All Existing Literary Magazine
Foreword
What classifies something as Horror? Fear? Gore? Disgust? We've all read horror books that we didn't find unsettling. We've all watched horror films that weren't scary to us. So, what exactly makes something "horror"?
Issue 2 explores different perspectives of horror. From psychological to bloody, from strange to unsettling, from disgusting to beautiful, this issue strives to figure out what makes a piece scary.
With themes meant to frighten scattered throughout the following paintings, short stories, poems, and flash fiction, there is something in here that is certain to scare you. Enjoy reading, but make sure you leave the lights on.
A word by Claire Westbrook, Founder of All Existing Literary Magazine
Cover art: Booklings by Erric Emerson
Short Fiction
Matthew Hopkins, Elijah
Chad W. Lutz, Playing
Yasmine Diaz, Wichita Candlelight
Margaret Limone, Elnora Walked
David John Baer McNicholas, The Bay is a Body
Sam Moe, Be Sweet
Caitlin A Quinn, The Basilisk and the Alchemist's Wife
Stephen Myer, Forsaken
Amelia Brown, Of Witches and Arsonists
Flash Fiction
Seán McNicholl, The Goat's Bride
Marc Isaac Potter, Soup
Lauren C Johnson, Hand-Built Heart
Julia Biggs, Amuse-Bouche
Patrick Malka, What Appeared in a Forest Stream
Maggie Nerz Iribarne, The Relics
Trent Brown, Resort Magic
Cassandra Daucus, A Velocipede Built for Seven
Poetry
Ellena Dee, Feral
Jonathan Chibuike Ukah, My Body is on Hiatus
Amian Bent, Waiting For Decay
Natalie Co, CARNAVAL
Cara Pleym, my nature is yet unnamed
Maz Rome, Merriam-Webster Definition of Horror
Amanda Leon, Damnation
Farrah Jamaluddin, Visions of the Near Future
David P. Miller, A Festered Narrative
Mackenzie Dunne, Predator and Prey
Megan Brown, Eulogy for Cawthorne Moor
Leia K Bradley, Adding up the Adders
Louis Faber, The Ark
Visual Art
Rachel Coyne, Flora
Gideon Grandis-McConnell, Squid Vineyard
Erric Emerson, Bookling
Avery Duncan, Entrapment
Angela Patera, Darkness
Lain McNeal, Demon of the Static
Merriam-Webster Definition of Horror
by Maz Rome
horror ; noun
hor·ror
-
the sound of your father’s footsteps coming from the living room & passing through the corridor. deafening love. getting older. sending letters to your grandmother. your voice. grabbing something from the burning hot oven. religion & the promise of a god. the small electricity shock you got from touching your friend.
-
you wake up & everything’s the same as yesterday. yesterday was the same as the day before. you go over your arms & legs (the holes are still there; the lumps are still there). nothing can save you. your life isn’t broken, it’s bent. you’re alive but you cannot act. you wake up & there is nothing to look forward to. you had always been more of a monster than a boy. you wake up & you want love, not for affection, not for the intimacy, but because love tastes better than vanilla coffee & motoröl & gunpowder. you wake up & the world tries to take a bite out of you. you feel sorry for being so hard to swallow.
Elnora Walked
by Margaret Limone
Every part of that summer was thick. It was the most humid year in Wheelock since ‘52, more than a decade earlier, and the dense air stuck to you like sap. Walking up Aunt Aggie’s driveway, a dirt road winding up the mountain, was like wading through a pond more mud than water. It was a cicada summer too, the 17 year cycle coming to a close and unleashing a plague of never ending sound - buzzing that seemed to swell and drop like a symphony – dead cicada shells hanging from just about every surface available. Penny and I began the summer by carefully carrying these treasures back to our room, insects like these still being a commodity to us city folk, but by the end we found that crushing them between our fingertips was far more fun – and practical, considering the sheer quantity of them. Aunt Aggie’s property was also home to an abundance of skunk cabbage, shamelessly releasing its odor without consideration to whether us kids wanted to eat outside without gagging. The air, the noise, the smell – everything in Wheelock that summer took up space, though nothing did so quite like Elnora.
Elnora once told me, as we were walking back from town with groceries for Aunt Aggie’s Sunday Dinner, that if she could start over, she would choose to be a creature that took up no space at all. An impossibility, maybe, she would admit, but she could at least be something smaller. Something that no one would notice when it disappeared. Looking back, this strikes me as a strange topic for a grown woman to dwell upon with a child, but it didn’t seem so at the time. Aunt Aggie didn’t like it when she talked that way, but Elnora knew I was a smart boy and that she could trust me to keep it a Between Us Secret. She said she had tried to disappear a few times before, but the birds always stopped her. Their eyes were too sharp to let her go before they wanted her to.
We were sent to live with Aunt Aggie in June because Mother was sick. I still don’t know exactly what with, but I remember it made her weak and easily tired. She was pale in the weeks before we left and prone to fainting spells when exerting herself. It wasn’t deadly serious – she was still able to work the front desk of Hattie’s Boutique a few times a week so long as she had a chair, but taking care of us when she got home was too much. So Penny and I were driven from Union City, New Jersey, by Mother’s Friend Carol, to Wheelock, Vermont in June of 1964. We saw Aunt Aggie a few times a year on holidays and we liked her very much, but we’d never stayed with her. Penny had never stayed with anyone before, a fact which manifested in the cloud of tears that followed her from room to room that first week.
Mother’s Friend Carol was one of the few people in our neighborhood who owned a car, but I whispered to Penny that it would’ve been faster if we’d walked. She was a prudish driver and rarely dared to approach the speed limit. When we finally arrived, Aunt Aggie was sitting out on the porch waiting for us.
Having spent the first decade of my life confined to the cramped and crowded subdivisions of Union City, I think part of me believed houses like this one only existed in fairy tales. Right on the top of the hill, quaint and homey, was a little yellow A-frame. The acre of cleared land surrounding the house was taken up by a garden and the homes of several animals (some chickens, goats, and a pig named Buster) and the rest of the property was woods. Someone had planted flowers around the perimeter of the porch, like a fur stole of pink and purple, broken only by the stone path that led from the driveway. Aunt Aggie had on a floppy sun hat and a green paisley dress which ended right above the knee. Her hair was strawberry blond like our mother’s and she wore it in twin braids. Next to her was her roommate Elnora, a cheerful woman we’d met only a few times before. Below her bobbed black hair, her face was dotted with freckles, barely visible on her browned skin. She wore overalls and a man’s blue shirt. Between them was the General, a brown and tawny mutt with three legs.
They all leapt up to greet us, Aunt Aggie running ahead to pull us into her arms. The General licked our hands and faces and jumped in excitement. I felt Penny stiffen in silent fear. She was always nervous around the dogs in our neighborhood, big, muscular animals that jumped against chain link fences and spewed foamy saliva with each bark. She accepted the General’s kisses with a white face. Elnora was close behind the others and crouched down to speak as soon as we were free from Aggie’s embrace.
“Oh, I am so happy to have you guys here,” she said. “I know it’s tough to be so far from home, but I promise, you guys are gonna have a great time. There’s so much to do here: much more fun than Union City, you’ll see! You can help Aggie around the yard and with the animals, and whenever you want I can take you down to the river or out exploring. We’re gonna have so many adventures."
“Look,” she said, pulling two crudely carved tiny wooden hearts from her pocket. “I made you guys these. They’re little talismans to remind you of home. The wood is from a crate of apples your mother gave Aggie. That way, if you carry them with you, you can have fun and be happy here while still holding on to home.”
“Alright,” said Aunt Aggie. “Let’s not overwhelm them. I’m sure you’re all hungry after that long drive! I have cucumber salad waiting in the kitchen.”
Mother’s Friend Carol eyed Elnora with some distaste and said she needed to get going, she’d stop for lunch on the way back. Aunt Aggie looked suddenly uneasy, murmured something I couldn’t quite catch, but Elnora smiled brightly and, taking our luggage in her arms, ushered us into the house while our aunt stayed behind to try to persuade our driver to at least take some food for the road.
The inside of the house was exactly what I’d expected. A hodgepodge of floral wallpapers and pastoral embroidery and dusty field guides stacked on every available bit of floor space. There wasn’t a single inch free from knick knacks or doilies or photographs. It was like walking into the nest of some animal that collected antiques and tchotchkes in lieu of shiny things. The room Penny and I slept in was the only space in the house relatively devoid of clutter. It looked like it had once been used as a study or a library, which made sense since, as Aunt Aggie explained to us, it was where Elnora normally would have slept and Elnora was fond of reading. With us there for the summer, they were forced to share Aunt Aggie’s room and our two cots took over the second bedroom.
I can’t quite see the room in my memory anymore. I know it was neat and I know there was a circular window covered in cobwebs out of which I would often stare at the night sky, so much brighter than the starless canopy back home, but I can’t envision much else. I didn’t spend an awful lot of time there anyway, so it’s no surprise that I remember better the curves of Webber Brook and the path to Flagg Pond. Those I could navigate with my eyes closed, even today. I know because I’ve done it in dreams and the mind doesn’t lie about those sorts of things.
More than anywhere else in my dreams about Wheelock, I go to the Bug Tree. Only partially because it was the first place Elnora shared a Between Us Secret with me. The Bug Tree was so called because, Elnora told me, that was where all the bugs came from. I was nine years old and not stupid and I told her so. I knew bugs came from wherever there were other bugs and certainly not from a dead oak tree on my aunt’s property.
“You’re right in some ways,” she had said to me. “I’ll give you that. There are bugs everywhere. But where do you think they came from? The original bugs come from here.”
“Original bugs?” I asked.
“Well there are loads of creatures out there with six legs and wings and a thorax and technically that makes them insects, but that’s all they are. Do you think something so intricate and beautiful could come from mindless, flying drones? No. It requires intention and intelligence. The bugs that come from this tree are special. Watch. You’ll see.”
I watched. I waited. But they were just bugs, flying and diving in the usual thoughtless loops. My cheeks burnt with embarrassment. She was teasing me and I fell for it. Just as I was about to stand and scold Elnora, I paused. The same blue dragonfly that I had been watching stopped again to land on Elnora’s shoulder. In the same exact spot. I saw it ascend again, making a loop around the bug tree, settling on an ivy leaf, just as it had before. I stood in captivated stillness, watching it take off once more, make the same dash towards a nearby birch, hover there just for a moment and then— as I knew it would— settle yet again on that same dip in Elnora’s shoulder.
It was traveling in a circuit.
Just long enough so the casual observer would take no notice, but I had caught on. I watched it perform this ritual several more times. Then I turned my attention to others. Each bug— and there were thousands crawling and flying around the bug tree— had its own course of motion that it followed, with only one thing in common. They all touched Elnora, some staying there long enough to crawl over the same stretch of skin in perpetuity, others barely touching her before bouncing off again to repeat their dance. I had a sudden feeling that this was all a masquerade for my sake. They were doing their best to appear as normal insects, following predetermined choreography so as not to seem suspicious, so as to seem natural, but that had I not been watching, they would have swarmed her, reveling in every inch of her flesh. There was a twist in my stomach, one that would come again and again in my life, when craning my neck to see past the flashing ambulance lights to a wreck on the highway, squirming in my seat during certain horror movies, or frozen, ice chips in hand, as I walked back into the delivery room, my wife’s bloody split on full display. It was horror and disgust, coupled with an overpowering fascination, an urge to stay, to see.
I went back there a lot that summer, sometimes alone, sometimes with Penny, sometimes with the whole family, the General included. But the bugs never acted strange unless Elnora was there. She explained to me that I couldn’t bring stuff like that up in front of Aunt Aggie. It worried her and she might try to help in ways that Elnora didn’t want to be helped. So began the Between Us Secrets.
There weren’t many, but each one felt enormous. When they came up, it seemed as though nothing was as stable as I once thought, and I alone had to be the bearer of that information. One of the gifts of childhood, however, is that unless you’re thinking of a thing, you’re not thinking of it. And so, most of the summer was ordinary. Penny and I played and got into mischief and explored the mountain. We had barbecues and went swimming in rivers. It seems now in my memory to be the most idyllic moment of my life. It was exactly what a summer in the country should’ve been for a boy my age, and I think even then I knew how rare and lucky that was.
Elnora wasn’t always around, though. Sometimes she would get sick and have to stay in her room for days at a time. When that happened, Aunt Aggie would get very busy around the house and always wore a pinched and worried expression. Sometimes I could hear Elnora murmuring things from the other side of the door. I tried to distract Penny with elaborate games I came up with on the spot, usually involving tests of agility and familial trivia, but I could tell the episodes scared her.
For the most part, though, things were normal until the beginning of August. That was when the first of the birds began to appear. It was hardly noticeable at first, just a few crows pecking around the garden, but it soon got worse. There would sometimes be entire murders stationed out in the yard, staring in the windows. But they only appeared when it was just Elnora and I in the house. Aunt Aggie would take Penny out for “girl’s trips” fairly frequently, and whenever she did, it would just be the two of us. I was the first one to point it out, but Elnora became obsessed. It seemed like she couldn’t wait for the girls to leave so she could watch the birds congregate out the kitchen window. When she got like that, nothing I said could get through to her.
“Do you see them, Eddie?” she’d ask. “What do they want? They’re trying to tell me something, I know they are. Seventeen years, godammit, and they won’t leave me alone. What more do they want from me?”
Sometimes it scared me the way she talked. But I knew the birds were a Between Us Secret, so I never mentioned it to Aunt Aggie. As soon as the girls returned, the birds would suddenly be gone and Elnora would return to normal. There was only one time where I thought about breaking my promise. A great white owl sat on the fence post of the garden. All around her, crows flapped their wings and pecked at the ground. Elnora was in a trance. Her face, normally dark and full of color, was drained. Without a word, she disappeared into her room. When she came back, she was holding a small parcel wrapped in silk.
Sitting on her knees in the kitchen, she unwrapped it and began shuffling the cards within. I watched silently from the kitchen doorway, afraid any sound or movement would somehow break a spell. After a while, she laid out three cards. I peered over her shoulder and saw The Moon, The Devil, and the Ten of Swords written in swirling ink. I expected her to say something, to turn to me and explain, or shuffle and draw again. But she only sat in silent stillness. I waited for her to move. Minutes passed and her soundless vigil became more and more unnerving.
“Elnora?” I asked. There was no response. Not even a twitch to indicate she heard me. “Elnora, what’s wrong?”
Nothing. I watched her, listening to the growing hum of cicadas out the window. Finally I stepped towards her, reaching out to touch her shoulder, when I stopped suddenly. The humming, the buzzing, unmistakable as the song of bugs, was not coming from outside. I leaned closer to be sure, and there it was, emanating in a vibrating rhythm from within Elnora. I felt my stomach sink, and I thought for a moment I might cry, purely out of panic and confusion.
By some miracle, I heard the crunch of footsteps and the chatter of voices as Aunt Aggie and Penny made their way up the driveway. I ran from the kitchen and nearly crashed into my aunt on the porch. She laughed at my clumsiness for a moment before her eyes settled on my face.
“What,” she said, growing pale. “Is it Elnora?”
I nodded weakly and she pushed past me into the house. She’d only made it a few steps when Elnora, appearing from nowhere, blocked her path.
“You’re in a hurry,” she said laughing. She was her normal self again, smiling brightly. There was nothing to indicate anything was wrong. “How was town?”
Aunt Aggie was stunned for a moment. She looked back at me and I knew we both knew. “Fine. Good. It was Good.”
After that, Aunt Aggie stopped going on girls’ trips with Penny. The birds never came when Aunt Aggie was around, so things for a time were normal. Nothing strange happened again until the last night, exactly a week before Mother’s Friend Carol was supposed to bring us home. School would be starting soon and Mother was beginning to feel strong again. Penny and I had grown to love Wheelock and Aunt Aggie and Elnora and the General, but we were homesick all the same.
That last night, I discovered the circular window could open. I don’t know how I’d never noticed, but I guess it just never occurred to me to try. It looked so different from the windows in our apartment at Union City, I couldn’t imagine how it might work. But it was so hot that I decided to test it out. It was stuck at first, but with some effort it swiveled open on an axis in the center. Penny was already asleep and I settled back into my cot, relishing the night breeze on my cheeks. I couldn’t have been asleep for more than ten minutes when the buzzing woke me up. I tried to ignore it at first, but it just got louder and louder. It sounded similar to the eternal chorus of cicadas of that summer, but it seemed different. Less like a rhythm and more like a melody. A sad one, too. It seemed like it was coming from everywhere all at once.
Then I noticed the flapping of wings. It sounded like dozens – maybe even hundreds – of birds were flapping around outside. I stared out the window, hoping to catch a glimpse. I saw nothing, but the noise grew louder. From downstairs, I heard the front door open and close. My curiosity getting the better of me, I crept out of bed to see what I could.
I’ve never told a soul this, not my wife, not even my mother on her deathbed, but I swear it’s true. When I looked out the window, Elnora was walking through the yard. Except she wasn’t quite Elnora. Her body was black and glittering and moving. All around her, crows flew in a vortex, following her along as she walked. I wanted to call out to her, but my voice faltered. I only managed a squeak, but it was enough. She stopped in her tracks, and, after a pause, slowly turned to face the house. I realized, my stomach lurching, that she was covered in insects. Cicadas. They squirmed and crawled over her entire body like a second skin. Only her face was free. Her eyes met mine. And they were so, so sad. I’ve never seen anything like it since then, and I don’t think I will. I wanted to do something, to help her, but I was at a loss. I considered running after her. Elnora shook her head as if she could hear me. I know it’s impossible, but I swear, in that moment she spoke to me without moving her lips. Don’t follow me, her voice said. In the end, I walk of my own accord. Then she turned from me and continued her deliberate march until she disappeared into the treeline.
I was frozen in front of the window. I can’t say for how long. It seemed at one point, as I stood there, that I had fallen asleep in place and jolted awake. As if in a trance, I walked back to my bed. I fell asleep.
Aunt Aggie found her the next morning at the Bug Tree. I don’t remember a lot of the events of that day, but I know at some point I became conscious of sitting in a neighbor’s kitchen. Penny swears she could hear Aunt Aggie wailing even from there. Mother arrived that night with Carol who took us home. She stayed for a few days with Aunt Aggie before taking a series of buses back to Union City. When she returned she held us in her arms for a long time. Penny wept. I didn’t. My fingers fumbled with the wooden heart in my pocket.
Finally, when she released us from her embrace, she cupped both our faces in her hands. “Aunt Aggie’s friend was very sick,” she explained. “Sometimes people get sick like I did and how you do sometimes, but some people get sick in their hearts. Elnora was a very sad person and she did a very sad thing. But it has nothing to do with either of you. You made her last few months so filled with joy and happiness. Aunt Aggie says she never saw her happier than when she was playing with you two. But sometimes people are just too sick to keep going. It’s no one’s fault.”
It seemed as though any time Elnora’s name or that summer was mentioned, the only thing people knew how to say was that it wasn’t my fault. But I knew that if it was anyone’s, it was mine. Later on I would hear hushed voices discussing her history of delusions, stories that became so real to her they’d take over her life. I heard them lamenting that if only she’d told someone, if only someone knew the intensity of her hallucinations, then maybe it could’ve been stopped.
I knew. And more than that, I saw her in the yard. In another world, perhaps I would’ve told Aunt Aggie or run out and stopped her. But not this one. The cicada year was drawing to a close and, though I don’t believe she wanted to leave us, she knew what must be done. In the end, Elnora walked of her own accord.
Margaret Limone (she/her) is a recent graduate of Skidmore College. She now resides in her father's attic in Long Island where she spends her days reading, writing, playing with her cat, and confirming basically every lesbian stereotype.
Resort Magic
by Trent Brown
Mr. Smiles looks at me, standing there in the parking lot of the combination KFC-Taco Bell in a magician’s outfit, because he is a magician, in the hottest part of an eastern North Carolina summer day, with a frown on his sun-worn face that is shadowed by a bowler hat.
He’s upset at me because I’ve turned down his game. It’s the kind of game you’d find at a carnival. Here – why don’t I just rewind the tape for you?
“Sir, sir, for just one dollar I will tell you your name,” he had shouted to me and Oliver, my 8-year-old, as we crossed the parking lot. “For five dollars, I will guess your age.”
“You ever thought about switching those around?” I jokingly asked as he approached. He looked at me like that made no sense at all.
“For ten dollars, I’ll do the greatest magic trick you’ve ever seen.”
“Huh. Really?” I asked, not taking it seriously.
“Really,” he replied.
“We’re good, man,” I said. Oliver looked up at me like Really? but to the opposite effect of the way I’d just asked it.
“Sir, sir, I’m not asking for free money. I could sure use it, but I’m not asking for a handout. I’m offering you a once-in-a-lifetime chance here to see Mr. Smiles in action.”
“Mr. Smiles? That’s cool. I mean, I can just grab you some food, man.” I said this with a sigh, for total transparency and reading clarification.
He looked at me like I’d just killed someone. “Mr. Smiles does not ask for handouts,” was all he replied.
“Well, we’re good,” I said. As we started to walk off, we reached the point at which you have already met me in the timeline. Smiles was there, frowning.
We ordered our food and sat down in an old, uncomfortable booth that puked so much manufactured nostalgia at you that you forgave it. “Everything weird happens in parking lots, does it not?” I asked Oliver as we sat down to eat our assorted fast foods.
He was a good kid, a damn fine young man, and he just said that he hoped Mr. Smiles didn’t get too hot outside and that he wished the man had just said yes to the food but also that I’d just said yes to the magic trick. He was a fine kid.
From the big windows of the restaurant, I watched Mr. Smiles walk into an adjacent parking lot that housed a Big Lots.
****
The next day, Jules wakes me up with a terrified whisper. “Danny, Danny, Danny,” she violently hisses from somewhere beside me in the bed.
“He’s in our yard.”
“Who’s in our yard?” I turn over and rub my eyes. As they begin to function, I see that she is on her knees, looking out the window above the headboard.
“That guy you told me about yesterday. The magician guy. Mr. Laughs or whatever. It has to be him.”
“Mr. Smiles?” I ask. I still don’t raise myself up, I don’t know why. I just look at her from my pillow perch.
“Smiles, whatever. Do you want to wake up and fucking look?”
“What’s he doing?”
“What’s he doing? For God’s sake – he’s just sitting in the lawn. Looking out at the road, I guess. When I was in the bathroom I just happened to catch a glimpse of him from the window in there. He was looking at the front door and pacing around, looked like he might have been practicing a trick or something. I don’t know.”
There’s a pause between us. It’s a lot to consider.
“Aren’t you going to do something? Or get up at least? Jesus Christ,” she says, nearly spitting.
“Alright, alright,” I say, throwing on pants and a sweatshirt.
“Sir, sir, good morning,” Mr. Smiles says, jumping up and turning around, as I exit the front door.
“Mr. Smiles, what are you doing here?” I ask, trying to be light with the situation.
“I could not sit with the idea that you would turn down giving up just 10 dollars for the greatest trick ever known to man. Couldn’t stomach the thought of not offering you another chance. So, here I am. Here to offer you one more chance. Ten dollars. One bill, two fives, five twos, Mr. Smiles does not care how you go about making up the ten.”
“Mr. Smiles, I say this with all due respect and completely hypothetically, what if I were just to ask you to leave?”
He frowns so hard I think his lips might curl off his old face. All time frown going on here.
“I will give you one more opportunity, sir, because you said it was purely hypothetical.”
“Is there anything you could do, like a precursory trick? Just to see what I’m getting?”
He pulls a tiny flower pot out of a pocket in his coat and makes it levitate.
“That’s good, Mr. Smiles. That’s really good. But this is a run of the mill trick, right? I think we saw this one on our honeymoon from a resort magician. That’s resort magic.
Here is when Mr. Smiles gets really fucking angry. Like his head might explode. The frown starts to actually come off of his face. Like this was the worst insult imaginable. And then the world pops. Like I blinked too hard. And then it’s just me and him again in the yard and he’s smiling at me and he says, “Go inside the house.”
I run and find what could only be explained as a bachelor pad. There is no sign of a wife or a kid ever having existed. I run back outside and he’s just gone. In the grass, some of the yard is burned to spell out something that I have to back up to read.
“Resort magic, my ass,” it reads. I nod in agreement and realize that it keeps going on another line.
“Mr. Smiles accepts Venmo, PayPal or Cash App.”
I get out my phone and start to pay him but I stop because if I don't pay he might come back and fuck my life again and the interesting thing about a really good magic trick is you want to see another.
Joshua Trent Brown is a short fiction writer from Raleigh, NC and a soon-to-be fiction editor at JAKE. He has previously been published in a handful of great lit mags and has work forthcoming in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Transients Magazine, Mythic Picnic, and Carolina Muse. He's also currently writing a novella about a complicated storytelling commune where technology is looming. Find him on Twitter @TrentBWrites.
Entrapment
by Avery Duncan
Avery Duncan (he/they), also known as Dunca, is a young creative from Scotland UK. They love to explore different medium of art from acrylics and canvas all the way to digital animation, with digital art being a deep love of his since their teenage years. Although working in the social media and photography industry in their day-to-day, Avery loves nothing more than to study art whilst enjoying REALLY BAD horror and sci-fi films, resulting in many hilarious and weird artworks alongside video games.
My Body is on Hiatus
by Jonathan Chibuike Ukah
Last night I was thunderstruck,
floored, my body went on hiatus
unseen, unknown, burning in peace,
a piece of calcium coal with fuel,
I cried that nothing
would return me to this earth,
seed me back to life;
I was a pack of putrid ashes,
of flying debris, light, sterile.
The fire left me sterile,
Flicking flies, grazing greens,
Floundering and confounded,
stagnates, delves into stillness,
and nothing is but what should not be.
I slipped into silence,
This small envelope of invisibility,
awaiting postage to the other side,
or the gloating pyre,
where no more hurt was possible.
I knew that this gradual ache,
eating me up, body and bone,
would char me to ashes,
like combustion, explosion
and the clock of my final hour
would quietly tick away, detonate.
I reach out for the stranded straw,
clutching at the wickerwork,
A thread of hope slipped into my edgy fingers,
a glittering flare of solar air,
loitering into this rotten wood.
There was a gathering of new flares,
like a little pool of water,
oasis of hope streaking into a body,
igniting it into life, quickening it
back into existence, into action.
I asked the sun to bring up my body
from the rubble of the hereafter,
where my life awaited interment,
my spirit in a torn leather jacket,
where I had only seconds before rebirth.
Without a Body
by Jonathan Chibuike Ukah
My mother whispered to me
that I was born without a body,
my head came out of her cervix,
while the midwives’ feet scoured
for my body to leave my mother’s river,
pulled by her volcanic vibrations,
steaming with blood from her drain.
Nothing else but a cloud gathered,
mixed with blood spilt out,
leaving her a pallid face,
spilling, spinning and spitting torrents.
My body drowned in my mother’s blood,
a sodden dream, a wet sky,
plunged into a canal of despair.
Today, I learnt about the mosquito walk,
headlong, unrelenting, unfazed,
but if I hit a hall, or mock a mirror,
I will change my course, my route,
make the echo of my voice disappear
like a harrowing dream at dawn.
I will never give up, never surrender,
I am a dream, a sneak of light, the unknown.
Here is my daughter’s oiled canvas,
an animal with three horns without a body,
and his persistence is his uncanny luck.
But I am the devil's nemesis, his antidote,
I have learned to excavate his soul,
net and slay him without a body,
I am strange, yet so familiar.
Blood of the Lamb
by Jonathan Chibuike Ukah
I heard a scream
of the infant's blood
from the forest of Opurudu,
spill over my village,
stinking of dead rats.
A swell of biliousness
tingles my head, coagulates,
Like the thick blood of a toad,
salty and crunchy,
like dry leaves mushed to death.
There were mourners
on their way to the shrine
to ask why, why, why?
Too many questions without answers
too many hysterics.
They offered lamb sacrifices,
made their way to the cathedral
candles in hand, bibles in their hearts
with clattered teeth,
manacled feet, singing of the blood.
They heard the groaning of their gods
demanding for more lamb, more blood
for answers to questions, for love,
I heard the rasp of breath of the gods,
Someone is collecting cowries for another lamb.
Jonathan Chibuike Ukah lives in the United Kingdom with his family. His poems have been recognised by Boomer Literary Magazine, New Note Poetry, Ariel Chart Press, The Pierian, Atticus Review and elsewhere. He won the Voices of Lincoln Poetry Contest 2022 and was a finalist at the African Diaspora Award 2023, organised by Kingsman Quarterly.
Forsaken
by Stephen Myer
Hot winds raced through the canyon, turning the acrid air thick and nigh unbreathable. Desiccated flora spun aimlessly. Creatures lay dead and those dying writhed in agony upon the hard land. Bodies heaved like bellows, tongues flapping over fated flesh. No man or animal sought inspiration in such turmoil. No thought or habit—good or treacherous—could withstand the burden that swept through the rugged pass.
Madden sat at the kitchen table. The peace he craved during the last years never came. He inhaled laboriously as his hand slid across his damp forehead. Kicking his chair backward, he walked to the rattling window, parted the dusty curtains, and stared into the haze. A lone coyote knelt on its forelegs, its spectral howls muted by the clamor of wicked currents. Madden gazed into the sky, convinced God had fled unannounced, stealing the stars—abandoning a stained moon at the pale of a darkened settlement. When he looked again for the coyote it was gone.
“All right. I’m done jacking myself around,” he growled.
He coughed and wiped the bloody drool from his chin as he pushed open the door and stepped into the inferno. Swirling drafts caught his duster and lifted it high off his boot shafts. In the dense twilight, his frail body seemed a fearless shadow making its way toward the workshed. The latched door stood firm upon the slab, its adjacent slats weakened by the hail of rocks and clots of dirt churned up by the wind. Madden kicked the door and watched it fall inward. He coughed again, this time longer and harder, his mouth filling with the taste of some arsenical brew.
The flashlight edged past bins that stored the memories of better days. Madden removed a rifle from the wall rack. The ammo box lay on a shelf below. There were two cartridges left. He loaded one. It was all he needed to bring his target down.
A low rumbling came from the west. He exited the shed and shielded his eyes, looking out across the crepuscular wasteland that sloped up toward the distant highway that wound beside a ridge. South along that road sprawled a city that harbored his estranged wife. He hardly ventured there, cleaving to a solitary life after his son’s death and her subsequent departure.
Dust clouds billowed behind a vehicle coming down the dirt road toward his house. Its engine hummed several octaves below the shrieking wind. Madden aimed his rifle. Roof lights flashed. He lowered the weapon and waited. The deputy pulled up beside him and stepped out of his car, holding fast the crown of his hat.
“God damn, Madden. I ain’t ever seen weather like this before.”
Madden leaned on the rifle for support but said nothing. The deputy hollered over the wind.
“Your wife Jenny … remember her? Sent me to deliver a message. She’s worried about you.”
Madden coughed. The deputy caught sight of the blood stains on Madden’s sleeve.
“You all right?”
Madden waved him away. The deputy didn’t move.
“Mind if we continue this conversation inside, Tom? My eyes are burnin’ fierce.”
The deputy followed Madden, slapping his dusty uniform with his wide-brimmed hat. “What ya plannin’ to do with that 30-aught 6? Unlikely there’s suitable game in this peculiar weather. Ain’t seen such death scattered about since the outbreak twenty years ago. Sure is a different world here. I’d go as far as to call it hostile.”
Madden didn’t answer.
“I got to say, you’re lookin’ sickly,” said the deputy.
“Ain’t asked your opinion, Caine. Consider your job done and scoot back to town. Jenny needn’t know of my state.”
“What do ya propose I tell her?”
“Nothing. I wasn’t here when you showed up.”
“I won’t lie to her, Madden. She has a right to know. Just to be clear. This ain’t official business nor a social call on my behalf. More like a favor.”
“I ain’t seeking favors—especially from the likes of you.”
Caine grinned. “Jenny’s a fine and handsome woman. She erred choosin’ the lesser man between us.”
“Was no mistake. She ain’t stupid,” said Madden. “And lest you forget it’s a sin to covet another man’s wife.” Then he wondered if all sins expired with the departure of God.
Caine sneered. The men stood waiting on each other’s silence. Madden drew his words first, speaking softly as if talking to himself.
“Maybe I’d be of a different mind if I was younger. I’m staying put in our home. She knows where to find me.”
The deputy creased his hat with the side of his hand. “All these years pinin’ away out here on account of the tragedy,” he said. “What a waste.”
“Ain’t none of your concern.”
“It’s no secret Jenny left you because of the accident on the highway. Wasn’t her fault. Deer come outta nowhere. Shoot, I’ve seen how the loss of a child twists folks up. Then they blame each other or worse.”
“That’s enough, now.”
The deputy continued, testing the fortitude of Madden’s rebuke.
“Losin’ the boy hit her hard. Spent all that time in the mental hospital and still ain’t fully right.”
“No way that woman’s crazy,” insisted Madden. “Just confused.”
“Needs consolation. She breaks down and cries as if relivin’ the horror. Thinks her boy is comin’ home for dinner. A damn shame.”
“Sounds like you’ve taken an interest in her . . . again.”
“My duty demands I support anyone in times of woe,” said the deputy.
“Ain’t right. That’s a husband’s job. The woman ought to be here with me.”
“It was her choice to leave. Don’t go gettin’ the wrong idea.”
“Wouldn’t be advisable for any man to take advantage of her misfortune,” said Madden.
“You accusin’ me of sportin’ with your wife?”
“I said any man, though you’re the first who comes to mind.”
“Ever hear of sympathy?”
“Sure. I could use a bit myself,” said Madden. “I’d wake up to her sweet face, weighing up why she chose me to forever lie beside. She ain’t of a mind to cheat, either, and loved our boy beyond words.” Madden wiped his eye with his bloodstained sleeve. “That child was a rare gift. Damn accident put an end to the goodness.”
“Far as I’m concerned, anyone who drives that highway puts their life in God’s hands,” said Caine. “It’s not even a matter how many warnin’ signs line the shoulders. The road was built with too many possibilities for things to go wrong.”
“God had no hand in it. Hasn’t for some time.”
Madden leaned back and set his boot against the wall. The rifle barrel rested on his shoulder. A painful cough came up from deep within and he bent over and grabbed his gut trying to catch a breath.
“Oughta see a doc.”
Madden slowly uncoiled himself. “Sickness got little to do with it. It’s the loss of goodness that ruins a man. Now, you ought to leave—and make damn sure you divest of them misplaced feelings for Jenny.”
Caine snickered. “Can’t reckon what she saw in you.”
Madden aimed the rifle at the deputy. His arms shook and his finger trembled on the trigger.
“Leave me as you found me. I’ve lost patience.”
“I could arrest you and haul your ass in for threatenin’ an officer of the law.”
“Try and I’ll shoot you for trespassing. You only came here to taunt. Ain’t no warrant presented and I didn’t invite you in.”
“She sure is a beautiful woman,” said Caine who started to leave then stopped and pointed at Madden. “You can rot in this filthy, broken-down place for all I care. Would be no loss to Jenny and great satisfaction to me.”
“You always took pleasure in others’ suffering. More so in mine. Now git!”
Madden cocked the rifle in an exclamation of disdain. Caine turned and slammed the door as he walked out. Madden listened to the engine rev and the faint crunching of gravel beneath the tires. The red tail lights blinked like fiendish eyes fading into the hazy darkness. The foul scent of the deputy’s cologne was all that remained.
****
Madden tilted the pot and poured himself a cup of cold, thick coffee. He considered Caine’s words: A filthy, broken-down place. He knelt on one knee and slid his hand across the uneven wood floor. Darkness clung to his fingers. Just no enterprise left in this body, he thought. Run out of purpose by my sorrow.
The wind subsided and the beams stopped creaking—as if nature awarded an indeterminate moment of respite to all things. “Now’s the time,” muttered Madden. He grabbed the rifle and headed out. He took his place atop a flat rock near the canyon entrance and positioned the muzzle beneath his jaw, feeling the warm metal poke his gullet. His finger coiled around the trigger, only seconds away from sending himself into the domain of lost souls. A hacking cough roared from the depths of his sickly lungs a moment before the blast echoed through the canyon. The sting of gunpowder rode up the side of his face as the rifle dropped off the edge of the perching rock. He collapsed, eyes wide open staring at the house where Jenny stood calling his name. Madden tried to answer but the words fell mute off his lips—as in the madness of dreams.
“You, Tom. Dinner’s ready. Find our son and bring him home,” he heard.
Then he passed out, but not away.
****
Madden glanced around as he propped himself up against the headboard, having the dismal notion he’d been returned to a life of misery. The deputy stared down at him and then stepped aside when Jenny approached holding a bowl of water and a cloth. She sat beside Madden and placed a cool towel on his forehead.
“How’s my boy?” she said.
“Say my senses ain’t deceiving me,” said Madden.
“Caine told me you were ailing. I worried you’d do something stupid and I was right. We found you all scuffed up lying on a rock. Don’t know why you’d be out wandering in your condition. Lucky Mama came to care for you and bring you back to town.”
Madden had no strength to argue about her latter intention.
“Guess I’ll be goin’ now,” said Caine. “I expect to see you soon,” aiming his words at Jenny, who smiled. The deputy touched the brim of his hat and departed.
“You seem mighty friendly with him,” said Madden.
“What’s wrong with being grateful for his help?”
“Nothing. Just that you could have found me without his assistance.”
“I suppose so. It wouldn’t make me any less appreciative.”
Madden took silent exception to her words, then drew in a deep but painful breath.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I ain’t feeling right. Let me rest a while.”
“You’ve rested plenty. You’re thin as a rail and need sustenance.”
Jenny checked the cupboard. A solitary can of beans sat on an otherwise empty shelf. She cranked the rusty can opener, stopping halfway around, then pulled back the jagged top and stared at the beans as they slowly dripped into the pot. She lit the stove and set two hardwood bowls and flatware on the table.
Jenny walked into the bedroom and wrapped Madden’s arm around her shoulders. He felt the warmth of her body as they paced toward the kitchen. He took a seat and she served the simple meal.
“My little boy never could look after himself,” she said.
“I’m glad you’re back. I know now that dying wasn’t meant to be.”
“Why would you say such a thing?”
Madden set his spoon down and stared at his wife who seemed very much the woman of his past, not a bit distracted or fragile like the deputy described her. She touched his hand. He doubted a man would feel such pleasure in death and thanked fate for intervening. Madden pulled himself off the chair and stood behind her, stroking the coppery hair of the woman he once loved and would love again.
****
He woke late the next day from a restful night during which unexpected youthful strength poured out of his body. From the heights of despair, he had fallen into the lushness of the woman who had forsaken him. Jenny stood near the doorway in her chemise, humming a song she sang while rocking the cradle before their years of discontent. Madden raised himself on one arm and saw several drops of blood on the pillow. For the first time, it scared him.
He coughed.
“You okay?”
“Ain’t nothing to worry about,” he said, hiding the stains with his hand.
He watched as she slipped into her jumper.
“Maybe you can fix us a fresh pot of coffee.”
“Sure, Baby. A fine thing it’ll be getting back to the city. The doc will fix you up and we’ll be a happy family again.”
He dressed and walked into the kitchen and placed his hands on her hips, then kissed the nape of her neck. She turned and handed him a cup and they retired to the couch. He sipped slowly—eyes fixed on his wife. Jenny sat beside him, her body tense as she stared across the room, gripping her cup, listening to the buzzing windows and creaking beams as the powerful winds returned.
“Something troubling you?” he said.
“This is what you’ve been living with?”
“You mean the wind? It’ll pass. It wasn’t like this back then.”
“How can you stand it? I’m scared, Tom. The house will come crashing down and kill us all!”
She dropped the cup and covered her ears.
“Hey, now. Take it easy. Nothing like that is going to happen.”
Madden kissed her cheek then dropped to his knees and retrieved her fallen cup. He soaked up the spill with his handkerchief. Jenny crouched beside him and held his arm. “We need to go before things get worse. Now! I’ll mind the boy while you pack.”
Madden stood, startled by her insistence on leaving and her odd remark about their son. It neared twilight when he finished packing the station wagon. The last item he stowed was his rifle which he had retrieved and reloaded with the remaining cartridge from the broken shed.
“No reason to carry that weapon in the city. Things are different there.”
“Some things don’t abide by boundaries,” he said, then turned to look at their canyon home.
“Don’t look back,” said Jenny. “That house is sick and wants to die.”
He opened the passenger door and eased himself in. He recognized the scent of the deputy.
“You been seeing Caine. His cheap odor is all over the car.”
“Nice you think another man would be interested in me.”
“I can deal with another man. My unease is with your interest in him.”
“He helped me move some things, that’s all. I can’t do much about his after-shave . . . I mean cologne.”
Madden slumped into his seat and wiped the feverish sweat from his brow. The car slowly rolled over the dirt path toward the road that led to the city. The night closed in by the time they reached the highway. Jenny looked at Madden, then at the road, then back at Madden.
“Nice having you back in our lives,” she said. “One happy family, again.”
Madden leaned his head against the side window.
“You’re so quiet, Baby,” she said. “Something wrong?”
“No. Mind the signs. You know this road all too well.”
Madden looked up at the sky. The moon beamed clear and luminous—friendlylike. Beside it glimmered two fugitive stars and between them the prospect of happiness. He and Jenny would spend some time in the city, he imagined, get well, then return to the canyon. He’d already warned Caine, though it meant little to such a scoundrel. The second bullet in the rifle awaited the deputy’s mistake. Life would be as it should be. Might even start a new family.
“I have a surprise, Tom. Our boy is coming to dinner.”
Her words jolted Madden out of his reverie.
“We need to get back before he arrives. He gets upset if I’m late.”
“Where’s he been?” asked Madden, fearing he misjudged the frailty of her mind.
Jenny didn’t answer. She pressed harder on the accelerator pedal.
“Slow down. There ain’t no boy awaiting us. It’s just you and me now.”
“Won’t it be wonderful to see him? Of course, it’ll take some time for him to get to know you, again.”
“Ease up, I said. Mind the signs. You know the dangers of this road.”
Jenny sped along the serpentine highway. There was nothing Madden could do. The car rattled. Its tires squealed, barely holding the road. The brakes locked as they came around a narrow bend and the wagon caromed off the guardrail, spinning wildly until it came to rest with its rear lodged against the ridge. Jenny sat hunched over the steering wheel, her head cushioned by her arms. She gathered her senses, then took account of the car. A man sat beside her. She could not recall who he was or why he was there. His head lay against the shattered windshield. She pulled him back and studied his lifeless face in the moonlight. He looked so much like her son.
Stephen Myer (he/him) is a writer and musician in Southern California. His stories and poetry have been published in Tales from the Moonlit Path, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Roi Faineant Press, Grand Little Things, JayHenge Publishing Back Forty Anthology, Figwort Journal, The Avenue Journal, The Quiet Reader, Close To The Bone, Outcast Press/Anxiety Press Anthology, Blood Fiction vol. 2, among others.
Hand-Built Heart
by Lauren C Johnson
When Aurora died, I knew I was in trouble. Her law-abiding offspring would deactivate me, and those cheap, four-legged robots at the recycling center would scrap my parts. So, I did what any sensible owl would do—egg hatched or otherwise—I flew.
After the memorial service, Aurora’s eldest daughter, Sol, made the mistake of walking outside with me perched on her fist, carrying herself like an overconfident falconer. Her voice rattled my apertures when she called my name: “Hubble!”
Sol’s sisters were still inside the house with their fiberglass dogs. I felt grateful that Sol’s hand-built was a tortoise, a creature that could never hope to retrieve me. The wires in Kepler’s neck stretched as he tilted his face to watch me soar. His jaw popped open.
I was grateful to Sol too. When Aurora’s mind deteriorated, Sol replaced the worn-down cables beneath my wings and updated my solar cells. The bond between Aurora and I had deteriorated; no, not deteriorated because I loved Aurora still, and I always would. But the bond changed. That’s to say, I no longer felt like a hand-built pet; in my grief, I became an animal.
****
For years, I’d heard whispers on mechanical lips about a family of wild hand-builts scavenging the landfill on the coast. In the absence of their people, they replaced their own parts. They’d built a forest from the trash. A stinking sanctuary. What did we care? Hand-built pets lacked the sense of taste and smell.
Aurora had made me from whatever she could find. Aluminum, plastic, enamel coating, solar cells, bus wire, plexiglass eyes, thermal paste, and an ancient Intel Core CPU. She gave me wings and a heart-shaped face. In exchange, I flew beside her from the time she built me when she was fifteen, per tradition, to her last birthday at ninety-five. I received her secrets. I learned her language. I learned to swear like her. I could screech and hiss, too; I was a tyto, after all.
I was there when each sister was born. Of course, these women loved me. How could they not? And when Sol couldn’t save Aurora’s mind, she saved mine instead.
****
Was it a mistake to leave them? Would this family really scrap me?
****
I landed in the nearest fir tree, aluminum wings outstretched, and steel tail fanned for balance. Sparrows scattered to the sky. I watched the living birds and gray clouds roll overhead.
I had never flown outside before and wondered if rain could rust my wings shut. I wondered if I’d become a target for lightning. Sol’s footsteps echoed against the pavement. The fiberglass dogs whined and shriek-howled; I knew Selena and Lilah weren’t far behind. What would I risk: the wild sky or the recycling center?
****
Some people kept a legacy of hand-builts spanning generations. But this was a problem. If no one recycled their pets, the world would overpopulate with scrap metal creatures, leaving nothing for cell phones, computers, data storage centers, satellites, and space stations.
Maybe the sisters would hold onto me for years; laws be damned. But if the authorities found out they housed their dead mother’s hand-built, they would make them choose between me or their pets. Choose between me—a mother’s companion—or the pets representing their own coming-of-age.
Who to save? Their mother or themselves?
Aurora’s death was official now; there were documents. Her offspring had received the summons to the recycling center, though they shoved these notices to the bottom of their kitchen drawers.
****
The fiberglass dogs chirp-barked. Long nails scrapped pavement. The dogs so badly wanted to be dogs, they shrieked, “Retrieve! Retrieve!” The intent sisters chorused my name.
****
Once, when people still flew airplanes, Aurora held me in a window seat all the way to a now-sunken place called Florida. The airplane wings fascinated me. Each time the plane took off and landed, panels lifted along the top of the wings, exposing wires like veins. Airplane veins, I thought, like veins beneath cartilage and feather. Or the wires beneath my aluminum.
Sol reached the base of the fir tree and stood panting with her hands pressed against her thighs. “Hubble, where are you?” she breathed. “I’m not ready to say goodbye to you too.” The desperate sisters caught up with her, fiberglass dogs sniffing in futility.
I swiveled to look down at them, and a plexiglass wedge fell from my eye. The sisters gasped “Oh!” The piece was strong enough to withstand the fall, and Sol cradled it in her hands.
The grieving sisters looked up.
Aurora had programmed me with wits and a drive to live. I was not Aurora, and I could never hope to retrieve her, but there were still pieces of Aurora within me; she had created me. I would not let these sisters make an impossible choice. I was Aurora’s hand-built heart.
I flew. I would find other solar-powered tytonidae, and we would share memories of how the world used to be.
We would build from this detritus.
Lauren C. Johnson (she/her) attributes her upbringing in Florida, America’s weirdest state, to her interest in the ecological and surreal. Her writing has appeared in Mason Jar Press, Maudlin House, Museum of Science Fiction, and others. She is the current interviews editor for The Racket Journal, and she is a member of The Ruby, a Bay Area collective for women and non-binary artists. She earned her MFA in creative writing at American University and lives in San Francisco, where she co-hosts Babylon Salon, a quarterly Bay Area reading series, and Club Chicxulub, a speculative fiction performance series and journal.
CARNAVAL
by Natalie Co
Reeling and wheeling through hysterical air,
I fall like a symphony at terminal speed,
building a crescendo with lilting discordance,
ripe with creeping fog,
and I’m
just out of tune in a limping gait
when the devil thrusts down
his clawed hands to a jeering crowd
and snaps the sinews that hug my left foot.
Crawling, then dragged
through the depths of the mud;
the applauding hands below enclose me
like a dying black bud.
Natalie Co (she/her) grew up in Vancouver and currently lives in Montreal, where she studies psychology. She loves spending time by the water, enjoying new cafes, and scouring thrift stores for hidden gems. You can find her on Instagram @nataliewco!
Elijah
by Matthew Hopkins
There are thirteen dead flies on the windowsill. The night is covering her like honey as she lies on the bathroom floor, back not quite touching the side of the bath, head not quite touching the base of the toilet, nothing deliberate, nothing grounding, staring through the open door, at the dark rather than into it. The sink brims with empty bags of sour sweets, brightly coloured plastic shining under the white light. The ulcers that fill her mouth like mycelium are raw. She feels sick, but she always does now. Gluey teeth and swollen eyes and snot drying on her face. Sugar stuck under her nails. Fine layer of grime over everything. Mind crawling up the walls with shame.
The quiet pushes down until her ears ring, until she can’t hear the tap dripping and the hollow thud it makes against all the plastic. Her silenced phone lights up again with an hours-old text from Ma. She doesn’t look, isn’t brave enough. Instead, she looks at the cracks in the paint and doesn’t chase them above eye level. She imagines the ceiling caving in.
A voice floats through the open door, and the dark takes shape, becomes solid. “Gerry?”
She sees her shoes first, those peeling Doc Martens knockoffs, then looks up, sees her.
****
There was a girl and you could have walked through her house in the dark. So when she took your hand, you blindly followed.
She cut all her hair off eight days ago, cut off some of yours too. Grabbed fistfuls of it out the petrol station sink and ran. You ran too, giddy and tripping over yourself after her. There was nowhere to run to, just roads and the absence of them, but you were running anyway – tarmac, grassy bank, the incline pushing your hands into the dirt, force your way through the trees right before that sheer drop and then – and then she was standing over the motorway and she could’ve been a knight, could’ve been a saint, the sun blazing onto her, and she mixed up your hair and her hair in her hands before throwing it up and out and shouting over the traffic we’re together now, now we’re together.
****
“Gerry, I–” Her gaze falls on the sweet wrappers, her face twisting. “Christ.”
She closes her eyes. “It’s hot.”
As one:
“Wow, really?”
As one:
“Stop it.”
As one:
“Seriously, stop it.”
A purple-green shadow of those peeling Doc Martens knockoffs lingers, not quite pulsing and not quite still in the new dark. No details, but Gerry can fill them in: the mud on the stitching, the cracked white paint on the left toe reading TSC – Toni St Clair – and the silver star beads on the laces. She used to love it, how Gerry always knew what she was going to say next.
“Shannon called me.” Shannon being Gerry’s ma, and the fourth of seven trumpets sounds: Toni has never not called her Shaz, deaf to Gerry begging her to stop (“You’re from Leith. Choose life.”). Pure blunt-force charm, until Ma gave up getting pissed off about it. “She… Well, she was pretty nasty, actually. She wants you to go back and talk to that priest about–” she gestures between them “–this.”
“How’d she know it was you?”
“I’m not gonny come with you, but I’ll stay here.”
“How did she know it was you?”
“Would you look at me?”
Gerry does, squinting in the brightness, vision tinted blue. Toni has always been allergic to trousers. She wears eight XL t-shirts, calls them dresses and never cares about the target it puts on her back. This one is pale green, the collar fraying and yellowed with age, a faded cupid looking longingly into the middle distance printed on the chest.
“You think I should go.”
“You’re no’ doing well. Might be for the best.” She fiddles with the cross around her neck. She’s a bad liar. “Closure, likesay.” She got bullied for that, too.
Gerry knows she wants a fight. Wants tears and shouting, something to be broken, physical evidence that it was worth it. Wants her to get up. Wants her to stand her ground, for once in her life.
****
There was a girl and she somehow kept surprising you, like snow in spring.
Your bedroom was small and green, mostly Facebook marketplace IKEA, and your ma wouldn’t let you put any posters up. The sun fell through the sky while you weren’t looking and then you were sitting in the dark. You weren’t going to turn on the light. She was talking. You were listening.
She was lying on the floor, legs resting up against your mattress, feet in the air (odd socks: pink with dinosaur skeletons, ivory with leaves). With your back pressed against the far wall, she couldn’t see you, but you could see her.
“–and everyone here is actually just boring, likesay. No’ you, obviously, but every cunt else.”
“You only just got here.”
“Am I wrong?”
“No, but that means it’s only a matter of time until I am and then we’re– I’m stuck here.” You bit the inside of your cheek, eyes watering as the sugar-worn-sharp points of your teeth dug into ulcer-ridden flesh. You bit harder. Repent. Forgiveness comes later, but you have to hurt first.
Some shuffling, a click – your bedside lamp turned on, bathing the room in soft gold. She knelt at the edge of your bed, looking up at you like you were something.
“Don’t do that.” Your voice cracked.
She stood, whirled around and dramatically collapsed back onto your bed. Next to you. On your bed. This was the closest anyone had been to you in years. You should have pushed her away, gotten her to move, but the light was in her eyes and she hadn’t stopped looking at you. “Better?”
“I guess.” You couldn’t keep the smile off your face. It was embarrassing.
“Give us your hand,” she said, taking it anyway, tracing over the lines in your palm.
You tried to pull away but she didn’t let you. Were you dreaming? Because you’ve had this dream before. You always woke up choking on shame.
“Am readin’ your palm,” she supplied, like she didn’t care. You couldn’t speak. “Right. You’re… cautious, I think, and you’ll make some big decisions… This means you’re controlled by fate… Oh, you fall in love dead easy–”
You yanked your hand free, curling it into a fist into your lap. “What makes you qualified to do this, anyway?”
“Got a certificate.” She pulled a scrap of paper from her pocket and handed it to you.
You took it with the hand she didn’t touch. “This is a receipt.”
She laughed.
Downstairs, the Strictly theme tune and half a phone call, ending. In the distance, a barking dog, traffic.
She reached over, put her hand on your white-knuckle fist. “We could just leave, you know. We’re old enough that it’s no’ running away anymore.”
Then your ma came in and got halfway through saying does your friend no’ have a house of her own? before stopping short, staring at your hands.
Your friend left sharpish, but not without a See ya, Shaz! and a wink for your ma. Nothing for you.
Alone in your room, you felt like a distant desert church, burning.
****
Gerry closes her eyes again, pulls away, wraps herself in the dark to stop time. Then, the thought of the shape of her body, curled up on the tiles, the way her hair isn’t covering her face, all that exposed skin. Time is going faster and faster. She imagines smashing her head against the wrapper-filled sink until her skull caves in. The blood on the porcelain is so vivid her eyes snap open. Bright white bathroom, brimming with imagined violence. The night is hot and quiet and there’s sweat on her forehead. Everyone else is right, which makes her wrong.
“Do you want me to go?”
“It wouldn’t be for long. Tell Shannon you’re still alive, nip to the church, fuck off again, and you’ll be back here before dinner.” She shrugs. “Might even be able to get a cheeky wee lift out of it.”
Just answer the fucking question Gerry doesn’t say, instead turning onto her back. There is a water stain about the size of her hand on the ceiling.
A shaky breath out. “I’ll be in… I’ll just be through here. If you– yeah.” Footsteps away. It doesn’t feel good.
She lies still and silent, like she’s holding a vigil, until time slips from one state to another, the sky pressed against the window growing light. It doesn’t make her feel any better. There is an obvious answer. It won’t be for long. It won’t be for long. It won’t be for long. The litany of the perpetually ashamed. Be back before dinner.
The early morning is still hot and still quiet and she says from the bathroom door, into the dark, I’m going home. The dark doesn’t answer.
****
The sun rises and she wishes she could live with it. She’s halfway home by now, sat at the back of the bus, staring at her phone and trying to think of what she’s going to tell her ma, ignoring the lad blasting a god-awful remix of Sir Duke a few seats in front. Guilt is hollowing out her teeth. She sneaks another sour sweet from her pocket. It burns.
Tell Ma you’re still alive, nip to the church, fuck off again.
Call Ma to tell her you’re still alive, nip to the church, fuck off again
Text Ma to tell her you’re still alive, nip to the church, fuck off again.
Text Ma’s best friend to tell her you’re still alive, nip to the church, run away again.
Gerry catches her reflection in the bus window. It mouths coward.
****
Father Addams is a short man with bad hair and the nicest thing Toni ever said about him was that he’s probably not a paedophile. Gerry has been asking him for forgiveness once a month since she was eight years old. She has never once felt wiped clean, which in itself needs to be forgiven. His office is simple, white walls, grey carpet, jazz on the radio.
He tries to change her mind about leaving again, obviously, and she says she’s sorry, but it’s happened now and there’s nothing she can do about it.
“Isn’t there?” he asks, his face serious and sad.
Tongue-tied, but not by herself. By something bigger. It feels like stage fright.
He sighs and changes tactic. “Why did you come back?”
She doesn’t reply. Toni told me to sounds so pathetic even in her head she can’t say it out loud.
“Your Ma–”
“She doesn’t like me.”
“She’s your Ma. She loves you.”
“Different thing.”
She doesn’t like Gerry. She says she hates her own silhouette but they have the same one. She hates the sweets and her daughter’s inability to stand up for herself but these things are not coded into their shared DNA.
Gerry’s earliest memory is of being left alone for hours, screaming in the hallway, nightie soaked through with piss, an insistent knock at the door and Ma with her coat on, hurriedly shushing her, opening the door to tell the old lady from across the way they’d been to the shop – kiddy tantrum because she wouldn’t buy Gerry sweets – so there was nothing to worry about.
In the minutes before she left, she was shoving clothes at random into a backpack, movements made clumsy by urgency. She had spent so long sobbing into her pillow the sun had set. Her bedroom was blue-dark and the lamp would never be turned on again.
Gerry turned to leave and froze. Her mother haunted the doorway. She leant there, arms folded, her feet not quite in the room. She saw Gerry kiss Toni. It was chaste and innocent and there was nothing wrong with it until it was seen.
They looked at each other in the quiet, in the dark. Time stilled. Nineteen years. The sound of each other’s breathing. She could smell Ma’s perfume. Sweet and floral, intensified by the low, humming heat. The space between them is unforgivable but it cannot be filled.
“I can’t…” live with her, be with her, be made invisible by her “... I just can’t stay.”
He nods, and Gerry can’t help wondering if all of his choices are made for him, too. How long it took for him to stop resisting and let the tide carry him out. He suggests confession, and Gerry agrees. One last time. Maybe this will wash the blood from her mouth.
****
They walk over to the confessional booth like they’re processing into a funeral.
It’s the same as it always is, a small and dark-stained wood box. She’s not sure why she was expecting it to be different. Inside, a chair, a step, both faded. A purple curtain draped over the grate in the wall. She sits down, and immediately she’s a child again, upset without the words to explain why. She’s sick of living like this. Sick of this body and this brain and how both of them are just her mother’s all the way down.
Maybe that’s why they can’t get along. She is a mirror Ma is forced to look in every day of her life. Her reflection stales, shifts, exposing all these new flaws. Gerry gets it – she hates looking in the mirror, too. But she was just a kid. Ma was supposed to look after her.
She loves Toni in a way that makes her feel like a rescue dog. Scared but desperate for anything resembling kindness. She’s not even sure Toni likes her that much anymore, now they know each other. Holding on is starting to feel like sinking her teeth in but it’s still contact, still touch, no matter how sharp.
She should love her mother, but Gerry is hard to love for a reason.
****
There was a girl and you would have done anything to be able to read her mind.
You kept sweets in your blazer pocket and snuck them throughout the morning – they didn’t last all day, no matter how hard you tried. They always got sticky from your sweaty palms and fused with the crumpled tissues you kept to soak up the blood and spit you couldn’t swallow. Your teeth were sharper than you remember them being and these ulcers snagged and split on them daily.
In church, stone walls, stained glass, Jesus on the cross and you were alone, half a pew to yourself even though this tiny building really didn’t have the room for it. Because no-one wanted to sit near you. There was giggling and pushing until someone drew the short straw and had to be closest to you, the eight people next to them taking up the space of five. Or, there usually was.
Today, a girl came in late, hissed at you to move over, crashed down next to you. Right next to you. And you were so surprised, you couldn’t stop looking at her. Really couldn’t stop looking at her. She didn’t sing the hymns, didn't recite the Lord’s prayer, wasn’t buckling under the weight of guilt like you were.
From the front: the voice of light and mercy – up is up, right is right, you have done wrong.
She caught your gaze for a second, and she might have smiled, but you looked away so fast it made you dizzy. You spent the rest of the service feeling like you were standing on the very edge of a cliff, but looking up into the sky.
****
As Father Addams chews his way through the prayer of absolution, Gerry can feel the little bits of sour sweets stuck in her teeth as she fights the urge to bury her head in her hands. There are so many ulcers that confessing felt like spreading spores. She doesn’t feel different, but that must come after. She tries to listen intently, tries not to get so caught up with trying to listen that she forgets to actually listen, and takes a sweet from her pocket. It burns.
****
You touch your gum, and your fingertip comes away bloody.
You touch your gum again, worrying at the open ulcer. More blood. You can taste it now, metallic and sour. You need to stop. You are making it worse, blood coming in rivulets and filling your mouth.
You push down and your finger sinks through the flesh.
It feels like squeezing a rotten fruit, how unevenly and easily your gum splits apart. You pull your finger out, dislodging one of your teeth. Your hands shake. There is blood pouring from your mouth, running down your throat, soaking through your t-shirt. It’s warm. Sticky. You touch your gum again, harder. The soft, pink flesh gets under your nails as you push further, curling your finger down so it goes through the roof of your mouth. You drag it out. A chunk of your mouth falls into your lap. You pick it up. Holding it in your hand, you push more fingers into your gums, into your cheek. Teeth clatter against the floor. If you pinch your tongue, you can make holes in it.
You sit in the confessional box, pulling your mouth apart. Slow, repetitive movements, like taking sweets from a bag.
The door opens.
You meet Father Addams’ eyes. You don’t stop, tearing away your bottom lip and letting it fall to the floor. He stares, uncomprehending. An animal moan. The taste of blood. A scream claws itself free of his throat and cuts itself into gags. He chokes on his own vomit, stumbling back.
You look away from him, down at your hands, your blood, your teeth and bits of your flesh. There is a void inside of you and nothing will ever fill it. You dig your nails in again and pull away a chunk of your cheek.
Matthew Hopkins (he/him) is a transgender poet and writer based in the Midlands, with a degree in English Literature with Creative Writing from the University of Manchester. He writes about music, queerness, and ghosts. He is a loving father to about four houseplants and a dog the size of an underachieving horse. You can find him on Twitter and Instagram @swearjaragain.
Soup
by Marc Isaac Potter
I'd like to gurgle when I kill someone. The slashing causes blood to spurt out of their neck. I like to giggle when I kill someone. It's refreshing to see their arms flailing.
The method by which I pick them is ingenious. I sit in the grocery store parking lot, waiting for a woman to come out with a lot of groceries. This way she has to stay outside her car putting all the groceries away. I only pick the women who put their groceries in the trunk, which is surprisingly few. Once they get their car and their groceries as a lovely bonus. After slashing, I love to simmer soup on the stove.
Son and Daughter
by Marc Isaac Potter
I've never been a ghost but I always wanted to be. I like to wear my bright pink jacket, when I go out and look for people. I really like to call them people, even though with all the body parts piled up together, it just doesn't look like much.
There is too much killing in this story. Let's talk about my son and how much he does not like monsters. I always tell him that there are many monsters in his closet. My thinking here is eventually he will really like monsters and want to play with them. I always bring him 2 glasses of tomato juice, one is for him to drink before he goes to sleep. The other one is to share with the first monster that comes out of its closet.
Once my son goes to sleep, I go out hunting in the middle of the night. I like the way the street lights sometimes make people look yellow. I try to pick a person who's walking slowly to their car. Sometimes for fun I just run them over. That way, I can have a higher production rate.
Do you think the story is fun? Night time is my favorite time. You have to have much more skill to kill people at night than you would to say kill a bear during the day. That is my professional opinion. I don't kill for money unless my wife and I get behind on the bills. The skill is a nice resource in case we get behind on the credit cards.
My daughter wants me to buy her a brand new sports car for high school graduation. I know what this means so I put the word out on the street that I need to kill more people. Unfortunately, this is not very good marketing. When my contacts knew that I needed more work they wanted to lower the pay. That meant that I had to kill even more people to make the car payment. You see, I bought the car when she was in her junior year so I could have it mostly paid off by the time she graduated. I would do almost anything for my daughter.
Marc Isaac Potter (we/they/them) is a differently-abled writer living in the SF Bay Area. Marc’s interests include blogging by email and Zen. They have been published in Fiery Scribe Review,Feral A Journal of Poetry and Art, Poetic Sun Poetry, and Provenance Journal.
Twitter is @mocai01
Demon of the Static
by Lain McNeal
Lain McNeal (they/them) is a traditional artist from rural Pennsylvania. Their art focuses on joyful representation of fat and queer folks through fantasy, figure drawing, and nature-inspired artwork. They hope that their art can bring some happiness to others who might not feel represented in the arts. They also have a huge soft spot for horror, and the Definition of Horror theme was a great chance to experiment and create some grotesquely beautiful body horror.
Feral
by Ellena Dee
Now, as the days grow shorter,
I am becoming nocturnal,
Like a displaced forest creature
That stalks the refuse area,
Decorating its burrow with glittering trash,
Dancing on pavements between splinters of glass,
Hot-footed under streetlights
Goblin-eyed,
Fur with an oil-slick lustre,
Darting in and out of shadow
Like a spirit flitting between worlds –
A silhouette leaping across
Brick walls, though locked gates
Sensing whispers in the undergrowth –
A rustling through
The body’s untamed wilderness.
Attuned to the low-rumbling of thunder
In my throat,
The voice of falling skies
I lick my wounded paw
And curl into the lap of the earth.
Ellena Dee is a poet and academic who holds a PhD in English from the University of Exeter. She was a runner-up in the 2015 Mslexia Women’s Poetry Competition and was specially commended in the Welsh Poetry Competition in 2012 and 2014. Her poetry has been published in a number of poetry magazines such as Ink, Sweat & Tears, Symmetry Pebbles, Mslexia, and Dreich Magazine.
Visions of the Near Future
by Farrah Jamaluddin
Last night I mourned
even though you were not yet gone;
tears paid out pains that no doctor
could count. Suddenly your insides
were black and white, and I would
have given anything to colour them
bloody once more. In dark moments, I fool
Myself into believing that I am not afraid
of the inevitable,
but your fate frightens me.
I cannot see where your journey leads.
It is not my right. Some currency is
prohibited.
Instead, I sit here in my childhood
dress, legs outstretched on the old
Persian rug. I sulk and stew in my
helplessness. I cannot save you,
or them. The masters within seek
to control the without - I furrow
my brow in defiance of the doctors,
the lawyers, the teachers and politicians,
but deep down I am a lost child
wandering this otherland.
The masters chant:
I am all alone
Their blackened specs and lace veils
convince me:
I am all there is.
Sometimes you go to ground, withdraw
for weeks to nurse your afflictions
We are both being led by chains to
believe that we only have our selves.
Farrah (she/her) is an unpublished writer, poet and late bloomer, born in England and currently living in Italy with her partner and Maltese terrier. She is currently studying a BA in psychology and philosophy, in between her determination to learn Italian and make pizza. She enjoys magical realism, and post-colonial studies, as well painting in watercolour. She can be found on Instagram and Medium writing about love, intersectional feminism, and challenging the status quo.
The Bay is a Body
by David John Baer McNicholas
His shoulders tense as he finds a finger, long and white, with a scratched and stained fingernail on one end and a root system of grey and black veins on the other. The flesh is white and pruned, but plump and alive. He puts it in the bucket.
A massive concrete building overlooks the bay. He sings a song of gratitude to the curling dragons of smoke coming out of the stacks.
When his bucket is full, he heads back up the slippery hill to the house where he lives with the mother. He digs his toes into the grassy hillside carefully, bracing himself with a free hand.
Her hands are covered in pigment. On the easel behind her an apparition stares from deep-welled pastel pupils. She checks his dripping bucket of fingers. "I’d like some arms next time," she says with a smile while kissing him on the forehead.
He laughs, "do you really think arms will grow down there?"
"Of course they do, where do you think the fingers come from?" She fillets each finger, removing the black veins. A chittering calls up from below the kitchen table.
"Orkoo, these aren’t for you."
Orkoo responds with a dissappointed boo.
"I wish I had a father," the boy says.
"Well, you don't," she says. She puts the fingers to roasting. "I pulled you whole out of the bay. You were the only fully formed person to ever come out of that muck."
"On TV they have fathers."
"Have you ever seen anything else on TV in real life? That’s what TV is, made up." The small house creaks with the weight of something and they both tense. "What, with the dormingers about that you should be worried about a father who doesn’t exist."
"They came early tonight," he looks worried.
****
Sundown and the house is lit with fat-soaked rags in jars. The lights smell of old meat.
A bell on top of the stove dings. She looks into the oven. "Fingers are ready", she says. "Don’t forget to peel the nails off!" She pulls the steaming tray from the oven with an old towel. They are stuck to the tray, juices oozing.
She serves him a plate of roast flesh. He picks each finger up and peels the nail off, which comes loose easily, held only by a string of cooked nailbed. Each fingernail goes on the side of his plate in a small pile.
"These are a good find," she says. "Next time you’ll find arms though, I’m sure of it."
"Will the arms have fingers too?"
"I’m certain they will. I bet those arms were out there today. You just didn’t dig deep enough. The fingers will grow back by tomorrow. Do you remember the spot where you found them?"
"Oh yes, I do."
"Tomorrow, when you find a finger, reach down into the hole. You should feel a bony hand. Don’t pull on that, because it’ll come off, and a hand is really not as good as an arm at all. When you feel the hand, follow it down to the wrist. Go past the wrist to the forearm. Grab hold of the forearm and pull with all your strength. If we’re lucky, you’ll dislocate the shoulder and we’ll have a bicep too, but a forearm is nice."
The boy listens, reaching into the dark mud behind his eyes.
"Don’t let your fingers get cold dear.”
"But, if there are arms, might there be a whole person down there too? What if I pull up a whole person?"
"Don’t be silly, you aren’t strong enough to pull up a whole person." She smiles and sucks the meat from a finger, leaving a knuckled series of bones, held together by milky sinew. "They don’t need those arms, and they will grow back in a day."
Orkoo scratches at the boy’s leg. "Ow, Orkoo, bad you." The boy kicks his legs under the table and Orkoo scurries away on his thick padded hind feet.
After dinner, the mother puts the plate with the bones on it into a locked box while Orkoo watches. "Shoo, go outside and find your dinner," she says and pushes him toward his little door. At the threshold he turns quickly and tries to bite her fingers with his long teeth. She is fast and tucks them into a fist and punches him in one of his long floppy ears. Orkoo cries out and runs from the house. She locks him outside.
****
Boy and mother sit together in front of a relic, a humming and sparking tube in a box with pictures moving on the front.
Arms and bodies below the muck press him. He blinks at appendages swaying underwater at high tide, collecting fish and snails to feed their bodies still buried below the riverbed. They sway like grass and animal combined in an organism of a single-minded purpose, to feed. As part of the mud, they are more of the earth than of the sea, but the fragile way they are held together is like a sea creature when it’s taken out of the water.
The mother falls asleep and the TV broadcast ends. The screen shows a flag on a pole, waving in the wind. It’s a lonely thing, that there is motion and wind at the end. He watches until the screen goes crazy with a tearing sound. Then, he turns it off and sits in the darkness with the snoring mother.
****
Maybe the entire bay was a body.
At the bottom, a sea of waving grey arms. A frenzy of splitting knuckles and knobby elbows flailing blindly. The prickly wetness of their blood. The finger factory reflected in a glowing green cloud. Tendrils of micaceous sparkling hair, chunks of mud descending in trails to the muckbed. The anti-freeze sunset, haloed in brackish green.
A deathless thing rotting alive.
The next day his small hands empty the bone drawer into the furnace. He is unable to thaw the frozen space between his feelings. Comfort recedes into hypolimnion. Down at the shore he wonders about the old boat, decaying at its mooring. A segmented worm crawls over the muck in the beached hull. He picks up a rock and throws it at the slick mover.
A set of rose-quartz eyes watch him intensely from a few feet away. Orkoo! he shouts, but the animal sits still watching. Orkoo? he asks. The creature backs silently into the bush until just the tips of its ears are visible.
Spooked, he gets out of the boat. The late afternoon light turns to a copper reflection. His breath quickens as he runs to the spot. He drops to his knees with his spoon and digs. Water and muck splash in wide incautious arcs and quickly cover his bare back in blue-black splatters. A finger breaches the soup and floats in front of him.
His breath quivers as his own hand disappears. Focus deforms into brash-bodied action. He pushes and slides his hand deeper. The veiny back of a cold thick hand slips past his forearm. Bony and tired and limp. A pulse, faint arhythmic tapping. He lays on his belly and plunges down. Chin in the water. A sheaf of elongate muscles. The sun touched the tops of the trees.
The arm tries to snake away. His fingernails dig into flesh. It dislocates with a sickening pop. No time. The disk of the sun is now missing an edge and dormingers will be out. The arm gives a weak twitch.
Feet slide in muck. Falls face first and the arm lands on top of him, twitching on his bare back, fingers flicking helplessly at the muck.
The veil lifts slowly.
He slips again climbing the hill. The arm limps slowly back toward the bay. He lifts his bucket high above his head and brings it down with a clunk. A ragged collection of grey and blue-black flesh, torn white sinews. A tree behind him creaks with the drop of a dorminger settling on a thick branch.
A lone flower dried to a sphere of feathery wisps. The flowerhead bobs back and forth on its stem. A gusty breath flattens the stem and explodes the flower into a hundred future flowers. The smell is like burning carpet.
Orkoo appears. Its eyes now carmine and glowing. Rears up on hind legs, split upper lip draws apart and flexes a pair of four-inch incisors dripping with half-chewed bear scat. It leaps over the boy's head, a long fawn blur.
He leaves the arm in pieces, runs swinging his bucket wildly around his head. The house is dark, the tree line beyond is a black ribbon, save one spot which glows with ambient laughter.
He slams into the door. The impact knocks him to his bottom. Orkoo's screeches behind him cut into him. He looks back. There is a type of man. Orkoo is baying at his heels as he walks toward the boy and stoops to one shaky knee. His grey fingers, black streaked nails, one solitary arm, shake as they reach to the splattered mess on the ground. He stops short of touching the pieces of himself scattered there.
The man turns to Orkoo and reaches tenderly for his head. The beast chitters and bows but submits itself to his affection. The bucket, laying on its side, pours shame out into the grass, where it waters some dandelions growing there.
David John Baer McNicholas (he/him) has been on travel in New Mexico for three years. He is the author of the novel Lemons: In an Orchard. He operates the nascent imprint ghostofamerica ltd co (Anarchy, Abolition, Art) and studies for his BFA in Creative Writing and AA in Native Studies at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. Currently, he is working on an array of projects. His work can be found on poets.org, Bending Genres, and Panorama Travel Journal. ghostofamerica.net
The Goat's Bride
by Seán McNicholl
“All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.” ~ St. Francis Of Assisi.
Anticipation hung curtained from the air, its weight suffocating the guests like the shadows of the church. The flicker of the candles fought the darkness in their eternal battle.
Around the church, hooded men coalesced with the shadows, keeping watch.
A man like death, with friable skin draped over jutted bone, genuflected low, his knee knocking against the mosaic floor. He perched upon a pew close to the back.
“All stand for the bride.”
Mutely, the congregation obeyed.
The bride moved up the aisle, her black veil fluttering like a raven's quill. A chill escorted her, wrapping its tendrils around those gathered. The clack of her heels pierced the silence, though no eyes turned to her. None except her groom, the red glow of his eyes in the candlelight leering from a Shadow by the altar. He was a darkness no light could touch.
“My children,” the high priest declared, “Welcome. We are gathered here at this hour to witness the marriage of this servant girl to her lord. Our lord. Let us bow our heads for his blessing.”
His words were clear, perfunct–void of emotion. In the jump of candlelight, his matte black hair writhed, and his pale grey eyes darkened to black. His translucent face pulled tight in a garish mask.
The bride stood fixed, her eyes staring before her to the crucifix hanging inverted on the wall. Her groom, still unseen, watched in lecherous want.
The high priest cleared his throat.
“Do you come here of your own free will?” he asked the bride.
She nodded.
“Do you give your body to your groom, your lord, that your actions are one with his?” Another solemn nod.
“Do you give your heart to your groom, your lord, that your desires are one with his?”
A wordless nod.
“Do you give your soul to your groom, your lord, that you are entirely one with him?”
A pause. A nod.
The darkness by the altar swelled, the candles flickering in retreat.
“Then,” announced the high priest, “Let us form the covenant. Bring forth the sacrifice.” Heavy footfall echoed from the back of the church, stepping slowly in unison. Four hooded figures emerged, moving in dead-march together, hoisting between them the hogtied body of man.
The pallbearers laid him at the feet of the high priest, removing his ligatures, and dissolved back into the gloom.
The sacrifice knelt, facing the congregation, his eyes heavy and unseeing. His head lolled atop his collar, flashing a square of white beneath his chin.
“Take this and eat it. This is his body.”
With one hand the high priest withdrew a pair of tongs from the depths of his robes. In the other, the flame of the candle caught the glint of a blade.
In his stupor, the sacrifice offered no resistance as the high priest pried his jaws open, only issuing a soporific whimper as the blade cleaved his tongue from his mouth.
The high priest held the tongue aloft before lowering to the bride, placing it upon her own protruded tongue.
Blood haemorrhaged from the victim's mouth, seeping onto his black shirt and disfiguring the once-white collar.
“Take this and drink it. This is his blood. And from this will come the new and eternal covenant of sin.”
With a bowl below the slack jaw, and the head pulled back, the blade was drawn across the victim's throat. Blood-mist clouded the air and rained down, pooling with the blood that had dripped from the black shirt, together ebbing across the mosaic floor.
The body pitched forward and collapsed into an unmoving mass, as the bowl was passed to the bride. She raised it to her lips, drinking deeply.
The nave of the church breathed. The high priest washed his hands. The Shadow of the groom continued to swell, his darkness expanding.
“Now,” thundered the high priest, “Let us consummate this marriage.”
He gestured and, from the depth of the sepulchre, came distressed groans and whines. Two pallbearers dragged a kid-goat, its horns thrashing in desperate and futile violence.
They held it tight at the foot of the altar as the high priest knelt before it, brandishing the blade once more.
One of the hooded men roared in agony as the goat embedded its horn deep within his thigh. A collective gasp escaped the congregation, following the goat as it charged down the aisle towards freedom.
Consumed by preternatural agility, the man-like-death lurched at it, grasping it by its horns, forcing it to submission. He led it back to the altar, its head bowed, its will broken. The pallbearers secured it once more.
With careful devotion, the high priest began to carve directly onto the goat’s forehead. It flailed, kicking and snorting, but the high priest persisted unperturbed - firstly a circle, then five crisscrossing lines.
A ghost of a smile stretched the high priest's taut face as he stood and nodded. The pallbearers dragged the animal to the deepened Shadow of the groom. The animal’s squeals filled the chamber as it was engulfed by the darkness.
Then the silence returned.
The darkness receded, swallowed into the goat, leaving it standing by the altar side, its eyes inflamed by the candles.
Unaided, it turned and walked to the bride, staring up at her tremorless face.
“The sharing of the ring.” The high priest gesticulated between the two.
She knelt, resting her hands behind the goat’s ears and laid her forehead against the carved pentagram. As she leaned back, the bloodied imprint was emblazoned upon her own pale skin.
In the distance, the chimes of three bells rang out, announcing the hour.
“Now kiss the groom,” came the order.
She obliged, her lips pressing tenderly and passionately against the thin mouth of the goat. Darkness exploded from the couple, swallowing the church in blackness, within which the candles surrendered to an ember.
Seán McNicholl is an Irish GP who enjoys writing short stories in a variety of genres. He has been nominated for the Best of the Net (BOTN) award 2024 and has been published in Beyond Words, Raw Lit, 34th Parallel, Bindweed and Intrepidus Ink, among others. He has featured on the Blue Marble Storytellers Podcast and the Read Lots Write Lots podcast.
For more: www.seanmcnicholl.com
Darkness
by Angela Patera
Angela Patera (she/her) is an emerging writer and published artist. Her short stories have appeared in Myth & Lore Zine, Iceblink Literary Magazine and a few more. Her art has appeared in numerous publications, as well as on the cover of Selenite Press and Penumbra Online. When Angela isn't creating, she likes to spend time outside in nature. You can find her on both Twitter and Instagram @angela_art13
A Festered Narrative
by David P. Miller
Sunrise, and the rain comes down in bathtubs.
A bowtied mouse’s distended head rises from the horizon,
beckoning our ship to the stadium.
A clown enters the arena and a bucket of water falls on his head.
A clown enters the arena. A bucket of water falls on his head.
Clown the arena. Bucket his head.
An entire arena of clowns, all waterbucketed heads.
We cannot exhale for the terror, the arousal.
The invocation swells our funnymen’s throats:
O bunny bunny bunny / O gunny gunny gunny
O scummy dummy / O lucky ducky
We in the stands are livid with pleasure.
The field of zanies stills. The majordomo raises his truncheon.
It bellows, Dance!
They lift one foot. They shuffle. They sidle.
They foxtrot. They glower. They strain.
They backtalk with posteriors. They simper.
They hop on big toes. They call for help.
They do the Pony. They do the Frug. They waddle with their heads.
They cough! They hum beneath their breaths! They point with seven fingers!
Between their knees, they bite their elbows. They cock their snoots.
It’s raining leopards and manatees. Tub-thumpers pass among us
with chalices, place two drops of Tincture of Scaramouche on each tongue.
We’re girded for the protracted petite mort authorized
in forgotten time by Goofus the Venerable:
An ecstasy of red squeaky noses floods the field!
The laughing-boys fall into the Dance of Ball Bearings,
long hallowed in bronze, now rubber-degenerate.
Ah! Ah! Shooting-gallery rabbits multiply among them,
out of the air, like a plague of Bozo punching bags.
We raise our blunderbusses. Our eyelids tremble.
The sun pulls away from the shore. Our ship
sinks slowly in the west. We the sated cherish
our plunder: nouvelle flipflops, sanctified
in rare JesterSkin®. The great heliumed head
of a duck in a sailor cap rises above our horizon home.
It’s raining baconburgers and tongue.
David P. Miller’s collection, Bend in the Stair, was published by Lily Poetry Review Books in 2021. Sprawled Asleep was published by Nixes Mate Books in 2019. Poems have recently appeared in Meat for Tea, Hawaii Pacific Review, Turtle Island Quarterly, Clementine Unbound, Constellations, among others. He was a librarian at Curry College in Massachusetts, from which he retired in June 2018.
Damnation
by Amanda Leon
How many ways can you slander a person?
How many ways do you slander my name
Twist your mistakes to fit your own personal narrative
God will take out your tongue
and not even pigs will want to ingest such swine
Who do I become in your fanciful stories of fiction?
A great villain?
Sly, cunning, using her intelligence for evil
Poor little victim
Why do I hate you in these stories
I set out to ruin your life for what reason?
Destructive for destruction’s sake?
False prophet
Fools follow the local village idiot
Do you wonder why all your friends hate you too?
A local idiot hears your story
I see the look in their eye
Evaluating me
Trying to intimidate me
They look away first
Fear and disgust in their eyes
Admiration as well
“You’re next!” I want to snarl
Watch them run with their tail between their legs
It would be too easy
Serious faced, too sure of oneself
Self-knowing is villainy to the insecure
You’re the real one to watch out for
The processed sweetness dripping from your rancid mouth
Positioning the knife
You forgot my gun
I come in peace but I am not peaceful
If I knew you still speak my name every day
I would have finished you off for good
Ripped out your dull eyes along with your tongue
and thrown them in the fire Doing the world a favor
And silencing you for good
I have made you immortal
Come, bitter muse
How does legacy taste?
Shaped in my own hand
The world will know you now through my own words
That the world is a much darker place with you in it
Amanda Leon (she/her) is a writer and poet from Miami, Florida. Her work has appeared in Delta Poetry Review, Unfiltered Magazine, Velvet Fields Magazine ‘Unspoken: A Poetry Anthology,’ among others. She graduated magna cum laude from Florida International University with two Bachelor’s degrees in Digital Media and English Literature. Instagram: @missamandaleon Twitter: @amandaleon
Wichita Candlelight
by Yasmine Diaz
A noise came from behind the farmhouse. This is the reason Jesula ventures out into the darkness in nothing but her nightgown and a shawl. It's too hot to throw something heavier on her body. If she did, the light sheen on her body would turn into droplets of salty sweat.
That's just Kansas.
Outside the trees did their summer night dance. Branches talk to one another and snap to their own beat. Jesula wraps the shawl around her tighter as she walks around the farmhouse. The noise, from before, was not a normal noise. In her mind she knows what the animals sounded like. Restless foot steps, tired and hungry moans, and stock ramming against the wood of their stalls.
She knows what nature sounded like and the creak of the wind vane. The blow of the grass and the leaves.
Those are things Jesula was used to.
This was different. It was something loud and not methodical.
When she gets to the back of the farmhouse there is nothing.
The grass is there, of course. And so are the stack of crates she would have to move in the next couple of days over to the Farmer’s Market. Other than that it was as if there wasn’t a noise to begin with. Jesula knows better, in this moment, to look for the answer to her question. So she stomps back to her house.
The porch is lit well, excusing the flickering bulb closest to the barn. Before she reaches the first step she takes off her shoes. In the light she sees the accumulating mud at the bottom. To track mud in the house was to invite a whooping that would be felt for days.
Jesula is surprised no one else woke up because of the noise. But she doesn’t spend too much time thinking about it. She goes through the screen door then the actual door into the house and up the steps. She reaches her room and shuts the door behind her quietly with a click.
Under the covers that night Jesula wracks her mind over and over on the noise before she would finally fall asleep.
She wanted to know what the noise was. But she also realized how stupid her recent actions were. Going out behind the farmhouse after sundown?
Things are always happening here. Never in pairs or more, but there is always a strange occurrence after sundown. The turned over cow with the purple belly her grandfather found. Or the time all of her uncle’s fingers got stuck in tight chicken wire. Her father fell off a ladder doing pipework, after seven.
A sixteen year old girl behind the farmhouse after sundown seemed to her the start of a cautionary tale.
That night she had a hard time staying asleep. It was as if every noise called to her but she could not answer. Not from that night, no, but another night farther away.
****
Jesula heard the noise ten years ago.
****
The screen door shuts first. Then the front door. It’s the consecutive shutting of both doors which grants Jesula a chance to actually breathe. She smooths her hands down the front of her black dress and presses her body against the door. It was torture to wear black in the heat but she had to.
At least this time she didn’t come back home with any baked dishes. She can’t remember if the green bean casserole she was handed after her Aunt Lisa’s burial is sitting somewhere in the kitchen rotting or if she threw it out already.
Jesula peels her backside from the door, sticky and tired. She walks to the kitchen and turns on the tap. While it runs she looks for a clean glass to drink from. Preferably glass not filled with crusted over juice and lint. When her fingers wrap around a suitable option she pulls it close and holds it under the water. The glass fills quickly. She turns off the tap.
She is alone.
In both senses.
Physically the house was all hers now. Uncle Barry was the last of the adults living under the same roof as her. When he went to check on the gas pipe after sundown he never came back. As the last living member of the family, she now owns the house. The grape colored curtains and the rusting golden shower rods. The farmhouse and all the animals in it no matter how overworked and over fed.
In the other sense, she’s got no close family. No one in Wichita is waiting for her anymore. No one is going to call her, no one is expecting her call. There isn’t a person here who has a blood relation to her.
She is alone.
Jesula raises the glass to her lips and takes the first sip. With the house so empty the gulp she takes echoes in the kitchen. Or, she feels like it does. Across the wooden arches in the ceiling and the dark blue tiles around the walls. Empty.
Her hand lets go of the glass to set it down on the counter.
The crash of glass brings her out of her mind. She missed the counter. The water is pooling at her shoes and the glass is strewn about. Jesula takes a step back and there is a crunching of glass beneath her. About to bend down and start cleaning, a knock comes from the door.
Jesula thinks it’s some well-wishing neighbor here to offer their condolences. She doesn’t want to turn into the unapproachable spinster. Taking a short breath she walks to the door and opens it with a smile small enough to show grief and full enough to show perseverance.
It’s not her neighbor.
Standing in front of her is a man she’s never seen before. He stands a few inches above her; almost a foot with the black brimmed cowboy hat he has on. He has a sweet looking face. Jesula can see how chubby his cheeks are, like he hasn’t shed the baby fat.
And his lips are upturned into a smile, as if she had said anything for him to smile about. But she hadn’t. Jesula wonders if he’s the kind of man who looks like he’s smiling all the time.
“Hi.” he says.
The way he says it makes Jesula think he’s got the wrong house. It was too familiar. Like he knew how to greet her from experience.
Jesula waves, “Hi there.”
"My name is Beaux. This is a nice place.” he answers.
His right hand juts out from his side, palm cupped. She takes his hand into her own and shakes it. He’s a firm hand shaker.
“Thank you, it’s my family home.”
“You’re Jesula Milien, correct?” he asks.
She nods her head. “That’s me."
He nods, “Good, I’m the transfer advisor.”
Jesula’s eyes widen. It was Aunt Lisa’s last testament that some official with legal knowledge bestowed upon their shoulders would come over and see to it the last living member of the family would be well prepared to take care of everything. The house, the farm, the business.
“You’re early–really early. I just buried my aunt today.” she says.
Beaux holds up his hands as if to surrender. He doesn’t look official-looking either. Who could be official with a flannel, white tank top and jeans? Jesula thinks he looks–whatever, but he does not look official.
“I’m sorry, I got instructions to come this early from your aunt.” he answers.
Jesula feels a tiny bit bad for cursing at the man for following her aunt’s orders. Only a tiny bit. He didn’t have to follow it down to every single detail, she was dead for crying out loud.
“So how does this work? How do we do this?” she asks.
****
Jesula watches as Beaux rolls the barrel up the hill. She shouldn’t just be watching, she should be helping. But why would she work when she has a transfer advisor on her hands ready to help when she needs?
It wasn’t like she asked him to stay in the house with her. That was all on Aunt Lisa. Why her aunt wanted a stranger living in the same house as her niece was something Jesula can’t work out. She might never understand.
So the past four weeks have been filled with awkwardness. Jesula is timing her showers, wondering what questions are too invasive to ask a man sharing a home with her, and wondering if she should be double checking if he is in fact who he claims to be.
But now, as he helps her out, she doesn’t really care. Work is getting done. Hard work which she hadn’t gotten used to doing. Such as rolling barrels of pig grease from the farmhouse up to the main house.
She takes a sip of lemonade.
“I’ve got two more left I think.” he says.
Jesula nods and then her eyes shift. Past the barrel he’s rolling, past him, and towards the sun. The sky is growing a dark orange tint. The sun is setting down over the land miles away, over on Mr. Deckard’s farm.
The sunlight makes Beaux look pretty. She would never say that to him, but she could think it in her mind. She could also think in her mind of all the gruel things that might happen to him after sundown if he keeps working like this.
“No, you can finish tomorrow.” she says.
At the blunt tone of her words, Beaux stops. The barrel rests at his feet as he stands up straight. Somewhere between the fifth and sixth barrel he had lost his flannel and remained in a gray tank top. This also happened to be around the time Jesula ventured outside.
“You’ll have me wait for the next day when I can get it done now?” he asks.
Jesula sighs, “I didn’t tell you this before but there are rules here. Things you don’t do at certain times.”
Beaux smiles.
“I got it, you’re scared of ghosts.” he jokes.
Jesula takes another sip of the lemonade. She shakes her head and crosses her arms over her chest. There were a lot of things to be scared of in Wichita; ghosts were not one of them.
“This land is haunted by things that make ghosts seem like family. Don’t go out back after sundown.” Jesula says.
And since she’s not his keeper and she’s definitely not his mother, she turns on her heel and walks back to the house. She has warned him. That is all she could do. It's all her family did for her, and now she’s the last one standing.
****
Jesula puts the last of the dishes away. Some of the spoons have gone missing. It’s been nearly two months since Beaux stepped into her life and into her home. Time flies when a strange man lives in the room across from you.
The cabinet door closes with a creak and a thud.
“Dinner was great.” a voice sounds suddenly.
Jesula jumps and turns around. It’s just Beaux. Although the sentiment does give her some pause. Yes it was just Beaux, but she didn’t know much about him. He still is the strange man living in her house.
“You scared me!” she shouts.
He smiles his usual boylike smile at her. Jesula quickly calms down. There was also the feeling in her stomach when he smiled at her or complimented her. If she could ignore it she would. She can’t.
“Thank you by the way for inviting me to the potluck.” he continues.
She laughs to herself recalling last night’s memories. For a white man he sure could move his hips. He did say he grew up on the east coast. The people at the potluck were falling in love with him by the second.
“I’m just glad you could have some fun,” she stops and thinks to herself on how to ask the question she needs answered, “this has to be the longest job you've ever worked doesn't it?”
Beaux nods, “Yeah, but it’s also the best, this house is amazing.”
“How long do I have you for?”
Without another word Beaux dashes away from her. Jesula watches as he runs out the kitchen. She can hear the brute force of his boots as he goes up the steps. A door opens, she hopes it’s his, and his footsteps are faint against the ceiling.
Then he undoes all of his actions and winds up in front of her. A folded up piece of paper in his hands. He holds it out for her.
Jesula takes the paper and unravels it slowly. At the top is a date from a year ago, followed by her aunt’s full legal name. Her eyes trail down the paper for important words. Housekeeping, farm management… foreseeable stay.
She looks up at him now.
“Foreseeable?” she asks.
Beaux crosses his arms against his chest. And with a smug grin on his lips he nods his head.
“That would be correct, Ms. Milien” he answers.
Jesula shakes her head. Staying in this house, with this man, is starting to become a nightmare. At first it was strange but now she thinks she might like him.
“You should read the last bit.” he says.
Jesula wants to rip the paper to shreds. But it's likely he has a copy on him. It’s even more likely the original is somewhere locked in a cabinet at the agency’s office. Her grandfather said it was a sack of lies anyways.
She skims down to the very bottom of the paper. With her mouth already open in shock she reads the words aloud.
“Under no circumstances should Jesula be in this house by herself.”
****
The electricity is out. The ceiling fan is stagnant and the usual hum of appliances is gone. Jesula isn’t sure when the electricity went out because the comfort of sleep took her to a place of unknowing. And for a moment, she does nothing.
A trail of sweat travels down her neck then her mind remembers Beaux. She runs out of bed. No time to put on a shawl. Just enough time to run to her door and slam it open. To her horror, Beaux’s door is already opened.
“Beaux!” she yells.
She takes off. Down the short hallway, her feet stomp down the stairs. Her heart beating out of her chest. The front door is open, the screen door is closed.
Jesula pushes the screen door open.
“Beaux!”
There is nothing to see in the dark. Even if there were, she knows exactly where he went. The electrical box is on the side of the farmhouse. Not the back. There was still a chance.
Jesula runs. Her legs strain and her chest feels tight as she does until the farmhouse comes into view. She comes to a stop.
“Beaux!”
No answer.
But there is a noise. The same one she heard when she was sixteen. Jesula can understand what it is now as she creeps towards the back of the farmhouse. In the dark she can see the top of an overturned barrel.
Only two more steps until she’s behind the farmhouse. Jesula holds her breath as both her feet cross the threshold. In the dark, standing still, is Beaux. His head is craned up to the sky.
“Jesula, it’s so beautiful.” he says.
His voice is nothing but a whisper but in the quiet and darkness, it’s loud enough for her to hear. Like she is pressing up against him. She breathes out.
“Beaux we need to go.” she speaks.
She doesn’t understand why he doesn’t move. Why his head remains titled up and his eyes glued on the sky.
“Just look at it, Jesula.” he says.
She wants to grab him by his shirt and pull him a few steps forward. Right now, that would be all they needed. Then he wouldn’t be in the back and nothing bad would happen. But she doesn’t think grabbing him would be enough.
“I’m not supposed to be alone, Beaux, remember?” she asks.
Her voice cracks.
For a breath of a moment he moves. His head moves downward just a fraction. His right hand flinches. Jesula reaches out for Beaux’s hand. The one that passes dishes for her to dry, the one that conveniently found a place on the small of her back during the potluck.
Then he looks back up. Jesula takes her chance and grabs his hand. She pulls as hard as she can. Her feet moving backwards to pull them both. His body moves with hers. Beaux takes three steps forward, still looking up at the sky, his feet hit something on the way.
Jesula gasps when he finally looks down. Two black rings circle his eyes like blood had rushed to the surface and dried there. Bruises.
“You went back there for me.” he says.
His words are firm but his voice is not, like he can’t believe it. She reaches up and holds both sides of his face. If he is in pain, he doesn’t notice.
“Beaux? Are you alright?” she asks.
He smiles, “Jesula you did it. You completed your Aunt’s wishes.”
“What wishes?”
Jesula wants to hear more but from behind Beaux she can see a dim light. She side steps him to get a clear view. There on the grass is a trail of flames from a discarded candlelight. The hot lines of orange flash pass them.
They trail up and up.
Jesula turns around to look.
In shock she can’t move as she watches the flames reach the house. They lick their way up the right corner. Tendrils split off. She feels her heart hammering. The pipes.
Up and up, until the flames reach the roof. The windvane unwavering at the top. Then a loud boom. Glass windows shattering. A gust of warm air on her cheeks.
Yasmine Diaz is a writer hailing from New York City. She primarily writes in fiction because she often finds words are easier to say when they come from a character she's created, however she also dabbles in nonfiction when she can be brave enough to let her words claim her in real life. If she's not writing, she's taking photos or curating playlists for writing, her fictional characters, or her current vibe. While she doesn't know what the future has in store for her, she believes it's the unknown which is the fun part and writing makes it all easier.
The Relics
by Maggie Nerz Iribarne
The swing creaked in the hot summer breeze, metal chain scraping against the bar supporting it. Dust kicked up, carrying garbage from one pointless place to another. Eight-year-old Paul stood alone in the middle of the empty playground, wishing for a friend. His mismatched legs lurched awkwardly to a sandy area beside the swings. He squatted and drew a map in the dirt. What’ll it be today, Paulie? he asked himself, finger hovering, a bird soaring above. Buried treasure, always a good choice. His finger pressed, drew a straight line to the right where he made an x. He imagined an island, a palm tree, a cool breeze, the sound of sea birds. He’d never been to the ocean so he could imagine no further than those wind-carried squawks, no salty sea smells or thunderous waves. His finger traced upwards, perhaps up a rocky hill. A story began to take shape-a boy had been marooned here-but the idea withered when his finger caught on something hard. He picked at its edges, blew the dust away, wedged it out, was shocked by his discovery.
****
On Paul’s tenth birthday, his mother, Bea, carried a chocolate cake with white icing. He sat at their kitchen table, his stomach full of his favorite meal (meatloaf) but with still enough room for cake. “Happy birthday to you,” Bea and his other mother, Judy, sang and clapped brightly, Judy’s hand reaching out for his. Since his adoption, he had slowly acclimated to affection, good food, his fluffy little dog, Lucky. Tears crowded Paul’s eyes as he listened to his mothers’ heartfelt words, “Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you!”- all for him. He blew out the ten candles, extinguishing them in one breath.
“Yay!” they shouted.
“Did you make a wish?” Bea asked, slicing into the cake with her sharp kitchen knife.
“Oh, I forgot!” Paul said, looking down. He didn’t want to sound stupid, but he had nothing more to wish for. All his wishes had come true. He hugged his mothers tightly before he went upstairs to bed that night. In his room, he pulled back the rug, lifted the floorboards, surveying his good luck charms, the bones he discovered two years before.
****
Paul was in middle school now, had a best friend (Cam), and played on the chess team. He didn’t need good luck anymore. He didn’t like keeping the secret bones from Bea and Judy. Paul hesitated, then reached for the garbage bag he’d brought upstairs, the dustpan and brush. He wanted to dispose of the boy-sized skeleton he called Joey who lived in the shallow grave in his bedroom floor. Joey’s weird, disjointed expression seemed to say, “No, Paulie, no.” Dismissing him, Paul swept his friend into the garbage bag, carried it to the dumpster behind the grocery store, and heaved it over the edge. He went home to Bea’s meatloaf and homemade applesauce. It was October. School had been in session for a month. Paul smiled at his doting parents, feeling free, strong.
****
Everything seemed to suck in, recoil, turn backwards. Two weeks after the disposal of Joey, Paul came home to find Bea, standing there in the kitchen beside the table. Her face looked twisted, sour, so different from usual he at first thought she might be sick. “I know your secrets, you liar. After all we’ve done for you!” Judy stood behind her, wagging her head in agreement, arms folded. They both suddenly morphed into totally different people than the mothers he had grown to trust and love. Things went downhill from there.
****
Paul had never been to this bar before, so was not recognized as a freeloader. He considered ordering some food, eating a good meal before disappearing. He noticed meatloaf on the menu. Pain stabbed at his wounded heart. He ate, then slipped out the door without paying. Illuminated by the full moon above, he limped along the empty streets to the old orphanage, walking behind to the playground. He kneeled down on the ground as he did most nights, began tracing in the dirt, hoping he’d once again find some luck.
Maggie Nerz Iribarne (She/her) is 54, lives in Syracuse, NY, writes about witches, cleaning ladies, priests/nuns, struggling teachers, neighborhood ghosts, and other things. She keeps a portfolio of her published work at https://www.maggienerziribarne.com.
Flora
by Rachel Coyne
Rescue
by Rachel Coyne
The Doorway
by Rachel Coyne
Rachel Coyne is a writer and painter from Lindstrom Mn
Eulogy for Cawthorne Moor
by Megan Brown
Cernunnos lays
his purpled carpet
And we:
his servile calves,
scrape flesh
from horns
to honour him.
Across the
dimpled moor
We nest in ancient hollows.
Berry-lipped,
sing and kiss and scream –
but before
our folk grow antlers
at his alter,
Their iron men
Pierce our land
Staked.
This boggy ground,
The river of our kin
contained
by our earth
dug high.
Not content
To take our past
They never root –
and moving as a forest
Great and inevitable
Bring a season
of decay.
As we rot,
we feel Cernunnos –
Wild Promise
potent –
primordial –
painless –
Megan Brown (she/her/hers) is an educational researcher and ex-doctor who lives in York, in the United Kingdom. She has engaged with poetry within research, and personally, where she writes about her experiences as a multiply disabled person. You can find Megan’s work in Consilience and Wishbone Words Review. Megan enjoys reading, gardening, and spending time with her young family.
Waiting For Decay
by Amian Bent
In the semi-dark cemetery
Of buried songs and silent dreams
If you listen closely enough
You can hear the pattering feet
Of someone moving about in perpetual lethargy
Over the graves, the skin drags and tears
On rotting, old concrete
Through the dirt, the toes sink
Into the forbidden bacterial territory
Without a dip in rhythm, they walk
Murmuring a rhyme of old
What language it is, cannot be said
Only that the words breathe like songs
If you stay under their spell long enough
You might even learn a matching dance
And find yourself accompanying the restless spirits
Along their blood moon romance
But since every fairytale has to have a happy end
Yours must be sweeter than a necromantic love
Perhaps a drink or two
With the reaper wrapped in black and blue
Or a secret rendezvous with your old lover
In their unmarked crypt
But perhaps you prefer the company
Of that solitary thing that stalks the graves
And sings songs for the dead
Truly what a haunting sight it would indeed be
To witness a soul awaiting by its own grave
The decay of its lifeless little body.
Amian Bent is a young writer who hopes to become a published novelist someday but as of now, she dedicates her time to writing poetry, which serves as an escape for the inarticulate thoughts in her soul. When not writing, she cand be found curled up with a book, trying to escape her reality (or in rare cases, studying). She can be found on Instagram at @words_of_an_endangered_soul_ and on Wattpad at @amianne_bent__
Playing
by Chad W. Lutz
Dylan’s been playing his guitar. He’s been playing and playing and playing. All night long, straight on through the entire party; playing and playing and playing and playing. But, when his friends finally ask him to stop playing, and Dylan smiles and says, “alright,” he finds he can’t stop playing.
Dylan can’t stop playing at all.
“I’m trying!” he cries to his friends, “I’m trying! I’m trying!”
But he can’t. Up and down the frets his fingers go: the major scales, pentatonic, hammer-ons, harmonics, open notes; he can’t stop.
“Take them off the strings, doofus,” shouts Marwa, pulling on a hoodie, “We’re ready to light the bonfire.”
“Yeah,” says Hasani. “You’re just doing this on purpose. Let’s go, man, before Liz finds out you’re being a dipshit,” and turns toward the door.
“I’m not, I swear it!” Dylan pleads. “My fingers!” He hears someone in the other room yell, and there’s laughter. His fingers pick up speed. He looks down.
“Dylan Heckart, you stop that nonsense right this instant!” shouts Liz, a smile on her face, her jacket on, ready to go. She walks over to give him a playful hug but stops and turns white as she watches little spots of blood drip from the neck of the instrument into a small pool forming at his feet.
****
“Does he need new bandages?” his mother asks Liz as a clap of thunder rolls through the neighborhood.
Liz stops mixing batter next to the sink and wipes her hands on the kitchen towel. She walks over to Dylan’s mother standing at the threshold of the living room and sighs.
The TV is on.
Wheel of Fortune.
“I just wish I could help him,” Liz says, and she pipes up. “Dylan, honey,” she says, “is there anything I can get you?” but the words fall flat.
Pat Sajak, almost on cue, tells the audience to, “Spin it again!”
“How long has he been like this?” his mother asks, taking a crumpled cigarette out of an equally crumpled soft pack. She lights the smoke.
The two watch Dylan watching nothing in the dim-lit room. He’s staring into the corner, just off to the right of the TV, shadows from the glare casting weird shadows over his face.
“He’s been watching the same show with that same blank look his face for a week now, Janet. All he does is sit there. I hate it,” and for a second Liz thinks she might cry.
Janet allows her daughter-in-law a moment and walks over to the sink to ash her cigarette. After it’s disposed of, she motions for Liz to join her by the counter.
“How long’s he been like this?”
“Since the accident,” Liz says.
“Since the accident?”
“That’s right,” says Liz, gathering herself and reaching for a glass of water, “Since the accident.” There’s a long pause between the two of them, only Pat Sajak, the Wheel of Fortune crowd, and the occasional roll of thunder can be heard floating through the air.
“I’m worried about him,” Liz says quietly, flexing her fingers. “Last night, I found him talking to the wall next to the TV, and now this…” the urge to cry comes back, cold, like rushing water, and she covers her face with her hands.
“I don’t know,” Janet says, reaching for another cigarette. She turns and watches the light from the TV dance like the glow of fire against the far wall in the living room.
The wind blows hard against the house.
“I don’t know.”
****
It’s a whisper, but not. A summons. A command. A sound in the silence of the night.
“It’s your turn to spin the wheel,” it says, and Dylan opens his eyes.
There, standing next to the television, is Pat Sajak, body warping and blurring blue-grey, and then coming back into focus like a television program on the fritz.
“It’s time,” Pat says.
“But I…”
“Time,” Pat reiterates, “to spin the wheel.”
Dylan looks around the dark, empty living room, then back at Pat, smiling in the corner and beckoning to him with one hand. His fingers flexing.
“I heard you like to play, Dylan Heckart. Would you like to play?”
Dylan thinks, No, but nods, Yes, and stands up out of the recliner.
“I can show you all the ways to play, Dylan. Every. Imaginable. Way. Harmonics and pentatonic and the major scales. Hammer-ons. Open notes. Everything.”
Dylan nods, looking down at his fingers, which suddenly begin to ache.
“I’ve never been very good before,” he says, finding himself nearly crying. “I want to be the best.”
“Then you must watch me carefully,” Pat says. “Watch me always; be ready for my signal.”
“I’ll be ready,” Dylan says, and looks down at his hands.
“Honey?” Liz asks, turning on the floor lamp behind him, “Who are you talking to?”
****
“Dylan!” shouts Liz. She’s standing in the doorway with a box of baked goods she has ready for the party, a cold breeze blowing inside.
“I’m coming,” he says, and grabs his guitar, flexing his fingers.
“You look tired,” Liz comments as he gathers his wallet, the keys, but Dylan shrugs her off.
“I’m fine,” he says, “haven’t been getting much sleep lately. And, besides, you know how much this party means to Marwa.”
“Are you sure you’re up for the party tonight?”
“Of course,” Dylan says, unable to tear his eyes from the television, but still getting ready, “There’s no way I’d miss Hasani and Marwa’s annual fall get-together,” and he stops in the center of the room, staring at the wall.
“Is something wrong?” she asks.
He shakes his head. “Just a little tightness in my hands,” he says, smiling wanly, and then, considering his words for a second and hoisting the guitar, now in its case, toward Liz, he says, “I’m ready,” and they leave.
They drive in silence. The road slick from recent rains. Liz turns on the radio but Dylan, driving, shuts its off immediately.
“We don’t have to go to this party,” she says, setting back in her seat. She stares at Dylan’s profile as they drive, the lights from the cars they pass turning him two-faced in the twilight.
“Your mother just wants to help,” she says, as they pull up to the party, street lined with cars, but he ignores her.
“We’re here,” he says, balling his hands into fists against the steering wheel and grimacing. She drags the back of her hand gently across his face. His eyes close.
“You’ll make it someday,” she says. “In the meantime, let your mother help.”
****
“How are you doing, Liz?” Janet asks on her way home from work. Someone changes lanes without signaling and she groans in disgust. She readjusts her grip on the phone. “You doing OK?”
“I’m alright,” Liz says, but the sound of her voice is distant, far-off. “Been busy.”
“In the kitchen?”
“Always,” Janet says, “now more than ever.”
Janet almost asks about something she shouldn’t but stops herself. The streetlights throw fingerlike shadows onto the dash. “I saw Dylan,” she says, instead. “I saw him after my shift.” Liz can hear Janet lighting a cigarette and imagines the smell of her breath, stale, rotting, and hot. “His condition hasn’t improved, but it hasn’t worsened, either. They gave him a room with a TV and they…”
But Liz stops her.
“I…”
“What is it, dear?”
“Do you think it’s possible to…” and her voice trails off again. A few seconds later, she says, “to pay for the hospitalization?”
In the background, Janet can hear Pat Sajak encouraging another lucky contestant to spin the wheel.
Liz’s fingers begin to hurt.
The wind blows hard against the house.
Chad W. Lutz is a speedy, bipolar writer born in Akron, Ohio, in 1986. They graduated from Mills College in Oakland, California, with their MFA in creative writing in 2018. Their first book, For the Time Being (2020), is currently available through J.New Books. Other recent works appear in Paper Dragon, Final Girl Bulletin Board, Half and One, and Hunger Mountain Review.
Amuse-Bouche
by Julia Biggs
My tongue tingles. At first the taste is delicious, the consistency pleasingly chewy without being teeth-pulling. As I am licking the spoon I notice the dripping crimson grin, edges obstinately raw, spreading across the pan. I think I see it twitch, though I can’t be sure. A gory little offering that should be left to sit for a while, until it reaches room temperature. My stomach twists.
Maybe I misread the recipe. Maybe I just need to add a little sugar.
****
The kitchen is littered with offensive bright smears of insinuatingly sweet jam and cups with gritty lipstick rims. A dubious, black, syrupy dribble is starting to run off the countertops, pooling on the floor and in corners. The smell of dark meat, thick and fleshy, has crept into the tenderised walls and is threading around the doorframe. My nostrils sting.
I tell myself it must be coming from the slice of open window.
****
The bread has turned white with crawling mould and the milk has curdled. Pots are hissing menacingly on the stove. The oil is spitting and spattering. I cut, chop, mash and stir. Gurgling and squelching noises emanate from the mixing bowl.
I think that if I can scoop them out with my fingers then the air will stop throbbing like a swollen lip.
****
I forget how long the dish will take to be done. Ten minutes? Five? A mouthful lodges in my throat, and I feel something press hard against my chest. It begins to nibble on my collarbones with ravenous intent.
Under a sprinkling of salt, it now finds me very digestible.
Julia Biggs (she/her) is a writer, poet and freelance art historian. She lives in Cambridge, UK. Her work has appeared in various print and online literary journals, including Hungry Shadow Press, Divinations Magazine, Streetcake Magazine and Green Ink Poetry. Her current research explores haunting seascapes and the delicious excesses of the Gothic mode. Find her via her website: https://juliabiggs1.wixsite.com/juliabiggs
Predator and Prey
by Mackenzie Dunne
He wanders over cracked lines,
his shoes thin and worn from years of stepping
through his internal drought.
The sand in his hourglass ticking down his spine,
it clings to the corners of his eyes,
and sticks to the surface of his skin,
leaving a constant trail of evaporated tears down his crusted cheeks.
Did you know cacti cling to the water within them
for fear that it is all they will find?
She is a glistening body of salt water,
her waves crash over the heads of others
as she showers them in droplets of joy.
She nurtures those around and within her.
Schools of fish and even lonely whales,
her bosom bursts with life that cradles the Earth and all its species.
When the two collide,
one is expected to heal the other.
The liquid elixir of life slipping into every dried out crack.
However, an apocalypse is in the cards.
He will crumble under the pressure of her depths and lose himself.
He will dissolve within her until he no longer exists–
his hourglass running out.
She will claim yet another victim.
Everything that knows her,
knows the decay of her salty water.
The ocean was home to the Megalodon,
and every predator that came before and after.
She houses the lifeblood of the Earth,
that preys upon him.
Mackenzie Dunne is a senior at the University of North Carolina Wilmington pursuing Creative Writing and English. One day she hopes to own her own farm where she can live out her dreams of reading her works of poetry and nonfiction to her chickens, but until then she will continue through school.
Be Sweet
by Sam Moe
The séance was to be hosted in the dining room, arguably the most haunted room in the house. With its low-hanging chandelier, spiders of varying hues—some lilac, others a fake candy-green—built complicated webs in the corners, stole matches from the innermost cabinet drawer, lit small fires and burnt spider-like marshmallows on splinters of wood.
If anyone’s haunted, it’s your sister, her mother said. I blessed this house when your father passed away.
She slapped her hands as if to say, no more talking about what happened, or talking about talking, I’ve had enough of you, first daughter, your father never would have tolerated this.
But it was hard to say what her late father would or wouldn’t care about, since he spent most of his life criticizing the women in their family. The lobsters, boiled to a perfect, dark rose hue, were not soft enough on the inside. Her mother, claiming she loved him, wasn’t carrying her weight around the house. The ghosts, which were plenty and gentle, their bodies draped across furniture like gauzy sheets, weren’t real. Shoot for the heart, reach the lungs instead. She wasn’t entirely convinced her father had a heart, though this didn’t seem to bother her mother. They’d started dating out of boredom, a mutual obsession with the library at Stanford College, a frustration with the snow, which fell blue and thick every first of December. Even the word felt blue to Lisa. A word like December was shining and smooth, like a gemstone or a sequin on her late grandmother’s blazer. Everyone kept dying in the house and her mother wouldn’t leave, not after her father passed away in the tub one night, not after both her parents died in their bedroom.
Lisa sat at the head of the table, examining the room. Stale grey light filtered through bars, blocking out the forest beyond. It had been raining for days and she was losing track of herself again. This wasn’t surprising. Lisa always lost control when she started developing feelings for someone, and spending time with the woman across the street was no different. They spent nights together, intertwined limbs, talking like old friends, emphasis on the distance, and in the morning they were nothing to each other. They drank coffee at the local diner, smirking over their mugs, Shelby’s glasses glowing gold-green in the pendant lights, her mouth full of sugar. The problem was, as always, the love.
Her mother moved around her, a tornado of a woman, gathering photographs and discarded sweaters, packing the good wine glasses for her trip to Cape Cod, her third husband wealthy enough to take her when shark season was over. But shark season was never over, not in Massachusetts. Lurking beneath the surface of the ocean, there were great whites, nurses, tigers. Those slick sandbar sharks whose hides were the same color as hermit crabs, begging for feet to penetrate the sand. She only hoped her mother wouldn’t enter the water, not even to wet the bottoms of her duck boots, for she couldn’t swim, though she remained fascinated by the promise of teeth, unbroken shells leftover from king tides, the drama that came with a body of water. Later, in the hotel lobby, they’d toast their anniversary, drink champagne and eat multi-course meals, each incorporating lobster, dessert filled with small candles and even smaller flames, the chef observing the eager, hungry couple from his perch in the semi-open kitchen. She was reminded, always, of the call, no, the need for hands, height, strength. Carrying buckets of choppy frost, mixed with broken glass, to be burned in the back of house. Shelby sitting at the end of the bar, killing the lights with how bright her amber eyes glowed, hair long and parted to the left, revealing the tip of her ear, a tattoo of a small sun resting beneath the lobe. How many nights had Lisa stayed awake dreaming about biting that spot until the sun turned bright and red as fire. How many times had they done this, only to pretend they meant nothing to each other afterwards. Just a night with too many bottles of wine and the bed looked more comfortable than the couch, or the floor of the forest, newly coated in frost, looked like the perfect place to take a nap. Crows overhead, the sky promising more snow within the hour, their inherited haunted house glowing with candles, their bodies fuchsia and glittering, the ghosts just beyond, wondering what on earth Lisa thought she was doing, why give her heart away to someone so hungry, a woman who knew no depths, couldn’t define plumb if begged.
“You’ll be okay on your own,” her mother said, kissing the top of her head.
“Bring me back a sweatshirt,” Lisa replied.
She held the door open for her, even offered to carry her suitcases to the car, but then Enrique emerged, voice soft as butter and muscles still visible beneath a too-tight pea coat, hand around his mother’s waist. Two honks and the mustang disappeared into the grey of dawn.
There was still time between Shelby coming over and nightfall. Those untrustworthy hours where anything could happen. If Lisa wasn’t careful, one of the ghosts would eat her as a snack. Each corner of the room occupied, their bodies singing like bells, a hum only she could hear. She could see her grandmother and grandfather, too, both of them named after semi-precious stones, both immigrants from Guayaquil, Ecuador. They came with their own ghost stories, of spirits on the roof making rain sounds, jumping in the pool but leaving no trace, tickling the curtains and taking peels of carrot and potato to be draped over the pictures hanging in the hall. All photos taken from Guayaquil were polaroids, printed on now-yellow paper, smiling faces of couples in fields of iguanas, an ocean so navy blue it looked like night, her grandmother laughing with a mixed drink in her hand. When Lisa was younger, and she first tried coming out to her mother, she was told not to tell anyone in the family. Especially not your grandmother, she recalled her mother saying, the threat looming heavy in Spring heat.
Shelby was a stranger to the family. She’d kept their friendship so secret even the restaurant staff couldn’t tell if she was a regular, a muse, or perhaps an ex. She was a permanent light fixture in Lisa’s mind, a lantern banging against the door of their old farm house, add too: an abandoned grain silo, the perfect peel of a purple wine capsule, a mouth full of flowers, empty hands dragging her heart through the mud and then some. She would have done anything for Shelby if she asked. Would have stopped time and run down the sea until it twisted back towards the moon.
The sharp knock startled her focus, signaling a presence, a promise. For a moment she couldn’t tell if it was a ghost or human. The stained glass door at the end of the hall appeared empty, light filtering onto the dusky green rug in the shape of octagons and triangles. With one hand on either side of the hall, Lisa moved. She refused to turn around and witness the dining room, passed slowly by her grandmother’s room, her mother’s room, finally reaching her room, covered in dust, painted cobalt, filled with half-finished paintings. She felt, in that moment before opening the door, tired of the chase. Would it hurt to give in? Twist of the knob, the cold shocking her neck and cheeks, then falling into Shelby, their bodies melting together on the front steps for everyone to see. Would it be so bad to lose the love of her mother and her remaining living family members. She was not nearly as depressed as she had been in the past, though pretending she felt nothing was eating away at her, decaying the inside of her chest until she felt her heart was no longer an organ but a pile of fungus, basket stinkhorn, little red cage filled with starfish, chanterelle, perhaps fly agaric and scarlet wax cap, bicolored sharks whose flesh peeled apart at the slightest touch.
She opened the door and what was left of her heart, that sour bundle, fluttered, rolled like a marble straight into her throat. Shelby bore three large grocery store bags filled with necessary ingredients.
“Hi,” she said, mouth curled into a small smile, barely revealing her teeth. These same teeth which grazed Lisa’s the night before, the two of them hiding in the back of the house in her great grandmother’s room, arguably the most haunted space on the farm, trying to be as quiet as a field mouse near a hawk.
“Hey, you,” Lisa said, then immediately regretted it.
She did that old thing you do when you feel your emotions come to the surface and bleed out your mouth, yes, the biting of the inside of her cheeks until they tasted copper, familiar, bruised.
Shelby didn’t mind hauntings. She took the hallway without lights, didn’t turn her head when something crashed in the living room, walked steadily towards the dining room and deposited her bags on the table. They spilled forward with dollar-store Christ and Mary candles, she’d even found one of Saint Jude, sponges with smiley faces, gummy worms, wine, and more matches. There were dollar bills for the offering, a new bag of yellow rice, frozen peas and carrots. Lisa fought the urge to clutch her chest, hating that unnamable feeling in her mouth and her nose, the memory of arroz con pollo and her grandmother humming in the kitchen, larán, larán, larito, Lisa at the table gently picking the vegetables out with her knife. Her grandmother called her bella and linda, her face lighting up with joy at the mere sight of Lisa sitting at her dining room table.
“They don’t tell you about the smells, but jeez, does it reek like your father in here,” Shelby said.
“I know, it’s eerie. I told Corazón and she said I was imagining things, that perhaps Enrique and Stein smell the same. But I’d know that scent anywhere. Disgusting mix of roses and gin, expensive cologne. It’s like he’s taunting me.”
“Yeah, well, not for much longer. You found the sweatshirts?”
Lisa reached beneath the table for two knit sweatshirts with large buttons, both black with splashes of navy. Her grandmother worked as a seamstress for years before learning to knit, gifting fifteen-foot blankets to each of her family members for special occasions and holidays. The sweaters had been a gift to her father, still several Christmases to go before they learned he was cheating.
“They look like Wita blankets,” Shelby said, laughing.
“I love that you remember her name.”
Into the fire went the sweaters, along with logs of peeling wood, bundles of hay, yellow ribbons, and pennies. Add, too, honey-crisp apples, his good rolling pin for pies, a rocks glass, and a bundle of clover with three and four leaves. Lisa in the background, muttering prayers to herself, striking the matches against her faded jeans. Shelby felt her heart leap around her mouth like a wild horse, hard-hoofed and heavy, pissed off but for reasons she couldn’t explain. The fire was necessary. They’d drawn a protective circle in the center of the room, filled all the windows with bundles of dead flowers turned upside-down, even made sure to dissuade the neighbors from sticking around, lest things get out of control. But still, she wanted to stop Lisa, to drag the lighter out of her hand and toss it through the window, shattering the glass, winter day be damned, and they’d sit with their consequences, their cold logs, her bitterness. Instead, Lisa tossed the match into the open, waiting mouth of the fireplace and they watched in silence as her father’s belongings went up in smoke.
Nothing happened afterwards. Not in the evening, when Lisa stayed to help make soup and potatoes, and not afterwards, when they chipped away at coco helado with their spoons, both frowning as ice chips pierced their more sensitive teeth.
Night fell over the house, rain coating the lawn and the forest beyond in frogs, thick droplets, and sludge. A figure watched the girls from outside the house, wondering why they didn’t create a protective center around the base of the building. Why not draw the curtains, alert saints, call down witches from the mountains. Instead, they went to bed, hands and knees bumping anxiously against each other as they fumbled beneath the comforter. The father walked inside, or rather floated, glided on the too-slick grass, and sat in the kitchen. He surveyed the damage from his perch on one of the stools, not yet strong enough to witness the charred remains of his life, sitting in a heap in the fireplace.
Every now and then he could hear laughter from the bedroom. He tried to pick up a coffee mug and failed the first few tries, its surface slippery like ice. When at last he’d managed to grasp it, the mug fell through his fingers and shattered in the kitchen. The women didn’t stir, their now-laughter covering up the noise.
In the living room, the father examined the circle. It was an ordinary chalk circle, not unlike the protective barriers he’d drawn as a child, with salt and ash. He’d stolen his mother’s rosaries and wore them around his wrists, pretending he was going to make his eyes bleed with a special spell of possession. But no ghosts ever came, and now he was dead he’d begun to wonder if he was the only one, the first haunting. It was so easy to center himself in the myth that he didn’t realize there had been hundreds, if not thousands, of hauntings before. And because of his lack of knowledge he found he felt comfortable approaching the circle. He stared at the edge, daring the salt to leap at his face and cut him, rubbing granules between his fingertips, wishing he could taste or smell, none of this feeling, only sensations in his fingers but not in his toes. To hell with the house and his body. After all, why not turn menace. Why not haunt his daughter and her crush, destroy them both with the sounds of his moaning. This, finally, halted the laughter. He wailed on his knees, cradling a candle of Saint Frances whom he’d prayed to as a young child, to save his pets.
Lisa and Shelby exited the room. They examined the kitchen, swept up the broken glass. At last, Shelby approached the ring of salt and chalk smudges, worrying the spell hadn’t worked. In the center was a cluster of wildflowers, some freshly picked, others dead, all smelling like sea salt, vanilla, a vague layer of wet clay. Lisa tugged her arm gently and told her it was now time to return to bed.
Sam Moe is the recipient of a 2023 St. Joe Community Foundation Poetry Fellowship from Longleaf Writers Conference. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming from Whale Road Review, The Indianapolis Review, Sundog Lit, and others. Her poetry book Heart Weeds is out from Alien Buddha Press (Sept. ’22) and her chapbook Grief Birds is out from Bullshit Lit (Apr. ’23). Her full-length Cicatrizing the Daughters is forthcoming from FlowerSong Press.
A Velocipede Built For Seven
by Cassandra Daucus
It was widely accepted that George Bently was the best velocipede repairman in all of Kent. He’d been fascinated by wheeled contraptions since he was a boy, and he was experienced with all of them: the penny-farthing, the rover, the otto-bicycle. He was happy to dabble as well in the various mono- and tri-cycles, but that morning he was asked to consider something completely new.
“Oh,” he said, contemplating the woman’s inquiry. “Hm.”
He eyed her as he thought. She was certainly an interesting-looking person. Wealth was implied both by her dress–which included shiny leather boots of a striking shade of green–and by her posture. George was always on the prowl for well-off customers, those who might be certain to come back again and again, so it was in his interest to take her request seriously, no matter how strange it might seem.
“Can you do it?”
“A bicycle for seven people?” He asked, making certain that he understood correctly. “With seven seats and seven sets of pedals?”
“Oh, no,” she answered quickly. “Seven sets of pedals, but only one seat.”
“Ah.” George frowned.
“It’s for my son,” she said, as though that would clarify things. “My Terence. He’s such a good lad. And his seventh birthday is next week, so…” she gestured around the room, at all the velocipede carcasses, gears and wheels and handlebars and seats just waiting to be fixed together.
“A birthday gift! You need a small bicycle, then? Since he’s only seven?”
“Oh, no, he’s quite tall. Takes after his father.” At that she laughed, as though she had told the most riotous joke instead of saying something slightly odd.
While they finalized the order, George made small talk with the woman–Mrs. Grant was her name. Her husband was Dr Grant, a surgeon of some sort, and they lived in an estate near Maidstone.
“And have you lived here long?” Mrs. Grant inquired, as she tucked the receipt into her velvet handbag.
“I’ve lived in Kent my whole life,” George said proudly. “Grew up just outside of Sevenoaks and set up this shop about five years ago.”
“Your family is local?”
Mrs. Grant sounded keenly interested, which George found off putting. He slowly walked towards the door, encouraging her to follow.
He reached for the knob and pulled the door open, gesturing her through. “My parents both died of scarlet fever during the last outbreak, and my sisters live in Scotland. I haven’t seen either of them in ages. But I love Kent too much to leave.”
“It’s a shame,” Mrs. Grant said as she stepped out the door, “that there would be no-one to miss you, if you were to go.” Then she smiled, a gesture almost too broad for her narrow face. “See you next week.”
Unsettled, George barely managed to keep himself from slamming the door behind her.
****
The following week, George delivered the velocipede to the Grant's house in Maidstone.
George drove the velocipede to their estate from the train station, and he couldn’t deny how well it turned out. It rode like a dream, all seven sets of pedals and three wheels, and he’d taken inspiration from Mrs. Grant's boots and painted it a vibrant green, like the iridescent wings of a beetle.
George pedaled up the stately drive, taking in the large but honestly rather shabby home, just as the sun began to set. He carefully leaned the green velocipede against the brick railing before knocking on the front door.
It was opened immediately by an elderly man at least two heads taller than George, and twice as broad. The movement was so sudden that George cried out in surprise. The man, a white-gloved butler, showed no emotion but simply stepped back, which George took as an invitation to enter.
The front hall was large and dim, lit only by gas lamps along the walls, and flanked by two staircases leading up to the second floor. Out from the darkness under the stairs came Mrs. Grant, and a man who introduced himself as Dr Grant. There was no child with them. George thought perhaps he was in the nursery.
"Good evening, Missus Grant, Doctor Grant. Your velocipede is outside, if you would like–"
"Mister Bentley," Dr Grant–shorter than his wife but more portly, with beady eyes and a full head of curly blonde hair–interrupted. "Did you ride it here?"
"Yes, sir."
"Do you often… ride?"
"I do," George replied, slightly perturbed by the line of questioning.
"I told you, dear," Mrs. Grant said, patting her husband's arm. "He's perfect."
George's confusion grew. "Pardon me–" but he was interrupted by a clattering on the stairs.
"Terence!" Mrs. Grant cried out. "Your birthday gift is here!"
George's eyes widened as the thing they called Terence tumbled down the stairs. At first he thought it was some kind of giant bug, a spider or perhaps a centipede, but as it came under the illumination of the gas lamps he realized it was human. Or at least it was made of parts of what had once been humans–heads and arms and legs. Especially legs.
"Oh my God!" George screamed and stumbled backwards, into the butler, whose arms wrapped tight around him.
Mrs. Grant murmured as she doused a cloth with liquid from a small glass bottle: "Perfect legs. Perfect."
In his last moments of consciousness, George caught one final look at Terence. He was horrified to realize that it only had six pairs of legs.
****
A few nights later, Terence cruised the paths around his home under the watchful eyes of his parents.
“The perfect gift,” Dr Grant whispered to his wife. “Birthday legs, and a bicycle to match. What more could a boy want?”
“We are truly blessed,” she replied, sighing with happiness.
Terence rode past, giggling and chittering, full of joy at the wind in his hair and the smooth movement of all the pedals under all his feet.
Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft, M. R. James, Shirley Jackson, Robert Aickman, and a ton of fan fiction, Cassandra Daucus (she/her) writes soft horror and dark romance. She is intrigued by how the human mind responds to the unknown, and also enjoys a good gross-out. She has stories published or forthcoming in a number of anthologies. Cassandra lives outside of Philadelphia with her family and three cats. Her social media and website can be found at https://linktr.ee/residualdreaming
Squid Vineyard
by Gideon Grandis-McConnell
Gideon Grandis-McConnell (she/her) is a high school Senior from Richmond, Virginia. She enjoys creating digital illustrations as well as animation, and she is drawn to the surreal, whimsical, and weird in her work. In addition to creating art, she enjoys learning Japanese and obscure niche fandoms.
The Ark
by Louis Faber
The ark of hope had sailed
almost empty, their reality
was free falling, their dreams
consumed in the furnace
of their greed, their arrogance.
Time was hanging suspended,
they were grasping at the hands
of the clock perched now
over the growing abyss.
Once they had been gods, or
imagined themselves so, now
they were fuel for Vulcan's flames.
Once they were prophets
of an unbounded, unbridled future,
now simply comic pariahs, clinging
to a world that had rejected them.
Some still held out hope, some
still tried, and in the faint glimmer
of their efforts a small ember
of salvation barely glowed.
They wanted to believe there was
a future, that this was one tale
in an ongoing saga, not
the posthumous mutterings
of a now doomed species dancing
on the razor's edge of extinction.
Louis Faber (he/him) is a poet, photographer and blogger. His work has appeared in The Whisky Blot, The Poet (U.K.), Alchemy Spoon, New Feathers Anthology, Dreich (Scotland), Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Erothanatos (Greece), Defenestration, Atlanta Review, Glimpse, Rattle, Cold Mountain Review, Eureka Literary Magazine, Borderlands: the Texas Poetry Review, Midnight Mind, Pearl, Midstream, European Judaism, The South Carolina Review and Worcester Review, among many others, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. A book of poetry, The Right to Depart, was published by Plain View Press. He can be found at https://anoldwriter.com.
my nature is yet unnamed
by Cara Pleym
I live in the ribcage of a bird,
bones stretched too thin, too long,
fragile and forgotten,
yet I have never been able to break this container.
It’s translucent, this trapped fluttering heart,
but not invisible. It’s creation a yawning chasm between who I am
and who I pretend to be,
you can’t really see me.
I discard this foreign skin and the wolves come at midnight
for their feasting,
released like the fall of season bound leaves.
I cannot sustain them year-round.
The ice sometimes forms distorted panels,
where I peek my razor mouth through the tissue paper layer,
it feels like a breath long dead and resurrected,
our lungs move mechanically,
our blood is slow,
cold,
ribboning out to taste the world as it is,
but I cannot forgive it.
Not now, not yet, not ever.
My tendons severed my connection to this life
but we are demons of deceit,
so you smile when you see me.
What a pretty little thing.
I think I hear her singing.
Cara could tell you many things about herself, most of which are true but few that would make sense. Her work is often uncomfortably, brutally honest and interrogates trauma in a way which might not be completely healthy. The poetry is melancholy and angry but tells the story of evolving identity and the ever-present spectrum of mental health.
You can find her and her sadness @polar_truths on Instagram.
Of Witches and Arsonists
by Amelia Brown
The First Day
“In three days,” says the witch, “You will burn your own town down.”
They laugh at her when she says this. The people in this town are always laughing at the witch. She does not live with a man and it has not killed her. They don’t like this. She cures their ailments with herbs that they don’t understand. They do not like this either, even though it keeps them alive. Especially because it keeps them alive. She leaves her hair unbraided, uncovered, flecked with grey like she isn’t scared of age the way they all are. This, they also do not like.
After the witch has shared the prophecy with the town she climbs down from the wooden crate and goes back to her hut. They looked angrier than usual, she thinks. Their brows were heavier with lines and there was something ugly in their laughter that made her think of candles going out. Light to dark, hot to cold. This is what she saw in all of them.
She sighs. These days, she feels exhausted more often. It has less to do with age and more to do with not being believed so many times over. It takes it out of her. She unlaces her boots and sits with her bare feet in front of the fire. She wiggles her toes one by one until they are warm. Then she kneels and brews a hot tonic for her head which has been banging incessantly since the prophecy arrived at her door.
The prophecy arrived in the form of a little girl some weeks ago. The little girl had come to her door and danced, arms over her head, writhing like a snake. She was dared to do this by one of the boys in the village. She didn’t know what it meant. The witch had opened the door to her, watched her dance, closed the door and then consulted the book. It had taken her until today to riddle it all out and she had told the people in the town immediately in the hope that they might listen. This, she had learnt, is not something men are good at doing. Still, she thought if their own lives were at stake they might, finally, open their ears.
The tonic smooths her tongue and she feels the liquid fall through, making her aware of her body and its pieces. Her heart is heavier than it was yesterday, she can tell. Her lungs are larger, fat with air. She already knows how this is going to end but she isn’t a dramatic person. Even as a baby, her mother had said she barely cried. She is still like this now. She drinks her tonic and then darns a sock. She waters the herbs she keeps on her windowsill and fingers their leaves. When she holds her fingertips up to her nose they smell of mint and basil which makes her smile.
Before bed she heaves her hair into a bun and opens the book. It is faded today. It gets like this when it is sad. She rubs her palm up and down the spine and watches the ink strengthen. It has not always done this. In the early days when they were still learning each other it would stay blank for days if she said the wrong thing or shut it too hard - it is prone to bad moods and difficult days. This suited the witch though because like many people, she was prone to bad moods and difficult days too, and so they found a rhythm over the years.
Tonight it stretches open with her touch and reads the witch out a spell to conjure dreams free from aching. The book knows the witch cannot sleep when all she can hear is her joints complaining. The witch is grateful. Onto the page she traces a wave, a windowsill, softness, and the book stirs these into its spell. Already she is beginning to feel drowsy. Her eyelids are beginning to slide. She is looking forward to what she will find behind them.
She puts the book beneath her head and it curls itself around her. “Not long now,” she says into its cover. “Not long left.”
****
The Second Day
Over an ale the joiner says, “I don’t like the witch.” The men agree. They nod their heads in unison and barely notice the barmaid who is clearing the stains of their drinks from the table under their chins. This is how she likes to be: unnoticed like this. She has been cleaning stains from their table for decades now. Career progression isn’t available for women in this century.
“Burn our own town down? We aren’t stupid. We are not stupid men. We would never burn our own town to the ground,” says the blacksmith.
“We can’t let her say things like this about us,” says the baker, rubbing his stomach.
“I heard a rumour,” says the farmer. He is a man with a low and broad voice that comes up from the floor to meet you. He has been leaning against a post, watching everyone but the barmaid talk, chewing corn in his yellow teeth. He comes towards them, pushes his shoulders between two of the men and lays his palms flat on the table. “Burning,” he says.
“Burning?” says the joiner, who equates rumour with gossip which he leaves to his wife.
“The king’s men are going around burning witches. By royal order. Perhaps it is our civic duty to the kingdom. Perhaps it is right.”
“The king would not do a thing which was wrong,” says the baker, with his head on one side.
“Certainly it is right, then,” says the blacksmith, who likes to agree.
“We have been kind, allowing her to live for so long,” says the farmer, sitting down on the bench. He is glad to be at the centre of things, instead of up on the hill with his sheep. He is tired of feeling so lonely.
They nod at him. “It’s time. It’s time,” says the joiner, disappointed that everyone is looking at the farmer when it was his idea to dislike the witch in the first place.
The barmaid refills each of their jugs and then she hangs up her apron and leaves through the backdoor. She traces the edges of buildings until she is at the house which belongs to the witch. It is slightly farther out than the others but otherwise it is unremarkable. When she arrives she knocks four times as she always does and enters. The witch is sat with her hair down on the bed.
“Will you plait it for me?” the witch says to the barmaid, who is the only person she allows to touch her hair. The barmaid kneels behind the witch on the bed and begins to wind the thick strands of hair together. Occasionally she kisses the back of her neck. Once she has finished the witch turns to face her. They sit cross legged on the bed with their knees touching.
“The men want to burn you,” says the barmaid.
The witch nods. “If not them, it would have been the kingsmen. Men are sick of things they can’t understand.”
“We could run away. We’ll hide in the mountains and live off the land. I’ve grown up here. I know the roots of the trees like a map in the countryside. I know how to drink and eat well from what there is. I know how to survive.”
“Then you know that I am not going to,” says the witch. She puts her hand on the face of the barmaid. She has green fingernails, not from magic but from gardening. Still, she looks alien.
“When will it happen?” asks the barmaid.
“Tomorrow,” says the witch. They look at each other for a long time. Once they have fed on each other’s eyes, the barmaid stokes the fire as the witch brews tonics for each of them. They sit by the heat and the barmaid reads the witch a story from a book her mother gave her when she was a child. It is late but the barmaid is hungry from work and so they heat soup and eat it until their tongues are burnt. The witch puts her index finger onto the barmaid’s tongue and gradually the heat dulls.
“I’ll miss you,” says the barmaid, who is trying not to cry. Unlike the witch, she was a baby who made rivers with her wailing.
“I’ll miss you too,” says the witch. The words catch in her throat. Although she is not an emotional person, does not wear her heart on her sleeve, she knows it will be difficult to leave the woman she has loved in secret since she came to this town nearly twenty years ago. She knows too that it will be difficult to let her body be tied to the wood. Most of all, she knows that it will be difficult to die in all that heat.
The barmaid lets the witch wander through her reverie. Then, when she senses that the mind has wandered as far as the witch wants it to, the barmaid puts her hand between the witches legs and they make love, as they often do, all night long.
This is something the people in this town do not know about it. But if they did, they would definitely not like it either.
****
The Third Day
They tie her to the stake and the crowd stand around her like crop circles.
“Witch witch witch,” they chant as if they only have one mouth between all of them. “Burn burn burn,” they chant as the joiner comes forward with the flame and turns their eyes orange.
The witch smiles out at the sea of orange-eyed people. She thinks of the pumpkin soup her mother used to make to keep them warm while they were travelling. She thinks of the time her mother gave her the book and said, “Learn everything and you will save people.” Her mother came from a time when things were simpler, when people wanted to be saved. She wonders why people do not want to be saved anymore.
Then she feels her feet begin to heat up and she holds her breath. She pictures the face of the barmaid and her crooked teeth smile.
“Die die die,” they chant as the flames lick her thighs and turn the murderers’ eyes red. “Kill kill kill,” they chant and feel glad, even proud, that they are witch killers.
And their eyes are too full of flame to see the fire at the foot of the witch catch onto a trail of hay and make its way towards the barn which makes its way towards the pub which catches the thatch and now it jumps - dancer-like - around the town.
Their ancestors built their town in a circle to honour the ways the crops grow. They built their village before people burned witches in its centre. The barmaid watches the town from the hillside. She sees the flame in the centre and then the growing circle. She is too far away to hear anything. As the town burns she listens to the sheep, bleating and chewing on the grass around her. Briefly she feels sad that their farmer will not be coming back to them: she worries for the sheep. But then she remembers that all animals were born wild.
She takes the book out of her apron pocket and opens it slowly, just like the witch had told her to do. Inside the book is a map and she follows its lines towards the future.
Amelia Brown is a queer writer and maker, whose short stories, poetry and non-fiction have been published in Transforming Being (an anthology by Bridgehouse Publishing), The Bombay Review, Queer Life, Queer Love 2 (an anthology by Muswell Press), Penumbra Literary and Texlandia Magazine. They have performed spoken word at Hay Festival, Last Word Festival and Brainchild Festival as part of the Roundhouse Poetry Collective. They are the co-founder and editor of queer arts and lit platform t’ART.
What Appeared in a Forest Stream
by Patrick Malka
The stream’s flow had been consistent around the testing site since the start of the observations. A cold, fast flow, water the colour of strong tea but clear enough to see to the bottom. The persistent smell of wet, decomposing vegetation hung thick in the air despite the colder than average temperatures.
Jenna’s team set up near that remote forest stream to observe juvenile Atlantic salmon defend their small but crucial territories in areas known to differ strongly in physical landscape. The real question: which of these little fighters were better set up to survive against a novel threat, an introduced predator. It was difficult work because the landscape, the control she required, was dynamic and ever shifting. Attempts to limit variability only seemed to encourage unexpected change. It was still the perfect site for this research though. Jenna had stumbled across it while chatting with fellow students at a conference. This region, officially known as White Moose Creek, was last exploited by logging companies thirty years ago but after the sudden and still unexplained disappearance of five workers, operations shut down and the area was left to return to nature. There was some unease about its history, but research permits were easily obtained. Jenna just tried her best not to think about it.
****
In the middle of her third weeklong observation period, the height, width, and speed of the stream’s current exploded after a freak storm absolutely no one saw coming rained over forty millimetres inland. Jenna couldn’t imagine not getting data, so, at six in the morning, she drank a scalding instant coffee which never failed to disappoint, put on her sleeveless wetsuit, grabbed her snorkel, and headed out on the 30-minute hike through birch, maple, and pine forest, to the test site. At these new depths, she couldn’t be sure she would even be able to find the tagged fish. Best case scenario, it would be a single lost trial, but she had to try. With funding on the line and needing to prove herself to her skeptical, anxiety prone supervisor, she couldn’t see herself getting away with saying “sorry, I couldn’t, it was raining.”
With the water that far up into the forest and not being able to see where her feet were landing in the dark muck, every step seemed like a risk. The rest of the team told her so. That’s why they stayed behind. Not a single one of them could be bothered to leave the field cabin. Maybe they hoped Jenna would come to her senses and let the rain pass, but they didn’t care enough to accompany her to the field site. It was frustrating. Truth was, she could have used the help. Between the lack of light, the inability to see her steps and the white noise of the rushing water nearby, her senses were cut off and the feeling that something lay just beyond her field of vision grew with every brush of an errant branch across her bare arms. She was never scared alone in the forest but at that moment, a crawling dread made its way up her spine in the form of metronomic shivers. The forest’s natural auditory distortions, the echoing language of creaks and scrapes which Jenna usually found soothing now carried menacing whispers. Something in the forest’s character had changed, introduced by this new onslaught of water.
When Jenna finally made her way to the open air of the stream and the little bit of available light, what she saw didn’t immediately make sense. She knew every inch of that site so any change to its appearance was deeply disorienting. The neon orange flag markers which were placed on shore, several feet into the forest to delineate the portion of the stream where she performed her observations, were under water, still planted but bent parallel to the floor by the fast-rushing river. Five bright white paper birch trees which had lined the shores had fallen into the stream sometime overnight and, looked like a closed skeletal fist attempting to take hold of the flowing water. She could see new, indistinct stumps between the fallen trees causing whirling ripples. Jenna waded into the water. At its deepest, the flow was now crushing her ribcage. She approached the new features slowly, not knowing what to expect. As she neared the first one, she did not recognize what it could be. Jenna looked upstream at the others and froze. The stump furthest from her was exposed. It was the pale face of a woman, eyes closed, long, thick dark hair flowing around her shoulders making clear the downstream direction. The skin of her cheeks was peeled back, curled up towards her forehead, exposing muscular pink flesh and rows of broken, jagged teeth. The skin curled like the thin white bark of the birch to which she seemed linked. Jenna could barely stand in the strong current, but the girl was effortlessly still, as though the water flowed through her.
Jenna’s eyes shot back to the first stump she approached, now just a few feet from her. The long flowing hair had parted, it was clear it was another woman with the same pale, peeling face, but this one’s eyes were open and looking straight at her. When this one leapt from the water, Jenna stumbled back and as the stream took her away, she could feel the branches of the newly fallen trees snagging against her legs.
The last thought that crossed her mind before a pulsing darkness took hold, as the rushing water painfully filled her nostrils, her vision faded and her rib cage spasmed, was that those branches catching on her wetsuit, should not feel like a tightening, predatory grip pulling her against the current.
Patrick Malka (he/him) is a high school science teacher from Montreal, Quebec, where he lives with his partner and two kids. His fiction can be found in Five South's The Weekly, Nocturne magazine, The Raven Review, Sky Island Journal and most recently at On The Run. He can be found online @PatrickMalka on Twitter and @malkapatrick on Instagram.
Adding Up the Adders
by Leia K Bradley
Taught to handle suffering by causing more suffering,
I’m learning that love is a bravery with many iron shields.
But no swords need be unsheathed, no unnecessary crimson fields—
old rage, like old ways, shameless in its public volume—
such grand grief tipples the bottom of the bottle.
I seek a lover who’s fought hard their battles, lithe on their heels,
but a lover who knows home to be peacetime, weary-hearted
& ready to heal.
Here by the lake, I sleep amidst forest-floor runes, moon-blanketed,
shimmering like a tear. I came to this quiet to lie with my fear.
Slithering into slumber,
king, garter, garden snake
we were taught kill on sight, with shovel or axe, but
by the time you’ve discerned it’s poison or peace—two fangs to the face,
you’ll be coffin’d and corps’d, struck still in black lace.
No wonder Medusa finds me in dreams, shows me my many deaths
shows me pines with copperheads winding round every branch
I ask her how to blind the bad, but she shakes her rattling head:
Red touch yellow, deadly fellow; red touch black, venom lack.
She shows me an open field, a fate harmless as a milk snake:
you’ve got to give up your grief to make it back.
Why not take that axe to the past?
Waking before dawn I add up the adders, see the numbers like a vision
666, 777—Satan’s slick luck follows far.
But morning’s maiden brings no sun:
cumulus, nimbus, stratus, thick and undone.
In the ninth lake, I watch the water moccasins
skimming the top in righteous ripples, a poison lattice,
gods of the line between above and below.
They sneak me a peek of paralysis, say
death shouldn’t be easy, say
you’re too old to still need time to grow.
I seek a love that can stand the flames
and burns right back with bright vengeance, palling
that conquers conquest with healing,
that roars wraths against old pains come-a-calling
that takes my cold marble-heart and warms it rabbit-fast again,
lustwild as any hare, matches my ardor with her hands.
I need a love that teaches me card tricks but never tricks me,
a gasoline gutterfly, a snakecharmer with a sweet sneer.
I need a butch who touches my eyes, hands, lips, reminds safe is right here.
In the salt circle by the water’s edge I
am not definable by my heart’s failures, I
am not a nameless nemesis against myself, I
am tired of love’s synchronicity with battery.
I am from you get what you get, don’t have a fit,
but I want a fit of romance that blooms evergreen,
want to warm in her arms like a fireplace on a wintry eve
want us to outfit one another in laughter and ease.
So I draw sigils by the lakeside, curl these gilded wants
like her hair on future pillow, tongue
the sacred language.
In a crown of cypress, a white sundress, I summon
something not self-sacrificial, not pernicious or petulant—
No more hematophagy, no more backroom resurrection
I want leather and kindness, a partner in insurrection.
Medusa smiles, finally nods, lays out the stakes.
Across the water, over my flesh and up the pines, slither go the snakes.
Smiling, tossing the stones of my past across the lake,
the poison eaters spit out my future faith
and the forest sings, and the forest shakes.
Scythe, Swinging
by Leia K Bradley
At dusk, walking through through the fields, I put my wedding dress on the scarecrow
and never see another bird again.
I cooked you three meals a day: hotcakes, bacon, cornbread with butter, meat
salty and dripping,
scrubbed your clothes on the washboard, mended them
and you. All that thread,
all those sharp needles. Made a house a home,
a roof we fell in love under—
yes, I can almost hear the memories lying to me
that there was some good. But good just meant
bad gone temporarily dormant.
I bathe in the lake, contemplate drowning, roll my eyes, emerge.
Who would feed the animals?
In the golden fields, the wind
reaping.
I am out with the scythe, swinging.
I shovel earth like I’ve never blistered or bled,
my hands red like you used to make me:
crimson spilling from my nose down my favorite blue dress–
I just keep digging—
I think of all the ways I could have killed you.
Eventually I chose the pickaxe—
the ceremonial swing of it took heft to heave
—so he’d know I really meant it,
that I had thought about it. But not too much.
That it was so simple, really, to just take a sharp thing and plunge it into someone’s brain
over and over again.
Face distorted and twisted, bloody and marred.
You looked so ridiculous. I had to laugh!
So then I took the butcher knife and chopped you up the best I could.
I thought about the symbolism of castrating you but
that gave you too much importance, so
I left the bottom half of you intact
when I gave the pigs their feast.
I bet you taste delicious to them.
Snouts aflurry, I wish I could have the sensation they were—
that deep, ravenous ecstasy of eating you.
But I had swallowed enough
to know I never would.
I light the marital bed on fire
and walk out into the field.
Someone’s gotta feed the animals.
Leia K. Bradley (they/she) is a backwoods Georgia born, Brooklyn based lesbian writer and performance artist and an MFA Poetry candidate at Columbia University, where she also was awarded the Undergraduate Writing Teaching Fellowship for 2023-24. She has work in Poetry Project, Aurore, Wrongdoing Magazine, Ghost City Press, Tarot Literary, Versification, and more, with her poem "Settle(d)" chosen as the Editor's Choice Best Overall pick for Penumbra Magazine's 2022 Pride issue. She can be found dancing through candlelit speakeasies or climbing barefoot up a magnolia tree with a tattered copy of Stone Butch Blues tucked into her dress. After climbing out from the coffin of her first divorce, she is accepting love and lust letters through her twitter @LeiaKBradley or instagram @MadameMort.
The Basilisk and the Alchemist's Wife
by Caitlin A Quinn
Just that morning, Donatella Gabrielli had discovered the latest of her husband’s infidelities. This newest one was with the wife of Salvatore Ricci, the baker. The previous lover had at least been the sister of a wealthy wine merchant. Now it was a woman covered in flour. Had he no shame?
Worst of all, this latest affair meant the baker would no longer provide Donatella with her beloved struffoli. The sweet dough that kissed her lips, the burst of orange and cinnamon on her tongue that had become a trusted lover over these years of loneliness and disappointment. The confection, so light it seemed to float on the very air, was her remaining source of happiness, and now her faithless husband—Dottore Lorenzo Gabrielli, famed alchemist to Duca Massimiliano—had stolen it from her. Mannaggia!
Their conversation about the affair had not gone well. She had wanted to be less emotional, more dignified. To show him she didn’t care.
“It does not matter to me in the slightest, Lorenzo, but you have shamed yourself, going with a woman of such low birth.”
But Dottore Gabrielli could be cruel, and that morning had been no exception.
“If it does not matter, why bring it up? No, I think it does matter. Although I do not know if it is the circumstances of Signora Ricci’s birth that bother you, or that Signor Ricci will not deliver struffoli to our household now.”
It was a cutting remark. Donatella should have expected it. It pained her to have some part of herself laid open so easily. She turned her head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He laughed, and the sound was like a shard of fine Murano glass wedging its way into her heart.
“Your love of struffoli is well-known—and it has made you fat, wife.”
At the insult, Donatella sucked in air. The fine hairs at the nape of her neck, beneath the coil of her carefully wound treccia, tingled with her shame. It was true she was no longer the lissome bride he had wed twenty-five years ago, before she had known the unkindness in his heart. Still, she cut a fine enough figure in her gowns, though the dressmaker had to let the stitches out more every year, and her bosoms in the latest décolletage from Milano strained like a pair of branzini pressing against a fishing net.
He would not get away with saying such a thing. She would draw blood, too.
“And you, Lorenzo, were never a handsome man, and now cruelty and lechery have made you repellent.”
“Ah, but I am an alchemist. Women are attracted to my power. You, wife, are nothing. You live—and eat—at my largesse. Do not try my patience further, or I shall put you out into the street and move Signora Ricci into your bedchambers.”
“You would not dare!”
“Try me and see. For I would prefer flour in my sheets to ingratitude.”
With that, he left their palazzo.
****
There were only three pieces of struffoli left. Donatella ate them slowly, concentrating on every flavor and texture, burning these sensations into her memory so she would be able to recall them later, the way one might do with memories of a dear companion feared never to be seen again.
It was not enough, she knew, to hide away in her bedroom and sulk. She must make her husband pay. He had taken away her dignity and now her struffoli. She had to rob him of something he treasured. He had broken her heart for the very last time, and she would be avenged.
So it was that Donatella found herself in Dottore Gabrielli’s laboratory, where he turned copper and iron into gold for Duca Massimiliano. Her husband kept the key to his laboratory on a chain about his neck, but Donatella knew where he hid the spare one: tucked within the pages of a sinful book filled with images of naked women. She had averted her eyes while she felt for the key within its pages.
The laboratory was housed in a cold, dark tower with no windows. Inside it, Donatella found a lone rushlight in a sconce on the wall and used it to light the room’s many candles. As the wicks sputtered to life, she hugged her bosom against the chill. She glanced up, but all was black above her, the tower’s height extending into untold darkness. Her nose twitched at the room’s acrid air. It smelled of burnt metal and scorched hair. Also, something musky, reminiscent of what her furs smelled of when her maid, Luisa, brought them back from summer storage.
She glanced at the shelves of books and piles of what looked like ash on her husband’s long, wooden work space. A dull ache of futility settled in her chest. What could she steal that would harm him? Gold? He would only create more. Iron? He could replace it cheaply. She sobbed with exasperation.
“Who is there?” a voice asked from the shadows, though it was more hiss than true voice.
Donatella cried out and backed away toward the door. She knew her husband had no apprentice. He had been pressured to take one on years ago by the duca, and it had not ended well for the young man, who had left quickly and in tears. She could not imagine who had spoken to her, especially in such an awful voice.
It came again: “You are not Il Dottore. Who are you?”
Behind her, Donatella’s hand grasped the door’s latch. But before she opened it to make her escape, she burned to know the identify of this speaker, and who he was to her husband.
She swallowed her fear. “I am Signora Gabrielli. Who are you?”
“Ah,” the voice said, although to Donatella’s ears, the sound was little more than the rustling of dry leaves. “I am a king, imprisoned here by your husband. Free me, and I will reward you, for I have great magic.”
King. Donatella huffed her incredulity. Did this man think her a fool? Her husband was powerful, but not enough to have taken a king prisoner. Likely, this was some village ruffian being held here for the duca’s men. Someone dangerous. And she knew magic was a thing of the past, abolished by the new art of science. Her husband’s work had proven that. So had that of her second-cousin from Vinci, Leonardo.
“You do not believe me,” the voice said. “Come closer, and I will prove it.”
Though Donatella was afraid of this strange speaker, she was more afraid of the disappointment and empty plate of struffoli that waited in her lonely rooms. She lifted a candle and drew closer to where the voice had come from. The room’s musky scent grew until it clung to her tongue and balled itself inside her throat. She retched.
Blinking through watery eyes, she saw a cage door built into the bottom of a spiral staircase. This was the source of the atrocious scent.
“Mio Dio! Disgusting!” Donatella coughed.
From within the cage, she heard, “It’s the weasel pelts. They’ve been soaked in the beast’s urine and are used to torture me. Move them, per favore, signora.”
Donatella looked down and saw a pile of small fur pelts laid on the ground before the cage’s door. She wouldn’t dream of touching them, so she kicked them away using the heels of her satin slippers. The scent didn’t disappear, but it did become blessedly fainter.
“Grazie, signora,” the voice said, a sibilant emphasis on the second word.
“Well, show yourself to me, magical king,” Donatella demanded.
The layer of hay near the cage’s door shuffled as the prisoner approached and entered the light.
A scream caught in Donatella’s throat when she saw it: a creature with the cockscomb and head of a rooster, the legs of a lion ending in clawed feet, and leathery wings folded against a body covered in a mixture of scales and feathers. The thing tilted its head at Donatella’s choked cry, and it was then she noticed the hood it wore over the top part of its face, covering its eyes. She had seen such hoods before on the heads of trained falcons, but this one had a hole cut in the top from which the creature’s bright red cockscomb sprouted.
A basilisk! Although Donatella had never seen one before, she remembered the drawings in her father’s bestiary and the knew the rumors, especially how such a creature killed with its eyes. No wonder it had been given a hood. To have such a thing hidden here, right in her own home? How terrible and wondrous!
“I know what you are. How is it you are here?” she asked. Her own voice sounded far away to her, barely audible over the sound of her heart thumping in her ears.
“Your husband stole me from my homeland many years ago. He keeps me imprisoned here, taking my blood to make gold and my feathers to make aphrodisiacs.”
“Then we share in his cruelty.” Donatella considered the hood again. “It is said a basilisk can kill with one look.”
“My eyes are deadly only to my enemies. It is why Il Dottore keeps me blinded in my misery. For his death waits in their depths.”
Donatella studied the basilisk. It was a hideous thing, truly. Yet perhaps its discovery had been a blessing, given it was the source of everything important to her husband: his work and his women. She shivered with fear and excitement.
“Free me, Signora Gabrielli, and I will give you what you desire most,” the basilisk pleaded.
Donatella considered what it was she most wanted. To strike at her husband, to punish him, certainly, but also to be forever free of him—and that was possible only with his death. But while freedom was one thing, happiness was something very different, and Donatella knew what she wanted most was to be happy again. To reclaim the woman she had been before Lorenzo Gabrielli and the toll of his heartbreak and humiliation. But was such a thing possible?
“Allora, if I ask for my husband’s death, that will be a poor request, as I am only giving you what you most desire. No, what I ask for is to feel again how I did before my marriage to such a cruel man. As light as a piece of struffoli. To feel I could float away on the very air. That is what I desire most.”
The basilisk turned his head and plucked two feathers from his side. He poked his beak between the bars of his cage door and held them out to Donatella. “Take these, and you will feel that way again.”
Donatella looked at the feathers and her face twisted with disgust. They were tattered and filthy. Likely harboring vermin, given the sordid state of the basilisk’s captivity. If these were, indeed, the secret of her husband’s virility, then his escapades were even more vile than she had imagined. Still, this was a magical creature, proffering what it claimed would provide her heart’s desire. And so she conquered her revulsion, bent down, and took the basilisk’s feathers.
“Hold one in each hand and fan the air with them, signora.”
Donatella laughed. The basilisk had clearly gone mad with suffering.
Ridicolo! But though she felt silly, Donatella shook her wrists, waving at the air with the feathers.
Nothing happened. Donatella was about to drop the feathers and go in search of a basin to wash her hands when a strange sensation filled her. It was as though her body, which had grown so cumbersome and heavy over the years, had somehow been emptied of its mass and now floated. She could no longer feel the ground beneath her, and when she looked down, she was shocked to discover she was actually hovering three feet above the tower’s stone floor. She whooped in fear and delight. She closed her eyes, beat the air faster with the basilisk’s feathers and felt herself rise higher. One of her satin slippers slid off her foot, and she heard it strike the ground below. She opened her eyes and discovered she had risen into the tower’s dark, upper reaches, but she felt no fear, only wonder. More than that, she felt young again. A beautiful bride once more, free of the weights of loneliness, sorrow, and disgrace. Laughing, she slowed her wrists and drifted toward the ground. She thought of how lovely it would be to float this way in the sunshine, above a beautiful garden or an orchard full of sweet orange blossoms.
Back on the ground, she retrieved her slipper and knelt at the creature’s cage. “Evviva! That was marvelous!”
“I am pleased, signora. Now, I have given you your desire, so you give me mine: free me.”
Donatella’s heart was still racing from the excitement of her flight, but the thought of freeing the basilisk filled her with dread, for it was a fearsome beast. Also, she felt a small pang of guilt for the harm soon to befall her husband, as she was not a cold woman, and the weightlessness she had just experienced reminded her of when life itself had been easy and kind.
“Will his death be painful?”
The basilisk hunched his wings forward, and Donatella read it as a type of shrug.
“It is death. Who can say what will be painful? Free me now and remove my hood—carefully, without looking yourself.”
Donatella nodded her assent, for she had given her word. She found a ring of keys on the table and tried several until she came upon the one that opened the lock on the basilisk’s cage. The creature half-walked, half-slithered into freedom, for Donatella saw with some misgiving that its body ended in a long serpent’s tail that drew itself into a thick coil.
“The hood, signora, per favore,” it said.
Donatella closed her eyes. Her hand shook as she touched the leather cap that had been pulled tightly over the basilisk’s eyes. She tugged and tugged until she felt it lift free of the cockscomb.
All was quiet but for Donatella’s heavy breath.
“Are you still here?” she asked.
There was no response. Donatella asked again. Silence, once more. The moments ticked by, keeping time with her racing heart. To stay calm, she counted to herself. Uno, due, tre, quattro... When she reached two-hundred and sixty-seven, she decided the basilisk must have departed, so eager it was for escape.
Her eyes, when she opened them, were met with a glare so cold, it froze her bones from the marrow outward. Her limbs turned to stone and her heart slowed to a staggering crawl. Before her throat closed forever, she cried, “But why? I was not your enemy.”
“I am a basilisk,” it answered. “Everyone is my enemy.”
And as Donatella Gabrielli’s body became dust and lifted away into the air, the basilisk beat his wings so she flew higher and higher. “Float away, signora. I have kept my promise. You will forever be as light as the very air.”
Caitlin A. Quinn’s short fiction has appeared or is upcoming in the anthology Murder on Her Mind, Vol 2., Blood & Bourbon (Issue 12), A Thin Slice of Anxiety, and Bending Genres. She lives in Northern California with her partner and two badly behaved Airedale terriers and is a member of Stony Brook University's BookEnds Fellowship Seven. Instagram: caitlinaquinnwriter.
Bookling
by Erric Emerson
Erric Emerson (he/him) is poet, artist, photographer, web designer and the Founder and Editor in Chief of Dark Onus Lit and Dark Onus Press (a literary magazine and press seeking dark-themed, experimental work). He has been an Editorial Staff member for AJI magazine since 2018, and co-founded Duende literary out of Goddard College (where he received his BFA). He’s published two poetry collections- Counting Days (Reckless Heron Press, 2017) and Which Way Is Up? (Coyote Blood, 2019), along with poetry and artwork publications across many zines. His relevant sites:
https://www.erricemerson.com/
https://www.darkonuslit.com/
https://www.darkonuspress.com/