Annabelle’s Alphabet, by Tim Pratt

http://www.ideomancer.com/fy/Pratt-Annabelle/Pratt-Annabelle.htm

I discovered this story soon after it was published online, and it remains one of my favorites.

Intro:

"Annabelle's Alphabet" is the little story that could. Tim wrote it in 1998, and sent it to every magazine, big and small, that he thought might like it. After three straight years of rejections, he was ready to give up on ever selling it. Then he read a few issues of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, the excellent 'zine edited by Gavin Grant & Kelly Link, and thought "Maybe they'd like my strange little story." So he sent it, and they did like it, and published it in October 2001. The story was subsequently reprinted in the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror and in Best of the Rest 3. Editor Terri Windling called it "a brief, bright, and chlling piece that falls into the interstitial realm between story and prose poem, between fantasy and horror."