Sarah Lotz is currently working as a script-writer on the kids’ sci-fi animated series, URBO: The Adventures of Pax Afrika , and with Lauren Beukes and Sam Wilson has developed an adult cartoon about her favourite subject (the living dead) which is currently in pre-production for the international market. When she’s not writing jokes about dead people, she writes gruesome stories that similarly sick-minded people seem to like. She won the Something Wicked ‘classic monsters’ competition, and her story about a dead grandmother (what else?) won the SAFM short story competition. She has an MA in Creative Writing from UCT, and her first novel has just been accepted by Penguin South Africa for publication.

This is Sarah's second story for Something Wicked, her first was The Perfect Man , which was published in Issue 1

 extract from An Eye For An Eye

By lunchtime we still haven’t decided what to do. We’re sitting round the kitchen table, watching our coffee get colder.                
“I still think we should phone the cops,” I say.
Kevin peers up at me blearily. He looks worse than usual. His face is sweaty and haggard; his eyes red-rimmed. The fag he’s trying to smoke jitters in his trembling fingers. Since we made our grisly discovery this morning, he’s puffed his way through at least half a pack of Camels.
“Did you hear me, Kev?”  
“Sam, you can’t be fucking serious,” he groans. “You know we can’t call the cops.”
“Yeah, but Kev - ”
“I can just see you now,” he purses his lips, which he always does when he’s imitating me. “Hello officer,” he says in a falsetto voice, “Thanks for coming so soon, officer. Oh, and by the way, please ignore the six hundred dope plants in the spare room while you’re here.” He stubs his cigarette out on the top of a discarded can of Black Label.
“Okay, okay. Very funny.” I pause for a second. I lick my finger and smear one of his tubes of dropped ash into an ‘X’. “But where could it have come from, Kev? How could it have got here?”
“God knows.” He burps, and I’m hit with a sickening blast of last night’s alcohol.
“Nice, Kev,” I snap.
“Sorry, man.”
“Look. There’re only two of us in the flat,” I say, picking up his Zippo and flicking it into action. “One of us must’ve put it there. How could it have got there otherwise?”
“Well don’t look at me,” he says. “I was completely wasted last night. Hey…maybe the flat’s haunted, Sam. That would be cool, eh?”