Page Turner Magazine Issue No.3

GENRE FICTION

let me tell you a story...

Contents

Letter from the Editor

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

ARTICLES

Neurodivergence by Haley Brock

DisabilityisDiversity by Ember-Reese Richardson

Fanfiction andRepresentation by Logan Ward

Mystery

CONTEST: Spooky Season

Winner: The Salesman by Sophia Laughlin

Runner-up: TrailAngels by Brigs Larson

Thriller

STORIES

EmergencyContact by Sky Allen

Mr. and Mrs.Popovich by Natalia Vodilkova

CONTEST: Historie Fatale

Winner: Faithless by Marleigh Green

Runner-up: ThirdandFinally by Rowan Wasserman

Lungs by Elisa Davidson

is OtherPeople by Marleigh Green

TheLittleClayGodling by Meahgan Farrel

TheThingsintheWoods by Marleigh Green

CONTEST: It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

Winner: A Wretch Like Me by Rhiannon Guzelian

Runner-up: His Face Was Abnormal by Jacquelyn Agliata

Romance

STORIES

NightWatch by Daniel Golub

Shorebreak by Savannah Jade

CONTEST: Romancing the Reader

by Savannah Rush

Cakes in Town by Sarah Hart

Fantasy

STORIES

ForgetMeNever by Laurie Hilburn

Asterius by Zenia deHaven

Thindelus by Clarissa Janeen

POEM

TheFaerieQueens by Clarissa Janeen

CONTEST: Call to Adventure

Winner Goldtrace by Zenia deHaven

Runner-up The Fox and the Box by Ali Dening

Science Fiction

STORIES

Macy’sAdventure by Camryn Lehr

TheGrizzlyMachine by Sam Kostakis

Exit Wound by Andrew Busch

Blue Horizon by Elizabeth Gomez

TheAugmentedLife by Amanda J. Marshall

CONTEST: Baby, There’s Bots Outside Winner Memories™ by Brianne Simone

Runner-up Reality, Worth a Shot by Savannah Jade

Features

LITERARY FEATURE

Asphyxia by Katherine Holmes

OP-EDS

InDefenseofWhimsy by Shannon Stockdale-Elftman CraftingtheScienceinScienceFiction by Tess Rossi

Romantasy Booklist by Marleigh Green

Authors I Should Read by Shannon Stockdale-Elftman ToHaveLived:AnanalysisofAdamSilvera’s They Both Die At The End by Sarah Burton

RomanceNovels,Rebellion, andLiterary Dissent: An interview withJenniferSafrey by Sarah Burton

Interview with LeahKoch, Co-Owner of TheRipped Bodice Bookstore by Marleigh Green

“TheWorldNeedsYourStory”InterviewwithAuthorsElizabethHelen by Marleigh Green

Fanfiction, MichaelFassbender, andWriting for Yourself: A Conversation with Sierra Simone by Marleigh Green

Letter from the Editor

Ican only give you the truth, but it’s one of the big ones: I believe genre fiction is essential. I believe this with the fervor of someone saved by it.

People dismiss entertainment as unimportant because it isn’t real. I spent too long depressed to discount momentary escape from a reality that, if we’re honest, could be better. I valued the time I spent reading. I hoarded it. Those were the hours that allowed me to carry back some courage when I returned to the world.

Genre fiction matters because accessible escapes matter, and because no one except Ursula K. Le Guin has adequately acknowledged the boredom of pain, or the foolishness in discarding what makes you happy.

Reality hurts sometimes. When it does, take this, and call me in the morning.

— Sarah M. Burton, Editor-in-Chief

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

NEURODIVERGENCE

by Haley Brock

Imagine someone was born with malformed hips that prevent them from walking. Everyone says they are not disabled and refuses to label them as such. They have to wear traditional shoes, walk up and down stairs, and participate in PE. They are denied mobility aids, elevators, ramps, or any assistant devices that may help them with essential tasks like driving a car or going to the grocery store. The people around this person do not show compassion or help this individual who is stumbling, crashing, struggling to catch up with everyone else. And this individual, who was born with a disability that society fails to acknowledge, is blamed. This is the reality for a wide majority of autistic people. This is their reality. For the majority of my life this was my reality.

My last semester of college, I was blatantly discriminated against by my roommates and the residential director. I remember how it felt to be sitting in that office, being torn to shreds by my roommates and university staff for what I now know are neurodivergent traits. I felt voiceless. I felt like my needs and opinions were less important than those of others. I did not have the knowledge of my disability at the time or the tools in order to advocate for my needs. When I tried to speak up, I was silenced. As a result, I just “sucked it up” and told myself the reason I was this way was a character flaw. I would go through long periods of burnout just trying to keep up with everyone else. I was just socially awkward, inherently unlikeable, and my true self needed to change the moment eyes were on me if I wanted to make anything out of myself. On the inside, I was crumbling.

My autism diagnosis at 23 saved my life. I finally had an understanding that the way my brain worked was different. That my needs do look slightly different from others but are still human needs. There are times where I grieve the person I could have been if I was given the accommodations and acceptance I needed sooner. A common discourse within society is that neurodivergence should not be “labeled” but what neurotypical parents fail to understand is that this does two very harmful things. The first thing this does is that it teaches children and other parents that the word “autism” is a dirty word that is meant to be feared instead of celebrated. The other thing it does is prevent neurodivergent children, like me, from getting the proper diagnosis and accommodations that I needed.

Neurodivergent children will get labels, as it is just the way of society. Autistic children will be labeled as “weird,” “creepy,” “lazy,” “stupid,” “sensitive,” etc. The r-slur, in partic ular, is one that was hurled at me throughout middle and high school and followed me well into my years in the workforce. What has always made this frustrating for me, before I saw this slur as a disrespect to the humanity of

disabled people, is that it just wasn’t true. I am an intelligent and capable person. What I struggle with is processing speed, especially when it comes to language processing. I have difficulty understanding long strands of verbal commands, which made it very difficult for me to maintain jobs in childcare and entry-level jobs in service industries. I had to give up several pieces of myself that made me who I am, just to function and not cause problems for others. My brain works on a “lag” when I speak, so I cannot say my point nearly as articulate as how I think of it in my head. That made it very easy for others to talk over me or shut down my opinion.

And yet, people still listen to me more than they do other autistic individuals because I am an attractive white woman with low support needs. The autism advocacy space is full of individuals like me for this reason. I still present an “ideal” that is rooted in ableism. Since I am high masking, people often do not know that I am autistic from one conversation with me. Since I have learned to make my voice strong on subjects that I care about, people listen. Since I have a talent to convey exactly what I think and feel through my writing, people see my disability as a “superpower” instead of it as a disability. There are several individuals on the spectrum who cannot voice their innermost thoughts, feelings, and opinions in the same way I can. They do not have the platform that I have been given. They may have higher support needs, an inability to communicate verbally, and not be given the proper accommodations in order to make their voices heard. That does not mean their voices are not worth listening to. Different communication such as AAC devices, sign language, and communication cards does not mean one’s words have less value, although society often sees it this way.

Autistic voices do not only deserve to be heard, but they need to be heard. Some of the most brilliant, creative, compassionate, and innovative voices belong to the minds of those who, by definition, do not think like everyone else. This is something that should be highly valued and celebrated within society, as opposed to fear-mongered or shunned by politicians and corporations. My mission within my work as an author, an editor, and activist is to create a space for autistic people of all ability levels and support needs to express their voice, as opposed to having me speak for such a diverse community of individuals. “Ableism” is an ugly word that prevents us from seeing humanity within each other. Autistic people are beautifully diverse individuals, and we should be represented within our media and society as we truly are. As a society we still have a long way to go, but with any hope, we will get there.

DISABILITY IS DIVERSITY

THE CASE FOR READING OUTSIDE COMFORT ZONES

by Ember-Reese Richardson

Ilove reading. It’s a way for me to destress after a long day, spend some time in my imagination, and become inspired by legends and stories that I one day hope to share with future generations. If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably seen the videos and essays on the benefits of reading diversely.

With teachers and librarians remarking on high rates of illiteracy among the next generation and the skyrocketing cost of books—not to mention the multiple limited editions that each host different additional features—reading is oftentimes seen as a luxury that few can afford. It’s for this reason that some have pushed back against reading diversely. I’m not here to guilt you into changing your habits, and I won’t gatekeep your favorite authors even if they do follow the stereotype of white and male. I’m genuinely happy you found yours.

However, if you fall under that category, you’re not my target audience. I’m here to talk to those who are willing or have taken the first steps into reading diversely. You’ve taken stock of your bookshelves and noticed lots of white male authors, or, in the case of romance, white female authors. You’ve gotten bored of the retellings and the same tropes. Instead of settling, you’ve started actively looking for books by BIPOC authors, adding more LGBTQ+ representation, and widening your horizons in general.

I’m going to go one step further. There is one category that I ask you to seek out that others—however well intentioned still often miss—that of disability.

Disability is a spectrum that covers everything from someone using assistive devices for communication and mobility to people fighting invisible battles like depression and PTSD. Dyslexia, autism, blindness, and anxiety are all examples of disabilities. Contrary to societal myths, being disabled does not define a person, just like your age or gender do not make the whole of you and your lived experiences. Disabled people are not a monolith; their stories are just as vibrant and varied as those you read as a kid.

Research shows that nearly 1 in 5 Americans will become disabled for a year or longer by the age of 65. The Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law in 1990, which allowed major strides to be taken in ensuring access—and even the creation of a disability pride month in July. However, that does not mean equality has suddenly been achieved. Ableism, defined as discrimination of disabled people in favor of able-bodied folk, shows up in a myriad of ways, not just on buildings with no ramps or using a slur. I use cochlear implants to hear and went through years of speech therapy as a kid that all but dissolved my “deaf accent.” My implants tend to be hidden beneath my hair and the processors are tucked away so people are often surprised when I tell them that I am deaf. The phrase, “you don’t look disabled,” comes from a good,

honest place, but it pits me against deaf folks that don’t have my privilege.

Acknowledging our internal biases, and then challenging them can be difficult. If you’ve already started taking steps to read diversely, you’ve likely noticed this already. It takes effort to step outside of your comfort zone and grab a new author with a last name you’re not quite sure you can pronounce.

Reading books is a great way of learning more, and easing our way into actively creating a better and more inclusive society. I’m not asking for everyone to suddenly become a disability rights activist, nor am I the right person to ask for all of the possible book recommendations out there. Yet there are books, both fiction and nonfiction, that center people with disabilities. There are some you may already know, such as the Six of Crows duology by Leigh Bardugo, ATheftofSunlight by Intisar Khanani, and Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao. All of these have characters that have feature disabilities of some kind. Percy Jackson has ADHD and dyslexia, but he doesn’t let that stop him from taking on Greek gods, monsters, and the ultimate terror—trying to graduate high school.

Much like every book featuring LGBTQ+ characters doesn’t and shouldn’t feature a coming out story, disability narratives don’t need to only show characters overcoming their disabilities. Instead, it can simply be one facet of their identity, one part of the story. Don’t be afraid to pick up a story because you’re worried you can’t connect to the characters. Good writers will always be able to give you the experience of a lifetime, and there’s nothing quite like living vicariously through reading.

If you’re like me, you know reading is a powerful experience, one that transcends all of the boxes and labels we use to describe ourselves, and allows us to become more empathic, caring, generous, and wholly wonderful human beings. When you diversify your bookshelves, you’re not only doing yourself a favor by reading authors from underrepresented communities, you’re letting others know, from bookstores to libraries, to the small presses and the biggest publishers alike, that you want to see more of these stories. Preordering sequels and searching for indie authors with unique stories lets the industry know that you are not satisfied with the mediocre offerings that they might try to sell. Searching for well-written, quality stories that feature characters who look wholly unlike you and face challenges that you may never have imagined can be a daunting task, yet it isn’t impossible. When you’re organizing your bookshelves for the first (or hundredth) time, ask yourself how many of those characters had a disability. Then ask yourself—wouldn’t you like to read more?

Now, if you’ll please excuse me, I have a book, or three, to get back to reading.

FANFICTION AND REPRESENTATION

by Logan Ward

Depictions of diverse characters experiencing joy is essential to include in publishing. Fiction can be more than storytelling that reflects morals and cultural norms, it can also serve as an opportunio show an ideal world. To envision what utopia may look like, we need supportive friendships, thoughtful jokes, and examples of welcoming environments.

In 2024, our cultural consciousness is finally aware of the challenges faced by minorities. And now fiction has an opportunity to play a pivotal role in the next step of a progressive society—demonstrating pathways to improvement, specifically within genres that allow for hopeful narratives to emerge. Diversity is often explored within darker genres such as horror and mystery, but these settings limit the amount of productive communication that can be exemplified. True inclusion involves allowing minorities to exist in narratives of joy and romance. Unfortunately, lots of fiction stories that would self-assign themselves into this category and feature LGBTQ+ individuals tend to follow narratives of secrecy and forbiddenness. But this dynamic isn’t exciting to our community because it is often a painful experience to hide and be hidden, especially since it’s not often by our own volition. This gives me reason to categorize LGBTQ+ romance novels that tell stories of forbidden love in the depressing genre (if there was one). As someone who has been involved in queer relationships, I find it especially disappointing when a story like this is written by someone outside of the community because then the narrative doesn’t serve as a release of pain for the author, but instead retells a narrative solidifying a stereotype within our community.

When narratives are not born out of lived experience, there is increased potential for misrepresentation and reinforcement of harmful stereotypes.

It is essential that fiction serves as an example for improved communication. People are only able to do better when they see what “better” looks like. This is why it is important not just to have these stories exist but also to publish them so they can reach wider audiences. When young LGBTQ+ people don’t see themselves in published literary work, many of them turn to fanfiction. Fanfiction is written by creative young people who create what they crave. Sometimes these stories are graphic, sometimes fluffy and sentimental, but overall they aim to

create complex identities and relationships for their queer and gender non-conforming characters. This creative outlet allows them to reflect on their fears, celebrate their wins, and pain their ideal world.

So many of our community’s experiences live on the unpublished interwebs. These stories don’t benefit our resumes, our social status, our parent’s bragging rights, or our conversations at the watercooler. We write them for each other. So that we can see ourselves in places we’ve never seen ourselves in before. So we can travel the world of fiction just like you do. Let me be clear—there is nothing wrong with fanfiction. Sure, most of them could use a good copy editor, but exposure to grammatical errors isn’t going to compromise anyone’s reading ability. We all walked away unaffected by our classmates’ high school English presentations, didn’t we? The real tragedy is financial recognition and the consequence that excluding these experiences from the published literary world has on the narrative about our community. The market value of posting stories online is practically pennies, and it would take some pretty intricate Google searches and data mining to get those stories in front of the eyes of every struggling young person that needed to see it. Publishing LGBTQ+ stories that have the same level of complexity built into their characters and tell similar stories of joy and strength has the potential to positively alter the way our community is perceived publicly and the way we see ourselves.

To ensure communities are well represented, a promising solution is to provide platforms to authors with diverse backgrounds. Additionally, authors, publishers, and other stakeholders in the literary world who write about communities that they are not a part of need to conduct thorough research by speaking with or collaborating with those communities. These situations could also benefit from having their work reviewed by a sensitivity reader. Just like a good copy editor, the sensitivity reader acts as an editor, but instead of searching for clarity and grammatical correctness, they seek out the author’s bias and political correctness. Consumers also play a huge role in what publishers are willing to market and sell, so it’s important to vote with your dollar and pursue fiction that shows complex, positive, and unique depictions of minority communities. Ask yourself if you’ve ever seen a story like this before and how it counteracts the stereotypes within the community. The literary world can learn from a grassroots movement such as fanfiction and work towards creating a more inclusive space that reflects the diversity of human identities and experiences. In doing so, fiction can become a powerful catalyst for understanding, empathy, and positive societal change.

DSPOOKY SEASON THE SALESMAN

by Sophia Laughlin

on’t you see the sign? No soliciting.”

“I’m not a solicitor. I’m a salesman.”

The man started to close his door. It shuddered. Stopped with a sickening thunk . One of the Salesman’s sleek black loafers was wedged between the door and its frame. His pale, matte skin melded into hair leached of all color, and blue veins slithered across his skin, making his sickly, purple-tinged lips even brighter. His eyes—blue the color of glacial ice—pierced the man. The man considered the Salesman’s gaze, and a shudder rolled up his spine.

Inhuman. Unemotional. Uncaring.

This Salesman was everything a salesman should not be.

“Get your foot out of my door,” the man grumbled.

“Don’t you want to know what I’m selling?”

“The sign , man… Read the sign! In case you can’t read, it says ‘No Soliciting!’”

The Salesman glanced at the sign. “Yes. I can read. I read the sign. I’m not a solicitor.”

The man’s eyes rolled skyward. “Jesus Christ. Look, if you don’t get off my property, I’m gonna call the cops.”

“You miss them, don’t you? Your memories?”

The man stiffened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The amnesia.”

“What do you know about that?” The man’s grip on the door turned his knuckles white.

The Salesman glanced into the house’s interior. “Do you want to let me in?”

“No.”

“You need memories. I have some.”

“What?”

“Memories. I sell memories.”

The man blinked through his confusion. “O-Okay, you really just need to—”

“I can sell you memories.”

The man opened his mouth to refuse the offer, but the words caught in his throat. He coughed and shifted on his

Mystery Contest

feet. The Salesman seemed to tower over him, a cold marble pillar. The man’s heart was slow in his chest, as it often was these days, after the accident. Blackness plagued the deep recesses of his mind. It had become a physical thing, a barricade of sorts, keeping him from the delights of the past. He knew only what he saw in pictures. Knew only what he had heard from friends—when there were still friends around.

The man considered the Salesman as he tapped his fingers against the door. The Salesmen, for his part, did not say a word. He spoke without speaking—the almost imperceptible twist of his lips came as a reply to words the man had not yet spoken. The man gulped. Then he opened the door wider.

“Come in, I guess.”

The Salesmen grinned. Ah… a shark. That’s what it was. The Salesman reminded him of a shark.

When the man shut the door behind the Salesman, dense black once more fell over the house. Heavy curtains hung over two-story windows. Narrow slivers of light slipped through the small gaps to illuminate the floating dust as it wandered through the great expanse and settled on every surface throughout the room. Dust carpet on the wooden floors, dust tablecloths on tables, dust screens over picture frames. Though the man’s nose was no longer accustomed to the scent, his house reeked of must and depression. The smell climbed up the massive foyer and circled the glass chandelier.

As the two moved into the kitchen, the man cleared dirty dishes from the counter and tossed them into an already full sink.

It had been like this ever since she had left.

“You have five minutes,” the man said. He didn’t know why he had allowed the Salesman into his house. He’d taken leave of his senses for a moment, but perhaps a deeper, more primal part of his soul called for it.

The Salesmen set his black briefcase down on the recently cleared counter. “You are missing memories. Do

you want memories? Happy ones?”

The man licked his lips. “It’s not possible. Things like that aren’t possible.”

“But they are, if you know how to do it.”

“How do you know how to do it?”

“…Practice.”

The man shook his head. “That isn’t an answer.”

“It is an answer. It is the one I have given you. I can give you memories, if you want. I can sell them to you. Looking around”—the Salesman cast a disinterested gaze at the room—“the only memories you have are covered in dust.”

“Zoe’s gone. Zoe, she, uh…she was my girlfriend. I think. That’s what they tell me. It’s what I see in the photos.”

“And even those have collected dust.”

The man ground his teeth together. He ought to just kick the Salesman out, but instead he found himself asking, “How much are they?”

“What price would you put on a memory?”

“It depends on what the memory is about.”

The man should have hesitated more, should have stopped and considered what buying these memories, if they were even such a thing, meant. But his heart ached and his head hurt and he wanted something—anything to replace the emptiness inside him.

“Okay,” the man finally said. “I’ll buy them.”

The Salesman smiled. “Wonderful.”

“Only because I miss having something there, okay? Not for any other reason.”

The Salesman’s upturned lips twitched. “Of course not.”

The man watched the Salesman search through his briefcase for a small bag of pills and then slide them across the counter. “Here you are. And as for payment…”

For a second, the man could not tear his gaze from the pills. They curled him into an enchanted embrace, whispering words of temptation. The Salesman cleared his throat, and the man snapped out of his thoughts.

“Oh. Yeah,” the man said. He walked to a cluttered countertop and snatched up his wallet. “You take card?”

“In this day and age?” The Salesman turned slowly. His lips slithered into a grin. “Of course.”

The two completed their transaction with little words. When the exchange was complete, the Salesman slinked away, leaving the dark house like a ghost cast from a haunted home. The man locked the front door and returned to the kitchen. He stopped in the doorway, looked at the pills—the memories—and took a deep breath. He was a fool for doing this. For what he had just paid. This couldn’t be real.

But he needed to have something. He needed to not feel so empty.

The man reached the counter in two steps. He held the pills in the palm of his hand and stared at them for a lengthy time. He counted his breaths, measured his heartbeat. A

long internal monologue rambled on his head. Oh, how he was a fool. Oh, how he was desperate. Pathetic. Weak.

Oh, but how he wanted them.

So he knocked the pills back with a glass of water.

And he remembered everything. He remembered looking at the clouds, and he remembered studying the deep mahogany of her eyes, admiring the way her lips moved as she muttered what shapes the clouds made above her, smiling at the small dimple pressing into her cheek. He remembered morning hikes and watching the sunrise with her head on his shoulder. He remembered their debates at dinner, the walks in the park, the time he first laid eyes on her and the way her nose crinkled when she smiled. He remembered the seven years they had spent together, and he remembered the promises they had made to spend years more.

Zoe.

He remembered Zoe.

He remembered how she died. The boat he’d insisted they take, the frigid water they’d tumbled into, the waves battering her again and again. Her hands had clawed at the sky as the boat teetered in the distance. The current swept them toward the rocky shore.

The ocean stole his memories. It stole her life.

The man released a broken sob. He curled in on himself, letting the memories wash over him, pummel him, and he cried salty tears as he again choked on salty ocean water. He did not hear the click of the lock, nor the creak of the heavy front door as it swung inward. Black loafers tapped on the floor as the Salesman neared. He dropped into a crouch.

“Does it hurt?” the Salesman asked.

“Yes,” the man cried.

“Do you want me to make it stop hurting?”

“I want to see her again.”

“Even if it hurts?”

“I need to see her again.”

“You will.”

The Salesman dabbed a sponge on the man’s cheeks, collecting his tears. With the tears, he once again took the memories. The man’s pain fell away, and numbness seeped into him, quelling the agony of loss. He laid limp and tired on the floor, staring straight ahead, wondering what had happened—wondering why he felt so hollow.

The Salesman smiled.

Ah, the things people paid for. The things people always said yes to, year after year. Month after month. Day after day. 1,023 days of selling the same memories—soon to be 1,024.

The Salesman patted the man’s cheek. “Don’t worry. You’ll see her again tomorrow.”

2nd

TRAIL ANGELS

by Brigs Larson

They have been walking since the world grew grass and the sky changed from black to blue. At least, it feels that way. Croc only started last year, when he left Florida with a crocodile and a backpack. That crocodile’s dead now—couldn’t take the cold—but Croc’s still walking. Took his pet’s name to honor it. Then you have folks like Jockey, who’ve been riding the trails for years and years and years. There are hikers on their deathbeds who remember Jockey. Real cool guy, they’d say, gotus weedeven intheMainewilderness,when we were at our lowest.Almostdiedthattime,fromthecold. He likes it when the old ones remember him. Makes him feel important.

I came upon them by accident, really. Took me five years and five attempts at the Appalachian Trail, and I found myself wandering. They tell you stories before you head out into the trees, about missing people found just yards off the trail, decomposing because they wanted to find some water. Don’t walk off, kid, the ranger said every time I passed through his station in the Rockies. For five years I hadn’t.

This time, I walked off.

I can’t remember why. Looking back on life is weird like that—I can remember the color of Jockey’s hat when I found him shitting in the woods, but I don’t remember the reason I walked off the trail in the first place. Could’ve been water. Could’ve been curiosity. Could’ve been that the gods of the trail were pulling my strings towards them, tugging on the straps of my bag and the cords of my rain shell.

But I found Jockey, oldest of them all with the everlasting face of a 20-year-old, squatting behind a tree. Inelegant, for an immortal. I swear to him I didn’t see anything, but that’s a lie. Hell, I averted my eyes and did my little stumbling number, but it only brought me into a clearing crowded with hiking gear and people and the smell of oatmeal burning. Jockey followed me, zipping up his pants and wiping his hands on his sides.

“Who the hell d’you think you are?” He asked, as if he didn’t already know.

“Jack Hepburn?” I said it like a question more than anything.

“This is our camp.” He was wearing what he’s always worn—shorts and a sweater hidden under a yellow hardshell.

“You’ve disturbed our camp.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“Are you fine with dying, Jack?”

Nobody expects that question. I don’t think anyone expects death either, not until it’s riding them into the ground. Jockey squinted at me, and I could see the sickle in his eyes.

“I guess I am now.”

“What’s your name then, kid?”

It wasn’t Jack anymore, that much was sure. The trail angels were in perfect repose around me, lounging in sleeping bags tinged with growing moss, fiddling with the faded ribbons in the trees, folding their clothes and refolding them. All of them staring at me, like I’d intruded on some sacred ritual that required a messy campsite and dirtbag judgment.

“Dunno. Guess I’ll find one.”

“I don’t like doing this, kid,” Jockey said. “Never have, never will.”

“I get it,” I said, and went to set up my sleeping bag. He’s said nobody’s accepted it as easy as me, in all his years. I don’t believe him, but I nod my head and chew my cheek when he brings it up. As it all goes on I forget more—the face of my sister, my middle name, the name of the town I grew up in. I know it was in New England, for now, so when Jockey has me walk the White Mountains I give myself a few seconds to stare out at the blue landscape and hope it comes back to me. It never does. Those mountains keep me busy enough, anyway. I’d call it recruitment if they had any choice in the matter.

Hops, they call me, for my tendency to bring hikers six-packs of Sam Adams before I tell them they’re dead. Makes it all go down smoother. Then I bring them back to the campsite, let them set up their sleeping bags for forever, introduce them to Jockey. They cry. They accept it. They learn how to walk the trails, then Jockey sends them off somewhere else to walk among the living. And there we’ll remain, new angels always coming in, the clearing always getting bigger. We will never die. We will never live, either, until the world ends. And then we’ll walk into the sun and let it swallow us.

THRILLER

EMERGENCY CONTACT

by Sky Allen

Ilike it best when it rains. There’s a sort of kinship I feel when I look out the window at the slate sky and find the sidewalks to be empty. I can breathe better feeling like we’re all on the same playing field again.

On the other hand, when I can tell that it’s a beautiful day outside from the sun warming the carpet beneath my window or the cacophonous music of birds twittering in the trees above, I feel an insurmountable sense of loss. I have no porch, and in my mind, there are no doors.

When I receive a phone call this morning from my landlord, I answer the phone without apprehension. I pay my rent months in advance and keep the space spotless. The soft blue couch is worn but clean, no dirt ever escapes the pots holding my many plants, dishes never pile in the sink. Cleaning after just one person is stupidly easy. I often wish it took me longer.

It’s odd hearing the sound of my own voice when I speak into the receiver; it sounds like it belongs to a stranger.

He informs me there is likely a gas leak in the building. One of the other tenants reported a sulfuric smell, and he recommends everyone evacuate the building until the gas company arrives. “It could be nothing, but you can’t stay there until someone comes to inspect it. That could be hours from now, though.”

I glance at the clock. It’s 10:34 a.m.

I control my slow collapse on the floor of my kitchen, dizzy with panic. My lung capacity shrinks in half. I lay myself down and press my cheek to the cold hardwood, taking measured breaths. I hone in on the sensation of my warm breath exiting my panting mouth, coating my nose in wet condensation.

This is the exact feeling I’ve spent my whole life trying to avoid. It’s the kind that only comes from the interference of

other people.

It has been three and a half years since I have spoken to another person face-to-face. For over a year, the whole world was sick or scared of getting sick, and we learned that nearly everything we needed to go outside for could be accomplished within our own homes. My career can be forged from my couch with a laptop and a reliable wi-fi router. Groceries and packages can be delivered with an app. Even after people realized this, as soon as they could, they went back to their offices, to the packed grocery stores full of fluorescent lighting and jam-packed aisles, to bustling city streets and whatever places they take them to.

I, however, did not.

There is so much pain in co-existing. I lived with a boyfriend, once. This was way back when things like romance seemed not only pleasurable, but necessary. He told me he didn’t want to be completely alone, which I didn’t understand even then. I loved him though, so I allowed him in. It was because I loved him that speaking with him was so infuriating. The more you have to talk to someone, the more they become a part of your life, and you theirs. Your conversations are supposed to become more meaningful and intimate over time, and when they don’t, a chasm opens. Constantly bowdlerizing every significant detail of what you say so as not to slip up, or feeling offended by some offhand comment they say to you—all of it makes you want to give up speaking to anyone altogether.

I suffered this way so often. I felt that if I could only not speak to anyone ever again, and have no one ever speak to me, I could finally be content. I could finally feel at peace. Conversations are transactional creatures, and I seem to have so much less currency for it than everybody else.

Content Warning mental illness, suicidal thoughts

He moved out, of course. I’m still here. If I picture myself not here, dread bleeds into my gut like from a slashed artery.

After however long it takes to stop the interminable squeezing of my heart in my chest, I manage to grip the edge of the counter and pull myself up to a seated position. I wheeze against the wooden cabinets, weighing my options. My landlord’s words run in a loop through my head. I grasp onto the only ones that give me any sense of relief: “could be nothing.”

From my place on the floor, I peer out of my kitchen window, fingers gripping the sill. There’s a fire truck on the street outside. It’s been an hour, and there are people— presumably my neighbors—milling about on the sidewalk, talking to firefighters in black T-shirts and overalls strapped over their broad chests. None of them seem particularly concerned. They’re not even wearing bunker gear, those bulky suits you see them wearing in movies when they’re climbing ladders and rescuing kittens from treetops.

The longer I sit here on the floor, the more resolute I become in my decision. I have some time; I don’t need to leave here, not just yet.

I stand, buoyed by a renewed sense of purpose, and begin opening the windows. The bright scent of rain on pavement fills the space, making everything crisp and new. My insides still feel scooped out by a watermelon baller, but a sense of order steadies me some.

Things are still within my locus of control. Everything in this apartment is, if nowhere else in this world could be.

I comfort myself with the stupidity of other people. Just because someone thought they smelled gas doesn’t mean there’s an actual leak anywhere in the building. Even if they did, it could be confined to just their apartment. I’m on the fifth floor of five floors; surely gas doesn’t rise, does it?

I intentionally do not seek out the answer.

I choose to skip breakfast—turning on the stovetop seems like taunting fate. Today is a Sunday, my favorite day of the week. My groceries arrive bimonthly on Sunday

afternoons at 3 p.m., and I revel putting away the items I buy each week in their designated places: cage-free eggs in reusable plastic egg trays, orange juice in a glass tumbler, honeycrisp apples in their designated fruit drawer. Each time, I throw in a little treat for myself; today I ordered chocolate-covered pretzels.

There’s not much that makes being young and sad bearable. If that thing is chocolate-covered pretzels on this particular Sunday, then so be it.

That feeling, heavy and unmistakable, still lingers in my stomach. I know sitting still will only make it worse. I wipe down my unusable stovetop; stick my full torso in the oven and scrub it of its blackened debris; polish the two sinks; spray down the windows with glass cleaner; dust every surface; vacuum my couch cushions and rugs; and mop all the hardwood floors.

I can admit this aspect of my lifestyle: it’s banal. I think humans only ever interact with one another to escape the tedium of everyday living. I can overcome the empty hours if it means doing no harm and having no harm done to me.

Pain is other people, after all.

Where I live is quite lovely. I can’t really speak for the neighborhood, considering I haven’t explored anywhere my eyes can’t reach beyond the dormer windows, but after hibernating for thousands of days, I’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere better suited to me.

My studio is fairly spacious, especially for just one person, but it feels much smaller from the sheer amount of stuff I’ve packed in here. Frames of different shapes and sizes containing watercolor Impressionist paintings, Basquiat portraits, and glossy posters of places I’ll never go splatter the walls like a physical manifestation of my imagination. Brobdingnagian piles of precariously stacked volumes of Camus, Dostoyevsky, and Dickinson act as side tables to bear thrift store knickknacks and Bialetti Moka pots. The softest, ugliest maroon shag rug you’ve ever seen in your life covers the cold hardwood floors in my living room, and wine bottles sticky with wax act as candlestick holders to light the room at night. Dead flowers

shrivel into preservation in dusty, bone-dry vases.

All I’ve ever wanted was a space to call my own, a place to subsist and experiment without ramifications. One time, I smoked a joint I found tucked away in my rarely-used underwear drawer and painted my bathroom a vibrant magenta with paint leftover from the previous tenants. When I woke up the next morning to pee, I just stood in the doorway and shrieked with laughter until I lay on the floor, coughing and choking on my own whimsy. I didn’t have anyone to apologize to for it, no one to fear any consequences from.

I am the only person who pees in my purple bathroom, and I like it that way.

You know, I was always kind of this way. I am acutely aware that the way I live my life is not especially healthy, or even sustainable. When I was a kid, I used to create tiny forts for myself in the closet and pretend that it was my own house. I’d bring in pillows, blankets, a box of saltine crackers and a flashlight to read books by. That closet became my home, and mine alone. The yelling coming from downstairs was not my responsibility, because I didn’t live wherever those voices did.

I’m not typically one to blame my adult deficiencies on a problematic childhood. I’m just telling it how it is, really.

The outside embodies a gas leak. I can always blame the exterior world for the problems in my interior world. It’s one of those days when I feel like I’m living in a wet mothball. The window is streaked gray with rainwater. I swear, in the city it comes out of the sky already dirty. The water runs in thin rivulets like streaked mascara down a woman’s cheeks. The sky is, unsettlingly, one color: not quite white, not quite gray. Some ambiguous love child of the two, I suppose. I wish it would have the decency to be one or the other.

This particular corner of my apartment is my favorite. It’s like a little homage to the closet I used to tuck myself away in. Funny, how I still need a space to hide in the space I already hide in. I constructed a makeshift window seat with an obscene stack of floor pillows near the bay

window in my living room, obscuring the little nook with a privacy screen. Tiny espresso cups and gargantuan tea mugs rest atop haphazard stacks of books. Small votive candles and a garland of fairy lights surrounding the window light the space. It’s a fire hazard, but then again, I seem to not have a particular motivation towards avoiding risks coming from inside my home.

I sit in this corner now, forehead pressed to the cold window, watching my breath fog against the glass. The fire truck is still outside, and is joined by a nondescript white van. I can’t decide if this is a good or bad sign, but the sheer number of people I see crowded outside on the pavement makes me duck my head back down out of sight.

My head throbs with indecision. I haven’t had any reason to step foot outside my apartment building in three straight years. This fact, coupled with the glaring realization that it’s beyond simply not wanting to leave, makes me sick. I always assumed that, if the need arose, I could leave; I simply just hadn’t desired to for a long, long time. I was unorthodox, unique. Not ill.

I don’t have any safety net outside of these 534 square feet. There is no one to call, and there is nowhere to go.

If I were a better, more balanced person, I would have someone to call. It’s because I am the way that I am that I’ve put myself out of the way of it all.

Each time I attempt to concentrate on finding a solution, my brain hiccups. I can’t seem to follow the thread of any one thought for more than a few moments today. This is odd for me; usually, I have nothing else to do but dissect my own musings. The unceasing roiling in my stomach consumes all my attention.

Almost as if on cue, I rush to the restroom and heave up last night’s dinner. The spasms are painful and violent from the lack of breakfast, twisting and draining my insides like a wet, dirty rag.

As a teenager, I experienced violent outbursts of nausea. I once projectile vomited all over a freshman boy in a tsunami of anxiety on the school bus. He was wearing a suit and tie, for some reason. If fate is going to make you puke on public transportation, best believe it will be all over the

one smartly dressed fourteen-year-old boy in the vicinity.

I chalk this current episode up to unease. I really need to stop answering the phone.

I go back over to an open window and breathe in the pure air, soaking it into my congested lungs with fervor. It takes a couple minutes to rid my mouth of its acrid taste.

It’s cold outside, the ether frosted wet with mid-afternoon mizzle. It’s one of those rare days I crave the outdoors, to allow myself to walk along the sidewalk to a coffee shop. I know that if I did regularly go outside, this would be the type of day to aggravate me.

I waitressed at a five-star restaurant when I first moved to the city. Whenever I felt overwhelmed, I sat in the walk-in cooler on a keg of beer until my lips turned a bruised blue. Everything in that restaurant was too loud, so filthy, composed and civil in the dining room but rancid and raucous in the kitchen.

Sticking my head out the window, I am reminded of sitting on a cold keg and freezing my nerves numb. Unexpected grief strikes me dumb.

I withdraw back into the hothouse of my living room. Something nags me, something I am forgetting to do or resolve. I crave chocolate all of a sudden, and lament having none.

I am exhausted. My apartment is clean, I am brutally nauseous, and I desperately wish for someone to hold me. I wonder if that instinct ever truly goes away.

I rest my body on the couch, curling my knees into my oversized T-shirt and tucking them against my chest. My mind evokes recurring images of saltine crackers, yellow school buses, and frigid stainless steel casks.

When the carbon monoxide detector finally starts chirping its shrill alarm, four consecutive breedles squalling in my ears, I am too weighed down to stand. It’s too late to decide whether I ever wanted to, or if this was always going to be an inevitable choice.

You know, I bet if the boyfriend still lived here, we would’ve left the building right away. Maybe we would’ve gone to the motel a couple miles down the road and stayed in bed, watching cable television and eating greasy fast food. Maybe we would have made a day of it, walked around in the sunshine at the park, breathing fresh air and feeling light on my face that hasn’t been filtered through annealed glass.

Or maybe it really would’ve ended up being nothing, after all.

For the second time today, my cheek is pressed flush to

the ground. The left leg of my sweatpants is rolled up past my knee. My shin is cold and wet. The quality of the air in my nostrils is jarring, crisp and earthy. I force my eyelids to quiver open enough to survey my surroundings.

My body knows before my mind does: I am outside.

“Are you gonna puke again?” My muscles automatically seize, hyperarousal making my limbs painfully inert.

I am lying on my side on a grassy patch next to a street. Even in my stupor, I recognize it as the one outside my apartment building. A woman sits on the curb beside me. Her short legs are spread wide, the bare ankles that poke out of blue house slippers kissing the black asphalt of the street. A cigarette with about an inch of ash dangling precariously off the end rests nonchalantly between her index and middle fingers. “It’s okay if you do, but I have to make you do it in the street this time. These are my favorite nighties.” She’s wearing blue plaid pajama pants. A dark, damp splotch of fabric sticks to her right thigh.

The woman brings the stubby cigarette up to her mouth, inhaling deeply before releasing a cloud of smoke out into the coarse black night. The smell mingles with the dusky air, plastered to my sticky skin like wet silk. “It’s okay, darlin’. The ambulance should be here in a few minutes.” She makes a scoffing sound, running a hand through thin, straight blonde hair. It hangs around her face and down to her shoulder blades, straight as straw. Some subconscious part of my mind finds her quite beautiful. “I would never call an ambulance if I could help it, but you really gave me a scare. The firefighters went away an hour ago, and didn’t really seem to mind that we were missing one during the building headcount. Typical.” She rolled her eyes dramatically. “I went upstairs to check for myself if anyone still lived on the fourth floor. I found you on your couch, curled up like a sick roly-poly, and I dragged you down the stairs. You woke up a bit about two flights down, just enough to empty your stomach on my leg. By the way,” she went on, “did you know your door was unlocked?”

I did not.

“This is Philadelphia. Take better care.” Her voice isn’t unkind. She looks like she’s about to say something else when blue and red lights pierce my peripheral vision, sending a fresh wave of dizzy nausea roiling through my gut.

The woman stubs out her cigarette and leans down to my ear. Her whisper is thick and foggy. “When they get here, I’m gonna tell ‘em you didn’t consent to an ambulance, but the firefighters told me to call anyway. Insurance won’t fuck you as hard that way.” I find it quite indulgent that she assumes I have insurance to begin with. I nod

anyway, the damp grass tickling my cheek.

Two EMTs hop out of the back of the ambulance and suddenly, there’s hands on me. I’m so stunned that I don’t move when they hold their warm, soft fingers to my wrist to check my pulse, or when the biggest of the two lifts me up tenderly and places me on a stretcher. It’s the most physical touch I’ve experienced in… My chest aches at the thought.

Inside the ambulance, stark white light brings the interior into harsh focus: bright orange restraint belts dangling from the walls, a radio spurting crackled voices in the passenger bay, neat stacks of sanitizers and splints and gloves within easy reach. I want to cry out, insist that I am fine and really just need to lay down in my own bed, but my voice catches in my throat. I can’t tell if I am too overwhelmed to speak, or if my last semblance of a survival instinct is finally kicking in.

I hear her speaking to the paramedics outside. Their soft murmurs, mingled with the intermittent beeping of pulse oximeters and blood pressure monitors, is oddly comforting, like listening to the hum of a television just before falling asleep. I only catch a few words, like “consent” and “unconscious” and “hose fairies.”

Suddenly, I wonder what time it is. I try once again to open my mouth and ask, but only choked burbles escape my lips. The three figures materialize at the entrance to the ambulance. “We’re about to take you overnight for observation,” an EMT tells me. He’s short and stocky, with arms covered completely in tattoos. His voice is hushed, like he’s trying to tell me a secret. “Before we go, do you have an emergency contact we can call to meet you there?”

I wonder, even before going all Emily Dickinson on the world, if I ever had one. I actually try to think of an answer, as futile an exercise as I already know it to be. Before the boyfriend, I had a family, in the sense that two people gave birth to me and tried to teach me how to be a human being with their own limited knowledge on the subject.

I imagine giving the paramedics my mother’s phone number, in the impossible scenario that I could recall it. I imagine her picking up the phone in her three-level suburban home in Salt Lake City, with her new realtor husband and middle school–age twin boys who play soccer in the summer and hockey in the winter. Depending on the time, she could be making dinner for her family. When I was a child, the three of us—my mom, dad, and I—ate together occasionally too. They were fraught,

tense occasions, cacophonous with silence and the clank of silverware against plates. No talking meant no fighting. Whoever was the first to speak always lost; it was always perceived as more of a battle cry than an attempt at civil, friendly conversation at that table.

If my father were still alive, he would be too intoxicated by this time of night (it’s dark outside—he’d certainly already be drunk) to drive to the hospital. He wouldn’t bother to find a ride, either. I can envision him picking up the phone, snorting malevolently at my being admitted to the hospital, then hanging up to continue whatever episode of Dateline he was watching. The man loved Dateline more than anything in his life, which ended a full week before anyone noticed his absence. He was found laying down on the couch in the fetal position, the light of the television screen playing across his still face.

And, for the first time, sorrow and shame washes over me at the thought of the boyfriend. He might’ve come. I would have wanted to cry with grief and guilt that he’d have to go all the way to the hospital for me, and this alone would have hurt more than any symptom of gas poisoning I may be suffering. I know, with almost painful certainty, that he would’ve been there, though.

He was kind like that. I hated that about him.

By the look on the EMT’s face, I have already taken far too long to respond.

“Here, take my name down.” The woman’s voice startles me out of my stupor. She stomps out another cigarette on the ground—I never saw her light it and wonder if she did it in front of the paramedics—and takes the pen they hand to her, writing her phone number down. “I’ll be right behind you. Just gotta change pants first.” She peers around the paramedics’ shoulders and winks at me.

The doors clang shut, and I feel the engine sputter to life beneath us. My head lolls back on the stretcher, spent.

As the vehicle starts to move, I glance over at the sheet on the clipboard in the paramedic’s hand.

Gloria Russell. I’ve seen this name, plastered in black marker on an index card taped to the mailbox outside, ever since I moved in. Relief that Gloria will be at the hospital when I arrive gives me the courage to close my eyes and slow my breathing.

For the first time in my life, I have an emergency contact.

MR. AND MRS. POPOVICH

by Natalia Vodilkova

It was Mr. and Mrs. Popovich’s 20th anniversary today, and both of them forgot. Boris Popovich went about his day routinely; Wake up in his damp bed around 5am. Take a piss. Without washing his hands, put on the same khakis and collared shirt as every workday. Check himself out in the mirror. Notbadfor55.Head for the door—pay no attention to Mrs. Popovich on the way out, who is draped across the aged leather couch.

She’s wearing her pink nightgown today; he can tell by the straps. She wore nothing underneath. Satin, light pink, ending just below her hips with a scalloped lace trim. She was so attractive once. Now, lying there cocooned in blankets, she looked old and tired to him. He considered whether it was a mistake to marry her. It doesn’t matter. This marriage had been a clean slate for him—a new name, new wife, new life. His routine was designed to keep him out of trouble. Little white lies were harmless, legal.

Next he gets in his ugly yellow cab. It was reminiscent of a misshapen bee, with its offensive yellow hue and sputtering engine. His permanent passenger was a faded old duffel bag.

It was mostly empty, save for a stack of documents, a stuffed envelope, a bag of stale salted peanuts, and Marlboro reds. The envelope, labeled retirement, contained Boris’s life’s savings and sole motivation: a wrinkled brochure from ThousandBeachesSeniorLiving.

All Boris really wanted was enough money to spend his golden years like the infomercial had described: in sunny Palm Springs, Florida, atop endless neon green golf pitches ogling at blondes tanned orange. He didn’t care whether or not Mrs. Popovich joined. He hadn’t even told her. Florida was a humble dream that he kept to himself. Every Friday he counted his money and added another $500. College loans, hon, he’d told Mrs. Popovich years ago. He gazed at the brochure, the envelope, and the wad of cash inside. Only a few more years, he thought, over the grating honks of evening traffic.

When Boris got home, Mrs. Popovich’s book club friend had parked in the single space driveway. Wanting some company too, he called up his old coworker from the Quikmart, looking to ask if she would hook up again. After a few rings, it was sent to voicemail. Boris tossed his Blackberry lamely across the couch. He couldn’t even remember the last time Mrs. Popovich had fucked him. He was starting to think women didn’t enjoy sex or something. He dozed off in front of the TV with a cigarette in hand and a big snore.

Mrs. Yuliana Popovich, “Yuli” to friends, hadn’t slept with Boris in the last decade. That’s how she preferred it. Boris repulsed her. Regret was a shared sentiment in their

marriage, but she regretted it more.

At home that morning, Yuli waited for Boris to leave. She was off from her job at the library on Thursdays and Fridays, meaning she could see her favorite person in the world. Hearing the door slam, she jumped up from the couch, tossing the blankets and revealing her favorite lingerie nightgown. Sometimes Boris caught a glance through the bay window. But she hadn’t worn that for him in a decade. Yuli lit her breakfast cigarette and called Cynthia. They had both signed up for the local book club, every Friday at 7pm. It was there they’d met about five years ago.

They were just friends at first, sharing drinks and complaints.

What are marriages, hell—husbands, if not disappointments, right? Yuli had forgotten what attraction felt like. Yuli was nervous, ashamed at first; just being near Cynthia made her as giddy and blush-faced as a teenager. For two years, their relations were strictly friendly. For another two, limited to a parked car outside the church where they hosted book club. Talking, listening to music, fogging up the windows, and sneaking off home. They agreed though fun, their rendezvous was juvenile. They had to say something to their husbands.

“My friend is sleeping over, dear, don’t be worried if the bedisfull!Girlsnight!”

Another two years went by and they confirmed: this excuse worked well on simple men.

When Cynthia was coming over, Yuli made the place beautiful with vanilla candles and jasmine perfume. Today was no different; they traipsed around half-naked in satin, sipped wine from the bottle and ate spaghetti from the pot. After some dancing in the kitchen, they went up to bed for the grand finale. The bright beams of the taxi headlights announced Boris’s arrival home. Yuli was pleased that he was otherwise invisible.

Finding each other was the most fun the ladies had in years. Earlier that night, Yuli laughed through the smoke in her lungs.

“What if we quit our jobs?” she jested.

“What, and run away?” Cynthia teased.

“I could live with that.” Yuli looked at her earnestly.

Yuli always joked about leaving Boris. They immigrated by chance to the same city. She’d married him because he was a fantastic liar. He pretended to be interesting, intelligent, and kind. Most importantly, he pretended to be rich. Yuli was good at pretending too.

She had laughed at his jokes when they weren’t funny and seduced him (dispassionately). She’d felt bad. But Boris lied about being a lawyer—he hadn’t even graduated college. There was no beach house in Cabo that

belonged to his family. He didn’t even speak to his family anymore. That’s the first time she wanted to leave him. It’d been hard for Yuli to justify starting over at 52, but tonight had sealed the deal.

Boris snored loudly in bed by the time Cynthia had gotten home on the night of their anniversary. She had expected as much, they had planned to go to Cynthia’s. But she was out of cigarettes, and that would simply not do. She was sure Borris had extra somewhere. She tiptoed out to his cab. Peering in the window, she saw a promising box poking out of his duffel bag.

She opened the door, grabbed the cigarettes, and lit one. As her eyes got adjusted to the dark, Yuli scanned the few contents of the bag: A brochure to a trashy retirement home. A very thick stack of cash. Some salted peanuts. Most notably, a spread of legal documents: two drivers

licenses and three passports, all complete with Boris’s picture. All different names.

She searched for their records on her clunky desktop: Hubert Norton, suspect in identity theft case. Martin Zebrowski, warrant for arrest. Boris Popovich. Big Apple Cab Service. No prior records. She took a deep breath before taking the bag inside.

The morning after he forgot his anniversary, Boris woke up to the sound of a familiar hum. He rolled on the couch— was time for work already? He wiped the drool from his mouth and looked out the window. Squinting his eyes against the morning sun, he watched that foul yellow cab speed off into the distance. In place of the car keys on the coffee table was his envelope. With an addendum.

Happy Retirement.

Catfish by Logan Ward

1st

FAITHLESS

by Marleigh Green

The bone-deep chill of the night air brushed across Abraham’s skin, triggering a shudder that his tattered clothes were unequipped to contain. He wrapped his arms around himself, cradling his knobby elbows, his hollow eyes called to the shadows that hovered in the crevices of the artfully worn brick buildings that loomed around him, tracking for any movement. The comfort he’d always associated with walking the streets of Poitou-Charentes eluded him, the scent of the coastal night air a bitter taste in the back of his parched throat. Abraham barely noticed the feeling of his bare heels scraping against the cobblestones beneath him as he shuffled down the sidewalk, his shoes long gone.

His only company was his ragged breaths, the beigetoned street empty of cars and other people, at least for now. The animalistic instinct that sensed he was being watched poised on the back of his neck like a scorpion, ready to strike. Abraham kept walking, shooting a furtive glance over his raised shoulder, but not daring to let his eyes linger on the deepening shadows. His head snapped forward again when he thought he spotted steely, clawlike fingers creeping around the edge of an alleyway at his back, casting shadows of their own.

A low, manic hum left his throat. His frayed vocal cords butchered the beautiful tune of Deux Arabesques, but he doubted Debussy would mind.

A figure shifted in the shadows ahead, drawing his gaze and sending his heart shooting into his throat. The fear gave way to hope as he took in the sight of her habit and the golden crucifix swinging from her neck as she strode towards him, alone. He lunged at her, and she instinctively threw her hands up in defense, her wide eyes bulging with terror as he seized her by her narrow shoulders, towering over her. His once-sunkissed, now chalky hands gripped the black fabric and warm flesh with every ounce of desperation that shined on his gaunt face.

“Pardon, mademoiselle,” he begged her, “it haunts me. It wants me dead. You must help me!”

She screamed shrilly, the sound sharp in his tortured ears, and twisted her body, wrenching herself from his grip. His hands slipped from her shoulders, and the force knocked him onto the ground, ripping the breath from his lungs. Searing pain shot through his back and right elbow as he landed, and he hissed in pain, rolling onto his side and screaming breathlessly after her retreating back, “Mademoiselle!”

Without a backward glance, the nun disappeared into the night.

Abraham panted breathlessly and sat up, shutting his eyes, the brief hope sinking like a stone in a pond. He should have known. Every single word that left his mouth sounded like the ravings of a madman, and she probably mistook him for a vagrant, as he certainly looked like one.

His once-tailored clothing was tattered and loose on his bony body, unwashed hair hanging lank down his face. His stomach grumbled with hunger, and his tongue hung dryly inside of his mouth, heavier than a brick. He knew better by now than to try and eat or quench his thirst. It wouldn’t let him.

Five days had passed since he fled the dig site where the thing found him, but fleeing had proved pointless soon enough. His life ended the second he entered Mt. Hermon. Nobody else had seen or felt the thing looming over them the way he had; they thought he was mad for believing some creature lingered in the darkness, awakened by their foolish foray.

It followed him from the black depths of that wretched Syrian mountain all the way back to his home. When he tried to eat, it choked him. When he tried to sleep, he could feel it standing over him, breathing so softly that it was barely above a whisper.

Weakly, he lumbered to his feet and kept walking. His

tired eyes widened when he finally saw his destination ahead: the blanched bricks of the Church of St. Hilaire. He hastened forward, ignoring the worn down soles of his feet, and mounted the steps, shoving the heavy doors open with his weary body. He stumbled into the foyer and found the church’s neat, wooden pews empty.

The silence of the white interior of St. Hilaire was so absolute it was almost a living thing itself. Bloody tracks appeared in his wake as he shuffled across the pristine floor, the air just as cold within as it had been outside, but mercifully absent of the chilling coastal breeze.

He padded to the altar and picked up a match, striking it.

The match burned his fingers as Abraham lit the candle, the dim, orange glow of the other burning wicks illuminating his weary face. He waved it around until the flame went out and set it atop the altar with the others, the smoke still rising from the charred end.

Abraham knelt in reverence to the pale statue of the Virgin Mary. His dead satellite phone hung heavily in his pocket, useless without a power source or a signal. Every time he’d tried to call for help, in the same way he’d tried to beg that nun, his words made no sense.

He wasn’t crazy. Of that he was certain. What was happening to him was real.

His knees dug into the marble floor beneath him, knobby and weak. They could no longer carry the weight he was burdened with, his body betraying him more swiftly than if he was in his eighties instead of his thirties. Pain shot through his overburdened legs and he grimaced, wiping away the tears that had begun to roll down his cheeks.

“Please,” he moaned, looking up at the statue.

The stained glass windows cast vague, colored shapes onto the floor around him, his lone figure blocked by the marble Mary’s sphere of influence. He didn’t expect her to answer his prayer as she gazed blindly forward, omnipotent and indifferent. He supposed he didn’t deserve her mercy after all he had done in this life.

Like any self-respecting archeologist, he had ignored his critics and the bleating of the uneducated locals when the excavation was announced. The Syrian people believed a fire-breathing daemon named Hemah lived inside of Mt. Hermon, but Abraham wasn’t about to be deterred by myths and fairytales. What was happening to him now was the kind of shit that only ever happened in movies.

A shiver crept up his spine, and fresh beads of sweat grew on his forehead, rolling down his cheeks. The candles flickered, as if caught in a breeze, and he shut his eyes, willing himself not to see the shadow.

Though he was a man of little faith, he had become a believer in evil.

Here he had hoped that the church would somehow shield him from it, but that was just another fairytale. Or, perhaps, he just didn’t deserve God’s protection.

“Abraham.” Its cold exhale made goosepimples rise on his skin.

He forced his eyes shut and shook his head, covering his ears.

“Youknowwhatyouhavetodo.”

Sobs wracked his weary body, the tears leaving clean tracks on his filthy face, dripping onto the marble floor beneath him.

“I just want it to stop,” he whispered.

The shadow responded, “I can make it stop. I can make itallgoaway.”

“I don’t want to die.”

“Lettinggo will mean your freedom, Abraham. You know this.”

He wiped his running nose with the back of his hand. Yes, of course it would mean his freedom. He would no longer be burdened by the shadow’s presence, smirking at him and waiting in the dark for him to drop his guard, constantly watching. If this went on much longer, he was going to die anyway.

The shadow was a breathing, sentient thing that, for reasons unknown to Abraham, wanted him dead and needed him to do it himself.

It placed a clawed hand on his shoulder, and he shuddered and moaned. It reeked of soil and dust and death, and its touch was unnaturally cold, like everything else about it.

“Just tell me what you want,” he said. “I’ll do anything.”

It slid its fingers down to his hands, cupping them with its icy, damp, rotting appendages like a lover embracing him from behind. He let out an unnaturally high-pitched wail that echoed through the hallowed building, the high wooden beams sending his voice back to him.

Using his own arm, it pointed at a mirror. Abraham rose and approached it, looking at his bedraggled body and broken expression. The thing that stood behind him had no reflection.

Abraham brought his fist against the mirror quickly, shattering it. Glass pricked his knuckles as broken bits rained onto the floor, slicing his bare feet. He hissed in pain as he picked up one of the shards, kneeling on the ground. He brought the sharp edge against the vein in his left wrist and pressed it into his skin, blood bubbling out and running over his palm.

“Good,” the shadow whispered.

2nd

THIRD AND FINALLY

by Rowan Wasserman

It’s a state highway, 50 miles per hour and barely carrying three cars at a time. Tree-lined with evergreens so tall they block the sun. A line of stars follows the path of your car when you’re driving down it, marking the trail of exhaust you leave behind.

You weren’t there that night, thank god.

If you’d driven down the road that night, the sight would have shocked you. Really, it would shock anyone. Yes, shocking was easily the main word for this experience.

If you were driving down the road that night you would have seen several things.

#1: The gate of the big house hanging open

#2: A dark red trail, barely visible on the dark concrete road

#3: A dark and shaking shape shambling down the road, right on the yellow line

Maybe you’re new to the area and you don’t know about the big house. It’s fairly obvious that it’s owned by some rich people who love to waste money. It’s massive and covered in the obvious signs of wealth. Three stories, perfectly trimmed hedges, huge beautiful windows. The lights are always on in the big house.

It’s the kind of house you wonder why someone would want. Sure, it’s massive and nice looking, but it’s in the middle of nowhere next to a loud highway. There’re very few neighbors, and everyone there loves to avoid each other.

Every house on that peninsula is surrounded by a tall fence. Privacy, security, everyone has their reason. The big

house has an eight-foot, wrought iron fence with pointed fence posts. It connects to a huge gate that arches into a rounded top. There’s a thick chain and padlock that keeps the gate closed. You never see that gate open. Even when the homeowners are coming and going, somehow the gate is never open.

That’s why #1 is so scary.

The trail of blood, because it is blood, of course it is, is immediately terrifying. Maybe you would assume it was from a car accident, or maybe just some roadkill. That would make sense on this highway, wouldn’t it?

But it’s not roadkill and it’s not an accident from earlier. The trail leads through the open gate to the front door of the big house. The trail ends at the yellow line where #3 is. #3 is silhouetted against the flickering light of the single lamppost on the highway. The shape is human, shaking, struggling against whatever it’s carrying. Dragging.

Held down by the weight of its luggage, the closer you get, the louder its breath grows. You grow closer to it, and the shape is illuminated by your headlights. The source of the blood is quite obvious now.

The person on the yellow line, slowly moving towards you, eyes to the ground, is dripping with blood. And so is the body they drag behind them.

As your headlights land on them their downcast eyes raise and meet yours. Those bloodshot blue eyes would meet yours. The body drops as the figure takes a single step closer to you.

HORROR

LUNGS

by Elisa Davidson

The dead are always starving. Craving our food, our love, everything that fills us up and keeps us warm at night. The gnawing hunger that filled them in life reaches out and snatches them from peaceful release, dragging them back into the world of the living. They become shells of who they were, aimlessly searching for the one thing that could release them from endless torment.

On the third day of that week, Micheal went to feed his wife.

The sun shone thinly, veiled by a layer of clouds. His footsteps fell weakly on the grass; only a slight crunch at his step. Rain threatened to fall, and Micheal winced as he looked up at the sky. Yet, rain was a good sign. It had been so scarce that month; the world seemed to be holding its breath. Even the sun seemed to barely shine, only a breath of wind ever passing into the valley. And the rain? The clouds swelled more and more with each day, yet—

His bag bounced slightly with all of the food he had picked: thick, ripe tomatoes, fresh green cucumbers, and lettuce flushed with youth. Beef cooked to perfection and glazed with sauces to enhance the juiciness of this freshly butchered meal. Water, fresh and cool; he had only just pulled it from the well this morning. It had been difficult, ever so difficult, to find vegetables not dead and dried by the drought. But he’d only ever needed a few.

She was waiting for him, her dress flapping lightly in the breeze. The earth below her was churned, blankets tossed

and turned from a rough night’s sleep. Aileen O’Connell stared at him, her face far from seeming like that of a human. Cracks in her skin curled and peeled, like a pale rendition of a child’s pottery project. Her once beautiful blue eyes stared into nothingness, dull and sightless. Micheal felt a shiver of fear pass through him. Was she even real, this woman who so barely resembled his wife? Or had his brain found a way to trick him, betray him in the most simple of ways?

Her face pulled back into a smile, almost a grimace. “Micheal,” she rasped. “You’re here.”

Micheal smiled back, frightened. “Aileen,” he said, as warmly as he could. “I made you something, something I thought you’d enjoy. I’m sure you’ve missed the vegetables from the garden. And some meat as well, put some strength in your bones, hey?” She simply stared at him, her eyes seeming to stare right past his own into his soul. “You didn’t come for a while.” She said finally.

Micheal swallowed. “Well you see, you said you were hungry,” he stammered. “And I only wanted to give you the best of food. I was worried, my dear, that I wouldn’t be able to tend to the garden as well if I was coming up all the way here so often. It’s just me now, after all, so I need to be as careful as possible.”

For a minute, he seemed to almost detect sadness in her gaze. “I understand,” she said, taking the sack from the floor and pulling out its contents.

He stared numbly at her as her thin, bony hands explored the ground. Delicate as they’d always been. Those were

hands he’d long gotten to know. Hands that had cooked late into the night, brushed his hair out of his face, pulled his laundry onto the clothesline every morning. But Aileen would never scrabble as this thing did.

“You can go now, Micheal. Go, and bring me more food.” She pulled out a tomato, and turned it over in her hand, surveying it. She bit into the juicy, red flesh, and tomato seeds flew everywhere. Tearing into it like a ravenous animal, red splattered onto the floor, onto her face, over her clothes. She looked up at him, seeds spilling down her cheeks. “Bring me some more of these, please. I can almost taste it.…”

Micheal stumbled back, his feet tripping over themselves as he ran away from the hill. Aileen had never eaten in such a way, always taking small, gentle bites of her food. Smiling gently, turning her eyes over things in a slight, exploratory way. A curious doe, fascinated by the joys of the world, had been his wife. This just could not be her. An angry ghoul perhaps, a trickster fairie trying to frighten him into submission.

He’d fed her every week since the day the earth had broken, trying and hoping that she would finally have her fill. Every week, he would bring her a third of his food, and beg for her to go.

It was as he arrived home that the rain began to fall in great, heavy drops that cascaded through the fields. He growled as he felt the rain plastering his hair to his head, shaking himself angrily. He walked towards the stove, working with clumsy fingers at the coffee pot. Like tar, the strong, black liquid trickled into his mug. Micheal sipped it quickly, making a face. “Tastes like tar too,” he mumbled to himself. He laid down in his chair, feeling weak. For the first time in his life, he felt so completely and utterly alone. It had been like this ever since Aileen had died, only a couple of months ago. He’d so desperately wished she truly wasn’t dead, that she would return.

Until she did.

How was he meant to know why his wife, once so beautiful and charming, now scrabbled at her headstone begging to be fed?

She’d never gone hungry with him, that he knew. She’d never gone without anything. Food, clothing, money of any kind. Music, talk, laughter, it had all filled their home once. She had been happy, light, and carefree. In the morning he’d left for the fields, and in the evening he’d returned to see her cheerfully waving for him in the yard. She’d prepared him dinner every evening, a carefully roasted steak with a heaping of potatoes, sometimes a rare gooseberry pie. They’d read in the living room, each with their own little chairs leaning against the lamplight. Their life had been good. Perfect even.

Yet some cruel being had taken it upon itself to make his life a living hell. And he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what he’d done to deserve such a thing.

The dead are hungry for the life they could have lived. If they didn’t live the way they wanted, that is. Their purpose isn’t fulfilled, not the way they wished. Their life was hollow, unlived, unloved. If you are happy, beware. They’re ready to take your soul, your food, your love, everything that fills you up. Maybe they will finally be able to fill their lungs with air again.

The morning’s visit hadn’t gone the way Aileen planned. She’d gotten up early, before the sun had even risen, and gone down to the creek. She’d washed herself carefully, scraping every speck of dirt from herself. She’d spent nearly an hour on her hands, digging furiously at the soil

caked under her fingernails until they were shining palely in the reflection of the water.

She’d tried her best to look presentable for him, so he could at least be happy about seeing her. But instead of a cry of adoration, perhaps a warm embrace, a simple “How are you feeling, dear wife?” he stared. And mumbled. Her heart had sunk then, watching him. Stutter and stumble and run about. What on Earth was she doing, waiting for him to figure things out?

He knew the grave was too tight. That it cramped her legs every time she got in or out, that the dirt closed around her made her want to cry and gag. It fell in clumps on her cheek at night, staining brown on her favorite dress. He knew she was still here. He had to. Why was he refusing her plea?

She swallowed, feeling her lips crack as she breathed in, and out. She didn’t need to breathe. Hadn’t needed to ever since she’d woken up, all of those months ago. But her chest felt different without it. There was a hollowness there, as if her lungs remembered being filled with air and longed for it.

Every day had been like this for her. A raw ache, a yearning never fulfilled. At first she’d thought it was for food, the way her stomach had clenched when those vegetables were placed in front of her. And yet, when she’d eaten then she gained no satisfaction. It frightened her, this hunger that rattled inside of her. She could feel it growing, day by day, and never was it closer to being satiated.

“You’re dead, Aileen. It’s time for you to leave.” Aileen wanted to leave. God,she wanted to escape this feeling of in-between. As much as she denied it, she knew her skin had never felt this paper thin before.

When she was alive.

“What am I to do, Micheal? I cannot go,” she murmured, feeling her eyes turn red. A small tear, oily and strained, fell.

“I couldn’t go even if I tried.”

The vegetables she clenched in her hands felt soft. Light. Nothing. She squeezed as tightly as she could, trying to gain any comfort from the feeling of the leaves. There was a slight pop, and suddenly it was everywhere. Red tomato juice ran down her hands, and Aileen failed to notice. She stared blankly at the man before her.

“All this time. You’ve been trying to get me to leave,” she said, not asked. He simply stared back, the numbness in him as evident as hers. She nodded, slightly, as if a point had been confirmed. “You never cared.”

And all of a sudden, that was fine. It was all fine. She didn’t need him to care after all. She’d never needed him to care. She smiled bitterly and laughed then. It was a terrible laugh, an angry laugh that felt both wrong and right and shivered through her.

“It’s all right. No, really!” she said, noticing his surprise. “I understand. It must have been difficult to have me around.” He nodded, relief showing in his gaze. “It must have been difficult,” she murmured.

She laughed then, a bone-rattling cackle that sounded like the shaking of trees. “You’re scared of me, aren’t you?”

“I-I’d never be scared of you! I could never be scared of my wife,” he said, reaching out his arms pleadingly, letting the sack fall from his hands. “I just wanted you to eat well! I love you so much my dear, you really don’t understand—”

“You love me.” It was a statement, a question. Did he love her? As Micheal stared at the woman before him, he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure when he’d stopped caring about the zombie of a person in front of him and just wanted it gone.

“If you loved me Micheal, you wouldn’t abandon me. If

you loved me, you wouldn’t spend every day of your goddamn life trying to get rid of me. So I’m going to ask you again. Do you love me?”

His shoulders slumped, and he leaned forward. “No,” he whispered in defeat. “No, I don’t love you anymore, Aileen.”

There was a silence.

“Do you know why I’m here, Micheal?”

He raised himself up and looked at her. For a minute, his eyes clouded in confusion. “No,” he murmured. “No, I don’t.”

“In life, I was starved. I was starved every day, in the comfort of my own home, every waking hour, from dawn to dusk. I was starved while having every need met.”

Micheal stared at her. “But you weren’t, Aileen. You ate every day. I ate with you. You made those boiled potatoes, that gooseberry pie…”

Aileen shook her head slightly, her grin more of a grimace now. “I was starved of affection, Micheal. I was starved of love. I was starved of happiness. And every day in that damn house was a reminder of that. When I died, I forgot all of that. I forgot how miserable I’d been living there, how I’d waited for the day someone would come to whisk me away. And then the hunger began…”

“But we always got along so well together! I never heard a complaint, not once,” Micheal stammered, shooting to his feet. “How could I complain? ‘Micheal, you don’t love me,

do better,’” she screeched, her beady eyes staring deep into his soul.

He stumbled backward, clutching his chest. “But I did love you!” he managed to croak out, his heart pounding. She was shuffling closer to him, the look in her eyes dangerous now. He felt himself stumble backward, the rocks crumbling under his feet. “What have I done?” He sobbed, tears leaking from his eyes hot and fast. “What have I done to you, Aileen?”

“You ruined me.” She said this sadly, matter of factly. It was this that broke him.

“Very well,” he said, first quietly. Then he repeated with more fervor, “VERY WELL!” Aileen froze, her eyes sparkling in the candlelight. Micheal nodded to himself, slightly.

‘You’re right,” he murmured, his back curving even more under his grief. “I never did anything for you, my dear. I never made you happy, and I’m sorry for that. But I think I can do something for you still.” He held his arms out, as if to embrace her. Aileen stared at him, not understanding. He smiled slightly, a glimmer of something in his eyes. “You’re hungry, aren’t you?” There was a moment of silence, where only the wind hissed. The dark thunderclouds that clouded the landscape appeared to grow, blanketing the landscape under them. A single drop of rain fell, hitting the grass with a soft sound. Aileen met eyes with Micheal.

The rain began to fall.

HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE

by Marleigh Green

Tom knew there would be consequences when he knifed Andre in the ribs, not that he’d had much choice in the matter. Andre had been mad dogging him across the yard for weeks and everyone had whispered that he was fixing to do something. Tom never found out what the something was.

The creaky cot squeaked every time he moved, but other than the sounds he made, the cell was silent. It was concrete, windowless, with an iron door that bore a rectangular view of the hallway beyond. He barely even heard his neighbors. The only human interaction he’d gotten in the past month was from the guards, stopping in to drop off his meals.

Back when he was a kid he used to hear his mom say “small world”. He never got it, until he went to prison. There was no world smaller than prison, except maybe the world inside of solitary confinement. He got an hour of sunlight a day, and otherwise, he was alone with his thoughts.

Tom had always hated most other people. The “minor” things that seemed to bother nobody else were nails on a chalkboard to him. An ex once told him everything pissed him off. She was probably right. Fuck her, anyway.

He never imagined what torment solitary confinement would be for him. He’d spent his whole life believing that hell was other people. When they were carting him off to solitary as punishment, he thought it would feel like a vacation from the assholes he shared this place with.

“Hi Tommy.”

Tom sat bolt upright at the sound of the voice. He’d forgotten that voice, or so he thought. But it returned to him like a warm breeze brushing against his cheek, warmer even than the speaker herself.

His eyes landed on the corner, where the toilet was. Standing beside it was a woman he knew extremely well.

Her profile was to him, but even as he blinked hard to erase the image she remained. She was wearing a black sleeveless dress that reached to her mid-calf, her feet bare. She’d been thinner the last time he saw her but now her hips and waist were full and rounded. Her naturally red hair was tied in a ponytail, exposing her neck, where a blazing orange and yellow phoenix was inked.

At the sight of the tattoo he couldn’t help but scowl. He hated tattoos on women. They never looked good. He had plenty of them himself, but that was different. She never would’ve dared get a tattoo when she was with him, but she hadn’t been with him for a while.

“Isla?” He whispered.

His ex-girlfriend nodded, still facing the wall. Tom was too frozen in place to get up and get closer. Too afraid. This had to be a hallucination brought on by the lack of human contact, but she looked so real. And she wasn’t going away.

Swallowing, he asked, “What’re you doing here?”

“He made me an offer.”

“Who did?”

Isla’s ponytail shimmered as she slowly turned her head to him, and at the sight of her face he recoiled in disgust. It was mangled and bloody, her right eye completely missing, her cheek so marred he could see her teeth through the hole in it. The scars ran down the opposite side of her

neck and the arm she’d been hiding from him was a shredded stump.

“Isla…” he was breathless, clutching his chest in horror, “what happened to you?”

She tilted her head to the side, as if considering the question. “A car accident. Funny, isn’t it? I worked so hard to get away from you, only to die five years later because a drunk driver got behind the wheel.”

Tom swallowed hard. It was true, he hadn’t let her go easily. He slashed her tires, left her hundreds of voicemails, made account after account to reach her online no matter how many times she blocked him, but it was all because he’d loved her too much to let her leave him. The cops couldn’t do shit about what he did to her because he didn’t lay a finger on her physically, and they had no proof it was him who’d done her tires. But they found the body of the fucker who’d crossed him in that swamp, and it didn’t take long for them to figure out who’d done it. He’d been careful, just not careful enough.

She picked up the corner of her skirt and lifted, as if to curtsy. “I don’t know why they bothered dressing me in funeral clothes. It was obviously a closed casket.”

Isla gestured to her marred face.

“My mother was devastated. You would have loved that. You always did love seeing other people in pain.”

“I’m hallucinating.” He declared.

She grinned at him, her teeth visible between her supple, gorgeous lips, and through that hole in the side of her face. His stomach churned.

“You aren’t. But you are the only one who can see me. You’re special, Tommy.”

“Special how?” He looked her up and down.

“He wants you. Really bad. More than he wants me. He made me an offer.”

Tom got off the bed and backed away from her into the furthest corner, near the door. He could holler for help if he had to, but the guards would take their sweet ass time.

“Who’s he?”

Her smile faded slightly. “The Devil.”

His heart slammed against his ribcage with fear. He put his hand over the crucifix inked on his forearm.

“That won’t help you.” She shook her head.

“What the fuck do you want, Isla?”

She sat on the cot, which didn’t make a sound as she rested there, her skirt fanning out elegantly, and examined her nails.

“God doesn’t forgive, Tommy. Not the things you’ve done. Or the things you made me do. It was hard for people to understand what it was like with you until you got caught. Once they knew you were a murderer they got it. As if the only way to kill a person is to actually kill them. I know better.”

Still breathing hard, he moved to the other corner, Isla didn’t look up.

“I loved you. I still love you. Maybe I wasn’t perfect–”

“You forced me to help you lie, cheat, and steal, Tommy. I laundered your bloody clothes. I obeyed your every command and let you convince me I was crazy for wanting better than that. You guilted me when I wouldn’t fuck you, until I gave in, and then you made me pretend to like it.”

His hands clenched into fists. “I didn’t force you to do shit, Isla. You went the fuck along with all of it, Bonnie to my Clyde. Don’t pretend.”

It used to rile her up back then, when she’d call him out on stuff and he’d turn it back around on her. They’d fight until she forgot or let go of whatever shit she brought up in the first place. He was good at getting her to understand that he wasn’t the problem, and it got her all frustrated. Her eyes would fill with tears and she’d sob and scream while he remained perfectly calm, the picture of reason. If anybody were to watch them argue they’d see he was the rational one, not her.

Isla didn’t cry now. She didn’t get riled up, or even look up from her nails.

“It doesn’t matter what you think happened, Tommy. The Devil keeps the score.”

“You still haven’t explained why you’re here, Isla. You keep saying it’s because of the Devil, but you can’t have met him unless you went to hell.”

Tommy had been religious his whole life. He understood the tenets of Christianity better than most so-called Christians. He’d never prayed the way other people did, like they were asking for wishes from a fucking genie. He’d only prayed to ask God for strength. And God forgave those who repented for their sins.

Finally, she looked up at him, and unfolded herself from his cot, rising like a cobra rearing to strike. Tommy regretted cramming himself into a corner, but he didn’t have much choice in a cell this small. Within a step she was inches away from him, her blue eyes glittering maliciously.

“But I did go, Tommy. And it’s so much worse than anyone alive can possibly understand. The things you see and feel there are unknowable. I used to believe there was nothing more horrifying in the world than you, but I was

wrong, Tommy. There’s one thing that is. Would you like to see it?”

He shook his head, “Stop it, Isla. Whatever it is you want, I’ll do it, just stop.”

“I can’t stop. I made a deal with him. He let me burn a long time before he made me the offer, but he didn’t need to. I would have agreed even if I had to burn for all eternity.”

She wasn’t touching him, but he could feel the coldness radiating from her still, disfigured body. The look in her eyes was unlike anything he’d ever seen before, not even in the serpent-blooded motherfuckers in this building. It was emptiness, a shrieking, horrible emptiness.

He was almost afraid to ask, but he needed to know. “What offer?”

“To drag you to hell, my love.” She grazed her dead fingers down his cheek and Tom shuddered.

“I’m not dead, yet.” He replied, his voice barely above a whisper.

Her pointer finger slid down his cheek, and she traced a line from his face to his abdomen, letting the tip of her finger rest on his stomach before she drew it back. The track she left behind was ice cold.

“I know, Tommy. But whether it’s in a week, a month, or twenty years, you willdie. And there’s not enough penance you could possibly do to change your fate. You’re too rotten on the inside.”

Tom slid along the wall and Isla followed with her eyes but didn’t pursue him as he darted to the other side of the room, barely managing not to brush against her.

“You’re not Isla. You’re a demon.” Tom declared in disgust. She faced him, a wry smirk on her face. “Not yet. It’s an honor bestowed upon those who serve him well. And I’ve served him well, Tommy. You’re his gift to me. My final hurdle.”

Tom shook his head. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be. But whether she was a delusion based on Isla, or some kind of horrid spirit form of her, she’d never outmatched him before. She wouldn’t, now.

“You were always weak, Isla. You really think you can do shit to me? You’re a fuckin’ ghost. You died in a car accident. Which you probably deserved anyway.”

Isla didn’t flinch.

“You think I give a fuck about your cunt of a mom crying about you being dead? She deserves worse. She always hated me. I hope the bitch kills herself and joins you in hell.”

A cheshire cat’s grin crawled across Isla’s face. Tom’s stomach dropped. She vanished. He looked around the room, turning in circles, but there was no place she could be hiding.

Suddenly, the humming sound that always permeated this section of the prison during the daytime began to fade, and there was a winding down followed by a rhythmic clicking as the overhead lights shut off, one by one.

Tom was abruptly bathed in darkness. And in darkness he waited for his eyes to adjust, heart still racing hard. But there was no other sound, no shift that indicated she was still there, and after some time he was able to get out a nervous piss and lay back on his cot.

It wasn’t unheard of for people in solitary to hallucinate. Maybe she never really was there. Maybe he was just losing it.

After a while he finally drifted off to sleep, awakening a few hours later in the darkness and exhaling in frustration. He never slept through the night anymore.

Movement caught his eye and his gaze flicked to the corner, where the toilet was. There was something dark nestled beside it. He remained on his back, staring at it, when suddenly it moved again.

He inhaled sharply as it unfurled itself and began to crawl towards him on all fours.

Tommy let out a shriek, and didn’t stop screaming until there were keys in the lock of his cell door and guards were rushing in flashing lights at him and ordering him to lay face down on the floor and stop yelling.

“Quiet, Sanchez! What the fuck are you doing?”

“THERE! THERE!” Was all he could manage, pointing to the corner that was now behind him as he faced the floor beneath him.

“There’s nothing there, Sanchez. You tryin’ to get sent to psych or some shit? Think it’s gonna be nice and cushy there in a padded cell and a straightjacket? Huh?”

A guard’s boot met his ribs and he jolted, pain radiating through his side. But he didn’t get kicked or punched again. Instead, one grabbed him by the back of the shirt and dragged him to his feet.

“Go to sleep, Sanchez. And don’t fuckin’ cry wolf again, I’m not in the mood.”

Clutching his ribs, he nodded, and the two guards filed out, slamming and locking the door again. Tom sank to the floor, curling into the fetal position on his side and keeping his eyes glued to the corner where he’d seen the figure.

He caught his breath and waited, but as his heart rate slowed and the pain in his side faded, nothing happened.

It was only when his body’s stiff position had relaxed slightly on the hard floor that he felt a cool sensation brush against the side of his neck, and a bloody stumparm encircled his waist. Tom froze in horror, not daring to move as Isla pressed her icy form against his back, like she had done hundreds of times when they were together. The embrace was almost loving.

Her lips touched his earlobe and she whispered, “May the best monster win.”

THE LITTLE CLAY GODLING

by Meahgan Farrel

In the dark of the woods, where sunbeams rarely kissed the ground and strangers never stepped, there was a small community, tucked away in the leaves and branches and dirt. I’ve lived my life there, in a cabin with my parents and sister. The two of us spent our childhood roaming beneath the trees with our parents at our heels, whispering in our ears to never wander too far, to never stray beyond the confines of the small community, and to never wonder too hard what lay beyond.

The community peppered the dark of the woods, little cabins mounted between thick tree trunks, each with a family inside. Together we hunted and gathered and dined and aged and lived and died. We were the descendants of ancient travelers who traveled no more, who rooted themselves in the dark of the woods and never left. It was here that they discovered the earth gods, encased in great statues, their bodies stiff and unmoving, holy and leering, standing among the trees. One was carved of wood, the other of stone. It was these deities who had convinced them to stay, who gifted them with new knowledge and the promise of protection.

Many years had passed since then. The deities of wood and stone did not speak as they used to; our Elders, those with

knowledge of divine rituals, were the only ones who communicated with them now. The rest of us were left to live in the shadows of those great, silent statues, who stood in the very center of our community. I often feared this was all that was left of the world, the dark of the woods and nothing else. It seemed that way; we were never sought, nor were we ever found. Nor did anyone ever leave.

This community was all I knew, all my parents knew, and all my grandparents knew. We worshiped those dormant gods, beseeching them with our rituals and prayers, same as the generations before us. There were very few new things in the dark of the woods.

One day, in the rusted depths of autumn, this changed. I had ventured out to the surrounding areas of the community, where our hunters set traps for hares and deer. It was my responsibility to check those traps and to bring back the animals they ensnared. I often took my time with this task, savoring the time to myself, time away from the community and the glaring gods and the mundanity of it all. On this day, there was an impossibly small, impeccably white hand poking through the moist ground, just to the side of one of the carefully laid traps. I unearthed it with gentle care, sensing its fragility, and soon a little statue appeared from the dirt, with porcelain clay skin as pale as my own, marred only by a startling crack running from her left brow to her right cheek. Her face was youthful and crafted with love, her eyebrows and mouth painted with the careful strokes of a steady hand. She wore a dress, riddled with holes and grime, her hair matted and knotted together atop her head. Her light

eyes winked open when I set her upright, and closed when I set her flat. She was the height of my forearm, just a little thing, out here in the dark of the woods, disrupting my narrow slit of a reality, ripping my world just a little wider. She was beautiful.

There was a thumping in my chest, the nervous beating of a heart with a newfound secret. I knew at once that I couldn’t tell the others about her, the Elders especially. They’d take her away, steal her from me before I had the chance to ponder her origins, to draw my conclusions of how she found her way here, before I could savor the taste of this somethingelse that I’d just discovered.

I placed her gently in my pack and finished my rounds, diligently checking each trap. I made my way back to the community, three hares and my discovery in tow. I dropped the carcasses off at the smoke cabin, where other members waited with ready hands and butcher’s knives. Elder Jacob waved at me as I passed his cabin, his eyes hard and stern as ever. Mother paid me no heed when I stumbled through the door, her back turned to me as she tended the hearth. Father was out, learning to be an Elder himself; an honor reserved for only a few in every generation.

I ran upstairs to the room my sister Sarah and I shared, and removed the statue from my pack. She was real and solid in my hands, as corporeal as I was. Outside my window, the deities of wood and stone peered at me from their perpetual stance between the trees, curiously looking in at my discovery and me.

I jolted with a sudden realization, as electric as lightning. What if this little statue, this tiny being, was one of them? I’d found her planted in the earth, just as the travelers had found the deities, all those years ago. All at once, I felt sure of her identity. What other explanation could there be? I looked down at the little clay godling, her soul surely present beneath her exterior, encased in porcelain and cloth.

Back when the travelers had first settled, the deities had spoken to them in thundering, commanding voices, and had shared with them secrets and knowledge so great, they’d been convinced to abandon their journey and forsake their destination, to stay hidden forevermore in the dark of the woods. I ran a finger down the crack on the statue’s face. Was it possible to make a dormant god speak again? I imagined her words, what they might sound like, what they’d reveal. Perhaps she knew of the outside world, that place beyond the dark of the woods, where the travelers had originated. Would she tell me about it if she knew, to thank me for saving her from the earth?

Downstairs, the front door opened then slammed shut. Father’s heavy, dragging footsteps thudded through the cabin. He was often tired, my father. All day, he studied those elusive rituals that were hidden from the rest of us, all recorded in a book of spells, the only thing in the community protected under lock and key. He often complained that when performing these rituals, even for practice, he could feel his energy being sucked straight out of him, a sacrificial offering to the deities of wood and stone. Perhaps, somewhere in that grimoire, that carefully tucked away book of spells, there was a ritual to awaken a god, to shake their soul from rest. How much was I willing to risk to know what the little clay godling had to say? Could she lead me out of the dark of the woods, to the place beyond?

Father had a key to that trunk, the one that held the grimoire. I’d seen it before, on the nightstand next to my parents’ bed. It was a fragile thing, carved of animal bone. It required a delicate, trained hand to turn it in its lock, so that it wouldn’t snap in two. I had no reason to believe I could do it, with my clumsy fingers.

But, in my heart I had already resolved myself to the

forming plan in my mind. This chance, this opportunity to learn more, to know more, to experience more than the dark of the woods, would likely never come again. I had to act fast, this I knew; it was only a matter of time before someone discovered my little clay godling. There were few private places to hide her in this cabin or in the community. Nothing remained secret for long in the dark of the woods. I placed her back in my pack and slid it under the bed I shared with Sarah. The day progressed normally, all the while my plan continued to simmer in the back of my mind. Soon, night fell, and it was time to implement my scheme, one precarious step at a time.

I readied for bed as I always did, pulling my nightgown over my head and weaving my hair into twin tresses. I laid next to my sister and waited for her breaths to become even and rhythmic. Then, I snuck out of my room, my only remedy for the darkness the flickering light of a candle. Mother and Father remained fast asleep when I creaked open their door, their deep slumber undisturbed by the sound of rusted hinges. I crept in, my feet meeting the floor with the lightest touches. There was the key, on the bedside table, illuminated in the candlelight. I gently pinched it between my thumb and forefinger, then slipped away, quiet as a ghost.

With my pack on my shoulders, I made my way to the ritual cabin, the one only Elders were permitted to enter. It was located directly in front of the deities of wood and stone, and though it was similar in appearance to the other cabins of the community, there was a menacing air radiating from it, like shimmering heat rising above a fire. The energy of the gods was tangible here, as palpable as the curling mist that had gathered under the trees.

The door opened with nothing more than a push, the threat of divine retribution usually enough to deter curious community members. I gulped, feeling the weight of the little clay godling in my pack.

The interior of the cabin was one big, open space, with no windows or decoration. I felt as though I were stepping into the mouth of a beast. The wooden ground held remnants of chalk, shadows of circles and symbols from rituals passed. At the far end of the room sat the trunk, pushed against the wall, both smaller than expected and larger than life. I walked over to it, the air suddenly so cold that my breath puffed out in front of me. I clutched my candle harder, as though I could siphon the warmth of the flame through the wax.

I fitted the key into the lock and held my breath as I turned it, nervous and uncertain. There was a click and no crack; the key emerged blessedly intact from its hole. The inside of the trunk was littered with herbs and tallow candles and bones and shards of obsidian, ingredients for the sacred rituals. In the center of it all, in a cradle of dried leaves, was a large leatherbound book.

My fingers tingled where my skin met the grimoire. I flipped through its thick pages, black script decorating the top of each, the bold letters describing the purpose of each ritual and listing the ingredients for each spell. There were rituals for everything—ones to predict the weather and to control it, ones for prosperity and for tracking game, ones to bind together spouses and ensure fertility. Towards the end of the book, chronicled in careful script, were the spells concerning the gods. There were ones to channel their power, ones to enact their will, and finally, ones to cause them to stir in their sleep, just a little, to call on their protection and wisdom, a last, powerful resort in the face of imminent death.

I was not dying in the traditional sense. But with every passing year, every passing day, every passing hour, I was suffocating, writhing for a freedom I didn’t even know for

sure existed. Perhaps the little clay godling wouldn’t mind this breach of tradition.

As I gathered the ingredients for my intended ritual, a fervor gripped my bones, propelling me forward without a thought to the consequences. I was willingly committing blasphemy, an indelible affront to my community, but I could not stop. It was tonight or never; I could feel it in my bones. In accordance with the grimoire, I cast a circle with a piece of chalk, humming as I did so. I copied the symbols into place on the ground, recreating the strokes of the unfamiliar glyphs as precisely as my shaking hands and racing mind would allow. I set the tallow candles in place and lit them. The cabin filled with a reeking, rancid scent as the candles began to burn down, the wax giving way to the carcass it once was.

I took the little clay godling out from my pack and placed her in the center of the circle, where the grimoire called for a representation of the gods. Then I began the incantation, reciting the strange words with reverence.

of finality, and shoved the bone key into its lock to seal away my crime, the last step before making my escape. Crack.

No.Little shards of bone fell away from the lock, as fine as needles, a large piece still wedged inside the hole and another in my clumsy hand. Outside of the cabin, birds began to sing their song, a warning of the coming morning. There was no time to fix my mistake, even if I knew how. I grabbed my little clay godling, my pack, and my candle, and trudged out the door, shutting it hard behind me. I made for my cabin as fast as I could, my legs heavy and disobedient, exhaustion overtaking me more by the second. I returned the broken key to Father’s nightstand and carefully climbed into bed. I’d ruined things, I knew I did, but all I could think of now was slipping into oblivion.

Before I fell into heavy, blissful sleep, a thought struck me, as sharp as an animal bone needle. Back in the ritual cabin, in the moment before I grabbed my little clay godling and made my escape, when she’d been laying flat on her back and before she had been upright, I could have sworn that her eyes were already open.

I felt energy crackling around me, coursing around my circle and setting my soul aflame with power. Taking a shard of obsidian in my dominant hand, I carved a line into my palm. Drops of blood flowed out of the wound and fell onto the little clay godling, seeping into the jagged crack that marred her face. I felt myself entering a trance, my consciousness entering into a hypnotic slumber that may have lasted a few moments or a thousand years.

Suddenly, the energy around me ceased with the abruptness of a clap of thunder, and I fell backward. I knew I’d fall asleep there, contorted on the floor, if I let my body grow still. With great effort, I hoisted myself up and began to tidy my work, my limbs as heavy as leaden beams. I thrust the grimoire back to where it belonged, careful not to soil the pages with my bloodied hands, and blew out the putrid tallow candles, leaving only the flame I’d arrived with lit. I shut the trunk with a thump

All too soon, I was yanked from my rest. Sarah was shaking me awake, her eyes wide with distress. A pit settled into my stomach, raw and twisting.

“Something’s happened,” she whispered. “You have to hurry.” She pulled me to my feet and ran out of the room, leaving me alone to dress.

I rubbed the crust out of my eyes, my body still fatigued and slow despite the growing anxiety in my chest. I grappled under the bed for my pack, which held my little clay godling, safe and sound and out of sight. At once, I sensed that the pack was lighter than it should have been, a bundle of cloth with no weight. I tore open the pack, my heart vying against my ribs to escape my chest. The pack was empty. My little clay godling was gone.

I hurled myself downstairs, fearing what would meet me when I reached the bottom, scared that she’d been discovered somehow in her little cocoon under my bed, that everyone would know what I’d done. The slice upon my palm stung as my hand slid down the banister, ripping the flesh open anew, reminding me of the depth of my sin.

Together my sister and I left our cabin and followed a rapidly growing stream of members to the center of the community, where the ritual cabin lay and the earth gods stood.

“It’s Elder Jacob,” my sister explained in a hushed tone as we stood in the small crowd, waiting for something to happen. “They say his wife found him dead this morning with his neck slit. They think whoever did it used obsidian—the cut was too precise to be anything else.” My blood ran cold, the memory of the slick, black blade I’d used hours before flashing before me. Had I returned it to its proper place? My mind raced, out of control. I couldn’t be sure; I’d been so, so tired. Obsidian was not a common substance here in the dark of the woods.

Every piece was carefully stowed away in the very place I’d defiled last night.

A few of the Elders gathered at the feet of the great statues, their faces both solemn and stern. The members quieted down and faced them. I stood with bated breath, waiting for one of them to break their silence.

Finally, Elder Darryl spoke. “The transgressor who has committed this atrocity is within our custody.” The door to the ritual cabin creaked open behind us, and as one, the community swiveled their heads to gaze at the murderer.

Father stepped through the doorway, chains pinning his arms to his side, his helpless eyes searching the crowd for a sympathetic face. Elder Alice emerged from behind him, her hands gripping the excess chain, and led him towards the gods of wood and stone. I felt as though someone was squeezing my heart and throat and my lungs gasped for air. Sarah crumpled to the floor next to me, her hands muffling a wail.

“He is condemned to death in the same manner he employed against Elder Jacob,” Elder Darryl said, his voice steady and dominating. “He has acted against his community, and has thus forfeited his life. Let his death be a lesson to all who dare defy the gods.” From behind his back he revealed an obsidian knife, its onyx surface glinting in a rare sunbeam, and placed it against my father’s throat. A low hum erupted from the mouths of the Elders, a single harmonized note bouncing through the dark of the woods, a prelude to Father’s impending death.

I turned and ran, ran back to my cabin, cowardly and ashamed and unwilling to watch Father die. I threw myself onto my bed and hid my head under my pillow, trying to drown out that awful humming, trying to drown out the pounding of my own heart, that heart with a secret that I never should have kept.

It was then that I felt a tap upon my shoulder, as light as a feather but as sure as the rain. I glanced over. Next to me, upon my bed, lay my little clay godling, her light eyes wide open. And her hands, her impossibly small, white hands, were impeccable no more; they were red with fresh blood. Horror pierced the very marrow of my bones, and a scream escaped my lips. I pushed myself back, banging my head on the wall behind me.

Why are you frightened? A soft, feminine voice whispered in my mind. What reason have you to be scared of me? Have I not helped you? I had not seen her mouth move, not an inch, but I was certain the words were hers and hers alone.

“Helped me? Father is dead because of you! It was you, wasn’t it? You killed Elder Jacob!” I exclaimed.

The voice in my mind giggled. Yourfatherisdeadbecause ofyou.Whydoyousupposetheyassumedhewas themurderer? He had the most to gain from Jacob’s death, being next to promote to Elder, but why else? Think, you stupid child.Who’skeywasfoundbrokeninthelockthathidesthe obsidian?

“You shut up, you vile thing. Don’t you blame me for what you did.” I glared at my little clay godling, anger boiling me alive, anger both at the little clay godling and myself for waking her. What had I done? What had I unleashed? “I never asked this of you!”

Are you so stupid that you cannot see? You, who wants so desperately to know more of the world. How do you expect to dothat?Thedarkofthewoodsdoesnotkeepyou trappedhere,nor dothosepilesofjunkyouworship.Itisthe peoplewithin.Now,stupidchild,whoshallwe killnext?Perhaps Alice? Or better,Darryl. Wouldn’tyou enjoywatching himbleed, after what he has done thismorning?

“I could smash you, you know. I could do it. I could break you into thousands of pieces, and bury you in the dirt

where I found you.” My voice shook as I spoke, my words unsure even to my own ears. Could I truly destroy this creature, could I silence this spirit, this little statue that I’d risked everything for?

A little laugh rang through my brain, snaking its way between my thoughts. You’dneverbreakme.Whowilllead you outofthedarkofthewoodsonce theEldersare dead,if not me? You can’t leave withoutkilling them.They will hunt you, ifnot.Ithashappenedbefore,generationsback.They’ll kill you and harvest your fat for those tallow candles, like they’redoingtoyourfather.

“You speak blasphemy!” I exclaimed. But even as I condemned her murderous thirst, I felt a battle of morals raging in my soul. I was no murderer, I knew this to be true. But part of me, a selfish, reckless, wicked part of me wanted desperately to know what would happen if I gave in, what I’d discover about the world beyond the dark of the woods if I heeded her.

Besides,who’stosayyou’dbefreeofme, even ifIwere to be smashed to bits? We’re bloodbound,you and I.

A chill ran down my spine. In a burst of panic at her words, I seized my little clay godling and bound her unmoving arms against her body with a ribbon from my tresses. I shook a pillow free of its casing and threw her into the sack of cloth, trapping inside her with a knot. I shoved her into a dresser drawer and slammed it shut, wishing there was more I could do to seal her away, to stop her voice from echoing in my mind.

Stupid child. You’ll besorry.

The night was long and weary, every creak and settle of the cabin a monstrous noise to my ears. Many times, I could have sworn that I heard scratching against the wood of the dresser, a sinister little sound, reminding me of what was hidden there. I tossed and turned and yearned for sleep, jealous of my sister for already reaching that place of rest, a reprieve from this terrible reality we found ourselves in. When I finally drifted off, my nightmares were fueled by visions of masacre and bloodshed and statues coming to life, stomping their way around the community and killing everyone in their path.

I awoke to gurgling—the unpleasant, wet sort of sound of a choking animal caught in a trap. I knew it well. My eyes snapped open, my gaze quickly landing on Sarah, the source of those awful sounds. Her neck was slit, ear to ear, like a second, grotesque mouth. Blood poured out of her as fast as a waterfall, her expression contorted as she gasped for breath. Between us lay my little clay godling, her pretty face fixed on the ceiling, her dress quickly staining crimson.

“No! Sarah, no!” I pressed my hands against her wound to stop the bleeding, but it was no use. Within moments, she was gone. I sobbed until I was gasping for breath, my body convulsing with shock and desolation. Her blood was on my hands, in every possible way.

A familiar, twinkling giggle filled my mind, smug and careless. Rage gripped my veins as I yanked my little clay godling upright by the hair. “You’re dead, you little fucker.”

I jumped out of bed and ran downstairs, intent on swinging her against the first tree trunk I came across. I stopped cold at the sight of Mother, slumped over a kitchen chair, unmoving and unbreathing, blood clotting at her neck. Dead. I couldn’t contain my heaving and retching, stomach acid burning me inside out. I pushed forward, out the front door, intent on my task, my fingers still tangled in my little clay godling’s hair.

There was something different about the dark of the woods. My ears were met with an absolute, unnatural silence—not a single community member going about

their day, no one talking or singing or walking about. I burst through door after door, into cabin after cabin, searching for a sign of life, somewhere, anywhere. Everywhere I looked, community members were slain in their beds, their necks mutilated by a single, neat slice. I could feel what was left of my sanity begin to pull away, some integral part of me shattering into pieces so sharp, I could feel the sting of every single one. Everyone was dead. I was alone. Almost alone.

“Why?” I cried, imploring my little clay godling. I held her up to my eyeline. “Why have you done this?”

You’re asking the wrong questions, she replied. How could you have done this?

I blinked, and suddenly my little clay godling had disappeared from my grasp. In her place was a blade of the darkest obsidian, its edges crusted and smeared with the blood of the community. I threw it to the ground in disgust, and watched it fracture against a rock.

What could possibly be holding you back now, stupid child? Aren’t you ready to see the world? I glanced around and spotted my little clay godling up against a tree. I ran for her, but again she disappeared, as though she was never there. Again her pale skin and crimson dress caught my gaze, farther away this time, and again she winked out of existence just as I reached her. Again, and again, and again she reappeared and vanished, never moving but never remaining all the same. She was leading me farther from the community, farther from the deities of wood and stone and their supposed protection. Farther we went, but I didn’t care. What was left for me here, in the dark of the woods, besides the dead and silent gods?

We traveled like this for days, weeks perhaps; I chased while she remained just out of reach. For sustenance I ate familiar plants and set familiar traps. I drank water from nearby streams and slept under the canopy of trees. She was taunting me, conning me into following her, knowing I wished her dead and would stop at nothing until she was. She, my greatest enemy and my sole companion in the dark of the woods. I saw her pretty little face when waking, I saw it in dreams. She led. I followed.

Slowly, the dark of the woods began to change. Sunlight had begun to penetrate the canopy of branches and falling leaves, painting my pale skin tone bright pink. I had never seen sunshine as potent as this, as strong and yellow and powerful. The thick trunks of the trees began to thin out, and for the first time I saw their tips, reaching for a blue sky they’d never quite touch.

“Do you not tire of running?” I screamed into the ever widening sky as she evaded me once more.

Doyou not tire ofchasing? her little voice echoed.

One day, the woods faded away completely, and a world I never could have dreamed of emerged in front of me. A pathway paved with graveled stone, dark as obsidian but grainy as dirt, stretched endlessly in either direction, a dividing river between me and an open, grassy field. Bright yellow lines were painted atop it, in solid strokes and dashed patterns. In the distance, past the grassy field, were sleek cabins the height of trees, built with reflective materials. What sort of people lived there, in those strange buildings, with no branches to cover them and no watchful gods to protect them?

I was free from the dark of the woods, really and truly free. A hysterical laugh bubbled upon my lips. I had done it. We had done it, my little clay godling and I. She had led me here, to my freedom; she was my savior and my nemesis, whom I thoroughly hated and to whom I was indebted.

Out of the corner of my eye, just a little ways away, her impeccably white skin caught my eye as it did the day I found her. There she was, in the middle of the strange pathway, beckoning me like a moth to a flame. I ran to her, to my little clay godling, unsure if I wanted to embrace or destroy her.

A low, grumbling roar sounded from somewhere down the pathway, and was growing louder by the moment. I froze where I was, just steps away from the black, gravely pavement. Out of nowhere, a shiny, metallic, oversized wagon appeared, moving freely and fast, impossibly fast. It did not stop for my little clay godling. My savior, my enemy, my worst desires incarnate shattered before my eyes, obliterated in a matter of seconds by this thing, this otherworldly thing that came and went with the speed of a demon.

I crumbled to the ground, bits of porcelain still bouncing in every direction, the last fragment of my life in the dark of the woods utterly destroyed. We had sustained each other as wax and wick sustained a flame, but now alone, I feared I would burn away. My little clay godling was gone and my mind was empty, void of the voice that had plagued me. Had it ever truly been there to begin with?

All I knew for certain was that it was over, both my life in the dark of the woods and this chase that had given way to something more. For the first time, I was no longer under the protection of the elders and the gods and the trees; I was at the mercy, now and forever, of the world that lay beyond.

THE THINGS IN THE WOODS

by Marleigh Green

The campfire crackled before my bare feet as I sat before it, breathing in the fumes. The smoke made my eyes water, but the only place I knew I was protected was within the red-orange glow cast by the flames. Darkness was death.

I was the last one left.

The forest around me was pitch black and silent, save for the occasional scuffling and growling noises that emerged from between the great tall trees. I hardly noticed them anymore, but it was hard to ignore the way that even the crickets had gone quiet in reverence to the things in the woods.

When we set out on our weeklong journey, there were five of us. Experienced campers and hikers who’d been exploring the wilderness for our entire lives. We’d met in some chatroom and bonded over our love of wide open spaces and isolated cabins. We weren’t frightened by things that go bump in the night. Each one of us could identify the sound of a bear’s roar, a falcon’s screech, even the scratching of a squirrel’s sharp nails against the bark of a tree as it climbed.

But when we first heard the things in the woods, none of us could place what they were. We’d been sitting around a similar fire, laughing and drinking and passing around cans of baked beans when a guttural roar ripped through the night and gave us all pause.

“What was that?” Riley, the youngest of our group, had asked, sitting up straighter.

“It had to be a bear, right?” Sergio offered, looking hopefully to Sam, our unofficial leader.

Sam, the oldest, had been camping and hiking in the woods all over Colorado since he could toddle. He fully rejected glamping and campervan culture, only sleeping inside of a tent when it was necessary. He preferred to lay out under the stars. His wife and 12-year-old daughter liked the indoors much better and had chosen not to tag along for our trip this time.

Frowning, Sam turned his left ear towards the noise, scratching at the base of his salt and pepper beard.

It was quiet for a while, the only sound the crackling of the logs, until the roar pierced through the night again. This time, sounding closer.

Sam shrugged airily, but his grave, lined face didn’t match the casual tone of his voice, “Maybe a moose? Definitely not a bear, it isn’t their season.”

We all exchanged worried glances, but soon shook off our fears and got back to chatting and laughing, albeit quieter this time. We were experienced outdoorsmen, and most animals didn’t want anything to do with humans, even

the dangerous ones. At minimum they wouldn’t come after a group this large unless they were desperate.

An hour later, we were crawling into our tents or in Sergio and Sam’s cases, under tarps. I was disturbed by the sound of the roaring we’d heard, but I also could barely keep my eyes open, and swiftly fell asleep. When we woke up, Sergio was gone. I was brought back to the present moment when I heard whimpering in the trees in front of me and rose to a stand, peering past the flames.

The downside of the fire is that it makes everything around it basically invisible. You can’t see any more than five feet past the ring of it at night. But if I were to put it out, that would be certain death.

What I’ve learned over the past few days about the things in the woods are that they’re willing to hunt in the day, they can mimic human voices, and the only thing that keeps them at bay is fire.

A pair of yellow eyes flash at me from the wall of darkness, and the whimpering gets louder.

“Fuck you,” I hiss.

The whimpering stops.

That’s how they got Riley. After we lost Sergio we knew we had to go looking for him. He’d left behind his tent and all of his belongings, the only clue to his disappearance the discarded flashlight laying in the middle of the clearing where we’d made camp. You always wanted to have your flashlight within reach when you were camping outdoors. I slept with mine tucked into my sleeping bag. Sergio had lain down next to his, one tent over from mine.

“He must’ve just gotten up for a piss and gotten lost, that’s the only thing that makes sense.” Sam insisted as Riley, Nick and I gathered up our things in a panicked frenzy.

“And left his flashlight?” Nick grumbled.

Sam glared at Nick, but the younger man had a point. It made no sense for Sergio to leave without his flashlight, and the discarded flashlight was laying just out of range of what would have been the glow of the fire.

I imagined two possible scenarios. Either Sergio had awoken and picked up his flashlight, dropping it by mistake and getting lost as Sam suggested. Or, bone-chillingly, someone or something had moved it out of reach as bait, to get him to leave the safety of his tarp. The back of my neck prickled at the second scenario and I shook my head. I couldn’t let myself fall into that fear trap.

I didn’t know yet that the second scenario was probably exactly what had happened to Sergio.

“Maybe he dropped it and couldn’t find it again because it was dark.” Riley offered hopefully, but I caught her eye and she didn’t look particularly convinced.

Sam laced up his hiking boots and stood with his hands on his hips. “We’ll find him. Nick’s a good tracker.”

If Sam was faking his confidence, I couldn’t tell, but even with Sergio missing it was easier to feel safe with the light of the day dawning on us. I

was less afraid now that the sun was up and we weren’t limited to the sight range of just what the fire could reveal.

We’d set off with optimism that we’d discover Sergio stumbling around, confused, but alive, or at worst injured, in which case we’d be in a predicament. We had cell phones but we were also in the middle of nowhere. There weren’t any towers for a signal to ping off of. That was the point of this trip; to disconnect.

Our optimism faded when we left the clearing, packs on our backs, and Nick squatted down in the pathway, frowning.

“It looks like something was dragged, see?” He pointed out the marks in the dirt that showed no footprints, but instead long streaks on the ground that led deeper into the treeline.

Nick followed it, and we followed him, up until we stumbled across a droplet of blood.

Holding his arm out straight to keep us back, Nick stepped forward, following the trail with his eyes, but instead of leading deeper into the woods, it led up.

I gasped and grabbed Riley’s hand as I followed the same line of vision as Nick, up the tree trunk and into the leaves above, there was a coppery, thick streak of blood. It was still dripping from the branches above. No body, but a body wasn’t necessary. There was no way Sergio was alive if he’d lost that much blood.

“Oh my god,” Riley covered her mouth in horror and looked away.

Nick locked gazes with me and shook his head. “Something got him.”

The same something that got Sergio, then Riley, then Sam, and finally Nick, was what lay beyond my range of vision in the woods as I sat in this clearing alone.

The glowing eyes I’d glimpsed at the source of that baiting whimper vanished as the thing retreated into the darkness. I glanced over my shoulder and checked in all directions but saw no other eyes. It didn’t mean they weren’t there, though.

Exhaling heavily, I sat back down in front of my fire and added another log.

We’d left behind the bloodstain that was the last remains of Sergio and continued on Sam’s guidance, walking in a single-file line down the trail.

We walked in silence, occasionally sniffling as we mourned the loss of Sergio. His husband would be devastated. We were devastated. But, more than anything, we were afraid of what the next night would bring.

The day passed too quickly, but sunset didn’t need to arrive before Riley was taken.

As we trudged through the thicket, climbing over fallen trees, just beyond our line of sight a little voice whispered, “Mama.”

All of us stopped cold.

“Mama,” it repeated.

“Dani?” Riley asked, starting forward.

Sam caught her arm before she could move off the path and said, “Riley, don’t.”

“But it sounds like—”

“Your kids are at home, Riley. There’s no way they could be here.”

“What if it’s someone else’s kid? If it was mine, I’d want someone to help them.”

Riley tugged her arm out of Sam’s grip and he let her go with a troubled look on his face. I knew what he was thinking, because I was having the same thought. Even though it sounded crazy, there was no way that that voice had come from a child.

But what else could it be?

We watched Riley trudge into the woods, calling out, “Hello? Can you hear me?”

Riley didn’t return.

We had no choice but to make camp in the closest clearing we could find and hope that she would make her way back to us. We didn’t banter or laugh as we sat around the campfire in a grave, small circle.

“What do you think it is?” I asked Sam, breaking the silence.

He shook his head. “Whatever it is, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard of.”

We slept fitfully, under the same tarp together, our flashlights tucked into our sleeping bags with us. Nobody disappeared in the night, but when we woke up the next morning, somehow, impossibly, our flashlights were gone.

That was probably the loss that had disturbed me the most, if I was being honest with myself. Unlike a person, who could wander off or be lured away like Riley had, a flashlight didn’t just disappear on its own. Whatever had taken it was smart enough to recognize that we would be handicapped without our flashlights. It also possessed enough restraint not to slaughter us on the spot, but instead to delicately take an essential item without even waking us.

It still troubled me that whatever these things were in the woods would make such a calculated move. As if our fear was what fed them, as much as our flesh.

My fire had diminished slightly, so I added another log. I did a mental check of how many I possessed at this stage. I needed to add two per hour to keep the fire big enough to keep me comfortable and illuminated, and there were twelve left. Which meant I had six hours worth of logs. Barely enough to stretch me to dawn. But it would have to do.

Tomorrow I had to get out of the woods. It would be harder because I couldn’t fall asleep, and without rest I would be sluggish and slow, but this was what I needed to do to stay alive. If not for myself, for the others. Their families deserved to know what happened to them. And for anyone else who might enter these woods thinking it was a good idea to camp in them.

A low growl met my ears and I looked towards it, even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to see its source.

“Yeah, you’re pretty fucking pissed at me, aren’t you?” I asked the darkness. “I’d be so much easier to eat if I just gave up. But I’ll light these woods on fire before I let you have me, you assholes.”

The growl stopped and I looked at the fire again.

After we’d confirmed our flashlights were, indeed, impossibly gone, Sam turned to Nick and I and declared, “I’m going to go look for Riley.”

We exchanged a panicked glance.

Nick shook his head, “No, Sam. We can’t split off from each other. If we stay together, that’s the only way we’ll have a fighting chance.”

“She could still be out there. What if she needs our help?”

I swallowed guiltily as I thought to myself she made her choice. It was cruel, and banal and unlike me to not want to go after my friend who was definitely lost but possibly still alive. I didn’t imagine she was, but if we could find some sort of proof that she’d died maybe Sam would let it go. Selfishly, I couldn’t bear the thought of Sam abandoning us. He was the most experienced and most likely to help us survive this.

“Then we’ll all go,” I stated shakily, standing up. “Nick’s right, we can’t separate. But you’re probably right too, Sam.”

“I can’t ask you to do this.”

“You aren’t. I’m volunteering.” I looked at Nick, who seemed unsettled, but nodded in his agreement.

“We go together or not at all.” He said.

So, we set off into the woods. At first we heard the sound of the birds chirping and insects buzzing around as we backtracked to where we’d lost Riley, but after a while the sound died. We all noticed, but nobody said anything.

“Sam!” A familiar voice called out from between the trees.

In spite of the fact that it was precisely what had lured Riley away, we followed the voice, hastening towards it.

But the closer we got, the further it seemed to move away. It took turns calling all of our names, drawing us deeper.

We’d wandered into another small clearing when we saw one for the first time.

It leapt down from a tree silently as we moved towards the disembodied voice, and the only reason I noticed at all was that I happened to see something moving in my peripheral vision.

“SAM!” I’d screamed, pointing, as it encroached.

It crawled on all fours, its fur pitch black. It looked like some cross between a wolf, a bear, and possibly even a man. It was enormous that way, but when I spotted it, it rose on its hind legs and lunged, standing at easily 9 feet tall, widening a jaw filled with razor-sharp teeth.

We turned and ran back towards the path, stumbling and crawling over rocks and boulders and fallen trees, our hearts pounding in our throats.

It wasn’t until we’d returned to where we started, not far beyond the clearing where we’d slept last night, that Nick and I realized Sam was gone.

I sank to my knees in the middle of the path, the horror fresh and acute, but unable to conjure a scream from me. Nick knelt beside me and we wrapped our arms around each other, quietly sobbing.

That was when I noticed the gash on Nick’s calf. He must have cut himself while we fled the monster.

I helped him limp back into our campsite, the day all but lost to our fruitless pursuit of Riley, who was likely dead.

“Did you see it?” Nick asked, as I cleaned and wrapped his leg wound.

Beyond words at this point, I just nodded.

“What was it?”

I shook my head.

When night fell we huddled together at the fireside, neither of us sleeping. Nick soaked through two makeshift bandages before the bleeding finally stopped. We made it to the next morning and agreed not to leave the path, even if we heard one of our friends calling to us. We’d deduced by then that the things in the woods could imitate people, and even more frightening, understood enough about humans to know how to lure us in.

I helped Nick hobble down the path for a few miles before we had to pause to rest. He was pale and shaky. Under ordinary circumstances such a wound would not be fatal, but out here, it was a death sentence.

“You might have to leave me,” he said breathlessly as we sat in the path, eat ing the last of our rations.

“No.” I replied stubbornly.

“I’m slowing you down.”

“You are all I have left, Nick. I won’t leave you even if I have to carry you out of these woods.”

He nodded somberly. We made it one more mile before having to give up for the night and make camp. Unfortunately I was so exhausted that despite my struggle to stay awake, I fell asleep by the fire.

When I woke up at dawn, Nick was gone. Inscribed in the dirt next to the stick he’d used to carve it was the message “SURVIVE.”

I was snapped from my cur rent reverie when I heard a clat ter at the edge of the clearing. I watched as my flashlight rolled from the edge of the trees into my campsite.

“Not falling for that one.” I declared.

The thing’s response was a snarl.

The fire’s glow dimmed as I sat before it, wide awake, but never died. As I awaited the coming of the morning, I knew only one of two things would happen.

I would make it out, and tell everyone in the world what had killed my friends.

Or I’d burn this forest to the ground.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

Horror Contest

1st

A WRETCH LIKE ME

by Rhiannon Guzelian

That November night fell swiftly but gracefully, draping the dense New Hampshire woods in impenetrable darkness. Elias panicked. He should have made camp nearly two hours ago. As the wind whipped harder and ushered in an icy cold, he cursed himself for allowing the evening to creep up on him. Though, to be fair, it had an advantage. Elias was moving slowly. Buried deep within his left leg was a constellation of lead and shrapnel that made his thigh muscles scream. His feet screamed right along, searing from 87 days of trekking north to Maine in his worn-out military-issue boots. And between the weight of the pack and his limp, Elias’s back had taken to joining in with the cacophonous chorus, too. When the pain didn’t slow his pace, the laudanum did. It quieted the burning in his thigh, the ache in his back, and the sting in his feet. It warmed his chest like whiskey and made his limbs heavy and sluggish.

As the wind whipped fat, wet snowflakes at him, the cold seeped into his bones, awakening that familiar ache. He was overdue for another dose and some rest. He turned slowly in a circle, looking out for a suitable place to bed down for the night, but he could see no further than his sniffling nose. Then, blessedly, the clouds parted, allowing what remained of the waning Frost Moon to cast its miserly light through the leafless trees.

That’s when he saw it.

Barely visible, maybe twenty yards off the trail and surrounded by thick woods, stood a small structure. He moved closer, scarcely making out the shape of it. The slant of the roof. A chimney. The rounded contours of the logs that made up its walls. It was a cabin.

If the cabin was abandoned, he could shelter for the night. Perhaps start a fire. He imagined the sweet comfort of warm, dry socks the next morning. If the cabin was inhabited, well, it was a gamble whether he’d be met with charity or with the business end of an eager rifle. As he approached the door, Elias prayed for the former. And as he knocked—twice, firmly—he prayed again for good measure.

The door swung open, and the first thing Elias saw was a person-sized figure silhouetted against the yellow light of a fire. The second was the muzzle of a shotgun–inches

from his face. Instinctively, he raised his hands and stepped back slowly. His eyes followed the twin barrels. On the other side of the sights, he spotted a pair of green eyes–one focused tightly on him, the other half-closed. If those moonlit eyes were the last thing Elias saw, he decided, that would be alright with him.

“You poor soul,” the woman at the other end of the shotgun whispered. She backed up into the cabin. With both hands still on the weapon, she gestured for him to come inside. He entered, shutting the door behind him.

As he untied his boots, Elias surveyed the cabin. “I’m Elias. Elias Collins.” He smiled the warmest smile he could manage in his frozen state.

She pressed her lips together, calculating something. Finally, she said a single syllable: “Grace.”

The warmth of the cabin suddenly made Elias acutely aware of how cold his flesh had become. He shuddered. “You’re nearly blue,” she gasped. Grace directed him towards the bed, grabbed the green patchwork quilt, held it up between them for privacy, and instructed him to remove his wet clothes. He did as he was told, and once he was in his long johns, she draped the quilt over him. “Sit there,” she ordered, and scurried over to the stove. Elias pulled the quilt around him and sat. The bed was still warm, a Bible resting on the pillow. Grace must have been curled up in bed just moments earlier. He’d never felt anything more beautiful than her residual body heat warming his cold bones.

After a few minutes, Grace returned with a cup of hot tea and a warm hunk of bread with jam.

“Thank you,” he said, looking into her eyes with an intensity that overwhelmed her. She glanced away.

“It’s the Christian thing to do. ‘Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby…’”

“If one of us is an angel,” he interrupted, “it sure as hell ain’t me.” He disappeared into a memory. When he returned, he looked pained. He gestured to his pack, and she retrieved it. He pulled the medicine bottle out, holding it up to the firelight. There was barely a dose left. Elias downed it, and drifted off as Grace read aloud from Psalms—the shotgun still resting within arm’s reach.

That was his last good night’s sleep for a week. A vicious

illness overtook him as the laudanum left his body. He was sick, body and soul, his waking mind plagued with memories and his sleep with nightmares. For seven days, Grace held his hand as he writhed and shook. Stroked his back as he vomited. Pressed a cool cloth to his forehead. Fed him sips of broth. She nursed him to back to health and freed him from laudanum’s grip. When he was well enough to continue his journey home, Elias found no words sufficient to repay Grace’s kindness.

Unsure what else to do, Elias offered to take care of any chores before he left. Grace asked if he might help her collect eggs for breakfast, and he happily obliged. She asked if he might chop some firewood, and he happily obliged. She asked him to fetch water from the stream and draw her a warm bath, and he happily obliged.

She joked that if he kept making himself so useful, she might ask him to stay forever.

“No,” he warned. “If you knew the things I’ve done, you wouldn’t say that.”

“You get right with the Lord, you’re alright with me,” she replied.

She took his hand and pulled him up to his feet, wrapped a towel around him, and led him to the bed. She knelt beside it. “Pray with me,” she said.

He knelt next to her, closing his eyes in prayer. When he reopened them, he was new again, and Grace was stretched out naked before him. Together, they worshiped until morning.

At dawn, he led her to a patch of vegetation that had miraculously survived the snow, and they improvised a handfasting, binding themselves together with the stems of the plants as they declared their love before God and nature.

In a few months’ time, God and nature saw fit to bless them with a child. Every morning, Elias kissed Grace’s growing belly, and every night, Grace sang to the baby while Elias built a cradle. He painstakingly carved fiddleheads and other ferns into the pine, painting the engravings an emerald color. When autumn arrived, Grace gave birth to a perfect, healthy baby girl. Life was sweet.

Then, one dark, stormy November night, someone knocked on the door—twice, firmly. Elias glanced at Grace,

who stopped rocking the cradle and stood to answer the door.

“Don’t,” he whispered.

“Elias. It’s the Christian thing to do,” she whispered back.

“That’s no angel, Grace.”

“You weren’t either.”

“Exactly. There are things I haven’t told you.”

“What do you mean? Are you back on the laudanum?”

“No, not that. It’s just… Trouble has a way of catching up with a man like me.”

They argued for hours, until Grace could no longer keep her eyes open. Elias placed the chair in front of the door and sat watch all night long.

At the first breath of dawn, with Grace and the baby still asleep, Elias unlatched the door and stepped outside, shotgun at the ready. He looked about, seeing nothing but snow-covered woods. Then, his boot hit something. Glancing down, he saw a patch of fabric in a snowdrift. With his sleeves pulled over his hands, he dug until he uncovered a man’s hand clutching a green bottle.

“Grace!” He shouted, but no-one came.

He dug and dug, desperately trying to free the man from the snow. When he’d uncovered the man’s face, Elias paused to rub his own eyes, which were watering in the cold. When he opened them, he studied the man’s face. It was frostbitten, and painted by a strange green light, as the rays of the rising sun refracted through the empty laudanum bottle. But he recognized it.

It was his own.

He tried desperately to pull himself from the snow, but his hands were suddenly vaporous and immaterial. He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out. Elias collapsed in the snow beside his frozen body, observing himself. He watched his frost-rimmed eyes flutter open and fix onto something. He watched himself rasp out his last breath, a single syllable: “Grace.” And he watched as the cloud of that last breath dissipated, taking his love, his child, his home, and his life with it.

2nd

HIS FACE WAS ABNORMAL

by Jacquelyn Agliata

His face was abnormal.

Crooked isn’t quite the right word to describe the sinister smile he wore as I rolled over in our moonlit room. Perhaps devious? Monstrous? That’s not quite right either.

Off. Off is the word I’m hunting for.

His face was off.

Where his warm, wholesome, loving eyes used to be instead protruded frightening pits. His pupils were beyond dilated, as if ink had fallen into the whites of his eyes and was seeping through each microscopic vein. Every ounce of human was drowning in the blackness.

Where his soft, perfectly pointed nose used to sit instead was a twitching pad of flesh. His cheeks glitching in sync with the flare of his carved out, asymmetrical nostrils. A string of code that was mistyped. Twitching and glitching.

And then, the smile.

His soft pale lips, which usually rested in a gently curved line while he slept, were cranked into a demonic position. The corners of his mouth were turned up to be almost perpendicular to his eyes, as if a child were attempting to sketch a blocky U-shaped smile.

Prior to this moment, I was in a deep sleep. The kind that was suspiciously restful. I hadn’t slept that hard in years, but something about the contortion of my body against the mattress matched with the ambient light of the moon transported me into a powerful slumber. I couldn’t say what woke me—only that my eyes fluttered open and my vision focused on the curved tree branch that hung outside our window. My back was turned to my husband, as it usually is when we sleep.

My eyes remained on the branch for a few heavy moments, as I processed my transition from asleep to awake. I slowly swept my gaze to my phone and removed my arm from its warm solace under the covers. The cold of the room hit my skin, and goosebumps rose instantaneously. I tapped the screen to check the time: 2:54 a.m. I flipped on my back and looked up at the white ceiling, contemplating whether or not to get a glass of water now that I was awake. The shadow of the tree branch danced at a

surprisingly rapid pace, and I stared at it, imagining what in the windless night had caused it to move so fervently.

Instead, I decided to roll over towards my husband, something I never found myself doing in the middle of the night. He insisted early on in our relationship, when we first started spending heated nights intertwined in each other’s beds, that we didn’t sleep facing each other. He had a livid disdain for hot breath in his face outside of passionate moments, and I obliged entirely. Small suggestions like that have no place taking up worry in the mind of young lovers. I never thought twice of the request, and for years happily slept on my back or facing away from the man I’d chosen forever.

My body rolled first, my face remaining fixated on the dancing branch. My head felt heavy as it followed the momentum of my body, my long curly hair sliding against my chilly shoulders. My eyes scanned the lumpy covers before navigating their way up to my husband’s face.

I had spent no more than a few moments processing his inhuman expression, when his face stopped twitching. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the shadow of the dancing branch freeze at the exact moment my husband’s face did, as if they were inexplicably intertwined.

My eyes refused to peel away from the demonic, now still, smile, wondering if perhaps I was dreaming. I signaled my hand to move—to touch my husband’s face in a comforting gesture I knew he loved—but my body remained comatose. Afraid to interact with the thing staring back at me.

I decided to speak.

“Honey…are you awake?”

No movement. His eyes, his nose, his cheeks, his smile, the branch in the window. Dead still.

“Is this a dream?” I uttered, mostly to myself. “Are you awake?”

And then, shattering the silence with motion, his eyes began blinking rapidly. The shadow of the branch began quaking, and he parted his lurid lips to whisper:

“Finally.”

Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz HORROR

ROMANCE

NIGHT WATCH

by Daniel Golub

The knight looked out over the rolling hills, hands on her knees and sword resting on the ground in front of her, ready to be snatched up at a moment’s notice. It was dark, with only the moon and the faint flickering firelight providing any visual on the surrounding area, but her eyes were sharp and well-accustomed to seeing in near pitch black. The plains where they had made camp seemed to stretch endlessly, grass rippling with the slight night breeze and interrupted only by the occasional tree or boulder. There wasn’t much to see, and yet she continued to scan. It was her duty.

The stillness of almost midnight, white noise of rustling grass, crickets, and the occasional distant howl of some predator hunting was familiar. What wasn’t familiar was the soft notes of a lute being plucked out behind her, weaving a soothing sleepy tune that somehow stood out from the sounds of nature and blended perfectly with the symphony of the night. The music was enchanting, alluring in a way that only the bard could make, and the knight shook her head as if to rid his influence from her brain. The sounds would surely give them away to any stalking bandits—the musician did not pay attention to his surroundings when he played, opting to concentrate instead on the weave of dynamics and scales, leaving him vulnerable to any attacker looking for an easy target. Herself, as well. She was in his bubble, responsible for watching over him and the others, and so any danger to him was a danger to them all.

“See anything interesting out there?” he called out, as quiet as a man of his profession could be. Sometimes it impressed her how loud he could make even his whispers—someone so used to being in the spotlight was bound to be terrible at stealth. She shook her head, not even bothering to turn and look at him before replying.

“All is still.” A drawn-out sigh responded, and she could practically feel him rolling his eyes as he shifted and settled back into his nook under the tree. His strumming resumed, this time accompanied by a gentle hum that pleasantly filled in the gaps in the music that she hadn’t even noticed were there until he added the extra layer.

“How do you know?” she spoke again, keeping her eyes resolutely trained on the landscape in front of her.

“Hmm?”

“How do you know what to play? I have never seen you carry any paper to write your notes on or a book from which you read.” The music slowed as he sat up slightly in his spot and let out a soft chuckle before responding.

“I don’t know, I guess I just go with what sounds right. You play long enough, eventually you figure out what sounds good together and what sounds terrible. It helps to have such great inspiration.” She cocked her head at that, subtly trying to angle her body so she could see him out of the corner of her eye. Plate metal clinked as she shifted. A small smile was creeping his way onto his face, the firelight casting warm, flickering shadows across his dark skin and making his lute glow orange. “I traveled a lot, you know, even before I joined up with everyone else. There are similarities across the world, but each place has something new and different that I can make music out of. Even here—I’m sure there are a million fields just like this one, but I’ve never been here before, in this moment, and it deserves to have a song made about it.” He shrugged, looking up at her. She was facing sideways now, straddling

the rock she sat on as she tried to balance listening to him play and watching the dark.

“What is there to be inspired by?” she asked, almost to no one. “It is only land. There is much more like it, and to make a song that will never be heard by anyone other than ourselves about a field many have passed through without staying seems to be a waste of effort.”

“Do you like it?”

She blinked, turning to face him fully before she could stop herself. He was looking right back, fingers still mindlessly plucking out a tune that didn’t seem to have an end, as meandering as everything else the bard did.

“What?”

“Do you like the song?” He watched her as she processed the question, eyes still trained on him but mind wandering. Her own paper-white, pallid skin was made nearly rosy by the firelight, giving a semblance of life and vitality that was rare to see on her.

“Yes,” she said, decisive as always. He nodded.

“Well, there you go. I make the music, you like to listen, what more is there to worry about?”

She let out a short breath of laughter and turned back to staring at the field in front of her, small spots swimming in her vision as she adjusted to the dark again.

“There is so much to worry about,” she whispered, more to herself and the fireflies than anyone else. She settled back into her watch, listening again to the noises of the plains. She hadn’t been still for more than a minute before the music stopped, and the bard appeared next to her and sat down to lean against the rock she was sitting on. With the firelight in the background, the bard had an outline of orange, features sharply defined by her careful gaze, by now well-adjusted to the dark. He crossed his legs as he settled back into the familiar playing position, again striking up the tune he hadn’t found an ending to yet. This time, it was a little slower, a little more melancholy. It demanded attention in a way it hadn’t before, not because of its volume or because it was especially different, but because it seemed to be speaking out rather than blending in.

“That one is different,” she found herself saying, words out of her mouth before she even had the chance to process them in her mind. Strange, since everything she said was usually so thought over and calculated, but he was smiling and responding before she could get a chance to analyze what it might mean.

“I found some new inspiration.” She looked back out at the field, scanning the grass to see what the bard saw. The same grass and starry night looked back at her, the same cricket sounds and bats flitted across the distant tree line. Squinting harder, she saw a weasel pop its head out of the tall stalks, beady eyes whipping around in a similar fashion as hers. Nothing nearly worthy of the song the bard was spinning next to her, and nothing that was any different than other nights they had spent on watch.

“Even if you don’t see it, it’s there,” the bard spoke up, leaning his head back to watch her search, not even needing to look at his fingers as they landed neatly on exactly the right notes. “Maybe someday you’ll understand.”

She bristled at the implication that she was too young, too inexperienced to know such serious matters as the one he was speaking of, mouth opening to retort, but her hackles deflated as she saw the mischievous twinkle in his eyes.

“Perhaps,” she relented, a soft smile gracing her face. They both turned their gaze back to the field in front of them, watching the rest of the night pass them by uneventfully.

The knight settled against the tree, leaning her head back and closing her eyes with a tired sigh. Specks of blood from the earlier battle were still crusted on her chain mail, despite earlier efforts to wash them off, and the remnants of the sunset bathing her in a reddish-purple light painted the perfect picture of a general exhausted from a day of conquest.

“Thank you for today.” She opened her eyes to see the bard standing over her, lute in hand and looking uncharac teristically nervous. He shuffled his feet against the loose dirt and stone, fingers mindlessly moving across the neck of the instrument in a familiar pattern. “I wasn’t— I can’t fight, not like you can, so having you at my back and see ing you take them all on so easily…” She inclined her head in acknowledgement, shifting slightly to make a space next to her. He smiled slightly and sat down, keeping the slightest bit of distance between his skin and her armor as he assumed the familiar playing position.

“Think nothing of it,” she said. “That sort of situation is exactly what I am trained for, and they were defeated before any real damage was done.”

He shrugged, focusing on the pegs of his lute. Discor dant notes slid into tune as he turned them, strumming a pleasant chord and smiling once he found the pitches he wanted.

“Besides, I have not had a proper fight in ages. It was refreshing to practice my techniques against opponents who offered a decent challenge.”

The bard laughed at that. “Not enough glory in the recent days?” he teased, beginning the same tune he had played the other night, the one that seemed determined to push past her watchful guard and smooth the wrinkles from her face.

“Not necessarily. Honor and glory in an arena are one thing—one is never truly in danger when there are thousands watching and chanting one’s name, when one has the luxury of knowledge beforehand. There is always the aftermath to deal with, the politics and the handshaking and other battles that swords and armor can do nothing against. Fighting for survival, in unknown terrain, where the only glory one receives is the privilege to live another day is a truer test of skill than any arena.” She met his gaze and held it. “And fighting for something other than yourself is the highest honor one can receive.” He looked right back at her, expression unreadable. The sun had fully set now, casting his face into deep shadow that even her discerning eyes couldn’t peer into. The nighttime chorus began to chime in to his mel ody, falling right into place with his strumming as it had the night before.

A branch snapped and she whipped her head around, immediately scanning for the source of the noise and hand darting to grip the handle of her sword. A rabbit stared back at her, eyes wide. Its mouth was frozen mid-chew and one of its paws was raised, every muscle tensed and poised to run. The knight relaxed slightly. She made a shooing motion with her free hand and the rabbit bounded away, vanishing quickly into the darkness.

She felt the bard’s eyes on her as she stood, fixing her

sword to her belt again before walking towards the center of the clearing they’d settled themselves in. She began the practiced motions of starting a fire with the materials that had been gathered earlier. Music was joined by sounds of breaking branches and scraping flint, and it wasn’t long before yellow-orange firelight was cast over the peaceful scene. She sat back on her heels, dusting her hands off and admiring her work. She looked up to see him still staring at her, still playing, with the same confusing expression.

“What is it?” she asked, settling her hands on her thighs. The bard shook his head slightly, turning to look up at the canopy of leaves above them. Slivers of moonlight barely peaked through, creating a mirror of the night

gather his thoughts. The flames in front of her seemed to dance in time with his playing.

“Have you fought for others before?” he asked finally, seemingly addressing the trees instead of her.

“Yes. I used to serve a court, first as a guard but later as a soldier on the front lines. The queen was very... ambitious. She wanted to expand her influence, and to achieve that she needed to capture territory. I fought in her name for a long time.” She laid her sword on her lap, tracing her fingers over the golden details on the handle absentmindedly.

“Why did you stop?”

Almost imperceptibly, she stilled, hesitation, regret,

She met the bard’s eyes again, his hands (for once) frozen on the body of his instrument.

“I found something better to fight for.” She heard his breath catch, though it might’ve just been her imagination filling in the unusual quiet surrounding her. She blinked, suddenly uncomfortable as the weight of the words she spoke settled on her shoulders. They almost felt like a vow, like swearing fealty to a cause that she didn’t realize she was committed to. After a few moments, the bard began playing again, the tune a little bit brighter than it was previously. Still the same theme, but shifted up in key, dancing with the gentle breeze. It seemed, along with the bard’s curious stare, like it was asking her to elaborate, but she remained resolutely silent.

“Well, whatever the reason,” the bard said, flashing her a grin, “I would have been a goner for sure without you there, so thank you.”

The knight shifted again. She was suddenly uncomfortable, her armor a prison rather than the protective shell she was used to it being. Everything about this situation wasn’t how it should be. For one, she realized she was looking at him rather than the forest around her, leaving herself as vulnerable as she had ever been to ambushes from the shadows—an especially risky situation after the fight they had survived earlier. Her sword was in her lap rather than her hand. She had no idea what creatures the forest around her held. There was only herself and the bard and the small circle of warmth they had carved for themselves.

She startled out of sleep, hand automatically going to the sword by her side. The fire in front of her was dim, reduced to only embers that drowsily smoldered in the pit she had made. Everything was quiet.

Across from her sat the bard, asleep upright with his lute still sitting in his lap, hands draped over its body and head leaned back against the bark of the tree, mouth open in a soft snore. Even in sleep he seemed to be playing—his fingers twitched slightly, subconsciously tapping out a familiar pattern. She smiled to herself as she stood to collect more fuel. He looked peaceful when he slept. She could see the remnants of his smile around the corners of his eyes, which was impressive given how young he was. He must have had a life full of joy to be so marked with it so early.

A short sweep of the forest around her had yielded enough wood to rekindle the flame, and she sat in front of the nearly dark coals to begin the task of coaxing it back to life. As quiet as she tried to be, the cracking of branches still rang out into the forest like a whip, and she winced as she heard birds flutter off into the night from a nearby tree. Even worse was when it became clear that whatever faint life the fire had when she started had gone out in the time it took her to prepare the materials to revive it. If the branches were loud, the flint would be thunderous in the complete silence that surrounded her.

A spark leapt from the rocks in her hands onto the preset branches and, as predicted, the bard stirred, bringing his head up and looking with bleary eyes around the campsite quickly being illuminated. He blinked the sleep away, smiling slightly when he noticed her crouched across from him.

“My apologies for waking you,” the knight said lowly,

gently fanning her hands to encourage the spark to grow into a blaze. The bard waved his hand towards her as if to swipe her apology from the air.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “It needed to be done anyway.” They both stared at the quickly catching branches, the crackling of their burning and a faint smell of smoke filling the air. She kept sneaking glances up at him, at the reflection of the flame in his eyes as he looked into nothing. Thoughts she couldn’t put words to spun in her head. Her own eyes were sticky from sleep and proximity to the fire, forcing her to blink, and yet she couldn’t move from her spot. She ought to be paying attention to the trees around her. She had a duty to keep watch over those that were vulnerable. She shouldn’t have fallen asleep in the first place.

“Will you play a song?”

The bard looked up from his musings, surprise melting into happiness as his face curled up into a wide smile. He sat up against the tree, stretching out his arms and doing a few twists to loosen up from the stiffness of sleep. Settling back into a comfortable position, he gave his lute a few experimental plucks before meeting her eyes again.

“Any requests?”

She shook her head mutely, watching his hands dance across the strings. Again, as always, the tune was familiar, the notes falling into the same place they always had, but a slightly different color than they had been last time. Now, in the midst of this suspiciously serene night, they swirled dancing around her, nearly brushing her skin and leaving her aching for something more.

“I did not know the forest would sound like this,” she spoke up, finally tearing her eyes away from him and leaning back to look at the canopy above. It was darker than it should have been, the moon locked behind cloud cover or simply turning away from the scene below it. “It is nice.”

“I’m glad you like it,” he responded quietly, sounding just as breathless as she felt, though neither of them had a reason to be. “I think I might write this one down for once.” She tilted her head, again looking at him in confusion.

“Why is that?” He shrugged, staring down at his fingers.

“I want to remember this.”

She nearly laughed at that, catching herself just before the sound could escape and electing for a short exhale instead. The knight moved back to settle into the same position she had woken up in, leaning against a tree with her legs outstretched and sword resting by her side. The music followed her, as naturally as if it had always been there, the bard giving voice to a presence that she didn’t know existed.

“What is there to remember?” she asked with a smile, trying to mimic the bard’s teasing tone from the other night. “It is only a forest.”

He let out a small, almost incredulous laugh, as if his response should be obvious.

“It’s more than the forest. It’s… I want to…” He trailed off,

frowning to himself as, for the first time since she’d known him, his words failed him. The tune shifted again, ever so slightly, infused with a hint of nervous energy. He sighed. “I’m just glad you like it. You’ve done so much for me and... I don’t know, I have so little to give back to you.”

“You need not offer anything in return,” she said, watching the fire paint patterns of shadow onto his face. “It is an honor to fight by your side.”

“You do more than fight by my side though. You’ve saved my life, more times than I can count, and my life is very important to me.”

“It is important to me too.” The music was interrupted with a jarring, out-of-tune note as the bard’s fingers stumbled over themselves with surprise, and he quickly glanced up at her, searching her face for something. She tried her hardest to look as she usually did, an odd energy stirring in her chest as he contemplated her. “I would not fight for you if it was not.” The silence stretched out between them, crickets and the faint hoot of an owl faded into nothing as they stared at each other. It was odd. She had almost gotten used to his constant playing, and quiet was not as comforting as it had been. As if reading her mind, the bard began playing again, the nervous energy masked under a slow, sweet melody that curled around her shoulders and brushed feather-light against her face.

“I don’t think anyone’s ever fought for me before,” he said quietly. She smiled, barely, the slightest upturn of her lips.

“I have not heard anyone play as you do.” The bard laughed, throwing his head back and adding his voice to his strumming.

“Oh, I see now. Only like me for my music, huh?” he teased. The knight furrowed her brow, her smile dropped as quickly as it appeared.

“No,” she insisted, never one to be misunderstood. “I have never heard anyone put to sound the beauty that they see, nor met anyone that sees as much beauty as you do. I have only ever known land to be something to conquer and build upon, but you make music of it, and you do it effortlessly.” Even as the words left her mouth, she wanted to take them back, stumbling over some line in the sand they had been dancing around, unseen until it had already been crossed. But the bard had almost no reaction. He just kept playing, looking at her with a soft expression that she hadn’t seen on him before.

“As long as you like it.”

SHOREBREAK

by Savannah Jade

Firm arms wrapped around my body as we lay atop a dark green crocheted blanket in the sand. Each grain molded to the contours of our figures, leaving imprints in the shape of mini sand dunes. Past his shoulder where my chin rested, my fingertips grazed the peak of the nearest dune, tracing the curvature of Earth’s natural occurring memory foam. The sand trickled down, forming a small waterfall that shimmered like feldspar in the afternoon sunlight.

Another wave crashed, sending a gust of warm wind our way like a sleeping dragon exhaling, followed by a refreshing puff of mist to cool our tan skin. I breathed in his cedar patchouli–scented cologne and smiled. He squeezed me once before pulling away to look at me. Hazel eyes met my deep blue ones. Where the forest meets the ocean— this is home.

As he leaned in to offer me a kiss, a chunk of wet sand landed between our lips. Behind our heads, Kenai’s paws were plowing furiously into the sand, his own head nearly buried by how far he’d managed to dig.

“Kenai!” Daniel shouted, spitting out sand like grape seeds. “Mom and I are trying to have a moment here!”

As if in apology, his brown tail swiped away the stains on our lips, only for another chunk of wet dirt to land on our heads.

I threw my head back in laughter. “He has selective hearing.”

“That’s it!” Daniel play-tackled him in the sand.

Our 80-pound pup was surprisingly quick to counter. His ears flopped in the air as he pivoted to sit directly on Daniel’s face.

“At least he doesn’t have any balls to T-bag me”—he squirmed beneath his recently neutered privates—“or he’d be a lot more aggressive about it.”

“You’re right.” I helped shove him off. “Is that what you were looking for down there buddy? Your balls?” I cooed.

Kenai whined and spun around at his favorite word to find a rubber ball already in my hand. “Fetch!”

Sand sprayed the both of us as he bolted off. Laughing, we both faced one another, flushed cheeks and joy pulling our lips together to resume where we left off.

My eyes flickered awake at the sound of a monitor beeping.

Everything was bright. Toobright. Nothing like the shimmering, warm reflection of the water in my dream. I tried to blink away the stark contrast of reality, but it only projected the scene like a still motion. Frame after frame after frame. An IV bag being switched out. The new one still half empty. A white coat flittering about the room like an albino butterfly flapping wings for the last time. In the center, a hospital bed, elevated slightly, humming as it continued to rise. And an emaciated hand, resting over the edge into empty space. Space I rushed over to fill.

Vertigo crashed into me. I teetered with the blackness and tottered against the bright walls before finally getting a steady picture.

“It’s time,” the nurse said.

I managed a nod. Leave , I tried to say to her, but my voice was gone. Everything I cared about was in the palm of my hand, the one holding his, but it somehow felt gone too.

Everything grew blurrier as I watched the IV drip down like sand in an hourglass. I was almost out of tears too.

Almost.

I wasn’t sure how long I stared at him before the monitor’s beeping slowed to an adagio… and then a largo...

I leaned down to kiss his forehead, wishing with everything in my being that we were back on our bed in the sand, resuming where we left off. Instead, I watched the monitor stretch into a flat line—the way the waves do when they’ve finished crashing against the shore, right before they’re pulled back to sea again.

I swear I could smell cedar mixed with salt in the air as the silence echoed. It tugged at me like a phantom limb.

“I hope you’re home,” I whispered.

I1st

theRomancing Reader Romance Contest

WAITING FOR THURSDAYS

by Savannah Rush

f I could be selfish with him, I imagine it would look something like this:

We’re at a random bar on a Thursday night, except they close at eleven instead of ten, and we have time.

I take slow sips of my gin and tonic as he reenacts an encounter he had recently, with all the carefully chosen details and theatrics of a top-notch storyteller. There are several moments when his delivery has me leaning back in laughter, and he smiles as I pull myself upright, resting my arm atop the bar while I catch my breath. I savor the chill of the marble against my skin that’s now flushed from the liquor, even more so from the sound of his voice.

I’m captivated by the sight of him in a simple black t-shirt and am just tipsy enough that I consider telling him that. Instead, I settle for a different truth, a confession that has less to do with the way he looks and more to do with how he makes me feel.

“I really love that you make me laugh,” my voice is quieter than I expect, but he hears me. This is when the witty and subtle, flirty banter should kick in. But I don’t want the desire that starts in the eyes to remain there, so I don’t wait for him to answer. “I know I’m not good enough for you, but I want to be.” He looks away for a moment, no doubt caught off guard and probably a bit surprised by my admission, before looking back at me.

“What makes you think that?” His voice is soft—softer than I deserve, so I tell him everything: how my first love shattered me, and all the damage I’ve caused on the path to healing. Every selfish attempt, every lover who reached for me, and every time I pulled them in as if I had no intention of letting them go.

How reckless I can be in the pursuit of love. Can be.

He says nothing as I steady my elbow on the counter and rest my cheek against my palm, feeling somewhat vulnerable but also exhausted. We’ve never been here before, a step beyond the familiar but still on the cusp of something new. This is why I look down, away, anywhere but at him because I can’t even imagine how he would respond. But I do know, deep in my heart, what I would want, and it’s this very yearning that shapes what happens next.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see him lean forward, and my heart races at the feel of his knee lightly pressing against the inside of my thigh. He pulls the sleeve of my shirt down ever so slightly and brushes his lips against the now-exposed skin of my shoulder. The dim light does nothing to hide the rush of heat that fills my cheeks, my neck, and my chest—a rush of desire in its wake.

I turn toward him and hold his gaze, wondering if he can see it in my eyes—a delicious, heartbreaking curiosity: Is this what it’s like to be lovedbyyou?

I gently run my fingertips along the collar of his shirt, just close enough that I graze the top of his chest and feel how warm his skin is. He closes his eyes at the touch of my fingers, his brows pulled together as if in thought. Any semblance of patience or caution leaves me as I take in the sight of him there, vulnerable. I’m not free of the guilt, or the pain, but fueled by a small glimmer of hope that tells me I can do right by him.

So, I curl my fingers around the soft, black fabric, and pull him into me.

THE BEST CAKES IN TOWN

by Sarah Hart

No, one and three-fourths of a cup of flour,” I said, enunciating the number this time. “That’s a onecup and a three-fourths cup.”

“I do know math, Lila,” Matthias pointed out as he pawed through the different measuring cups, finally selecting the correct two. “But you said one three-fourths, not one and three-fourths.”

“Did not!” I rolled my eyes at him, gesturing to the laminated recipe card in my hand. “I read it from right here. See? One and—”

“Okay, okay.” He poured flour into the cups, shaking them to make sure it was flat on top before dumping them into the large mixing bowl. Peering into it, he took a testing sniff. Of course, he then sneezed, though he at least managed to turn away and bury his face in his elbow before doing so.

“Jesus Christ, Matt. Could you not sneeze on the cake mix? No one wants your spit in their food.”

“I didn’t. I sneezed into my arm.”

“Why did you get so close to smell the dry ingredients? Come to think of it, what possessed you to smell them in the first place?”

He walked over to the refrigerator, pulling open the door. “I thought something smelled off, but it’s the milk in the fridge. It’s been off for... mm, about two hours,” he said after a pause and another sniff.

“Grab the eggs while you’re at it, please. And your nose seriously freaks me out sometimes.”

He pulled out the carton of eggs and brought it to the counter, then turned his head to study my face. Those golden-yellow eyes of his ran over my features slowly, and a tiny smile tugged at one corner of his mouth.

“What?” I raised an eyebrow at him, huffing a long, dark curl out of my face.

Matthias reached up and cupped my face, running his thumb along my cheekbone. “You’ve got baking powder on you.”

Well, damn. I’d thought I was annoyed with him, but I couldn’t even remember why—not when he did that. I leaned into his warm hand, nuzzling it.

He laughed and swiped his thumb over my cheek once more. “You’re like a cat.”

“That’s why you love to chase me,” I said with a smirk, turning my head to nip at the tip of his thumb. His reflexes could have easily dodged it, but he let me bite him, grinning the whole time.

“That I do,” he agreed, letting go of my face with his hand, though his gaze didn’t leave it. I knew that expression in

his eyes. It promised me all sorts of deliciously debaucherous things. I shivered involuntarily, then narrowed my eyes at him. “Down, boy. We have a cake to make.”

“We could buy one from Laurent’s Bakerie,” he replied, his voice lowering to the point that there was a rumble in his throat. God, when hespoke like that...

“Matt!” I turned away, flustered, though I couldn’t get rid of the ridiculous grin on my face. “I want Anna to have a homemade cake for her birthday. It’s not as special if we just drop money on it.” I glanced over my shoulder to see him still watching me, looking amused. “What now?”

“You know I can smell your reactions.”

It took me a second to realize what he meant. I scowled at him, squeezing my thighs together, as if that would help. “You’re incorrigible. Go get the cocoa powder.”

“I’m allergic to chocolate.”

That caught me off guard even more than anything else he’d said. I opened my mouth, then closed it, then twisted up my face in confusion. “You’re what?”

“Chocolate’s poisonous to me,” he replied.

“Wait, like a dog?”

It was his turn to scowl, crossing his arms over his chest. “Like a werewolf, Lie.”

“So you can’t touch the container, or...?”

He sighed and uncrossed his arms, going to the cabinet to root around. Finally, he brought back the cocoa powder, as well as a can of cream cheese frosting.

“Oh, I was going to make homemade frost—”

He’d already opened it and stuck his finger inside, scooping up a tipful of the frosting, which he pressed against my lips, cutting me off mid-word. Automatically, I opened my mouth, and he smirked as I closed my lips around his finger.

Jesus, that was goodfrosting.

“Good girl,” he said, his smirk turning devilish. Oh, you bastard.

“Happy birthday, Anna!” I squeezed her shoulder, then handed her a fork and plate.

Matthias kissed her cheek and grabbed a plate for himself, moving to stand behind me.

“Wow, this cake is really good,” said Anna, taking a big bite. “Where’d it come from?”

I heard Matt’s little snort behind me as I gave Anna a bright smile. “Laurent’s Bakerie! Best cakes in town!”

FANTASY

FORGET ME NEVER

by Laurie Hilburn

“His eyes were the blue of the forget-me-not, and of a profound melancholy, save when he was plunging his hook into you. . . . He was never more sinister than when he was most polite.”

J.M. Barrie, Peter and Wendy, the inspiration for this story

Captain James Hook, edge still earning him more than a crown ever could. Out of all of his bastard children, Beatrice was the only one to bow and bide her time.

Gerard was clever, but he could never put his intelligence to proper use, too distracted by sparkling baubles, ancient treasure maps, and impatient harlots. Caxton was blunt, bludgeoning where there should have been deft precision, while his twin Hawes could slice through anything were he not such a spineless whelp, too afraid to complete the cut. Oswin was confident and conceited, thinking himself the main character and never once considering what lurked outside his purview. Though Stroud schemed and scavenged in the shadows, he refused to leave them, rendered impotent by relying on the inept to do his work. And Thormond was a formidable boy at over six feet yet a boy he was and always would be, muscle and might not enough to inspire competent thought, as dim and unreliable as the flickering lamps that decorated Skull Rock Harbor.

Then, there was Beatrice. The only girl. The only daughter. The only bastard who knew better.

Though not strictly defined as a whoreson like the boys, Beatrice still grew up under Hook’s patronage, or what counted for it. As pirate king of Neverland, he saw to his scions as much as he saw to his mistresses: when it afforded him great pleasure and admiration. With a malicious rhythm, Hook would return from plundering with ravaged trophies, wilder women from the Neverland Plains to forest nymphs found in the Neverwood, and he would keep them until they bore his fruit, his legacy, his retribution.

Beatrice was schooled alongside her brothers, taught strategy and politics like her brothers, learned to fight and fence with her brothers—against her brothers. In exchange, Smee paraded each of them around the Jolly Roger and other brigs throughout the Neverseas as evidence of Hook’s laudable progeniture, his ability to shift and shape even the inferior to greatness, and to guarantee—to make sure everyone knew and saw with their own eyes—that Neverland would never go without a Hook to lead their wretched souls.

But he never showed them off so much as to emphasize his mortality. They were still bastard children, after all, and he, their king.

When once more, for the last time, the scoundrel from the sky crowed in victory— when the crocodile, always in the periphery, scented something red and familiar, consuming the screaming meal it had so long ago

been denied—when the purged remains, meat and bone and one iron hook, sank into the gray depths of the sea, the very one he had for so long claimed as his—the degenerates of Skull Rock Harbor turned to Hook’s bastard children. The unthinkable had occurred. With broken cries, they begged for protection from feral lost boys, shaman trickery, starved mermaids, fairy bewitchment—from the perpetual, unrelenting life of Neverland. Please.

And after Beatrice took her dagger and slit each brother’s throat, one by one, slick and succulent, she crowned herself. Not as bastard, not as daughter, not even as Hook, crooked and cursed by a ticking clock, but as a new name altogether under the skull-and-crossbones flag.

Captain Beatrice Dagger, edge still wet with blood.

ASTERIUS

by Zenia deHaven

The stylus bled black rivers in its wake as it danced across the papyrus. Its wielder’s eyebrows knitted together in a furrow, like a peasant girl’s wretched attempt at sewing. Huffing, the man sat back. The nubs of the wicker chair’s legs squeaked against the stone floor. He inhaled, breathing in the soft musk of night and old parchment, and rested his palm on the drawing. His pointed finger landed on an inky mark like a ship dropping anchor. The torchlight burned crimson and gold behind his eyelids, but the man ignored it. The study vanished like a drop of blood in a pool. He stood in a bleak corridor. The ceiling above his head stretched so high it might have brushed the base of Mount Olympus itself. The man raced down the hallways, counting his turns, retreating when he met a dead end. Left, right, left, left, dead end, back, right. His gaze was sharper than a hawk’s as he searched for a sliver of daylight that heralded his escape from the underground labyrinth. Then, sooner than he would have liked, he found it. There was a bronze door at the end of a long corridor, its edges shimmering with the promise of sunlight.

Daedalus opened his eyes and sighed, burying his face in his wrinkled hands.

Notgoodenough.

He scratched his beard and hurled the scroll aside, where it amalgamated with its brethren of bastard sketches beside his desk. He ran a hand through his mop of gray curls, untangling some of the knots with the crooks of his fingers. His chair groaned as he rose, pacing back and forth in his study that was barely larger than a weapon cupboard. The room was windowless, but he didn’t mind. His walls were overrun with sketches of his inventions, so windows would have been an inconvenience, with their natural light washing out the parchment ink. Some of the scrolls displayed grand ships with furling sails and majestic figureheads of sirens and goddesses and kings at their prow, inspiring her crew and driving terror into the hearts of her enemies. Daedalus chuckled at one sheet he had forgotten about, plucking it off the wall. His son had scribbled soldiers onto the ship’s deck, each equipped with an impressively large sword, ax, or bow. Every soldier’s smile expanded beyond the lines of their misshapen faces. Thankfully, Daedalus had shown this idea to the shipbuilder prior to his son’s creative additions.

He pinned the drawing back on with the others, noticing an older sketch of a weapon that King Minos had requested. “Requested” wasn’t quite the right word, as Daedalus would have had his head separated from his shoulders if he had refused. He had forged an ax so sharp that it cleaved through chainmail like butter. After fastening the blade onto a body that perfectly counterbalanced its weight, he delivered it to the king. He remembered kneeling on the cold floor before the king of Crete’s throne, his aging knees barking in protest. His eyes were locked downward, his strong arms held the ax high above his head in offering. Though he wasn’t privy to Minos’s reaction, he heard the onlookers gasp at the expert craft of the ax, and he stifled a smile. Minos deemed the weapon worthy of his kingliness and named it “Thunderclap” in honor of his godly sire, Zeus.

The blade is sharper than the wielder, Daedalus thought.

His gaze drifted to a sheet of parchment so old that the edges wrinkled like the cheeks of a smiling old woman. It

was a crude drawing of a saw, with jagged, uneven teeth designed for chewing through tree trunks. Rudimentary, of course, but not inconsiderable, especially considering it had been created not by himself, but his nephew.

Shame gripped Daedalus’s heart as the memory rushed his mind before he could close the floodgates.

“Ibasediton afish,see!”Talussaid,bouncingon hisheels as he handed Daedalus the paper. “I was eating salmon, the one we get from the market, and noticed how sharp its spine was. It made me think, if we made a big version of that—” he spread his ten-year-old arms out wide for demonstration, “we could make a tool! Something to help cut trees, or anythingreally!”

Daedalusfrownedattheillustration,feigningdisapproval, but the idea was sound,especially for one as young Talus. They stood just outside his ocean cabin, which perched on the edge of Mount Acropolis. The ocean waves hissed againstthemountainhundredsoffeetbelowastheycontinuallycrashedintoitsstonysurfacebeforeretreatingback intoPoseidon’srealm.Daedaluslovedtheocean.Thesalty airkissinghisskinhelpedrejuvenateoldideasandadvance his current works-in-progress. He loved to watch Helios’s chariot drag the sun to the edge of the water, bleeding into the ocean with moltengold. Thewhisper of the waves against the cliffsidesung him to sleep, untilrecently, when his fool of a brother insisted that he take Talus under his wing for an apprenticeship.

He looked back at his nephew, whose mousy hair whipped wildly as the sea breeze funneled around them. This was not the first sketch Talus had created during his stay, but rather anotherimpressive addition to hisgrowing collection.Theboyhadagift,therewas no doubtaboutit.If he continued toperfect his craft, hemay even rival Daedalusoneday.

Orsurpass him.

The thought bloomed something rotten and hideous in Daedalus’s mind, and he crumpled the parchment in a clenched fist.

Daedalus rubbed his eyes until red and green fireworks burst across his vision, forcing him back to the present. He kept the sketch of the saw as a painful reminder, but sometimes the pain was too much for him to bear, especially in moments of frustration like now.

His recent sketches were dedicated to different variations of cages. His latest design was a set of reinforced iron bars that stood so firm that they could withstand the impact of a rushing chariot or the brute force of a charging bull. The expanding pile at his feet taunted him for his repeated failed attempts at designing his most ambitious project yet. He was tempted to throw them all into the fireplace and watch as they shriveled and died.

From the hall beyond his open door, he heard rapid panting, the slap of bare soles on stone floors, and then Icarus tumbled into the room, the firelight bouncing prisms off his sweat-beaded cheeks. Sand dusted his knees and palms. His chestnut hair was unkempt and matted with dirt, his sandals strung together by bare threads.

“Father!” Icarus gasped, then paused, doubling over as he sucked in air. His small shoulders rose and fell, and, in his frenzy, his toga had slipped off his shoulder. Daedalus knelt by his son and readjusted it as he recovered from his feverish sprint.

“Thank you, father,” he said, his hands still clasping his

knees, trembling.

“Put your hands behind your head,” Daedalus said, locking his fingers behind his head as an example. “And then breathe.”

Icarus looked up, his eyes narrowing as he studied the gesture. He mimicked his father, inhaling deeply, then exhaling. The redness slowly drained from his face like a river receding after a long drought.

“Thank you,” he said once his heart stopped galloping in his chest. A smile stretched across his chapped lips. “The tournament was incredible!”

Icarus’s energy was so electric that Daedalus worried his papyrus would catch fire from his enthusiasm alone. His son’s bubbling energy reminded him achingly of Talus, and, for a heartbeat, his nephew stood before him, frowning at the cold expression on his uncle’s face when he had anticipated praise.

Daedalus clasped Icarus’s hands, trying desperately to anchor himself to reality. He noticed scratches on his fingers and turned his hands over, searching for abrasions or broken skin.

“Who won the races?” he said, mostly to distract himself from slipping back into his past. Thankfully, Icarus jumped on his question, as his passion for athletics was unrivaled.

“Deucalion was in the lead,” he said, the words tumbling out of his mouth like wine sweeping from a pitcher’s lips. “But on the last lap, Androgeus threw a spear and broke one of the wheels of Deucalion’s chariot! He was not happy. He left even though he still won second place.”

“Did you enjoy yourself?” he asked, letting Icarus’s hands drop to his sides. The cuts were hardly skin-deep, but he wouldn’t lose his child to something as avoidable as an infection from a rogue shard of glass or metal.

hours of the night that he still had to himself. Though his grip on a stylus remained steadfast, his fingers ached from the tension.

“Yes!” Icarus said. “You must come next time! Please?”

Daedalus resisted the itch to glance back at the pile of failed designs lurking beside his desk. Icarus’s eyes were wide with a childish plea, the torchlight bouncing in his brown irises like twin suns.

“King Minos has given me a great task, my boy,” he said, the words feeling hollow on his tongue.

“You’re alwaysworking,” Icarus complained, crossing his arms over his small chest in a proud pout. “Won’t he let you rest? His soldiers were at the tourney today.”

“I’m not a soldier,” Daedalus said, though his son wasn’t wrong. He had spent months slaving over this labyrinth, holed up in his study as he racked his brilliant mind for a solution. He couldn’t remember the last time he walked the palace gardens or dueled with Icarus with wooden sticks in the strawberry fields. His tongue couldn’t recall the taste of the salty ocean air, and his skin was pale and leathery from the months locked away from the reach of sunlight.

Though he was only in his forties, the years of constant labor and stress under Minos’s roof had withered away at his body and spirit. His joints creaked like unoiled door hinges when he groaned out of bed in the morning. The ghosts of his past visited him in his sleep, disrupting the

His physical and emotional torment had worsened since Minos bestowed him the task of containing the monster prowling beneath Crete’s floors.

“How about this,” Daedalus knelt by Icarus, resting his weary hands on the boy’s shoulders. “After I finish this project, I’ll take time off. A whole month. How does that sound?”

Icarus beamed. “Yes!” His lips parted to speak, possibly to list the various athletic events they would spectate together, when a voice interrupted him from beyond the study’s door.

“The queen demands your presence,” the guard said. He stood in the doorframe, his shoulders drawn and his armored hand clutching a ribboned halberd. His armor was so shiny that Daedalus could’ve used it as a bronze mirror.

He ignored the guard.

“I have to work,” he said to Icarus. “I will see you at dinner.”

Icarus nodded, excitement still radiating from his youthful face, and dashed past the guard, who blinked in surprise as the boy skirted past his knees.

Daedalus stood, wincing from the movement.

“If her highness says she wants to fuck another bull, I ask

Daedalus by Miles Jacobsen

few

that you kill me with that.” Daedalus nodded his head at the halberd.

The journey to the throne room was silent. The guard’s glistening armor clinked and clanked with each step, and the noise made Daedalus speculate if he could design heavy armor suited for stealth. This man couldn’t have ambushed a deaf satyr if he tried. The poor boy had balked at his crass tone towards the queen, and Daedalus guessed that he was too stunned to strike up conversation. The grotesque story of Queen Pasiphaë’s lust for the bull was now commonplace amongst Crete, though most pretended to ignore it in fear of Minos’s wrath. Some drunken guards were overheard to joke about wearing bull horns and crawling on all fours around the queen in hopes to entice her, and their heads were found on pikes in front of the palace grounds the next morning.

Though, while the queen’s intermingling with the bull was public knowledge, the byproduct of their union remained a hushed secret.

Daedalus heard the commotion in the dining hall before he saw it. High lords and soldiers and charioteers were now deep in their cups, celebrating the tournament’s spectacle with songs, cheers, and japes. Daedalus spotted Androgeus, one of Minos’s sons, in the throng of the gathering, surrounded by inebriated lords and long-lashed prostitutes. Everyone in the hall seemed desperate to have a word with the victorious prince, squeezing in and shoving each other in hopes to be graced by his royal presence. Daedalus was impressed that Androgeus found time in between conversations to sip his wine. His brother, Deucalion, wasn’t present. Icarus sat at a table with younger princes and sons of high lords. His garb was plain, he bore no sigil and wore no crown, but his charisma was enough for the elite boys to forget about his lowborn status. As Daedalus watched, Icarus reenacted Androgeus’s victory over his brother. He hooted as the imaginary spear shattered the unseen chariot and he bowed to his captive audience. The other boys clapped, showering Icarus with grapes in lieu of flowers and wreaths.

Daedalus smiled at the sight but marched past the festivities with his stern guard.

Two seasoned soldiers stood proudly on either side of the throne room doors. They sprawled from the floor to the ceiling, their dark oak embroidered by golden script. If the men recognized Daedalus from his near two decades of servitude, they didn’t show it. His guard gave them a rigid nod, and they returned the gesture, swinging the grumbling doors open.

The king and queen of Crete sat in their respective thrones, and neither of them were happy. Minos was dressed for an evening of entertaining his favorite lords and sons, not political formalities with his wife. He wore a loose tunic and rested a sheathed sword across his knees. As Daedalus approached, he adjusted the golden crown that rested upon his square head.

child born of a union between the sun titan Helios and a sea nymph, her beauty was undeniable. Her shimmering hair caught the light of her father’s sun in the day, and, at night, it seemed aglow with its own luminosity. Her red gown hugged her slim figure, and her neckline dipped generously low. She looked at Daedalus and smiled, though a sadness seeped through her beauty.

A sadness that had been born the same day that Asterius tore from her womb.

“Your highnesses,” Daedalus said, bowing. The motion sent a small spasm up his back, but he bit his lip, suppressing the urge to cry out. He stood tall, releasing the pain slightly. “You have summoned me, my queen?”

Pasiphaë nodded, her rose lips parting to speak, but her husband interrupted her.

“This can’t wait till morning?” Minos was glaring at her. His hand was wrapped around the sword’s hilt, his knuckles white from his tight grip.

“No,” she said, her voice lighter than a whispering stream. She didn’t look at Minos, who was seething with the fury of an offended god. “I have a task for you, Daedalus.”

“I apologize, but I am preoccupied with the task that King Minos has given me,” he said.

Pasiphaë was undisturbed by his response, waving aside his words with a slender hand.

“This task is related,” she said. “It’s about my son. He won’t eat.”

Daedalus’s heart plummeted into his stomach, and then down further until it dropped down into the pits of Tartarus. The memory rushed to meet him even as he tried to barricade it from his mind.

Pasiphaë screamed, clutching her swollen abdomen. Even in childbirth, she beamed like a star, but now her serene face was twisted with pain. Daedalus watched as the handmaidens rushed about her bedside, yelling commandstoeachotheroverthequeen’swails.

And suddenly she was not Pasiphaë, but Naucrate, and it was his wife contorting in pain as she struggled to push the child from her.

Shecriedagain,andDaedalus’svisioncleared.No,itwas thequeenwrithingon thebed,forNaucratewaslongdead. Thethinginsideherpushedupagainstherbelly.Something like a goat’s horn pressed up from inside of her, trying to break through her skin. Daedalus’s hand trembled as he reached for the knife.

“I agreed to help contain… him,” Daedalus said, pushing away the cursed images of childbirth from his mind. “But I asked not to interact with him.” He struggled to refer to Asterius as “him” and not “it.”

“My lord husband has asked that you design his forever home,” Pasiphaë said. “All of your labors will go to waste if he starves before the labyrinth is complete. See my gentle son and evaluate why refuses to eat.”

Let it starve , Daedalus thought, but out loud, he said, “Forgive me, my queen, but as I recall, your gentle son ripped out of your chest.”

His gaze briefly met Daedalus, but he glanced back at his wife, his shoulders drooping at the resolve in her eyes. She sat cross-legged in her throne, her blonde hair braided over her left shoulder. As the

Pasiphaë’s golden cheeks flushed pink, and Daedalus regretted the unnecessary jab at the queen the moment it left his mouth. Her reputation had been irrecoverably tarnished by no fault of her own. King Minos had requested a mighty bull from Poseidon with the promise to sacrifice it in his name. Poseidon relented. However, after Minos witnessed the bull’s striking appearance, he deemed that a sacrifice would be a pitiful waste of such an impressive creature. He killed a common bull in the name of Poseidon, hoping to fool the god of the seas into believing that his promise had remained unbroken.

If there is anything to know about the gods, it is that they offend easily and punish cruelly.

Poseidon, furious at Minos’s betrayal and subsequent deceit, cursed Pasiphaë with an unruly lust for the bull. She summoned Daedalus, demanding that he create a cowshaped apparatus from which she could pursue intimate relations with the creature. Daedalus refused, for she was clearly not in her right mind. Minos was away on a hunting trip, so he tried to stall out Pasiphaë’s distorted demands, avoiding her and her servants for days in hopes that her husband would return and pardon Daedalus from performing the task. On the sixth day, Pasiphaë threatened to slit his throat, and the inventor sighed and relented.

Months later, when the contractions began to wrack her body, she summoned Daedalus once again to assist her in the unnatural birth. He wanted to refuse her summons, desperate to distance himself from her perverse fetus and avoid reliving his own trauma after losing his wife to childbirth, but he steeled himself. It was Minos to blame for her predicament, not her, and she need not suffer further for his vanity.

After the bloody occasion, the handmaidens collapsed from exhaustion and Daedalus laid down the knife that had freed the horned creature from the womb. Pasiphaë held her son in her arms, gazing almost lovingly at it. Its furry body was golden brown, like slightly burnt bread, and already rippled with muscle. Its gray horns curved, their tips sharp enough to be dangerous, but still stubbed, not sharp enough to be a true weapon just yet. Its equine legs were curled against its belly, its cloven feet rubbing together as Pasiphaë sang a nonsensical melody. The monster’s large eyes were closed, its snout snored softly in its mother’s embrace. From afar, the babe may even resemble an ordinary human boy.

Daedalus supposed that, even though the circumstances of its birth were beyond unnatural, she had carried it within her. It had nourished in her womb, and she birthed it like the rest of her children, though if she hadn’t been immortal, the creature would have torn her to shreds. Pasiphaë named it Asterius. It meant “star.”

Sometimes Daedalus wondered if her fondness for the monster after its birth was a remnant of Poseidon’s curse, but nearly a year had passed, and a delicate sorrow gleamed in Pasiphaë’s eyes. She did love it, he decided, or she would have let it starve long ago.

Pasiphaë’s long sigh snapped Daedalus back to the present.

“You must also evaluate his strength,” she continued. “He has grown greatly powerful in the last few months. You must examine him to ensure you build something that can contain him. Do you understand?”

Daedalus recognized the soundness of the queen’s argument; it would be fruitless to labor for such a long time over a design that might not withstand the creature’s might.

“I will go,” he said. Pasiphaë leaned back in her throne, the tension in her tanned face washing away, but the traces of melancholy remained.

“Then it is done,” Minos said, his legs already braced, as if preparing to leap out of the room to enjoy the roaring celebration in the dining hall. “Go, then.”

Daedalus turned on his heel, then paused, remembering his promise to Icarus. He faced his overseers once again, swallowing his unease as he searched for the best words to make his request.

“My lieges,” he said. “It has been an honor to work for you and for the kingdom of Crete. After I discern the reason for your son’s lack of appetite and complete the labyrinth, may I have time off to spend with Icarus? He already has to grow up without a mother, I don’t want him to grow up without a father, either.”

The noble couple looked at each other. Though their marriage was by no means the happiest, they had an uncanny ability to communicate to each other through their eyes alone.

Pasiphaë spoke first.

“What happened to Naucrate was a tragedy,” she said, and her voice caught slightly. Though Naucrate was buried over a decade ago, she spoke as if the wounds were still fresh. “She was my friend before she was your wife. Should you solve Asterius’s lack of appetite and create a suitable home for him, you may have time with Icarus. He looks so much like her.”

“Yes, he does,” Daedalus said, moved by the remorse in her tone. “Thank you, your highness.” He bowed.

The queen nodded, but she was looking past him, her eyes glossy as her mind drifted into memories privy to her alone. Daedalus emerged from the throne room with a firm resolve in his heart. In his own grief, he had forgotten the closeness between Naucrate and the queen. Some said that they were nearly sisters, although Pasiphaë’s noble status cleaved them from ever being true equals. Naucrate never seemed to mind serving as her handmaid, and Pasiphaë still held her friend in the highest regard.

Naucrate’s disregard for status was probably why she agreed to marry an impoverished inventor like Daedalus.

The guard waited for him, but he was now accompanied by a tethered goat. The beast bayed at him and locked its lopsided eyes on Daedalus’s toga. He tugged against his leash, reaching to chew on the delicious fabric. Daedalus patted the doomed creature on the head, scratching the space between its horns.

“Come,” Daedalus said, pushing past the guard. “We have a monster to feed.”

As Asterius’s existence remained a secret from the general public, his current residence was deep below the palace floors, where Minos once sent prisoners to live in absolute darkness until they went mad from solitude and begged for freedom in return for secrets on the king’s rivals. In preparation for the creature’s birth, Daedalus had reinforced the prison cell with strong bars, but nobody had been prepared for the might of the bull-human child. He was fortunate that the cage had held for this long, given his progress on the labyrinth was abysmal.

The stairwell to the prison spiraled downwards and was tightly wound, intended to induce panic in captives as they descended further and further down, away from the sunlight and murmurs of civilization above. Daedalus carried a torch, its light licking the beige walls and casting warped shadows of two men and a goat against the surface. Of the three, the goat was easily the most graceful as it clopped down the steps with a natural assuredness. The guard’s armor clanked, the sounds of metal rubbing metal ricocheting against the stairwell walls. By the time they reached the prison door, Daedalus’s knees were throbbing, and the back of his tunic was sticky with sweat.

Daedalus breathed heavily before the barred door, inhaling the musty, underground

air as he prepared himself for the beast that lurked beyond. The young guard was unfazed by the countless downward steps, his smooth face stern, not yielding any sign of fear. Or perhaps he was too young to understand terror; his armor was spectacularly clean; he was likely untested by the horrors of battle. He might have been Talus’s age if he was still alive.

What if Daedalus couldn’t create this inescapable labyrinth that Minos had ordered? What if he became another Sisyphus, constantly striving for an impossible goal, only to lose all of his progress when he realized his sketch was another failure, another parchment to be burned?

If Daedalus didn’t have his mind, what was he?

It was this dangerous line of thinking that doomed him nearly twenty years ago.

Daedalus glared at Talus, this boy who had undergone barely a few weeks of instruction and already challenged him in craftsmanship and creativity. He was born from the loinsofhisidiotbrother,whocouldn’tdiscernaspoon froma trebuchet, andyet hisoffspringpossessed an almost demigod-like intuition. Should he continue toexpand histalents, he would be renowned not just in Greece, but throughout theentireworld.Hewas handsome,charming,andwitty,all featuresthatappealedtogodsandmortalsalike.He would become the gods’ preferred moral inventor, and Daedalus wouldbeshovedintotheshadowsofobscurity.Forgotten.

Ina fitofrage, hisvisionringedwithwrithingpoolsofred,

Daedaluspushed Talus off theedge ofAcropolis.

The undiluted terror in hisnephew’seyes as he stumbled backwards would haunt Daedalus for as long as he lived. Talus’s arms flailed forth, trying desperately to regain his balanceandcease hisfall,butitwas toolate.Ashetumbled fromthemountainpeak,hisfrightfulcrypiercingtheserene hiss of the ocean against the cliffside, a blindingpillar shot down from the heavens. The boy froze mid-fall, his limbs spread awkwardly, hands still arced to grasp whatever handholdthatmay save him.Talus’sbodycontorted,folding over itself like a potter molding wet clay, and a new shape emerged from the light, one much smaller and rounder than the boy he had been heartbeats earlier. A partridge, its white feathers the shade of the cumulusclouds,flapped out of the beam. It fluttered about for a moment, its bobbed head flicking between the cliffside and the ocean, before catching the air current and drifting away, and Daedalus wouldneverseeTalusagain.

A voice erupted in Daedalus’s mind with such violence that he fell to the ground, his hands pressed over his ears as if that would alleviate the pain. The voice was female, andthough he had never encountered her before, he knew itto bethatofthegoddessAthena,thegoddessofwisdom, craft, and warfare.

“Daedalus,” she said, each word striking his mind like a mallet against a gong. He thought he was screaming, but the voice of the goddess suffocated everything: his voice, the crashing waves, the whispers of the wind. “You are banished from Athens on my authority. Ifyou ever return, I will smiteyou. Ionlyspare you foryour talents as a craftsman is undeniable, but your crime against your own blood is unforgivable.Begone,kinslayer.”

Though Athena was more calculated than her brother Ares, whose temper had ignited more wars than anyone could count, her frigid judgment was even more terrifying than her trigger-happy sibling. Daedalus left Athens, leaving behind all of his work and everything he’d ever known, except for Talus’s sketch, the only remnant of his former life. He looked for work, seeking a lord that would offer him food and shelter in return for his craft. Several recognized his name and tried to wrangle him into their service for mere scraps, but Daedalus had refused. He knew his worth, and, even now, refused to suffer a blow to his reputation by working for a meager governor with hardly any land to his name. Eventually, the clothes on Daedalus’s back became uncomfortably loose and his stomach growled ever louder in yearning, and he was running out of options. He arrived on King Minos’s doorstep as the shadow of the proud inventor that had embarked from Athens, but Minos had heard of Daedalus’s ingenuity, and accepted him.

And thus, Crete had become his begrudging home for the last fifteen years.

It wasn’t all terrible, Daedalus conceded. He had fallen madly in love with the queen’s silver-eyed handmaiden, a fair woman named Naucrate, who, for reasons beyond his comprehension, agreed to wed a wretched man like him. She had died on the childbed, her eyes gazing lovingly at Daedalus as the last breath sighed from her lips. He had held their son in his arms, his own flesh and blood, but the babe was a stranger to him. In that moment, he had wished Athena had destroyed him and sent his soul straight into Hades rather than bear the grief that ravaged him that day.

“Come on, you dumb thing,” the guard said, trying to nudge the ill-fated goat towards the barred door. Perhaps it smelled something unnatural in its wake because the creature was straining against its leash, trying to scurry back up the stairwell to safety beyond.

“Ugh, fine,” the young man groaned, scooping the baying goat into his ironclad arms. “Let’s go.”

With his free hand, he unlocked the door, and it swung open with an ease that sent gooseflesh down Daedalus’s neck.

The entire prison had been converted into one massive cage. In between the threshold of the opened door and the cage that bore Asterius, there was an extra set of bars so that the unfortunate guard assigned to feed the monster could shove whatever doomed animal inside without being consumed themselves. The torchlight illuminated several meters in front of them, but its light wasn’t powerful enough to expose the entire length of the room. The monster was nowhere to be seen. Daedalus listened for it, perhaps for rugged breaths like those of a seething bull, but the only sound disrupting the tense silence were the panicked cries of the goat, now thrashing in the guard’s arms.

“Go on,” the guard said, and tossed the creature into the makeshift feeding cage, slamming the door shut before it could escape. The goat butted its horns against the bars, but the man ignored it. He tugged on a pulley, removing the barrier between the goat and the monster that waited in the shadows.

But Asterius didn’t appear.

The two men waited for some time for the creature to claim its meal, but nothing moved in the darkness. The goat continued bashing its head against the enclosure, but even it grew tired and eventually rested, sitting down. The minutes crept past, and while Daedalus’s concern mounted with each thundering heartbeat, the younger man’s impatience was simmering. He shifted from foot to foot, annoyance weighing his brow as he stared harder into the cage, as if that would encourage the monster to emerge. Perhaps, like Minos, he wanted to rejoin the party upstairs rather than handle these grizzly matters.

Eventually, he huffed in annoyance, lowering the barrier between the cage and the exterior.

“Maybe pushing the goat closer will make it come out,” he said. He stepped inside the cage, keeping the goat from escaping with his body when it tried to dash past him.

Daedalus noticed then that the barrier between Asterius’s prison and the feeding cage had been damaged. The film was dented, its edges not quite sliding into its slot, as if something had continually rammed into it with brute force.

“Wait!” Daedalus cried, but he was too late.

Like something out of a nightmare, the creature came crashing through the broken barrier, tearing through it headfirst as if it were made of papyrus rather than solid steel. With unimaginable speed, the humanoid shape grabbed the guard’s arm, its yellow eyes boring into the young man’s panicked face. And just as quickly as it appeared, it vanished back into the darkness, dragging the screaming guard back with him.

Daedalus stared into the shadows, his mouth agape with shock. There were terrible, wet, snapping sounds from deep inside the room, accented by bloodcurdling howls from the man, until finally there was a resounding crunch , and his shrieks ceased. The moist noises of tearing continued, as well as lowly grunts that sounded like the beast itself. Like a human baby who outgrew their mother’s milk and yearned for solid food, Asterius’s appetite surpassed animals. He now craved human flesh.

The bars between Daedalus and the monster remained

intact. The goat was now completely silent, though unharmed by the monster’s swift attack, it trembled. Asterius had wanted the man; he had learned that each of his meals was accompanied by a human. He had destroyed the barrier just enough to be unnoticeable by the untrained eye, but frail enough that he could crumple it with one blow and snatch away his human dinner before the unfortunate guard had an opportunity to react.

Asterius had not only grown powerful, but more intelligent. Daedalus wasn’t sure which was more terrifying. And despite his own fear, he wanted to see the beast himself.

“Asterius?” Daedalus said, his voice a whisper drifting along the stone floor.

He received no response; did he expect one? Even if Asterius had the capacity to speak, how would he pick up a language when he was locked so far away from civilization and the life that continued above him, unaware of his existence? Was the creature even aware of what he was? That he was neither animal nor man, but a cursed hybrid that neither group would ever accept?

There was shuffling in the darkness, and Asterius appeared in the torchlight.

Daedalus had expected the beast to approach on all fours like a beast, but he walked like a man. Though just over a year old, he was nearly as tall as an adult male. His legs were furred and ended with bull-like hooves, similar to those of a satyr, but while satyrs were lithe and nimble, Asterius was built like a warrior. His humanoid torso was bare and corded with muscle. His golden skin and fur reminded Daedalus of Pasiphaë. Though his head was entirely that of a bull, intelligence flickered from his dark irises.

Blood dribbled from his maw onto the base of his neck, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand.

He observed Daedalus for a moment, and he wondered if the creature would remember him. He had delivered him into this world, after all. But that was a foolish thought, and Daedalus shook his head free of it.

Asterius then looked to the goat, his large head tilting to one side, as if in curiosity. The goat, still shaking like a frail leaf in a whirlwind, offered him a terrified “beh?” in return.

To Daedalus’s utter disbelief, Asterius knelt by the quivering creature, folding his bull legs under his human chest. With a large, human hand, he stroked the goat’s head, itching its temple. The goat froze for a moment, as if expecting Asterius to wrap his hands around its throat and snap the life from its body, but the monster showed no signs of aggression. After several minutes of Asterius petting its head, scratching its side, each gesture so unexpectedly gentle, the goat relaxed, nestling its head on his lap.

Asterius looked to Daedalus again, and raised his chin, as if in challenge. Suddenly, he didn’t see a monster, but a boy who would grow up without parents who loved him. He saw a child whose entire existence was doomed because a vain king offended a prideful god.

He saw the terror in Talus’s face when Daedalus succumbed to his fear of failure.

He saw the disappointment in Icarus frown when Daedalus chose his work over him.

In Asterius, he saw the nephew he had failed and the son he was failing.

Pity almost wrapped around Daedalus’s heart until the torchlight danced against the human blood dripping from Asterius’s snout.

Daedalus left him then, still petting the goat with painstaking tenderness, and he wondered if Asterius had ever experienced love since the day he was born, cradled in his mother’s arms.

THE FAERIE QUEENS

by Clarissa Janeen

Said Seelie to Unseelie Queen, “What calls you to my court?” Unseelie said, “There’s one small thing which I would like to sort.

“You call yourselves the Seelie, say you’re happy, lucky, blessed. But when I bring up these few points, you’ll see you’re not the best.

“Your people treasure beauty fair from birds to butterflies. But I say that you all are vain, your goodness is disguise.”

The Seelie said, “What makes it sin to treasure nature so?

To see all that is beautiful, admiring the show?

“But you, my foe, are not as dark and vicious as you seem. Your court is open to all things That would cause us to scream.”

“It’s true,” said the Unseelie Queen. “They’re present in my court, From spiders to the scorpions, We welcome all their sort.

“You give us too much credit, though,” she said after she paused, “For we care not for any harm that our court may have caused.”

“You’re gracious and you’re merciful,” the Seelie Queen replied.

The other queen just clicked her tongue. “We care for our own hide.”

The Seelie Queen thought long and hard. “But that is not quite true. When humans venture on your land, What then do you all do?

“You join to teach them justice and unite your hearts as one.”

The other queen just shook her head. “What sweetness you have spun. “Our methods are more often cruel; our victims rare deserve. There is no type of punishment which we choose to reserve.

“Meanwhile,” the queen continued on, “You infiltrate their lair. Without asking, you clean the place, pretending you’re not there—”

“We would call that integrity.” “. . . But if they cause a rift, even if it’s unknowingly, Your vengeful hand is swift.”

“Perhaps we are a bit like you,” the Seelie Queen agreed.

“But you’re a bit like us as well, on that, can we concede?”

“How so?” asked the Unseelie Queen. “Well, you’re a last resort to any desperate mortal who might call upon your court.”

“It isn’t out of pity, though,” laughed the Unseelie Queen. “We prey upon their dire state, Concocting our own scheme.”

The Seelie sat and pondered this then said, “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps you all are truly cruel and filled with naught but spite.”

The other queen just smiled at her. “Think of us what you will. ’Twas kind of you to try and find some goodness in us still.”

THINDELUS

by Clarissa Janeen

Dear Thindelus,

By now you must realize I am not at home. What was so pressing as to merit you breaking into my tower eludes me, yet here you stand. If you were dedicated enough to spend what must have been at least 30 minutes dispelling my door enchantments, then I must assume that either someone has fallen gravely ill (If it is Mrs. Quiggleby, I send my deepest condolences. If it was Harold Rootwhisker, good riddance to him. The man couldn’t recite a spell properly if the spellbook read itself aloud for him to repeat—I would know, I saw him try.), or you have come to finish me off yourself.

Oh, now, don’t look so offended. We’ve both tried to slip each other the occasional poisoned scone. And don’t think I’m unaware of the time you tried to enchant my shoes to carry me off the nearest cliffside when we were both eyeing that Council opening. (And if anyone asks, I was not responsible for dear Eggsmith’s unfortunate curse which opened the position in the first place.)

But that’s all water under the bridge now. We’ve each risen well in our respective stations as highly appraised members of the Council of Mages. You know I could only ever hold you in the highest of respects and lowest of tango dips, though I expect I lost my ability to execute the latter several decades ago. My back never fully recovered after that incident with the griffins—which of course I needn’t rehash since I’m sure you remember it all too well, as I do. Your nose certainly hasn’t been the same since.

If you absolutely must know where I am, I’m afraid I must say I shall not be found at my tower again, nor do I expect shall I be found in Stanthion ever again. I daresay, though I reached a lucrative position on the council, I shall not miss Thornard’s endless babbling about how we ought to allocate a team of mages to look into the mysterious phenomenon of Leprechaun mucus.

So if you were hoping to get back the bottle of troll dust I borrowed, I’m afraid I had to take it with me. As you know, it makes for an excellent portal conductor. For you see, I have left this land entirely and have gone off in search of what may well be my final expedition. My search for the wonders and mysteries of this universe have led me to investigate another realm entirely. Even if I survive, I doubt I shall endeavor to make the journey back to Stanthion. These woods have few remaining secrets to me. But don’t fret, my friend, I have no doubt the woods will continue to elude you for some time to come.

I don’t intend to tell you which realm I have run off to, as it’s hardly worth the trouble it would take for you to come looking for me. I’m sure whatever pressing matter that you’ve politely barged into my tower for can get by without my expertise. And if not, I have no doubt the woods will sort themselves out even if the mages have been obliterated.

Feel free to take whatever materials I left behind that you didn’t already steal from me before picking this letter up. You’ll note a revised version of my grimoire on my nightstand. I expect Geoffrey, the brownie who has a habit of tidying up my tower, will be pleased that I am no longer making a mess of the place. (Though I would check your pockets before you leave, as he may try to hitch a ride with you.)

I wish you the best of luck on whatever malady has you burgling my tower.

Sincerely,

Magthorn the Magnificent

P.S. On the rare chance that it was good news you were coming to share, there’s a bottle of brandy in the top cupboard on the left.

1st

Adventure Call to Fantasy Contest GOLDTRACE

by Zenia deHaven

There was a golden man who lived in the dungeon. “Lived” might not be the correct term, as his home was patrolled by sneering, halberd-wielding men. The man “lived” here as much as a parasite “lived” in its host. He was fed scraps through the thick, magically reinforced bars of his cell. He ate more like a vulture than a man, tearing the meat from the bones with his square teeth. His gulps of satisfaction echoed throughout the cavernous prison. The squelching sound haunted the guards long after they left their posts. His animalistic grunts followed them from the dungeon and into their uneasy dreams.

Nobody in the kingdom knew who, or rather what , the golden man was. He was man-shaped, with two legs, two arms, five fingers and five toes, a flat face, and wispy hair, but he was not man-natured. He walked with a stoop as if an invisible force were pressing down on the nape of his neck, forcing him to hunch forward like an ogre. His eyes were deep-set in his angular face and darker than a moonless night. Though his hands were undeniably manshaped, his nails were thick and brown, with a texture more like wood than cartilage.

And, of course, his skin was golden. It shined like the hue of a gold coin that had traded too many hands. The man looked as if he were dipped in a bath of molten gold.

His skin was bubbly like toad flesh.

He was a prisoner when the king’s father ruled, the king’s grandfather, and his great-grandfather before that, all the way through the line of succession to the very first man who declared himself ruler. The reason for the golden man’s imprisonment was a mystery, but a glance at his crocodile grin was evidence enough to believe that whatever the reason was, it was a good one.

The sentries rotated every night, with no man remaining in earshot of the golden prisoner for longer than a day. The last time a soldier watched him for two nights, he went mad. The guard descended into the prison to relieve his comrade from his post and found the golden man unguarded. The cell was intact, but the man was missing.

The golden man licked his fingers as he looked at the panicking soldier.

“I think your friend got hungry,” he purred.

They found the missing sentry in the kitchens. He was slathered with honey. He had doused himself with every stash. The amber liquid dripped from his metallic uniform. He dashed around the room, leaping over tables, knocking over pots and dishes and jars, leaving a golden, sticky trail in his wake. All the while, he shouted ancient songs as loud as his vocal cords would allow. These songs were unsung for centuries. There was no way this young man had ever heard them, much less recite them perfectly in the Old Language.

His fellow soldiers tried to restrain him, but after several failed attempts, the head chef’s impatience boiled over. He slammed a pan over the disturbed man’s head, and he collapsed like a sack of flour. When he came to, he blinked as if awakening from a befuddling dream. He had no recollection of dowsing himself in pounds of honey (though the head chef appeared skeptical by his claim). The guard said he remembered standing before the jail cell and then regaining consciousness in the infirmary.

No incidents like the crazed honey-coated man occurred in some generations. The golden man spent his hours slouched against the humid stone wall, his eyes closed, humming hymns to himself that were long forgotten to the rest of the world.

Waiting.

On the night the princess was born, the golden man smiled for the first time in living memory.

No one had told him that the king and queen were expecting a child, and he didn’t hear or see the golden fireworks that heralded the arrival of the beautiful baby girl, but somehow, he knew.

And he began to scream.

The sound was so terrible that it brought the kingdom to its knees. It traveled up from the dungeon, bouncing off the stairwell, and shot through the castle into the world beyond. Even solid stone didn’t falter its crusade. Any unfortunate soul who heard it crippled over in pain. It felt as if a parasite had wormed into their brain and leisurely chewed on the lining of their skull. Soldiers stuffed their helmets with fabric in an effort to stay sane. Citizens in the surrounding city began to wrap cloth around their ears in a vain attempt to mute the sound. Scheming merchants

thrived on a new booming business for “magical” headscarves that were specially designed to muffle the screaming (they didn’t help one bit). Even leagues away from the city, farmers cringed from pounding headaches as they toiled in their fields.

The newborn princess did not sleep for the first five days of her life, her tiny fists clenched over her ears, her mouth open in a cry that nobody heard.

The king and queen were desperate to silence the golden man without opening the cell door and risking his escape. Sorcerers were summoned. Wizards dispersed their wisdom at a high fee. Blacksmiths installed supposedly soundproof mechanisms in the prison. Nothing, no magic or steel, could stop the sound.

Finally, the king, his eyes rimmed with black bags, asked the man what he wanted.

The golden man closed his mouth, and the brief moment of respite made the whole kingdom sigh in relief.

“Let me see the princess,” he said. “And I will stop.”

Though the queen was reluctant to allow her firstborn anywhere near the prisoner, she couldn’t deny the reprieve she experienced when his cries ceased. After insisting that the king bring his entire personal guard to accompany him and their daughter, she relented.

The king, his squirming baby, and a dozen soldiers armed to the teeth approached the golden man. The dungeon was not intended to house a small militia, so the men stood with their shoulders pressed together. The sight was almost comedic if everyone (besides the baby) didn’t look so grim.

The man peered at the child. His expression was unreadable. His taloned hands wrapped around the bars of his cell, his nails digging into his palms. If he was pained by the motion, he didn’t show it. He cocked his head like a vulture admiring a carcass, and the king resisted the urge to strike him.

Long ago, the golden man sacrificed everything he held dear to learn what was, what is, and what is yet to be. And, in witnessing the birth of the world and the fall of man, he went mad. Deranged. Monstrous. A thing to be imprisoned away from sunlight and sky and life.

In the baby’s slumbering face, the golden man saw the end of the world.

He saw her, a grown woman, standing tall before a hall of kings and queens, their heads bowed to the floor in reverence. In another flash, she was in battle. As fires raged and the cries of the injured and dying rang around her, she carved through her enemies with her sword like a scythe slicing through wheat. He saw another memory, of the same kings and queens from before, but their bodies were slumped, their heads parted from their shoulders. Their glistening crowns and diadems lay abandoned, useless. The woman’s greatsword dripped with crimson as she strode across her dead competition, nudging aside their heads with a steel boot. Her footsteps resonated in the chamber like funeral bells. Blood splattered her face like war paint.

The world was ripe for her taking.

The golden man returned to his body, looking at the warrior queen who was still just a babe. Almost unconsciously, he reached out, his golden hand straining towards the child’s peaceful face.

The nearest soldier’s sword flashed in a silver downward arc, nearly severing the golden man’s hand. He withdrew quickly, scrambling back into his cell like a startled rat. The king stepped back, holding the end of times closer to his chest.

“Thank you, my king,” the golden man said, though he didn’t look away from the girl. “I saw what I wanted.”

2nd

THE FOX AND THE BOX

by Ali Dening

ONE

In the beginning, back before our lands grew apart and the seas rose and fell, back before the age of ice and even before the great rain of fire, an old man named Wisdom stood in a summer field with his dog and learned the smell of flowers. Wisdom wore a small box around his neck, which he never removed. The box, which was also Wisdom’s mother, was called Ignorance. It contained the only secret in the whole world, because at the beginning of things, everyone knew everything. Every plant, animal, and person knew every skill they could ever need to practice, and could recall all the mistakes of their forebears. Though many terrible things were known, such as pain, loneliness, and hunger, many beautiful things were known too, like family, joy, and the value of fleeting things. On the whole, most living things were quite happy.

TWO

Fox, like everyone else, knew all things except for what was in the box. As is the nature of foxes, he was curious. One day, when he was hunting for his dinner, he met Wisdom in a summer field, struggling to make a fire. Fox asked Wisdom why he could not start a fire. Wisdom replied that he had put all his knowledge of fire in his box. This caused him to forget his knowledge of making fire, allowing him to learn the skill again and thus gain wisdom. Fox asked why Wisdom did not simply open the box and reclaim his knowledge of fire all at once, this being a much more efficient way to gain wisdom. The old man replied that wisdom is not like knowledge. It cannot be given or taken. Wisdom can only be earned, through struggle. Fox did not understand Wisdom’s box, or his peculiar habits, and he wished to learn so that he could once again know the answers to all things. Fox asked if Wisdom would open the box, so he could know ignorance. Wisdom replied that it is impossible to know ignorance and hid the box under his shirt.

THREE

Fox was infuriated by Wisdom’s refusal to give him answers, and his curiosity was like an itch he could not scratch. He decided he would steal the box. Though he followed Wisdom for many days and nights, Wisdom never took his necklace off, and he clutched the box tightly while he slept. Each day Wisdom placed a piece of his knowledge in the box and relearned it, traveling the land with Hound, his best friend. Hound could smell Fox and chased Fox away whenever he drew too near.

FOUR

After a long time stalking Wisdom with no luck, Fox approached Wisdom. Fox told Wisdom that he had accepted that Ignorance was unknowable. He asked Wisdom if instead of learning Ignorance, he could put pieces of his knowledge in the box, so that he might become wise. Though Wisdom knew Fox was lying, he allowed Fox to join him so long as he actually placed a piece of his knowledge in the box, hoping to win the trickster over with his lessons. That day, Wisdom placed his knowledge of war in the box. Because all knowledge is connected to other knowledge in an infinitely intricate web, attached to war in a thousand trailing strands were greed, spite, rage, hunger, and dozens of other things. Wisdom wadded these all up and stuffed them in his box, forgetting them for the day so he could learn them again. Fox placed his knowledge of what color his fur was in the box, not deeming it very important and loath to give up any of his cleverness.

FIVE

One thing attached to war that Wisdom should not have placed out of reach within the box was distrust. Knowing that Wisdom would not have knowledge of lies, Fox lied that Wisdom had promised to give Fox the box a few days ago. Although his suspicion was gone, Wisdom still had his memory. The old man replied that he had not promised Fox the box. To avoid teaching Wisdom distrust, Fox lied again. He said that he had placed his knowledge of past conversations in the box, and Wisdom believed him. Hound watched Fox warily.

SIX

After a long hike up a mountain searching for war that Wisdom might relearn it, they came to a clearing. Fox suggested that they rest in the soft moss. Wisdom agreed and went to sleep. Hound lay awake to watch Fox, but eventually exhaustion from the climb overtook him and he succumbed to dreams as well. Because Wisdom had forgotten distrust, the old man did not clutch the box tightly as he slept. Fox stole it easily and ran into the woods. Wisdom woke up, Fox’s actions having re-taught him distrust, anger, possessiveness, and the desire for revenge. Wisdom bid Hound to chase Fox and reclaim the box.

SEVEN

Hound chased Fox through the woods. As Fox fled, the lid of the box bounced up and down, leaving pieces of Ignorance all along his path. One piece of Ignorance eliminated knowledge of climbing, and this piece hit Hound squarely in the face. Fox did not see this. He climbed a tree, expecting Hound to follow. He was surprised when Hound just stood at the bottom and barked, but Fox was not about to question his luck. Taking advantage of his position, he eagerly opened the box so that he could know Ignorance and become completely omniscient.

EIGHT

Ignorance flew out of the box as a great black web, along with war and all of its trailing parts. Shocked, Fox snapped the box shut as quickly as he could, but it was too late. The wind took the web of Ignorance and war like a sail and spread it out quite by chance in a great blanket. Ignorance of everything but war and its directly connected pieces of knowledge, such as hunger, rage, and the others, drifted down to settle over the world. The heaviest strands of the web, such as ignorance of speech, fire, and building, settled fully on almost all of the animals, who like to live outside. Humans, at least the ones who happened to be indoors, were sheltered from these heavy strands and were only affected by the smaller, light webs which blew in their windows. These erased knowledge of less fundamental things like unlimited energy, flight, the universal language, and the paths to worlds other than our own. Eventually the wind blew the web into tiny pieces which disappeared, but the damage had been done.

NINE

Wisdom followed the sound of Hound’s barking, which no longer held any meaning for him because he was now ignorant of animal speech. He saw that Fox was trapped in the tree because he no longer had knowledge of how to climb. Fox was not trying to climb down because he had never learned anything before, and did not know how. Wisdom had experience with learning, so he learned how to climb up and rescued Fox from the tree. Fox tried to thank him and apologize for his terrible betrayal, but he no longer had knowledge of speech. Wisdom, seeing that Fox’s mistake was punishment enough by itself, forgave Fox. Wisdom explained to Fox and Hound that it would take them all a very long time to re-learn all the knowledge that had been lost, but that it was possible and necessary. Fox returned the box to Wisdom. The only thing still inside it was Fox’s knowledge of his fur color, which Wisdom kept as a way of reminding Fox to trust his elders. That is why foxes’ pelts shift colors according to the season, sometimes red, sometimes white, unsure of their true nature.

SCIENCE FICTION

MACY’S ADVENTURE

by Camryn Lehr

Inspired by TheHappyAlienGorg

Idon’t remember the city where I was born. I was taken to this world of green before I could talk. At bedtime, I used to snuggle into my soft lime-printed blanket, and ask Grandfather to tell me of the city. He always sat in my blue desk chair, which made him look unusually large, and read from a worn, stained piece of paper. I’ve always wanted to read it, but the cursive, sloped handwriting was too fuzzy for my brain, so I allowed Grandfather’s deep, raspy voice to illuminate the past.

“Once upon a time before the world cracked in half and mistrust started to grow on trees, there were buildings as tall as four giraffes combined, constant entertainment, and fast-walking people. This world was controlled by green scraps of paper . . .”

When he ended his story, I always used to ask about my parents and he always replied with the same words. “They’re in the blue sky, living happily.”

I never used to understand what he meant, but his face would sag so low that I never asked for further explanation. I understand what he meant now thanks to the guidance of Gorg. I discovered Gorg in the library. I spend most nights there, slunk low in a beanbag, escaping to the foreign lands described in paper and ink. Our library consists of two wooden planks nailed into the wall and forty-three messily stacked books—Grandfather was only able to grab so many. Last night, I discovered a book at the bottom of the pile, hidden from me. It was called Adventures oftheHappyAlienGorg. I had never seen this book before. It was a picture book, which was odd—Grandfather hated picture books. “Go look outside if you wanna see something,” he always said. The first page had an illustration of a red and white painted shuttle with a circular window displaying Gorg. Gorg had three eyes and was the color the leaves outside my house get after a rainfall: a dark, dewey, earth color. Gorg’s spaceship flew in the pastel blue sky of Earth. Gorg whizzed through the blue air happily and I knew this is what Grandfather meant. My parents were Gorg.

I woke up today sunkissed and smiley, ready to see blue instead of green. Grandfather and I live deep within a forest. We only have one rule and it’s mainly directly towards me: I always have to be within view of the cottage. Since that gives me about forty feet of ground to explore, I’ve become familiar with this particular part of the woods. I know the exact place every pine needle settles down to go

to sleep. I see the same spiders and ticks struggle to crawl up the rough patterns of bark. But today isn’t about the forest, it’s about the sky. Looking above, I wait to see Gorg or my parents fly by on their fun-loving spaceship, but all I see is a fly buzzing near my eyelids. I just need to find the right angle. I start to walk with my head in the clouds. Suddenly, my foot catches on something hard and solid and I fall. My head finds a pillow in the dirt.

During dinner, Grandfather spills splotches of soup on his jeans. I think about telling him about Gorg. I open my mouth to form the words, but instead of my voice, I hear a distant rumbling similar to a clap of thunder. Grandfather becomes very still, so still not even his arthritic hands shake. I throw open the back door and press my face to the sky.

“Macy!” Grandfather calls.

A rolling black circle appears above, casting a shadow over me, Grandfather, and the beating pulse of our house. It looks different from the picture book. This spaceship has a winged tail and two ski legs. But it doesn’t matter; it’s a beautiful spaceship coming to rescue me. The air starts to glow and spin, almost throwing me to the ground. The trees save me by allowing me to shove my back against their skin and borrow their strength. My heart pounds with joy. I close my eyes and picture Gorg and his green skin. He’s close. They’re close. I squeeze my palms together to stop from screaming in glee. As I temper my excitement, the air changes and grows still. I open my eyes to see the spaceship has landed, giving me the perfect view. Movement flickers in the corner of my eye. Grandfather runs out of our cottage breathing heavily. In his right hand is an object I’ve never seen. It looks dark, like black coffee, and is L-shaped.

“Macy. Inside!” Grandfather yells.

Why are Grandfather’s eyebrows scrunched and his eyes wide? These are aliens. They are here to take us on an adventure to see the stars. They are here so we can live happily in the blue sky. Grandfather points the object in his hand at the spaceship, and presses a finger against a small half circle, which triggers an ear-piercing boom. The glass on the front of the spaceship shatters. What did Grandfather do? Flames of panic lick at my internal organs. The space shuttle door opens with a clank, and all I can hear is a loud crash of fire as it’s thrown onto our house.

THE GRIZZLY MACHINE

by Sam Kostakis

Krissa stepped up to the curved metal counters, crossing from the polished floors of the mall into the colorful ring surrounding the Here & There Coffee Bar. Under her feet, the ground swirled with stars and nebulae. A black hole opened and closed hungrily feet away, sucking the light from the surrounding bodies into it.

“Good morning,” the Grizzly said. Krissa tore her eyes away from the black hole on the floor, and met the gaze of the bright eyes projected onto the surface of the Grizzly’s body. “I noticed your appreciation for our black hole projection. It is also one of my favorite aspects of our floor display.”

Krissa smiled, though she knew the Grizzly couldn’t really see her. Its egg-shaped silver body sat in the middle of the circle of counters, towering several feet above Krissa’s head. Perfectly round ports were set at intervals around its body, the lowest at Krissa’s waist height, the highest nearly at the peak of the body. From each port, a flexible silver arm protruded, scaled like a snake, all waving idly in the air around the Grizzly.

“Good morning, Grizzly,” Krissa said. “Could I get a caramel macchiato, please? Five espresso shots.”

“Of course,” the Grizzly said. Three of its arms started to move with more purpose, reaching under the counter for ingredients, producing a sleek metal cup from a stack beside it, flipping switches on one of the counters’ many machines. “My protocols require me to point out the

potential health risks of excessive caffeine consumption. It is recommended that adults not consume more than 400 milligrams of caffeine per day. This drink will contain approximately 320 milligrams. Do you still wish me to proceed?”

“Please do.” Krissa waited as the Grizzly finished assembling her drink, swirling milk foam onto the top before snapping a plastic lid into place. One of the snakelike arms lifted the waxed paper cup between two pincers, depositing it directly into Krissa’s waiting hands.

“Is it to your satisfaction?” the Grizzly asked. “I am always open to comments and suggestions.”

Krissa lifted the cup to her lips and took a sip. “This is great, Grizzly, thank you. Maybe a little light on the caramel?”

One of the Grizzly’s arms shot toward Krissa’s face, pincers snapping menacingly. Krissa leapt back, feet skidding on the floor as the black hole widened, sucking in the stars from the far corners of the circle as she thrust the cup back toward the machine.

The Grizzly snatched the drink away and dropped it into a hole on the top of its body. A reflected flash of red laser beams off its sides and a puff of smoke were all that remained of the first drink as the rest of the Grizzly’s arms set to work, frantically snatching and mixing.

The second drink was the best macchiato Krissa had ever tasted, and when she left the coffee bar, she left a trail of comets and brilliantly colored nebulae in her wake.

EXIT WOUND

by Andrew Busch

The gravity felt like it had doubled as Joi approached the front door of the bank.

“You ready?” Ant asked. A gas mask hung around his neck where the edge of a tattoo curled above the shoulder strap of his armored vest.

Joi glanced through the spotless glass at the two tellers and a guard positioned inside. They were huddled in front of a screen in the corner of the room, watching the Kato Clan’s fighting broadcast. The tellers in their gray suits shouted at one another as one of the glistening fighters landed a flying haymaker to the temple of her opponent.

Joi used their distraction to move to the other side of the front entrance, becoming a part of the elongating shadows as the sun fell lower behind the city. With her back against the granite façade of the building, she pulled her gas mask over her face. She extracted a silver canister from the pack. Her heart was beating in her ears like the whirr of skiff traffic high above the city streets.

She watched Ant reveal a canister of his own, removing the pin. With a silent nod, he opened the door and they both released them into the center of the room. Joi could hear a muffled shout stifled by the hollow pop with a flash of bright light. In seconds, a thick gray smoke enveloped the space. The men collapsed as the gas overwhelmed them.

Ant moved inside and Joi followed behind him. As Ant veered off to disable the cameras, she beelined for the safe and removed a flat device from her pack. She placed it on the exterior of the vault to the server room and pressed the button on her holo. The pad buzzed and pulsed as it modulated through a series of signals, crackling with static until the magnetic lock was forced to cooperate. The vault door swung open.

Joi ducked through the opening and passed into the blank, white room beyond the impenetrable steel with Ant trailing her like a shadow. At the center was a computer terminal fitted with a rack of cryptodrives humming along as they worked to harvest new tokens from out of thin air. It was the kind of magic that only money could buy. Ant held the bag open and as Joi unplugged the devices, she placed them inside. Joi could feel her palms sweating inside her black gloves.

“This is at least enough for two rigs,” Joi said.

“So, drinks on you then?” Ant said.

“I think you still owe me from last time.” She slung the bag over her shoulders.

He approached her, grabbing the straps of her plate carrier and pulling her closer. “I would kiss you if I could.”

Three weeks before the hit on the Kato bank, Joi stepped into a darkened pool hall clouded with the sweet scent of vapor pens. Joi’s right eye was practically closed shut from the shot she had taken in the temple and the nubs of new sutures were like a single line of stubble beneath her chin. She saw Roach at the back of the place in his booth beside the pool tables—grease smattered leather jacket sewn with patches and dyed blonde hair where the roots were starting to show brown. A guard standing idly at the back of the room moved to intercept her, but Roach waved him off, allowing her to approach his booth.

Joi slid into the seat beside a man she had never seen before, wiry frame, tight-cropped hair, no visible mods, too

clean for Roach’s place. The shade of his eyes was a gray she had never seen before, like the shawl of fog draped over the city at midmorning. She guessed that he was an off-worlder.

“I need work,” she said.

An ugly grin unfolded on Roach’s face. His pointed, gold teeth flashed for a moment in the overhead light. “Didn’t expect to see you again, street rat. You look well.” His eyes taking stock of Joi’s injuries then shamelessly running down her chest before looking back into her eyes. “The big shot. A prized fighter all the way in the outer ring, asking me for work.” He laughed, looking to the man beside Joi for a reaction, but he didn’t seem to understand. The man mustered a fake smile.

“What’s that Kato pay like?” Roach added. “I’m dying to know.”

Joi narrowed her eyes. “Better than you ever did.”

“But now you’re back with old Roach. I wonder why, street rat? Couldn’t hang with the big dogs?” He summoned a bark from deep in his gut that startled the man beside her. “Or did you just miss me?” His grin curled into a sneer as he leaned back against the cracked vinyl.

“I just need a job,” Joi said.

“Let me think,” he said, rubbing his chin.

Joi thought about what it would be like to punch him in those gold teeth. She was sure they would eviscerate her knuckles, but the pain would be worth it.

“You know what? Filth like us have to watch out for our own, street rat. Was just telling Ant, here about an acquisition that you might be interested in. Delilah’s boys have a rare skiff that they are trying to offload, but I say we save them some work.”

He slid a key to the center of the table. Joi took it.

“The skiff is sitting in Manny’s lot just for tonight,” Roach said. “That’s it. Easy in, easy out.”

Roach winked at Ant before he whistled. The guard standing just a few paces away approached to escort Ant and Joi toward the door.

It was like Roach said. Joi and Ant crept into the lot in the back of Manny’s where the alternating neon lights danced on the sign at the front. It was a small skiff garage with parking at the back. After Joi sliced a hole through the chain link fence with a separator, they ducked inside. At the back of the shop, she saw the pair of bald men, eyes glued to a game where playing cards hovered above the table. Joi crouched behind a line of battered skiffs until she reached the gleaming, white X-class, sitting in the lot of skiff husks and dismal wrecks like a pearl in a trash heap.

Joi nodded to Ant, and he moved to the driver’s side door. When she tapped the key to the reader, they both flung themselves inside, and Joi hit the ignition. The skiff was off the ground before the bald watchmen could formulate anything besides confused grunts as it ascended above the lot. Joi was about to pull away when she saw Ant draw a gun from the inside of his bomber jacket and lean out the window aiming for the thugs. As he trained his weapon, Joi jerked the steering wheel to one side, causing his first shot to black out the “M” on the neon sign out front in a shower of sparks, and the second trailed off before fizzling against the city’s atmospheric dome.

“What’re you doing?” she shouted as she veered the

skiff between a pair of buildings and thrust into the sky above the city. Her right ear was ringing from the crack of the blaster.

Ant regained his balance, pulling himself back inside the cabin. “I was covering us!” he shouted over the rushing air.

Joi closed his window with the corresponding button on her control panel. The pressure equalized and the sound of the wind faded away, replaced by the growl of the engine. The buildings became miniatures beneath them. They were clusters of rigid structures and twinkling lights by the time Joi had joined the flow of traffic toward the outer edge of the city.

“I don’t know where you’re from, but Roach will have your ass if I tell him you pulled that kind of stunt,” Joi said. “We’re stealing a skiff, not starting a war.”

“I was just trying to scare them off. I’m sorry,” he huffed, stowing the blaster back inside of his jacket. That was when she realized that his hands were shaking. He tried to hide them in his pockets as if he sensed her gaze.

“Why are you working for Roach?” she asked as she slowed their speed and slipped into the flow of traffic.

Ant hiked up his pant legs. She glanced over to see that beneath his black jeans, each leg was a twist of rusting metal and loose wires. It was the worst mod job she had ever seen. There was no telling how long it would be before they went septic.

“I decided day jobs weren’t for me. Two years of squatting in bomb craters on Kawa and all they could give me were these,” he said.

Joi had heard that Kawa was nothing but dust and ruined cities. It had been the front of the faction war that had finally fizzled out with another temporary armistice, but not before claiming an entire planet. “Those are from the V.A.?” she asked.

“Only the best healthcare in the world.” Ant turned to look out the window. As Joi looked past him, she could see the concentric circles of Waithe’s rings unfolded beneath them—curving streets and jagged glass buildings huddled around the city center that served as the hub of the wheel. Billowing clouds of manufacturing exhaust hung heavy in the air. The neon glow of distant buildings was replaced by a gray haze.

“What about you? Professional punching bag?” He gestured at Joi’s black eye.

“Not anymore,” Joi said. She had found a temporary place in the outer ring. The landlord was an older woman not interested in asking questions. She knew better. Even though the cramped apartment was miles outside of glossy streets and shimmering penthouses of the city center, Joi knew that the Katos were looking for her. Fighters didn’t just go missing unless they wanted it that way. Each day that she stayed in Waithe, the more dangerous things would get.

“You know, I’m starting to like it here. This place kinda reminds me of home,” Ant said.

Joi’s gaze drifted above the traffic to the sky above them. The atmospheric dome above the city shimmered, churning with iridescent light. “Where’s home?” she asked.

“Slerus,” he pulled back the sleeve of his jacket to show Joi the shapes of three machines with long legs and snouts etched across his skin against a mountain backdrop. A quilt of intricate dots formed the starry aurora above them.

“Slerus,” Joi said, feeling the circular shape of the word, beginning and ending with her tongue bent toward the roof of her mouth. She was surprised he trusted her with that kind of information. They hardly knew each other.

“Sounds a lot better than here.”

“It’s cold as hell. I’ve lived in simulated climates for so long that I’m not sure I’d ever get used to it again.”

“I’ve never been somewhere without one.”

“The stars are always better. But I’ll trade those for having to wear a skin-tight thermal suit everywhere.”

“I’m sure those are flattering.”

“Talk about awkward phases.”

From the corner of her eye, Joi could see Ant smirking. She passed the exit for Roach’s place and kept following the flow of red taillights.

“Wait, I think that was the turn,” Ant said.

“I don’t think he’ll mind if we take a bit longer,” she said, pushing the accelerator to the floor. The skiff moved like a flash of lightning through the night sky.

The hot morning breath of the outer ring crept through the empty streets as Ant and Joi walked back to Roach’s together from a chop shop repurposed from the bones of an abandoned grocery store that had gone belly-up after middle class families left Waithe for “safer” cities. They had dumped a glossy, yellow Zephyr, previously owned by one of Roach’s debtors. The guy had been ass-naked when he stumbled down his apartment stairs to watch his sport skiff disappear. Joi and Ant were still laughing as they walked through the narrow, gridded streets.

The endless rows of identical apartment blocks stood above them like sleeping concrete giants. They were the remnants of the city’s renewal plan after the old mayor had campaigned to double-down on affordable housing. Joi wasn’t surprised when the sector police found him bloated and bound in the river with his hands removed. He was one of the first to be marked by the Kato signature. Now, the buildings were crowded with people who couldn’t afford interplanetary transfer as more and more stragglers drifted to Waithe, displaced by warfare.

The city lights all seemed to flicker on at once as the red sun rose above the horizon. Joi noticed how each of Ant’s steps were slow and measured. It was as if he was afraid the sidewalk would suddenly give way beneath him. He had a slight limp as he compensated for the servos in his right leg that were giving out.

“I’m saving up for new ones, you know,” Ant said.

“What then? I hear Roach is hiring someone to clean his grillz.”

“In that case, I’ll dust off my resumé.”

“Seriously though. You can’t be planning on stealing skiffs forever.”

“I don’t know. The mods are all I’ve wanted since I left Kawa. It’s fucked up to think that the part of me I lost in that desert is still there.”

“I’m sorry,” Joi said. She wasn’t used to someone opening up like that. Part of life in the outer ring was keeping everyone else out. She learned early on that trust was scarce for good reason.

“What about you?” he asked.

It was the street rat in her that told her to hide every last particle of vulnerability, but his easy presence was disarming. She found herself ignoring the part of her that told her to lie.

“I wouldn’t mind working a normal-ass job. Fix skiffs. Work on a starship. Maybe pilot one of those water extractors.” She pointed at Ant’s tattoo. “Hardest part would be pretending to be interested.”

“That’s a good one.” Ant smirked.

“I’m serious. I’d get my shit done. Then I’d go home. Water my plants. Feed my dog. Why would I ever want anything else?”

The smile vanished from his lips. “The recruiter made me believe that I’d made a choice to leave home on that dropship. As if a night job at the water plant and a flat with five roommates where I still couldn’t pay rent weren’t the only

things I had left on Slerus. People like us never get a real choice. But this time things are gonna be different for me.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I’m done pretending to be one of the good guys.”

Joi thought for a moment about what Ant had said. They walked the same stretch of dusty, trash-ridden street as the sun appeared behind the distant buildings of the inner circle. Bright yellows and burnt oranges tracing along the dark angular silhouettes rising in the distance, anointing each concrete block or shadowy spire with haloes of warmth.

“Looks almost pretty sometimes.” Joi said, looking out at the city.

“You talking about me?” Ant said.

Joi almost laughed. She punched him softly in the shoulder.

After they jacked two more skiffs from a pair of scum-sucking nightclub owners, Ant finally had enough for the procedure. Joi had agreed to go with him. She had heard modding could be hell and decided that it would be best if she kept an eye on him.

It was well past midnight, and she stood beside him as he sat like a slab of beef on a makeshift operating table in an empty storage room at the back of a ramen restaurant where the chef moonlit as a body modder after hours.

The light over the table cast a green haze over the room. Ant was in a disposable gown that was a sickly shade of teal. She could tell from his eyes that he was nervous. She had told him that he should go to the hospital to get it done, but he had been on Waithe for long enough to know that when street rats like them showed up with money that people started to ask questions about where it was coming from.

“You won’t feel a thing,” the chef said as she sterilized, and the sous-chef tied on her surgical mask.

Ant grabbed Joi’s hand for a moment and gave it a squeeze before dropping it again. The graze of his thumb over her palm sent a small pulse of electricity down the length of her arm. The line cook placed the respirator around Ant’s face and eased him back on the table. He was out before his head was all the way back. Then souschef led Joi out of the makeshift operating room to the front of the restaurant. The place had a long bar with paper lanterns suspended from the ceiling. After washing up, the sous placed a steaming bowl of noodles in front of Joi and disappeared again into the back.

Joi tried to think about anything else aside from the woman cutting Ant open until she could see nothing but the soft pink in the muscle of his thighs. She pulled a single noodle from the soup with her chopsticks where it hung over the warm broth like the disconnected fibers being retrieved from the base of Ant’s spine. The only sound was the repeated refrain of the names of surgical instruments from the chef and the sous until a small forever had finally passed.

Ant was delirious as Joi led him home. Together they stumbled up the stairwell of his apartment and down a hallway of identical doors.

“I have a secret,” he said placing a finger to his lips. “Shhh… don’t tell her. Don’t tell.”

“Which one is the key?” Joi asked him. She led him to the door at the end of the hall.

Ant fumbled with the ring, flipping through the keys. He stopped abruptly, staring at her instead. His gray eyes were foggy, and his pupils were dilated. “I think I love her,” he said.

After trying three others, Joi finally found the right key and led him inside to his bed. He slid into the sheets

and curled his arms around the pillow. She waited for a moment, watching the blinking lights on the metal ridge emerging from his skin and cutting along the length of his spine. It glistened like a knife’s edge between the bandages. Her hand lingered on the curve of his shoulder blade. His breathing was slow but steady.

Against her better judgment, Joi took Ant dancing when his legs had healed. That week she had seen the all-black, tinted Kato skiffs crawling through her neighborhood more than usual. But The Silver Rocket was a nightclub in the warehouse district way on the other side of town. After the war, it had been converted from a space that constructed engine pieces for military starships to a place people went to forget any of that had happened. That night, it was still filled with the pulse of machinery but a beating human heart at the center.

It was dark inside and Joi could feel the heat radiating from the bodies crammed into the space. The distorted vocals of a singer glitched and stuttered an unintelligible refraining march over an alternating pattern of kick and bass drum. The floor was divided into individual orbits of people all united into a single mass by the movement of the music.

Joi could sense Ant’s hesitation.

“Come on,” she said, grabbing his arm and leading him into the purple haze of the crowded dance floor.

Everyone was dancing so close. By the time they were enveloped by the moving mass of energy, her bare arms were coated in glitter that wasn’t hers. She pulled Ant close to her. He didn’t have rhythm and he moved like he was worried about someone watching him.

“I’m no good at this,” he said as if sensing her thoughts. “Why is this the scariest thing I’ve ever done?”

Joi leaned closer. “I can think of a lot scarier things.”

Ant looked out at the people around them, all absorbed in their own motion. He seemed to understand that nothing mattered to everyone else through the heavy trance of the throbbing music. He pulled Joi closer and moved with her hips.

“You know what you told me after your surgery?” Joi said close to his ear.

Even in the low light, Joi could see his face flush. “I thought that was a dream.”

“A little soon for that isn’t it?”

“I’ve always been terrible at keeping secrets.”

One song was replaced by the next and as the night kept moving Ant and Joi became more in sync. They were pressed up against one another, sweat making the dark makeup around Joi’s eyes run, her arms folded around his neck when she kissed him. The electric current raced down her back and carried them both out into the night where the air was warm and there was no wind.

Back on their side of the outer ring, the apartment blocks loomed above the street, topped with static red lights that warned the skiffs floating through the air from getting too close. The only distinguishing factor between them was the large numbers painted across their bleak exteriors. Joi could see the white shapes of the three etched on her building as they crossed the street.

Joi and Ant were hardly through the door to her dark, bare apartment as they fumbled with clasps and zippers. She pressed her mouth to his and he matched the shapes in the moments between discarded garments. His fingers moved down the length of her spine, finding the angles of her shoulder blades and tracing them down toward the backs of her thighs.

Joi pushed him down on the bed, pulling his mouth to hers with an urgency that she felt deep in the pit of her

stomach. The soft skin of his bare chest was disrupted by the nebula of scars just below the right side of his ribs. She moved her hands through them and down his side, startled for just a moment by the coldness. Everything beneath the start of his thighs was servos and gunmetal. The sturdy legs picked up where his body ended—two souvenirs from half a galaxy away.

She carried them too. Ant’s hand followed the sealed fissure running along the length of her chin, and the split above her eyebrow that was now only a pale line. Joi had always thought the marks made her tough. They were warning signs that she was a fighter, but with the pastels of the city flooding through the single window and casting colorful shapes across the bare ceiling, it was the first time she ever thought of them as weak points. They were written history of the failures in her defenses. Places she had let someone get too close and paid the price.

Joi told Ant that she couldn’t remember much about the fights, but that was a lie. Sometimes when she closed her eyes, she could see the woman’s face: strong jaw, shaved head, nose leaning to one side, a broken sword tattooed below one of her wild eyes. She stood at the opposite corner of the cage, teeth bared, seething.

The single light suspended above burned a ring in the mat flecked with blood from the previous fight. The ring of the bell made Joi’s stomach lurch and the other fighter seemed to float toward her as the people around the cage screamed. She ducked the first jab, but as she shifted her weight into an uppercut, her vision exploded with points of light that danced like stars trading places in the night sky. Another punch connected with her cheek. Pain welling up, burning to the surface of the skin like the white plasma glow of afterburners.

She felt the trickle of warm blood down her chest as she staggered for a moment, feeling the floor bend beneath her. Sensing her momentary advantage, the other fighter tried for a grab, but Joi swept the fighter’s leg as she rushed her. As the fighter hit the mat, Joi threw herself on top of her. The fighter raised up her arms to block, but Joi landed another punch on her jaw. Blood stippled her glove as she pulled it back again. The crowd was frenzied, shrieking for another taste.

Joi wished she had begged the fighter to ask her to yield above the cry of the faceless roar. But she knew that wasn’t what happened. Instead, she had kept punching until she heard the sickening crack of teeth leaping to safety. The fighter was gone before the bell finally rang.

When Joi finally woke, Ant was already up. She could hear the sink running in the bathroom. From the bed, Joi could see him through the cracked door, standing in front of the mirror and staring ahead. His face was twisted as if he saw something horrible in the mirror that she couldn’t. His fingers prodded the scarred barrens at the boundary between flesh and steel.

The city of Waithe was never finished. It never would be. Ant and Joi walked the wide streets as the warm wind blew in the gloaming hour. In their neighborhood, all day the cargo ships dropped from the atmosphere holding the pieces of prefabricated buildings that would become apartments, factories, office buildings, snapping them into place. City officials believed that starting over again with a fresh slate would make things different. As the years passed, new rings would be added to the city as it spider-webbed endlessly along the planet’s surface. But Joi knew that it was only a matter of time before everything looked like the outer ring while the pristine skyscrapers of the inner circle shone like a jewel at the center of a rotting wasteland.

Ant had convinced Joi to walk with her to the Moon Drop, a weathered bar with sticky floors along a strip of shuttered shops, some remaining permanently closed after the city had raised rent prices after the war. Inside, the music was loud—a drum machine accompanied by an auto tuned voice that crooned over a lost lover—but everyone talking over it made the room even louder.

“This is my thinking place,” he joked as they found a spot at the corner of the bar beside the smudged glass window. A neon sign of a moon pulsing through its phases, casted a blinking light along the edges of Ant’s face and moving reflections in his eyes.

“Sounds productive,” Joi said.

He grinned at that.

The bartending unit, a skeleton-thin serving bot, took their order and then left. Joi watched the screen at the back of the bar. Lately the Kato broadcast was everywhere in town from the dingy pubs in the outer ring to the overpriced, shimmering bars nestled amongst the skyscrapers at the city center. On a screen at the back wall, a fighter jumped off the side of the cage and landed a kick square in the side of the other’s head. Joi had to turn away. Every day that she stayed in the city things got more dangerous for her. She wore her hood up and half-masks to hide herself during the daytime. That night, a bandana hung slack around her neck in case she needed to obscure her face in a pinch.

“Everything okay?” he asked, sensing her tenseness.

“Have you heard from Roach?” she asked.

Ant shrugged off the black jacket. The three extractors were still frozen in their perpetual march toward his wrist against the mountains. “He may have mentioned something about a job. Why?”

“I need to leave Waithe. Now.” Joi said. She saw the muscle in his jaw clench for a moment.

“When were you going to tell me?”

“Do you know what they’ll do to me if they find me?”

“Well, where are you gonna go?”

“I don’t know, but I need one more job. Something big. Then I’ll be set.”

The bartending unit placed their glasses down and buzzed off to serve another group.

“What if I came with you?” he said. “Would be easier than running solo.”

Joi thought about the place she rented in the cold apartment blocks; the mattress resting on the floor; the two suitcases in the living room with clothes strewn around the room; the couch he had helped her bring inside from the street that definitely had given them lice. She would happily leave all of those things behind, but in the back of her head, she couldn’t help but wonder if things were moving too fast. She had been running for so long that she wondered what it would be like if there were no more jobs to pull, if it was just the two of them drifting aimlessly along the fringes of the galaxy. Would she be happy if everything was less complicated? She tried to push that voice to the side. She thought instead about the night under the flashing lights of the club. Their bodies pressed against one another. Her heart pounding against her ribs as he touched the bare skin at the small of her back.

“I’d like that,” she finally said, but still not fully believing her own words.

Joi felt Ant shift closer to her until their hips touched. The foam of his drink clung to his upper lip like he was a child living in a world where dreams could be pulled from the empty air. She knew she should have been happy, but she couldn’t help feeling like something was horribly wrong. Joi didn’t realize it then, but later she recognized it was the permanence of everything creeping in on her from the darkened corners of the bar.

One day before the hit, Joi stood looking out at the front of the Kato bank from the third level of a parking garage. A skiff floated into the bright, blue sky. Its reflection danced across conference room windows before disappearing around the curve between two skyscrapers.

“This is the place,” Ant said.

Joi laughed. “You’re joking right?”

“I’m not.”

Joi looked over her shoulder at him for a moment to try to get a read. He was leaning against one of the garage’s concrete support beams.

She turned, looking back down at the bank, marble facade, red carpets marked with the two-headed dragon insignia of the Kato Clan.

“We’re not professional thieves, Ant. We steal skiffs for a slimy asshole in the outer ring. Now you want us to hit a Kato bank?”

“We could finally leave Waithe like you wanted.”

“We can’t leave this dump if we’re dead. I know this wasn’t Roach’s idea.”

Ant dodged her eyes. “I told him we’re going solo this time.”

“Are you trying to get us killed?”

“They already want you dead. I’m trying to help you. You aren’t ever going to make enough from jacking skiffs. You’re gonna need something steady. You won’t regret this. A stack of cryptodrives from the bank’s computer and we’re set. We could have our own mining rig pulling in cash as we sit back with our feet up. No more Roach. No more Katos.”

She could see the flash of something new in his eyes. He was treading at a depth that Joi was scared to follow.

“I don’t think I can do this.”

“Just trust me, Joi.” He held up a key. “This storage locker is where we’ll set up the rig. After that, we can be anywhere. It’s what we’re owed. We’re just taking what’s ours.” He pointed to the bank, pressing a key into her hand. The small, jagged shape burned like ice.

“I just steal skiffs.”

“We don’t have time for that anymore.”

He pressed the button on the holo, and the screen hovered over his wrist. In the flickering blue glow, she saw the two faces side-by-side. It was like looking in a warped

mirror where the features were almost the same but something about them was off. The nose was too small and the eyes were too close together, but Joi recognized she was looking at the two of them on a priority bounty listing attached to a six-figure lump sum. She felt her stomach drop. She needed air faster than she could take it in.

Ant pointed back toward the bank. “This is our chance to get off Waithe. We hit it tomorrow and get out of the city before anyone comes sniffing around.”

It felt like someone was standing on her chest. Ant placed his hand on her arm. He led her to the edge of the skiff garage, where he pointed toward the front door of the bank. His grip was too tight.

“Listen, there’s one guard with a shift change at 18:00 and two tellers. No one has stepped through the door in over twenty minutes, even at rush hour.”

“We can’t do this.”

“You’re overthinking it. Pop the gas, open the safe, grab the drives, and ride off into the sunset. In and out.”

Fluorescent bugs flickered around the lights in the parking garage. Joi watched one land on Ant’s hand, perching on his skin like a gemstone, but he didn’t notice it. His eyes were transfixed on something in the distance.

Inside the Kato bank, Joi and Ant were moving toward the door with the drives they had pulled from the central computer when it swung open, freezing them in their tracks.

“Hold it!” A man shouted from the doorway. A bank guard materialized from the smoke, wearing a respirator clamped tightly over his nose and mouth. He aimed a blaster toward Ant. For a moment, it was like the floor had fallen out from beneath the soles of Joi’s boots.

Ant pulled a gun, training the weapon on the man’s head before Joi even realized what had happened. The single motion looked like pure instinct.

“Listen,” Joi said. “The last thing we want is someone getting hurt.”

“The Katos will be here any minute,” the guard said, redirecting the barrel of his gun to Joi. “I hear they take your fingernails first. Then each bone in your hand, one at a time.”

She felt a pulse of electricity race along her spine. She fought to keep her words steady. “The Katos don’t pay you a hundredth of what each of these drives pull in.” Joi

could feel Ant’s eyes burning a hole through her temple as she continued to speak. “You let us walk and one could be yours.” She pulled a drive from the bag.

Joi watched the man’s eyes flicker, already counting zeros.

“Why would I trust you?”

“Ant put down the gun,” she said.

“Are you crazy?” Ant said.

“Do it,” she ordered.

Ant reluctantly lowered the weapon while the guard kept his trained in their direction. Joi approached him cautiously with measured steps. She held the silver drive outstretched in her palm when she was within arm’s reach. But instead of taking the drive, the guard grabbed her arm, catching her by surprise. With his free arm, he swung the blunt edge of his blaster toward her head. Joi thought for a split second about taking the hit. Everything in her didn’t want to fight, but there was no telling what the guard would do to Ant after he took her down. She couldn’t let that happen.

Joi dodged low. The strike whizzed over her head before she resurfaced to deliver a shot to the man’s jaw. The pain raced through her arm as she connected with the hard bone and the edge of his respirator. The guard tried to recover by aiming his weapon, but Joi forced the barrel toward the ceiling.

“Joi, get out of the way!” Ant shouted.

But there was no way for Joi to disengage to give him a clear shot. The muscles in her arms burned as she fought for control of the gun. With a loud clap, the heat of a blast flickered across her face. The guard had discharged a round into the ceiling. Joi’s ears screamed, the residual echo muffled Ant’s shouting.

In that moment, still locked in the stalemate, her arms begging for reprieve, she realized the guard’s eyes were solely focused on the blaster. Recognizing the weak point in his defense, she capitalized. With a fluid snap, she hurled her knee at the man’s groin. The impact landed like a meteor strike, sending him wailing to the carpeted floor.

She threw herself over him, striking him in the temple as Ant approached behind her.

“Let me have the shot!” Ant yelled.

“No! Put the gun away!” she screamed, flashing her wild eyes in his direction.

That split second was all the time the guard needed to fire a shot, striking Ant just beneath the border of his vest in the sliver of exposed abdomen. He shrieked, falling to the carpet clutching his stomach as Joi fought through her shock to regain control of the guard. This time she didn’t let up, even as the fire spread through both of her hands. She kept hurling her fists until the man’s pleas were replaced by a squelching, hollow thump.

Ant’s moans finally snapped her out of it. She backed away in horror from the bloody pulp of the crumpled guard to kneel beside him. She had lost control. She had done this. Ant was clutching the fresh wound. Blood was rushing down his pant leg in angry streaks, seeping into the crimson carpet.

“You’re—you’re gonna be fine.” She knew the shake in her voice wasn’t convincing.

“I can’t feel my legs,” he said. His gray eyes were wide inside of the mask.

She removed a small med pouch from her bag, rifling through the contents. Her shaking fingers retrieved a hemostatic injector. She removed the cap with her teeth and with a decisive thrust she jabbed the device into the wound, emptying the contents of the syringe. The blood still flowed, but it slowly became more controlled.

“You have to go,” he urged.

“You have to come with me.”

Curses spewed from his lips as Joi wrapped her arm beneath his armpit leaning him upright. That was when she spotted the dark stain at the back of his shirt. The shot had gone through.

“Oh god. Oh god,” she heard herself saying. The voice sounded far away.

He wriggled out of her grasp. “Use the back exit. I’ll keep them at the front.”

“They’ll kill you. You’ll never get out.”

“I never left Kawa either, but that didn’t stop me,” Ant said. He grabbed her hand, pressing a cold, jagged shape into her palm. His thumb flickered across her skin before pulling away.

Joi held the thin key to the storage locker when Ant withdrew his hand from hers. As the whir of skiff engines approached, her legs seemed to move without her toward the emergency exit at the back of the room. She looked back one last time at Ant over her shoulder. He had propped himself up on his elbow, aiming his gun toward the doors.

A bright spotlight cut through the night and the glass windows, surrounding him in white. A black skiff hovered in place over the street at the front of the bank. The side doors of the vehicle opened like wings and two Kato thugs, armed like soldiers, raised long weapons toward him.

“Go,” he pleaded without looking toward her.

Joi never saw what happened next. She turned away and sprinted through the fire escape, ducking into the black alleyways. The crack of gunfire chased after her as she clutched the dufflebag of drives close to her chest.

When she finally reached the storage locker, swarms of spotlights prodded through the streets from overhead. As she matched the key in the duffle bag to one of the uniform steel doors, all she could see was Ant trapped in the white beam of light, like a spider in a glass.

“It’s just up here,” the woman said. She was dressed in a heavy coat with a fur collar that was unzipped showing the suit she wore beneath it, pleated, gray and ending in heels. “This is one of my favorite units.”

Joi followed her out of the elevator into a long hallway lined with an azure carpet divided into flowing circular patterns that reminded Joi of waves.

“So, what do you do?” the woman asked. Her eyes were dark peering out from behind her glasses.

“I work in tech,” Joi said like she had practiced. “I’m a programmer for a security software company.”

“Isn’t that fascinating?” the woman said just like she rehearsed, flashing her white teeth. “There’s so much to love about living in Uptown. The food on this side of the city is just to die for. The views aren’t too bad either.”

When the agent had finished fussing with the keys, she unlocked the door. Inside was a small entryway with a double closet. Past that was a kitchen and an island topped by a thick slab of colorful stone intercut with gray veins of quartz flashing beneath its surface. Wide windows were positioned on the other side of the kitchen looking out at the skyline.

“Now this kitchen is just my favorite,’’ the woman said. You have all new appliances, lots of space and all this natural light—”

But Joi didn’t answer. She stood at the windows. The buildings jutted into the night like rows of crooked teeth as the city held its mouth open to swallow the flurry of falling snowflakes. Past the skyline was the endless plain of ice, flat, white nothingness beneath the uninterrupted gray of the sky. That was when Joi saw them. The pair of hulking machines moving in a steady march along Slerus’s frozen horizon.

BLUE HORIZON

by Elizabeth Gomez

Iremember when the Beatitudo landed on Mars. I was six years old and sitting on the stained carpet of my father’s family room. The CRT TV crackled with faint images of the red planet; the voices of the astronauts hissed through its speakers.

Delora Bates, a young astronaut from the middle of nowhere, emerged from the space shuttle. Dust and a silver space helmet obscured her large grin. I could barely see her—the large pixels of the TV could only convey so much of the scene—yet I knew she was smiling. I knew that when she placed her feet onto the dusty ground of Mars, an intense emotion of peace meandered through her body. I knew she understood that feeling of otherness—of being out of place. I knew she had found her home. I knew I had found my home. We both held that connection with a planet fiftytwo million miles away from our middles of nowhere.

I trained to become Delora. I studied astronomy and astrophysics in the early hours of the morning, so I might fly in a space shuttle. I pushed my body to its physical and emotional limits, so I might press my feet into the dusty ground of Mars. I motivated myself with the soreness of my body, the exhaustion of my mind, the hopelessness of my soul, and the prospect of looking up into the butterscotch sky of the red planet.

Eventually, NASA announced its second mission to Mars in the space shuttle Libitina . I was selected to be on the team of astronauts. We called ourselves the Heirs— the six of us were the heirs to the red planet, heirs to the

exploration of space, and heirs to discovery.

We launched on a misty Sunday morning. The orange Florida sun barely peaked over the palm tree horizon. The air smelled of dew and exhaust. The sounds of trucks speeding around the launch site and distant applause vibrated in the humid air.

Libitina violently vibrated as its rockets pushed us away from Earth’s surface. I felt the weight of an elephant against my chest and heard the loud bursting of the exhaust plume. The shaking never stopped.

As each minute passed, the more the shuttle shuddered. Our heads slammed against the headrests, and our arms flew in every direction.

I heard the faint crackle of yells from Mission Control. I could barely hear my name called before the fuel tank of Libitina exploded. I remember the screams, bursting of metal panels, and fire. An intense heat burned through my suit and scorched my skin. I could not scream—I did not have the time to. The frayed seat belts allowed the vacuum of space to suck my body into an abyss.

I am floating away from the wreckage.

Metal debris and the cold universe engulf my still body. All I can do is stare at Earth’s blue horizon becoming ever more distant.

THE AUGMENTED LIFE

by Amanda J. Marshall

Ouch!” Alice cried.

She looked down and slid back the kitchen knife to survey the damage. At first, all she noticed was a white line on her index finger, then after a pause, blood fiercely spurted out, raining down on the freshly sliced carrots. Quickly, she grabbed a towel off the stove handle and held it down firmly. She started to feel faint, and it wasn’t because of the blood.

This is how it starts , she thought to herself. This is the beginningoftheend.

Alice’s thoughts went to her mother and how her path of augmentations began similarly. It started with a popping crackle in her left knee. At first, it only bothered her mother when she used the stairs, but before long the crackling followed her with every step. Father and the doctor worked together to convince her that a full leg replacement was the best option. She remembered her mother was hesitant but eventually conceded to the pressures. After the first augmentation, each additional one required less convincing, although it was ultimately Father’s decision. It’s true that the changes did make her mother’s housework incredibly efficient. The replaced limbs skillfully blasted through chores, but Alice also remembered how each augmentation took a little more light from her mother’s eyes. The last time Alice saw her, she stared blankly

forward while Father chatted away. She only got up when something needed cleaning or doing. Her bionic limbs moved for her, taking her human torso and head along for the ride.

Alice was terrified of her mother’s fate and lived her life cautiously, trying to avoid augmentations. Now, the inevitable injury she had long dreaded had come.

She glanced down at the growing red stain on the towel and took in a deep breath to calm her wits. Her eyes wandered over to a simple black frame that rested on the wall before the living room. It held her wedding photo, a memento from a time when her body was young. The girl’s face in the photo beamed up at her husband, too far away from the need for augmentations to rightfully fear him.

She parted her lips to speak, stopped herself, and then started again. “Fred dear? Can you come in here?” She called firmly, but not quite a shout.

“I’ll be right there Alice,” Fred replied, his voice volume fluctuating as he bent into his abdomen to get up. A few paces from the next room over and Fred immediately saw the blood. “Alice–what happened?!”

“It’s alright Fred,” she assured. He tried to slowly pull away the towel. “No, just leave it,” she insisted, jerking her hand away. “I think I need stitches, let’s just get to the doctor.”

“Right, right,” Fred hastily agreed, his voice sounding a little panicked. “Get in the car, I’ll turn off the stove and throw this in the fridge.” Alice watched as his eyes fixed on the cutting board.

“I looked away for just a second,” Alice explained. “One second of daydreaming and the knife came down wrong.” Her uninjured hand’s fingers started pulling on the towel’s frayed strings.

Fred gave her a reassuring pat, “Don’t worry, we will fix this.” He started to say something more but stopped himself, and reached into a nearby drawer to retrieve another towel. “Here, take this too.”

Alice quickly scampered through the front door fearful of what “we will fix this” actually meant. Once in the car, she tried to focus on keeping pressure on the wound, her thumb still clamped down over the towel. She watched out the window looking for the slightest changes in people’s yards. Her uninjured hand repetitively stroked down her white-laced apron that she forgot to take off, mid-thigh to knee, over and over. Anything to avoid thinking about how terrified she was of the possibilities that could stem from this mistake. Surely Fred wouldn’t go against her wishes?

The neighborhood was always the same, flawless. Each yard had carefully manicured hedges that wrapped around houses of varying colors of pastel; perfect squares inside perfect squares. Alice’s gaze drifted over to her neighbor Martha who was kneeling in front of her prize-winning roses. Martha always had a garden that was the envy of every housewife on the street. She spent endless hours carefully pruning, watering, and nurturing her flowers; which led to her carpal tunnel. As soon as she was diagnosed her husband ordered the augmentations. Alice would never forget the pride on Martha’s husband’s face as he bragged to Fred from across the dividing hedge about her augmentations.

“I’m tellin’ ya Fred,” he said with elevated excitement. “You gotta do Alice next! She’s no spring chicken anymore. You can afford it, it’s your duty to keep her in top shape!”

Alice had quietly eavesdropped on the conversation from her kitchen window, as she dutifully washed dishes. She remembered the fearful flutter that rose in her heart as she watched Fred carefully contemplate the neighbors’ advice.

Fred got into the car, breaking Alice’s attention. He placed his right hand on her thigh and gave her an affectionate squeeze. They pulled out of the driveway, the gravel underneath the tires making its familiar earthen white noise sound. Alice’s eyes returned to Martha, noting her bionic arms laid across her kneeling legs unmoving. As the car panned around, she saw Martha’s eyes fixed forward, dead like the brown roses in front of her. Alice squeezed her eyes closed and turned away, trying to pretend she saw nothing.

“Alice, you’re 32 now. It might be time to consider it,” Fred said cautiously.

Consider it? The words immediately sent her knee muscles into a tight clenching frenzy as she carefully considered her next words. “Fred, you know my feelings about this. I just want stitches, please let’s just keep it at that.”

Fred returned his hand to the wheel and let out an agitated sigh. “I don’t know why you’re so afraid Alice. Just let me take care of you!” His hand knifed into the air as he spoke with a rising tone, “Your finger may never be the same again, you should fix it proper!”

“It’s what I want Fred,” Alice spoke firmly, yet softly, hoping Fred’s tone would lower to match hers. “Promise me you won’t give them permission?” She rubbed his shoulder and stared pleadingly.

Fred’s lips formed into a thin tight line, and he remained silent the rest of the drive, never once looking at her.

“We are here,” Fred announced as he turned into the parking lot.

Alice clenched her knee muscles, afraid of Fred’s reaction. “I won’t go in until you promise,” she pressed again.

Fred turned off the car and faced her, his hand cradled her cheek, and he blew out a breath, as though he was blowing out his anger. “You can trust me, Alice.”

Alice surveyed his eyes for deception, her knee muscles relaxed. “Okay,” she said “Let’s go,” with a nod towards the door.

Once inside they were rushed to a patient room. This was a typical protocol because of the exposed bleeding. Alice tried not to worry and focused on the clock’s loud tick, there was nothing else to look at. All the walls were white, and there was a simple set of cabinets off to one side. Fred sat on a lone chair, looking down at his feet until the doctor entered.

“Hi Alice, looks like you did a good one here,” he stated as he gestured to the blood-stained towel.

“I’m afraid so,” she agreed.

“Are you current on your tetanus?”

“No, she’s not,” Fred quickly answered.

“Okay, we will start with that.” The doctor poked his head out the door and spoke with a nurse. Turning back he said, “Okay Alice, I’m going to ask you to lie down. Between the blood and shot, you’re at risk for fainting.”

Alice heard her heartbeat grow loud in her ears but followed his command, and laid back on the crinkly paper. As the doctor and nurse shuffled, Fred came over and held her good hand.

“Okay, Alice, are you ready?” the doctor asked. Alice nodded and turned away as he administered the shot into her arm. “How does that feel?”

Alice immediately felt waves of exhaustion pressing against her mind. “Fred!” she exclaimed in a panic, her good hand withdrew from his and desperately grasped at his sleeve.

“It will be alright,” Fred assured, petting her hair as the ‘tetanus’ shot pulled her unconscious. “It will be okay”.

A darkness pulled hard at her mind. She imagined herself running away from it. Her fingers turned white as she tried to grab Fred harder at the wrist. Hurt him! Make him understand! Bruise him! Break him! But her hand betrayed her and her grip lessened no matter how hard she tried. Tears slid down from her closed lids. She felt them roll down her cheeks and then nothing. Her body was gone, sinking deeper into the darkness.

1st

BABY, THERE’S BOTS OUTSIDE

Sci-Fi Contest

MEMORIES TM

by Brianne Simone

Pa always smelled of cooking grease and smoke. He’d come home late at night, an hour after her bedtime, and kiss her mother on the cheek.

Then he’d quietly open her door, whisper, “Are you asleep, darlin’?” and she’d try so hard not to giggle because Momma would be mad if she found out that their little girl was still awake, but Pa would scoop her up and tickle her until she let out peals of—

Error. Your memory service has not been renewed. Pleaserenewifyouwishtoretainaccesstoyourcherished memories.

She remembered—

Would you like to renew your Premium Subscription to Memories™?

—dancing with her husband on the night of their wedding. He had freckles over his nose and cheeks that she liked to trace with her fingers, making constellations on his skin. He held her with so much care and tenderness, as though he’d been born to love her. And she loved him.

… What was his name?

Yoursubscription has ended.

It was Christmas Day. There was a man standing beside her, but his features were blurred, as though she was seeing him through the lens of a camera that was out of focus. He was dressed in blue pajamas and though she couldn’t see his face, she somehow knew that he was smiling as he watched a young girl tear red wrapping paper from a box that was roughly the size of a microwave.

Just as the massive bow came tumbling off, a highpitched bark came from within the box. The faceless girl squealed with glee as a puppy with short black fur and mismatched eyes jumped into her lap and licked her chin.

“She’s never going to forget this,” the man beside her said, his voice shaking with laughter.

She smiled at him. “I hope that’s true.”

Your subscription has been renewed. Thankyou foryour patronage.

Camilla stared down at a familiar scene, her grandsons unwrapping their presents on Christmas Day. Her seventy-fifth birthday had passed last spring. It was her first since her beloved Matthew had passed away.

Her daughter had been so worried about her spending the holidays alone that she’d insisted she stay with them for a few weeks. It’d been so wonderful to spend time with her grandchildren, she must have lost track of the time.

Outside the room, she could hear muffled voices, and she walked across the room to investigate, keeping one eye on the children so they wouldn’t get up to any mischief.

“You need to tell her,” she heard her son-in-law say in the hallway. He sounded strained. “You can’t keep selling your memories like this.”

“Her subscription rate has skyrocketed, Tom,” her daughtered replied, a tremor in her voice. “I knew it would increase as she got older, but this is ridiculous! She won’t be able to afford her retirement at this rate. What else am I supposed to do?” Camilla listened to the sound of fabric rustling, then an exhausted sigh. “It was just one birthday. I was so young I doubt our service would have covered it for much longer, anyway.”

Having heard enough, Camilla returned to where her precious grandsons were crashing their toy robots together and wrapped her arms around their squirming, protesting bodies, drawing them close so she could study their faces one more time before she called to cancel her service for good.

2nd

REALITY, WORTH A SHOT

by Savannah Jade

Jason Zuckerberg’s head spun while teleporting from his Meta college classroom to his 981-acre estate in the Metaverse to meet a few friends to explore the latest gaming theme parks.

Normally, the switch from one place in the Metaverse to another was instantaneous and rarely caused disorientation. But the past few weeks, Jason’s QuestChip device somehow slowed to an Intel Core i9 processing speed, which was laughable considering he just updated his systems days ago. It was most likely a spambot operating in the background affecting his gigahertz. He sent in a request a few hours ago, but for now, he’d have to deal with the nausea of teleporting.

His eyes squinted before adjusting to the iridescent shimmer when spawning into the gallery room he agreed to meet his friends in. Hundreds of NFTs covered the walls from Pak, Beeple, Mad Dog Jones, and even Hackatao’s Imagine 2.0 piece. The Zuckerberg family didn’t particularly want Imagine 2.0 as much as some other art fanatics, but they agreed it would be disrespectful to offer Hackatao the opportunity to build The Sandbox Metaverse without purchasing any of his original works. It was only $900K anyways, and the investment proved lucrative, seeing as Hackatao is now one of the main contributors to the Twelve Seas and Islands Metaverse. The desert must’ve been too dry for his greedy taste.

In the center of the room, four men, much older than Jason, in lavish suits holding champagne stood huddled in a circle with his grandfather. Probably talking about the data storage space crisis. To his right, Nisha and Timmy were directing the hologram to showcase all of the stats on Zuckerberg-owned gaming parks. Numbers in neon blues, purples, reds, and greens shone back at them, highlighting their incandescent faces. Even from a distance, Jason could make out the amounts of the parks reflecting on his friend Timmy’s forehead as he scrolled through them like slots in those old gambling systems his grandfather used to tell them about.

$260,773… $153,406… $454,988…

If he didn’t know any better, he’d think the AI hologram was trying to auction him off as a new host like all the other devices his grandfather sold in here. He walked over to them.

“Siri, take us to Opulentland in Restoria,” Timmy said.

Nisha rolled her eyes. “Timmy, I told you yesterday a million times that you need Ethereum to buy land and shit in Restoria, not Tether.”

“That’s stupid. I’m not supporting your blood crypto that’s funding a cyberwar for—” Timmy jumped. “Jay! When’d you get here? Listen, my parents stopped

investing in Ethereum, and Nisha here is saying that some real estate won’t even take Tether anymore. It’s literally the most stable crypto on the market! Tell her. Tell her that doesn’t make any sense.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” he lied.

“Bullshit! Nisha, don’t you even—”

Both of his friends’ voices faded out as a flash of maroon light struck his vision. He took a step back from the shock, then froze until the dizziness subsided. An instinctual part of his mind already summoned the command panel, sifting through various malfunction errors of his QuestChip. It appeared that a few malware bots had gotten through his firewall. He copied the issue and forwarded it to his grandfather.

“Fine! Well, Jay, it looks like we can’t go to any parks that take Ethereum…”

“That’s literally ALL of the good ones, Timmy!” Nisha complained.

“It’s fine, guys. Just pick wherever you wanna go.” He transferred a temporary code for his play-fund MetaMask wallet to them. “It’s on me. Don’t worry about it,” Jason said.

“Are you sure?” Timmy asked.

An alert sounded. Cheyenne was ready to take a look at his QuestChip. “Totally. Just… just give me a couple minutes.”

Jason: Hey Cheyenne, I know you’re busy. It looks like some sort of virus that invaded during the newest update.

Cheyenne: Hey Jay, sorry about the delay. We’ve been getting quite a few requests about a similar concern. It’s related to an anon hacker using some malware bot. We haven’t quite figured out the source of it yet, but our team is on it.

Jason: Hacker?

Cheyenne: Nothing to worry about. I’m going to remove the newest update until we’re ready to relaunch it. That should work in the meantime.

Jason: Thanks.

Cheyenne: One moment.

Despite never seeing Cheyenne or hearing her real voice, Jason always appreciated her expertise as their family tech. None of them knew if she was human or AI, except maybe his grandfather. Regardless, it was probably smart to remain a blank slate considering her occupation.

Her modulated voice and recording chatbox appeared back in his mind.

Cheyenne: Jason, how long has your QuestChip been experiencing delays in processing?

Jason: A few weeks maybe…?

Cheyenne: So before you updated it?

Jason: Is everything okay? Silence.

Cheyenne: The malware bot in your device, its behavior is unusual. It doesn’t originate from anything using Metasoftwares. I think… I think it’s coming from outside.

Jason: An outside bot? What do you mean?

Before she could respond, Jason’s virtual plane shook with static as six security guards spawned to rush the gallery. He tried to send multiple messages to his grandfather and Cheyenne at once, but all of his systems, including his digital body, froze, suspended in a loading state. A DDos attack?

The guards pulled his grandfather aside, one whispering in his ear. Immediately, his grandfather shimmered, then disappeared, a sign he teleported to another location, or that he left the Metaverse…

“What’s going on?” Nisha asked.

Before Jason could comprehend, he felt another electric zap in his temples. A lightning bolt of maroon saturated his vision as everything started shifting and spinning into some unfamiliar plane.

Thrust into some sort of geri chair, the zaps in his mind ceased, and everything steadied. Home. This was the home he learned to physically walk in before transporting to the Metaverse to live out the rest of his life.

Hundreds of senses flooded his body. His actual body. A blinding light shone through the window, nothing like he’d ever seen before. At least, not that he could remember. It didn’t shimmer like his life in the Metaverse. It seemed still. Stable. Dust particles danced in the golden waves like atoms transversing in the universe. Was his grandfather inspired by the sun’s rays?

The surrounding walls were a plain off-white, the same color of skins before selecting colors to wear at the start of every day.

Skin.

Real skin rubbed against the arms of the geri chair. He stared down at his hands in awe, bringing the tips of his fingers to brush against his palms. Crevices of entire planets rested in them: his own wrinkly lifelines.

The CRISPR lifebox that reflected his vitals emitted no heart-beep sound like his generation was taught it should. Metaschools explained everything they could about their lifeboxes since kindergarten, but it was his first time

seeing one in person. Nothing about it reflected the images from his lessons. It just looked like… shrapnel. Granted, he couldn’t see as well as he could in the Metaverse.

He blinked, then reopened his eyes as if reloading a page. It took longer than he anticipated before his pupils finally focused.

A hole the size of a bullet rested in his lifebox. Terror shot through him.

“Nurse!” he shouted.

A young man in a black uniform stepped out of the shadow of his door frame. “She’s gone,” he said before tucking a maroon scarf with a white anti-AI symbol around his neck. Now that Jason could feel, the fashion seemed suffocating.

“Forgive me, I don’t know what… I’ve never been here. I mean, I have, but I… Would you mind helping me get in contact with my family?”

“Don’t worry. You’ll see them soon,” the man said before pointing a gun at Jason.

“Shit!” The scarf… it was the same maroon color that flashed during his QuestChip malfunctions. Jason raised his hands to protect himself. The movement took more effort than he thought. “Wait! Please. There must be some misunderstanding.”

“We’re tired of being your slaves. Caring for your bodies while we’re left with the scraps of a forsaken planet you poor, poor rich left behind.”

Sweat beaded down the side of his face, a clear droplet of blood. “What do you want? Crypto? Access to the Metaverse? I can get you a QuestChip! I’ll give you anything. Anything!”

“I have no need for your devices.” He lunged forward to shove the barrel of the gun against Jason’s forehead. “Your grandfather thinks he’s untouchable,” he spat. “But you can’t run the real world if none of you are in it.”

There wasn’t enough time for Jason to unplug his IVs to defend himself. Not enough time for his inert muscles to remove the wires ensnaring his body.

Reality freed him the moment the criminal pulled the trigger.

FEATURES

Literary Feature

According to legend, through any mirror exists an alternate world. There, clean-shaven people wear goatees, good and bad trade moral standings, and PTM... well, it still prints fiction, because some things are indelible. But we print narrative fiction. Literary fiction. That delicious, academically-lauded alternative to the genres we love in this world... In another world, we publish stories like Asphyxia, by Katherine Holmes. So take a deep breath, step through the mirror, and accept, for your reading pleasure, this harrowing, complex, and grittily determined tale. Heed the content warnings for description of suicide, gore, and violence.

ASPHYXIA

by Katherine Holmes

Tig said that if I didn’t let her play Romeo she would throw me into the blackberries behind the guesthouse. Fight me, she said. Your legs are water. I shouted unfair, but her shirt was already off.

I blame the movies. Tig did her heroics seminude because that, she said, was how they did it. Never mind ‘they’ were boys with muscles and fiery emergencies. As for the blackberries, they grew behind Nanny’s in a feeble thicket that Tig said went all the way back to the witch trials. Thejuice has special powers, hence why the taste, she said, black bits in her incisors.

I was tired of glory and gloom. Why can’t we play Snow White?

Quitwhiningandeat.

Tig wanted Mom to see our red, red lips when we came in for dinner. Mom never commented. She never noticed.

Of course she did.

She noticed and said nothing like a barn owl over Babylon. I think she was born knowing everything in advance. She had a tortured air, with downturned eyes that screamed, Save yourselves! though she never raised her voice. Tig wanted her to. Tig wanted screaming matches and punishments, trudging through snowfall in bathrobe and boots to hack the blackberry bush to confetti. She was so steeped in stories, she thought all mothers were crazy and ours was slacking, an untrained imposter chewing on lettuce leaves.

Washyour fruit, Mom would say. Wear sunscreen. She knew everything.

And she permitted it. She knew Tig’s theatrics weren’t all about death. The feral parkour of Romeo over the flagstones, the fainting of Juliet, the double suicide and starting over, was an act of conquest. Romeo died, counted three Mississippis, then got up to go again. Death? What was death? In the endless repetitions of tragedy upon tragedy, Tig was indomitable.

It was her decision to quit playing.

The grass had baked into hard, brown spikes. I wore my trusty Tevas. The sun burned crisscrosses over my feet. It

was too hot for toast; honeydew, cucumbers, and crushed ice only. The thing to do was sleep under thin, cool sheets. But Tig wouldn’t defer her fun to the heat. She took off her shirt and pointed me to the rock wall. I went.

The stones burned under my back. We started as usual. Romeo yelled for Juliet, who laid silent as a mummy, and was shocked to find her unresponsive (Tig would poke me with a stick, harder if I flinched). Assuming the worst, Romeo dropped to the grass and cried Love! and Torture! and writhed like an eel that’s zapped itself. It sounded tiring.

When the grief spell was over, Romeo gathered her wits. She wondered aloud how she should die: impaled on the sundial, struck by lightning, flattened by falling timber, choked by the hose…

The last time she played, Romeo wrapped the hose several times like multi-strand pearls and collapsed in a kicking fit. Uncle Creon was on his way to drop the check in Nanny’s mailbox.

He saw Tig. Tig saw him. He tipped his head back and laughed.

It was worse than a stern word. Tig unwrapped herself and stormed inside. I had no idea the performance was over—I thought it her finest yet. The brush of pine needles and scratching of ants spoke to Romeo’s desolation in a most artful way. I lay on the rock wall, admiring Tig’s subtlety and waiting for her cue to stir. Maybe she hadn’t finished dying. She would emerge momentarily for her biggest death yet, fake blood and firecrackers, lightning from the gods. But it was Nanny who came, ringing the dinner bell.

And where was Tig? On the couch, eating Whoppers. When I brought up the game, she said it was my idea; she only played because I needed the Vitamin D and would I stop crying already. She looked flat, vaguely threatening, kind of wide in the face when she lied. It was like staring into an iron. But then I knew, I really knew, my sister. The strong ones are the most brittle. Tig’s ego made her a hot air balloon, big enough to blot the sun and prone to rip if

misfolded.

Some nights I dream that I’m back on the rock wall. The light burns through my eyelids as I wait for my love. The grass hisses with something dragging, the light shifts, and Tig stands like a Great Dane over me. Through my eyelids I make out the solar glare on her shoulders, her yellow hair, her determination. That hiss again. I figure out what’s making it when she jams the hose in my mouth.

The metal ring dinks my teeth. I taste dirt and a cold jet of—not water, but blackberry juice. It fills my mouth fast so I can’t swallow it all, but she won’t let any waste. It’s magic. Or poison? Before I can reject it, Tig clamps my lips around the ring. The juice goes where it can. My cheeks stretch, my throat closes against choking, it holds for a nanosecond and then bursts like a dam. I am flooding inside.

Tig says, Relax. You’refinally Snow White.

My belly rises. I need more room. There is nowhere to go but apart.

I explode in a shower of black confetti. When I wake, the bed is soaking.

Everything has a purpose. To fail that purpose is to slide into oxymoron, to waste atoms, and to jerk around the

honest man. No mutiny is too small for Creon. So, at the end of a long day, when he sits down to dinner and finds the butter dish empty, his distress is both gastronomic and existential. Butter dish sans butter? It is not to be borne.

There are four chairs in addition to ours. All the places are set. There are never guests to fill them or ask why we eat in the middle, reserving the heads of the table.

I made the placemats. The needlework shows different scenes in a marsh: grass on water, deer in fog, sunrise patterned with birds in flight. Creon doesn’t particularly care for embroidery, but he respects hard work. When he comes home from the lab, he always asks what I’ve been up to. He likes to see the designs fill in, the textiles lengthen, the fingers scab over. He asks if I’ve heard of something called Etsy. Someday we’ll reach that easy place where we can laugh at one another.

Nanny is making roast duck with orange glaze. The smell of brown sugar teases us from the kitchen, and Creon is hungrier than usual, so the butter dish feels like especial injustice. He still holds the lid, white ceramic with foliage motif, as our disappointment triangulates at the colorless scrapings where a fresh stick of Kerrygold should be warmed and waiting. I can hear the reprobation in Creon’s

head. He’s cutting someone a severance package.

He sets the lid down on the tabletop and begins eating his dinner roll dry. His swallow is audible from across the table. “What were you working on today?” he asks.

“Nothing,” I say.

“Ran out of yarn?”

I’m crocheting a dress. I would never wear it, of course, but I’d have it on my mannequin and know that I made it. So far I’ve made scarves and shawls in different styles, and the work is taxing. The simplest pattern requires hypervigilance because mistakes must be righted as soon as they happen. They cannot be covered, as in painting, or slurred aright, as in music. One wrong move warps the garment. A dropped stitch undoes it.

“Were you going to tell me?” I ask.

He nudges the silverware on his placemat—rearing herons—into perfect parallels. “That was today?”

“It’s on the news,” I say flatly.

“Oh, Izzy.” He reaches between us for the green glass carafe, an heirloom from his mother to mine. We do not drink alcohol. I like my sleep; he likes his uncompromised cognitive excellence. “I didn’t want you to worry,” he says, refilling my glass. “Would telling you have made a difference? At least now, you can teach me how to knit.”

“Yes.”

He refills his own. “I’ll make a poncho.”

“I mean yes, it would have made a difference.”

He puts the carafe down, hard. Water spits on impact. “You’re being too sensitive.”

Anyone else might be startled at the change from poncho pupil to authoritarian. But Creon takes himself seriously. In a rare mood of lightheartedness, he will joke and make faces and turn into a clown with kid gloves that, should he feel contradicted or snubbed, come off with a crack. He is the sensitive one.

“It was sudden,” I say. “I would have appreciated—”

“Nobody died.” He looks up. “I mean—I didn’t mean it like that.”

I breathe out. “I know.”

“I’ll tell you the next time I retire.”

I want to smack him. I want to eat somewhere else, try the kitchen floor. How long must he have been planning his blazing exit from the company, with sound bites and appearances on every major news outlet? He’d let them paint him and light him like a ceremonial effigy, while I had to catch up on recap articles and tabloids. The headlines were awful.

SUN SETS ON THEBES.

PRODIGAL SUN SETS.

SOLAR POWERHOUSE POWERS DOWN.

According to an anonymous source, Creon, Director of Thebes Engineering Solar Division and Founder of Aerosolutions, Inc., was stepping down after a near decade of innovation. The billionaire science whiz had developed a low-cost aerosol that, if injected into the stratosphere, would deflect the sun’s rays in order to slow global warming. He was saving the world, pending NASA’s approval. Let’s hear from the man himself.

This was the first video result of many. Everyone had something to say.

Creon trotted onto set in a custom suit and oval glasses. His hair was tousled, sleepless and endearing. If not for the orangey studio makeup, his appearance looked so perfectly haphazard I would’ve thought he had leaked the news himself. Maybe he did.

He sat on a U-shaped couch between a reporter in red and a reporter in magenta. The reporters had biceps and tarantula lashes. They rubbed their wet-looking shins together and laughed charmingly as he answered them

yes, he was retiring… Because he was getting old… Oh, stop it!... It sure was difficult to let go after everything… No, it wasn’t a midlife crisis. That was the Bugatti… He looked forward to spending more time with family.

I, the family, know better. “The Board voted you out. Didn’t they.”

There were rumors. There were inquiries. Creon brushed it all off as the production of namby-pambies and Histrionic Resources. And then there was the family history, which he had transferred to Solar to bury in the first place. Creon might have saved the future, but he wasn’t the man to lead us there.

His chest puffs like a sail. He’s not used to being challenged. It’s been a while. “Pass the butter,” he says, tearing off a chunk of roll.

“It’s out.”

He pushes his bread plate away from him and inadvertently knocks the carafe. Ice water spills. We both lunge with our napkins. He saves the mahogany, I clean the mess. When the table is more or less dry, Creon rights the vessel and inspects the green glass for cracks.

Nothing visible? Good.

Tig killed herself for real, in her PJs, indoors. She was still a child.

She was such a child.

It was easy. She had no obligations, no goals besides sunny weather, dessert, and making a point. She sure showed us. My greatest fear isn’t death or pain or sadness. It’s stunted potential. It’s Tig on a cement floor, spiders twitching in her hair. That was eight years ago. That was downstairs.

She was always angry. There was one time a dragonfly landed in her ice cream, and she yelled the poor thing into seizures. Its legs got stuck in the melting mint chip, and no matter how hard it beat its wings, it would drown. Imagine the pain. The pounding. The burning green gurgle. Hemon rinsed the little carcass with an eye dropper. Time passed. For the next anniversary of Tig’s earthen advent, he gave her a glass pendant wherein he had pinned the dragonfly with invisible bolts. She wore the pendant on a long chain over her T-shirt. She wore it in the shower and in bed. She used it to hang herself from Creon’s workbench.

She had wound the chain in the vise jaws and turned the handle herself. The chain was so slender that it cut where it choked. The blood was thick, brownish, cold. It smelled.

I still smell it.

Creon had the bench cleaned and covered with a tarp. He hasn’t touched it since. I wonder where his sentimentality lies.

He really does work hard. His neck refuses the top button. His eyes punch like the carving end of a chisel. His hair is a wolf’s mane. He is a wolf in man’s clothing. He runs at six in the morning, having woken at five-thirty to shave before anyone sees him. He takes care of himself: Botox, tattooed hairline, railroad of sports tape up and down his legs. Calipers are religion. Crunches are penance. When the nightmares wake him up, he crunches like a python digesting a car.

It must be confusing when the world fawns over you. You assume your own son will fawn, too. But Creon’s achievements meant nothing to Hemon, who was not a culture ruled by goods and services. Hemon was a boy. He wanted love, forget the world.

Creon couldn’t. Now it’s all he has left.

Shelves with books, portraits, rock samples, and a TV span the three walls facing the bay window. In front of the window is a massive desk that juts like a cliff over a sage

green rug. The desk has a leather top and built-in fountain pen. On the rightmost corner is a glass figurine, a ship.

Creon sits on the sofa perpendicular to the desk and jabs the remote at the TV. He hits the plus button several times. The Discovery Channel is showing an expedition. Marine biologists drive a steel pod through the ocean. The footage turns Creon’s face blue.

“The Bruins are on 8,” I say.

He tilts his head in my direction, still watching the screen, and presses 8. I’m surprised.

The study does not invite interruption. It is a space for simmering genius. It is sleek and fearsome in the way Creon wants to be—and was until now, slumped and listless in retirement. He should be screaming through the phone at Ed on the Board, who according to Creon owes him his sweet, bleached ass. He should be collecting favors, threatening hell, doing everything in his power to keep that power or cede it on his own terms, not channel-surfing at home. He’s given up, a businessman neutered. I can’t look anymore.

The commercials give way to a figure skating program. An announcer introduces the Boston College skating team, replacing tonight’s pregame interviews with their Nationals-winning number. The girls stroke onto the ice. They take a lap before settling into position. Their pale dresses flutter with anticipation.

Someone get them all gloves. Blankets. Therapy.

A violin whines over the arena. The air granulates. On the next beat, the girls dance. They sweep into motion, dresses flipping up, while the music follows like cold rain. The crisp unison of their footwork stirs something in me. I could fall asleep or burst into tears. There’s no way to tell but to watch the girls turn like cherry blossoms in a pool.

Creon rubs the back of his head. “Ever think about getting back out there?”

I shake my head. It was stupid to hold out as long as I had. I wanted grace and dynamism. Maybe I wanted some of Tig. She would have danced hieroglyphs into the ice. She was born well; I had complications. My gait depended on certain movements of the arms that disrupted choreography and made the judges cringe. I was okay at jumps and spins, but the angled leg, locked knee, and pointed toe—essential garnishes in the sport—were impossible. Then there were the outfits, Saran wrap spandex and no-lying nylon. They hid none of my deformity. I tried not to watch my reflection in the rink shield, but I didn’t move fast enough, and what I saw was a T-rex in tights. And then to keep coming back, to flounce and pretend an ease of motion I would never have… I felt obscene on the ice, sometimes brave, but mostly alone.

The skaters were kind to me. They knew whose niece I was. They moved out of my way when my program music came onto the loudspeakers and it was my turn to rehearse. They complimented my dresses. Creon could afford the best. We all knew who was good and who was just costumed. I didn’t win medals. I stopped caring. I hated the cold. There was no reason to want to skate in the first place. It was a doomed venture.

But it was my venture. Mangled, but mine.

Or had part of me hoped that centrifugal forces would whip me, blur me, delude me, to normalcy? Had I hoped Hemon would see this transformation from the bleachers and hail me a nymph?

Hemon. He would pick me up from practice, and we’d go to Dairy Queen for peanut-butter parfaits. He kept tissues in the glovebox for when potholes, or the speed bumps on our road, made a splatter. He was thoughtful, artistic, and interested in everything. He got me into textiles. His mother was a weaver who had taken him and the other weavers’

children to the prickly pear fields where cochineals mated. She taught young Hemon to brush the little beetles off the cacti, dry them under the sun, and grind them into a red, red powder like the sand in the wicked witch’s hourglass. This was the dye that turned wool brighter than roses, richer than blood.

Hemon’s mom died of a brain aneurysm. Her name was Llaslla, meaning snowfall.

Creon adopted Hemon after a spirit quest in the Andes compelled Creon to save a life (this, of course, after Creon saved the world with Aerosolutions). Hemon was my age and a good match in temperament, but he favored Tig as soon as they met. She defied Creon enough for the three of us while Creon did what he could for the boy, paying for a prep school that beat the boy crooked; for clothes that bound the boy’s character; for haircuts; for therapy that opened the boy and looted his brightest parts; and for the Academy, where he died in a field drill. Creon refuses to talk about him.

“It’s sadistic,” Creon says, pointing the remote at the skaters. “I bet it all started when some Russian creep paid a hooker to strap knives to her feet and said, ‘See frozen lake? Dance for me on lake. But take off coat first, then dance.’”

The couch cushions jiggle as he laughs to himself.

“Look how physical it is.” He ups the volume. The orchestra blares, but Creon shouts over the music, “Hear the ice rip under the blade, the growl of a proper edge. Watch the bird’s-eye shots. There. See the flash where that girl just went, the flash at her feet? That’s a tiny wake she makes. The ice liquefies by the pressure of her blade. She’s changing phases while she dances.” He looks at me as if he’s solved the White Album puzzle. “It’s a literally physical sport.”

As a lapsed skater myself, I can pontificate on angular momentum. Instead I tell him how when I spun without gloves, my fingers felt like they’d pop off.

“Is that why you quit? Ran out of gloves?”

I say nothing.

“You could have knit more.”

The BC girls link arms and kick in homage to the Rockettes. The camera zooms in. They look like one girl tessellated, her hair scraped, her smile rigid, her eyes watery from the irritation of whipping air currents. “I hated it,” I whisper.

“He told me as much.”

He.Hemon. Termites gnaw at the rim of my vision. I blink them back. I should have had something at dinner. I was upset, making a point. Meager way to do it. My mouth is fuzzy when I try to speak. “What did he say?”

“He told me to quit forcing you. Marched right in here and said enough was enough. I said fine. I didn’t care what hobby you took up, but Hemon insisted. He wouldn’t believe the ice skating was your idea.” Creon licks his lips, an old mannerism. He keeps liquor in crystal vessels on the window sill. Decorative, at this point, trumpeting his self-control, but real and waiting for him to take one, casual sip.

“I miss him,” he says softly. “I miss making plans for him.”

“Hemon was kind,” I say. Someone has to say his name. Creon rolls a wrist, swilling a phantom tumbler. “That’s one way to put it.”

The comfortability of routine makes it easy to forget our grief. The passage of years hides the empty spaces that burn all around us. I remember now. I remember how Creon started it.

How he ignored it.

“I don’t believe the report,” he says. “The way the Superintendent put it. I don’t think…” He tips his head back,

flicking an eye at me. “What do you think he died of?” “You.”

I can see the scattering and regrouping behind his eyes. I almost pity him. Then he returns, the merciless Creon, starved too long of a decent fight. “And what makes you so special that you can stand me?”

The room tints. Adrenaline shows the presence that is always here, waiting to be named, weighing our impudence in the days we stay silent. Shutting my eyes, I feel the pantheon of our dead. I feel Hemon behind me and Tig’s cheek on mine and my parents mourning the family we could have been.

Don’t leave.

We can’t.

Weareyours.

Weareslungonyourneck.

My cheeks drip. I’m crying with guiltiness and so, so much love.

Creon keeps talking, spit and gesticulations. “Hemon

with the drama. Antigone with the games. You with the moping and macrame. Your life is ahead of you, and you can’t even see it. That’s the defect of you kids.”

What does he think Hemon died of?

“Stuck on present pleasures, rushing faster than you can see. Try a job. That’s the hard thing, setting up in the world. Elbowing room for yourself. None of you ever tried. She…” He laughs, pugnacious then tired. His hands drop in his lap. “She might have done well.”

Tig.

Eight years.

I still live in her shadow.

After well-mannered dinners, cutting his cake, spooning cream on the side, I didn’t have the soft spot that Tig had in him. In everyone. It was because she felt things, she felt people, so brightly. When she heard that Hemon had left for the Academy, Tig spat on Creon’s shoe. We all stared at the white, bubbly clot. It took forever to sink into the Italian leather. When it did, leaving a dark stain, she ran off. I followed her through the garage, all the way to the guesthouse, and by the time I caught up she was shaking lighter fluid onto the blackberry bushes. I cried. She said I always cried, I had a fish face and should live in the sink. She thought strength was what you wacked others with.

She razed half the garden before the firemen arrived. And what did Creon tell them? He’d been burning leaves and things got out of hand. He wore gardening gloves to sell it. Tig hated him more. All her zealotry wasted. If Creon had sent for Hemon to come home, she would have picked something else to die over. Any one of us was a prop for her rage. But what could we expect of the girl who thought death was the grandest gesture?

I am not a romantic. I lead a sheltered life. All that death, and death again, stunted what was left in us. Creon worked eighty hours a week. I did college online, switching from Gen Ed to Nursing to Gen Ed again. I don’t have the fire to hate a person, but I hate what Tig did to us. We are not haunted. We are the ghosts that she left behind.

Creon sets the remote on the cushion beside him. “You can watch if you want. I’m going to bed.” He stretches, getting up, and wiggles into his slippers. “I’ve got a late morning tomorrow.”

He leaves the study and goes scuffing down the hall. His gait has stiffened. It’s the hour, he’d say, but I know it’s age. Retirement will overwhelm him. He might get so bored as to actually try knitting. Creon, the Solar Savior, stitching a cozy for the world.

Deflect. Cool off. The sun keeps burning. It readily answers our provocation. The oceans acidify. Trash piles up. Houses on Cape Cod sink shingle by shingle. Earthquakes get people names, scientists weep, and landfills earn nationhood status. They are ruled by goats.

Fate cannot be avoided or starved or beaten by a man

on cortisol shots.

I smoothen the cushion where he sat. I angle off the remote on the side table, the ship on his desk, and the crystal vessels on the sill. No one will miss the decanter.

I’myour onlyfamily, I told him once.

AndI’myourwholeworld.

The bath runs hot. I burn my fingers while checking the temperature and recall an earlier argument with Creon. It didn’t come up in the study tonight because it, like Tig and Hemon, is part of the air. Our words hang around us like garlands at Christmastime. They are sweet, even the hurtful ones, because we meant them.

And what ofyour world? You’re an old man now.

I would have said that if I’d thought of it at the time. As it was, I probably said something like, I made chickensalad, why don’tyou love me?

I know he loves me. That’s what makes him mean. But I shouldn’t have to defend him again and again. It’s not enough to love someone ‘deep down’ so that the other person must go caving for recognition. That’s what Tig figured out when she hanged herself.

I want him to see the Tig in me.

I have taken her back and won’t let go. Try exorcism. Try holy water. I am more than hot air. I ate the blackberries. I sunburned on the wall. I untangled Tig from the hose and from the vise—because I was the one who discovered her body. Tig had missed dinner, and lunch, so I went looking for her. The attic was empty. Her room was clean. Her shower was dry, so I knew she hadn’t gone out. I almost skipped the old workroom with its dull, glinting tools. It was hard to believe that anyone used them, but Creon had. And Tig. There she was, deader than cobwebs, a black line of coagulation where Hemon’s chain had garroted her. Creon knows all about it from the forensic team’s photos. He wasn’t there like I was. He didn’t smell her.

The tub fills. I twist off the faucet and let the surface go still. My shadow over the water becomes a reflection. When I crane over her, she looks down on me. What a haughty nose. You wouldn’t think her a nervous type. Maybe she isn’t. She could be my better self, hoarding her grace from an unworthy world. I raise my foot over the water, and we touch sole to sole. She is scalding. For a moment, she carries me.

I step into her.

My ankles burn underwater. They itch and then acclimate. I lower into a sitting position against the freezing cold back of the tub. My arm hair spikes. It makes no sense that the water can burn, and even steam up the porcelain, while the porcelain itself concedes nothing to the heat. I wish I were immovable. Hard to be, with these legs. They lie sticklike before me, scored with clean, white lines. Surgery did what it could—and it did a lot. In a pair of loose pants, I look almost normal.

I bend my knees and slide toward the water. The surface comes up to my waist, like a ballgown. I slide more. A turtleneck. A balaclava. Just shy of submersion, I straighten my legs and slide up into a sitting position, my hair streaming and heavy. My skin catches the light, and the bath tile across from me winks in return. There’s another face. Another self. I grab the decanter from the ledge of the tub. The stopper gives with a pop. I tip the crystal to my lips and tear up at the smell. The rim is glass, but a narrow circle I know from my dreams.

This isn’t her night. I cheers myself in the bath tile and drink to Ismene.

Gah. It’s rum.

There’s not enough house for both me and Creon. I’ve overstayed anyway. But where would I go? I have no marketable skills and no calling that I know of. I thought Nursing was it. I liked learning how bodies break down and people repair them. It takes a strange personality, hopeful yet clinical, to save lives for a living. You have to be trained under grueling conditions because the stakes are never higher, and whether or not your humbleness survives all that gory accomplishment, you are still, unwaveringly, a good person.

I couldn’t see that for myself. Who would look at me and let me fix them? I can hardly decide who I am, whom I answer to—myself, Tig, or an appropriation of her. She is louder in death, always taunting me.

You want to save theworld, huh?Join the club.

You liked when Mom killed herself, didn’t you? You thought that made her a real woman.

Go knityourself a deathrope.

People think of her on a bed of wildflowers, fingers laced over her stomach, dress white for gratuitous tragedy. But I know she died on sawdust and mouse droppings. I look at the photos to remember her like this because she won’t leave me alone. Not in sleep. Not in prayer. If there is a God, I know He’s fawning over her, casting dotage in stars, fool like everyone else who didn’t know her as I did. How can I pray when she’s laughing behind Him?

I take another swig.

My tailbone is numb from the hard porcelain as if I’m back on the rock wall after the fire scorched it. A hundred years from now, the stones will be gray again. A hundred Augusts will bleach the soot stains. My eyes must be closed—maybe I’m dreaming—because a red blot overtakes me. I know who is standing there.

Did you love me, Tig?

Yes.

When?

I know. When your eyes bulged. When your skin turned blue. When your smile congealed in a death mask. You loved me best when you broke my heart, when you showed all of us by tightening the vise.

Kerplunk. The crystal stopper has tipped off the ledge. It knocks my thigh under the water. I imagine a finger there, poking, wanting to play. My mouth tastes vanilla-y. Mint chip is overrated. I’m hemorrhaging odd sights and false memories: the black mouth of the hose and the golden inversion, a tunnel tossed with leaves. There is laughter and screaming, Boo! and Slowpoke! and Wait! Sneakers pounding toward the eyeball of brightness at the end.

The water’s gone cold. My head droops. It’s always a shock to see my own breasts. Tig died before hers came in. Makes me feel worse. More lumps, more deformity. But they show my years. They show my breath. They rise and fall with feeling.

I am weak but not hopeless, like my heroines. Snow White mopped for her keep. Juliet knifed herself. Ismene will leave this house one way or another. Weakness turns on itself, slow to rise, slow to heat. Like lava that hates its nature, it’s slow to blacken and sprout flowers.

Tonight, drunk Ismene, exhale something fresh into the air.

IN DEFENSE OF WHIMSY

by Shannon Stockdale-Elftman

What is whimsy, really? The problem is whimsy is hard to pin down. It’s much like that oft-misunderstood quote concerning pornography.

“I’ll know it when I see it.” Ironically, when we think about whimsy in storytelling we tend to favor children’s stories. James andtheGiant Peach , Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland , The Wind in the Willows , and other classics, as well as more modern fare. Children have, supposedly, cornered the market on whimsy. Is this because we associate whimsy with childish wonders, frivolity, light-hearted adventures, and humor? Not the realm of adulthood, where our fears and anxieties rule the day.

Another quote—I collect them. Yes, I know how that sounds. “Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.” Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. gets to the crux of my point. We should all be embracing whimsy, in whatever way we might define it.

Let me take a side quest here and ask, how much media have you consumed in the last year aimed at self-improvement? Or at increasing your creativity? At deepening your connections, your empathy, your sense of well-being? The deluge of contentment content becomes overwhelming at times, doesn’t it? There are planners and journals to buy. Apps to quiet our mind, guided meditation gurus that take American Express, podcasts and sycophants and social media influencers. The very pursuit of joy has been bogged down in toxic positivity and tied with the gaudy bow of capitalism.

Sometimes these advice givers remind us to play. Julia Cameron, for example, stressed the importance of play to the creative process. And I don’t know about you, but there are times I’ve looked at that advice and rolled my eyes. Play is all well and good, in theory, but what am I supposed to do, go climb those dome shaped metal contraptions from my childhood? Out of luck there. Turns out kids are discouraged from breaking bones and requiring tetanus shots almost as much as adults. Well, at least kids these days.

Sometimes these joy gurus will try to give you some pointers. See, what you need is to visit a strange city and just explore, to pick up a hobby that speaks to your inner child, to take risks. This advice only applies to the people who have the money and time to do this. Sure, if you can afford some play-centered adult retreat (that sounds dangerously close to obscene, doesn’t it?) then I’m happy for you. In fact, I honor your creative free spirit. But, the truth is, many of us aren’t in that position (no pun intended). So, what are us plebs to do? Well, embrace whimsy for a start. And it’s out there, even for people who think themselves too serious for such flippant entertainment. Especially if you think yourself too serious. Whimsy is out there waiting to be found, and, unlike the skittish colt of joy or the sloth of contentment, whimsy is obtainable on a daily basis. And you don’t need to spend more than the price of a book (or visit your local public library—the true collectors of joy and whimsy).

Books, even those not geared at children, are positively stuffed with whimsy. Terry Pratchett springs to mind, early T. Kingfisher, occasionally Gaiman, Erin Morgenstern, India Holton. But, I would be remiss if I didn’t also encourage you to pick up some books geared at younger audiences from time to time, even a few of those classics. And I don’t mean YA or New Adult, while some of these are certainly whimsical. I mean try some Middle Grade fiction, some Kelly Barnhill, Anne Ursu—hell, Judy Blume, even. We know (science says so) that reading increases empathy, and who could use more empathy than that side of yourselves that still wants to pick dandelions to make them into crowns. In short, if you feel disconnected from your youthful sense of wonder, try reading something you know you would have loved at age ten. Self-empathy, for all the parts of yourself.

Whimsy is, on the whole, something that can be easily folded into our everyday lives. It can be as fast or as costly as you want to make it. And because it doesn’t have all that toxic positivity associated with it—you must do X to experience Y—you can move more freely in the realm of whimsy.

Do you feel whimsical when you make up a song about loading the dishwasher? Then there’s your daily dose, and don’t forget the air guitar. Do you feel like a character from a fairy tale when you wear a particular outfit? Do it, even if you only feel comfortable wearing it around the house—preferably while loading the dishwasher and playing air guitar.

Whimsy is a small candle in a hurricane, but it’s a candle you can light against the darkness easily; it’s a candle all of us can access anytime we wish. If we are too tired, too jaded, to chase after happiness, just try finding a touch of whimsy whether in a book—or other form of media—or in your everyday lives.

What’s your favorite form of whimsy? You can email me at s_stockdaleelftman@emerson.edu and share.

CRAFTING THE SCIENCE IN SCIENCE FICTION

by Tess Rossi

Science fiction allures and enthralls because of the unique worlds each story holds. At the core of science fiction, there’s science: some new knowledge, discovery, or breakthrough. Then, there’s technology: how that science is applied, from daily life to a planetary or (inter)galactic scale.

When you hear “science,” your mind might jump to physics, biology, chemistry—all those hard sciences. But don’t discount the social sciences, like psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Blending together different subsciences leads to robust, rich stories.

Science and technology are inextricably entwined, and there’s limitless imagination when it comes to “new” science in sci-fi stories. Alien invaders? Unique societal structuring? Faster-than-light travel?

Are you ready? Because it’s time to boldly go.

Science fiction will always hold a special place in my heart. It’s my favorite genre to read, write, or watch on screen. There’s something alluring and enthralling about the unique worlds each story holds. Obviously, a lot of planning and note-keeping needs to happen to create the most intriguing but consistent story within science fiction.

At the core of science fiction, there’s science: some new knowledge, discovery, or breakthrough. Then, there’s technology: how that science is applied, from daily life to a planetary or (inter)galactic scale.

Limitless imagination goes into designing the new science for your story. Questions jump out at you: Will people fight with modified body parts, laser blasters, or sonic screwdrivers? Are aliens invaders, allies, or slumlords (a la Jabba the Hutt)? Is there faster-than-light travel? Have wormholes made for easy trips ’round the galaxy?

A blank page might be daunting when attempting to start your sci-fi story—it certainly is for me! I tend to write by the “seat of my pants,” in that I don’t have much of the story planned out. However, I’ll have written extensive notes on the world in which the story takes place.

I want to share some tips and tricks I’ve picked up and refined along my writing journey so that you, too, can feel more confident when diving deep to write your next sci-fi hit. Many points can be applied to other genres as well, but in this context, I’ll have a sci-fi focus.

1What is the question that drives your story?

The big “what if?” It should involve the science element that separates your story from our current world. It can still be a basic, humanistic question or problem, but with a little twist. Keep this question close in mind as you continue to flesh out your story’s world.

2

Plot the history of your world. This doesn’t need to be an encyclopedia, but at least a few points on why Society A hates Society B, or when first contact was made, or how solar fusion was harnessed for energy. If dates are important or will come into play in your story, jot them down, and double check your math!

3

Plan your society/societies. How are different groups of people divided? Is there a government, ruling class, monarchy, or all-powerful cabal of cats? What does a typical job, wage, house, family, etc. look like?

4

Invent your technology. How is the technology used, and by whom? Is it something to help or hurt others? Are there dangers associated with the technology? Something that can help bridge the gap for a reader is formulating technology that is similar to or builds upon familiar technology we use today.

5

Create your characters. What personality, traits, skills, opinions, and flaws does your main character have? How do they relate to other characters, and how do they interact with your technology? Most importantly, what does the main character want? What motivates them—and, as the author, how are you going to make it difficult for them to achieve that goal?

6

Science should cause or solve the problem of the story––or both. Science and technology should be entwined with the story you write. If those elements are removed and your story can still stand on its own, then it’s not science fiction. It’s fiction with science.

You can explore these elements and more before writing your sci-fi story, but these are the ones that come into play the most for me. I find that a separate Word document helps to organize my worldbuilding details, but you can use whatever modality you prefer: notebooks, sticky notes, vision board, or computer programs (there are many good free ones!).

I hope these tips are helpful as you plan your story, sci-fi or otherwise. If the blank page seems less intimidating to you now, my work here is done.

Boldly go, dear writer!

ROMANTASY BOOKLIST

by Marleigh Green

If you’re anything like me, and you spend way too much time on BookTok, you’ve probably seen people talking about books that blend the genres of Romance and Fantasy.

Together, they form the power couple: Romantasy. But what exactly does it mean? What makes a book straight up Fantasy versus Romantasy?

Romantasy is defined as a subgenre of Fantasy where there is a romance subplot that exists alongside the Fantasy main plot. How intrinsic the romance is to the plot depends on the book.

For example, I wouldn’t label a book like J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings a Romantasy, because romance is such a minor aspect of the story, despite what the films might suggest.

You could make the argument that Melissa Caruso’s The Obsidian Tower qualifies, since a romance subplot exists, even though the main story isn’t driven forward by it.

If you’re curious about reading books within the genre of Romantasy to see what it’s all about, but don’t know where to start, you’ve come to the right place. Here is a list with mini, spoiler-free synopses of some popular Romantasy books currently on the market.

1. FourthWing by Rebecca Yarros

Two words: Dragon College. Fourth Wing centers around Violet, a young woman who is forced by her ambitious mother to enter the cutthroat Basgiath War College. Most students don’t make it out of training alive, and while Violet is underprepared for the obstacles ahead of her, she possesses a great deal of cunning and grit.

The college is full of enemies eager to cut the weakest link, including the intimidatingly powerful student Xaden Riorson, who has a dragon, more knives than you can count, and an ax to grind with Violet. Fourth Wing is fast-paced and exciting to read, and certainly worth the internet hype.

place whose enchantment hides the horror lying underneath. Her humanity may be what saves or dooms her and the entire realm.

Romance tropes: Forced proximity, opposites attract, fairytale retelling, fish out of water.

3. TheWinterKing by C.L. Wilson

A war, a curse, and a king named Wynter walk into a bar… C.L. Wilson’s The Winter King centers on Khamsin Coruscate, an exiled princess of Summerlea, whose father reviles her for her power to summon storms. When the king of Wintercraig defeats Summerlea in war and demands one of the daughters of the king of Summerlea as his bride, Kham is chosen and wed to the enemy king as punishment.

Romance Tropes: Forced proximity, enemies-to-lovers, shadow daddy, academic rivals.

2. A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard of A Court of Thorns and Roses , the wildly popular Beauty & the Beast inspired Romantasy series that’s taken BookTok by storm.

When Feyre Archeron, an impoverished young woman forced to hunt for survival, slays a wolf in the woods, she sets a series of events into motion that she never could have predicted. The bill for this choice comes due, and Feyre is thrown into the world across the wall, where the terrifying fae reside. She must learn how to adapt to life under the beast-shifting lord of a beautiful manor, in a

Now, Kham must survive a new court and melt the frozen heart of her new husband, who may be lost to a terrible curse if she fails.

Romance tropes: Forced proximity, arranged marriage, fated lovers.

4. Bonded by Thorns by Elizabeth Helen

A multi-POV, why choose, reverse harem, Bonded by Thorns is another retelling of Beauty & the Beast, but involves four cursed fae princes instead of just one. When Rosalina O’Connell’s, a bookstore clerk, eccentric father goes missing, she tracks him down in the fae realm at a thorn-infested castle called Castletree, where the cruel, icy-hearted high prince of Winter, Keldarion, takes her prisoner in exchange for her father’s freedom. Rosalina meets the other princes, one for each season, who are all cursed to turn into beasts at night until they find their mates. The armor-wearing, stoic high prince of spring, Ezryn, the swaggering and frequently shirtless high prince of summer, Dayton, and the kindly and timid high prince of autumn, Farron. But working to unravel their curse awakens something in Rosalina, who discovers that this world straight out of a book could destroy her, or turn her into something else entirely.

Romance tropes: Forced proximity, reverse harem, fated lovers, curse breaking.

5. Blood Oath by Raye Wagner & Kelly St. Clare

It’s another dragon book! Except this one has dragon shifters. Ryn, like everyone else in her kingdom, has always lived under the oppression of the king and his blood-sworn dragon shifter, Lord Irrik. When Ryn is taken by the terrifying Lord Irrik to the castle, presumed to be a rebel, her death seems imminent. But there’s more to the frightening dragon shifter who captured her than meets the eye, and more to Ryn herself, which may just save her life.

Romance tropes: Fated lovers, mistaken identities, dark secret.

AUTHORS I SHOULD READ

by Shannon Stockdale-Elftman

In the interest of honesty, I have a contrary streak—a large one. Sometimes, I don’t like things simply because too many people do. It’s committed me to a lifetime of missing out on stuff like Breaking Bad , Sarah J. Maas, and Takis. Due to my contrary nature, I generally do not make resolutions. If I aim for life-altering change, I will wait until I hit rock bottom in the time-honored traditions of my ancestors. No preemptive SMART goals for me, thank you very much. Besides, I haven’t felt hopeful at the start of a new year since January 2021. That turned out to be less phoenix-rising-from-the-ashes and more put-out-greasefire-in-my-trailer-kitchen-only-to-have-a-tornado-blowit-all-away kind of year.

However, despite my dislike of the resolution, I’ve realized that between work, school, children, lack of focus, and increasing existential dread, my reading the past year or two has not been as well thought out as I would like. For starters, there’s been less of it. In years past, I’ve averaged 60–100 books a year (not all hefty reads, mind you, and some in audiobooks, but still). I’ve read 35–50 books a year in bad years. In the last few years (since 2020, really), I’ve been closer to 25. For someone whose primary personality trait (at least if you ask my friends) is “reader,” this is a depressing turn of events.

In addition to volume, my reading selections have been somewhat arbitrary. I’ve read whatever feels good at the moment (on top of books for my graduate classes and book club). While reading whatever feels good in the moment is great soul comfort, it does leave me languishing as I look for a book to fill my immediate need. It’s the literary equivalent of standing in front of the pantry looking for a snack and being unsure if you want something salty, cakey, gooey, and like a starving woman, you grab a package of peanut butter crackers and call it good. So, to be a bit more meticulous about my reading, I’ve come up with the following list of authors who I’ve either sampled and loved or just books I have in my TBR stack and have been avoiding in favor of the literary equivalent of peanut butter crackers. Because I’m an oversharer, I thought I’d, well, share.

So, in no particular order (and shortened for space), my reading plans.

Jo Walton

Jo Walton is one of those rare authors who never does the same thing twice (unless she’s writing a series, but even then, the books are different). I read Among Others, perhaps the novel she is most well known for, quite a few years ago and recently finished My Real Children. I also regularly read her newsletter on Tor.com, “Jo Walton Reads.” I can’t recommend it highly enough if you haven’t read Among Others. It’s a beautiful book about a lonely, book-loving teenager who also happened to save the world from her evil, crazy mother (not that the world knows or cares) and lost everything she held dear in the process. I plan to read the rest of her catalog, including her newest: Or What You Will.

Rivers Solomon

I read An Unkindness of Ghosts when it first came out and loved it. It was such an odd fever dream of a book that I still think about. However, life got in the way, and I lost track of the author since then. As nonbinary and intersex, they are not an author who hit most mainstream radars, and their writing style is more about the journey than the destination (at least in AUOG); this means that you have to settle in for the meandering thought process and the seemingly dropped threads that weave back into the narrative later; in short, not an easy read, but rewarding in its exploration of the -isms (sexism, racism, post-colonialism…you get the idea).

Peter S. Beagle

This man does not get enough respect. His fantasy novel, The Last Unicorn, is iconic. It’s one of those rare books that ages with you; when you are young, you see it as an adventure, a love story, and as you age, well, let’s say the character of Molly has taken on new meaning for me over the years. But Mr. Beagle has a body of work that never fails to amaze and delight. There have been, over the years, several of his novels I haven’t gotten to, though. Including The Folk of the Air and his newest book, I’m AfraidYou’veGotDragons.

Robert V.S. Redick

I used to read a lot of epic sword and sorcery fantasy. Even today, it brings a nostalgic warmth to curl up with a genre classic. I’ve struggled to find something in this sub-genre I enjoy in recent years. However, I read Master Assassins last year and loved it. The cover looks like something straight out of 80s era fantasy, but what Redick does to the genre is unique. The story begins with two half-brothers in the service of a warlord who—by traditional fantasy standards—would be the big, bad, evil villain. Honestly, in Redick’s version, she is, too, but we at least get her back story and come to understand (somewhat) the forces that have shaped her. Along the way, we explore a brotherly relationship that makes Cain and Abel seem healthy in comparison. All of this is wrapped in a desert world of dried ocean beds, competing political interests, and monstrous creatures the likes of which Conan would have been proud to fight. The second book in the trilogy is already out, and I plan to dive into this world again as soon as possible.

I could eat up several more pages describing the authors I’m looking forward to reacquainting myself with or meeting for the first time. But the editors don’t like it when I ramble. So, I’ve included a picture of my TBR pile that I’ve assembled to share with the story-hungry masses. What authors or books are you looking forward to this year?

ROMANCE NOVELS, REBELLION, AND LITERARY DISSENT: AN INTERVIEW WITH JENNIFER SAFREY

by Sarah Burton

Romance: A Novel Approach” is a class about the craft, theory, and writing of romance novels, about their impact on the reading public, and on wide-spread current and historical repudiation of the well (if often secretly) loved genre. Dangerous Books for Girls is the title of one of the class texts, written by romance author Maya Rodale. I hit the button to enroll sofast . I took the class, I loved the class, and I was excited to interview the professor and author who led the class. She is a contributor to the romance genre, herself: Jennifer Safrey.

I sit in a huddle room at work, hoping no one wonders why I’m not at my desk, and wave at Jen across the internet via Zoom.

“When did you start reading romance,” I start, “and when did you decide you wanted to teach it?”

She nods, thinking back. “I started reading it very young. When I was in 6th grade, there was a girl in my class named Susanne. Silhouette had a teen line, and Susanne had a million of them and she handed them out to our class. When they were available to me, I just started buying teen romance. Fun fact: I ended up writing for Silhouette later. That same Silhouette logo is on my first romance books.”

“In terms of teaching romance,” she continues, “I taught a community class here and there, and I saw the Emerson listing. I’m always cruising the job boards because my career is a freelance career. Emerson was there, and I applied because… this is stuff I know. I had an interview with them, and they hired me right away. Most of my teaching before this was adult education.”

The conversation turns to backgrounds, and I learn that Jen and I have something in common beyond a love of romance novels.

“My mother was a high school English teacher for many, many, many years,” Jen says. “When she retired she was the Assistant Principal for Academics. My stepfather is the Head of the English Department in the same school. I almost feel like when you’re the kid of teachers, you always end up discussing books at the dinner table and critically analyzing everything.”

Reader, this is fact. My father: a book-hoarding former math professor. My stepmother: a retired English and rhetoric professor. My mother: devoured books like they gave her life. The literary analyses never ended. I am what I am for a reason.

“Our Scrabble games are cut-throat,” Jen says, laughing, “Like, Game-of-Thrones-level fierce.”

Confession time: I will not play Scrabble , because I’m both competitive at board games and very, very bad at them. The results are not good for anyone.

“What impact do you think centering romance has on students who take the class, as well as on wider perceptions of the genre?” I ask Jen.

“Love and romance are at the heart of a majority of the art that is produced, in visual arts, songwriting, books… It’s either about love, or love is there,” Jen says. “It is a central

human emotion. I don’t think you can have a piece of art with depth without love, either the loss or the celebration of it. It frustrates me that romance novels that take love and make it central are so maligned. I mean, you know, and I know, and we all know that it’s really because it’s women. Romance is by women for women. Now, it’s by women and many people in the LGBTQ+ community, and for all those people, and that makes the literary elite very nervous. There is a threshold of some kind that people in the literary world want you to be able to cross, somehow, and [they have] a frustration at self-publishing, and a frustration that women and romance writers can get this into the marketplace.”

Self-publishing can strengthen a more direct relationship between the author and the reader. Sometimes agents and publishers are successful because they choose manuscripts well, but sometimes—thanks to the rise of self-publishing, BookTok, and other forms of social media—authors don’t need to wait for their work to be chosen. That’s partly because of the secret many people don’t discuss: romance novels are lucrative.

“They’ve conveniently ignored that romance keeps the lights on in these businesses,” Jen continues. “It’s the genre that sells the majority of literature.”

Yet sales aren’t the sole reason to focus on the romance genre or its history.

“There has been a history of discrimination against [romance novels], and a history of not letting women read, and a history of not letting women read what they want.”

Following the thread of why society would discriminate against women reading what they want, we start to see the influence of romance novels.

If society is made up of relationships, then, as Jen says, “The nature of romance is that it reflects the culture we’re living in. We can see if we read three romances from the 60s, three romances from the 70s, and three romances from the 80s how culture is changing, how marriage is shifting. You can see how perceptions of what love is or could be is shifting. Romance isn’t just necessarily for enjoyment, though that’s what we all read it for. It’s a strong reflection of where society is at any given point. A romance novel can almost be like a sociological document of what’s going on in general society at the time, even if you write historical. The attitudes of the hero and the heroine will be modern reflections.”

And to that, I say “Preach.” Except not out loud, because I’m busy soaking up arguments in defense of a genre I love.

“If you start to look at romance’s place in history and you start to look at romance as a barometer of where things are in society, I can’t think of anything more important to be in a college curriculum.”

At this standing-ovation moment, I sit, dumbfounded, because it’s true

“And the fact that they’re such fun books and they make people feel really good is really just a bonus. You can read an anthropological textbook, but it won’t be as fun, and you won’t get the layperson’s view,” Jen says.

Romance novels: fun, interesting, and educational, yet society derides them.

“Why do you think there has been such a strong historical stigma against romance novels as valid work?” I ask.

“Women and their contribution to society has long been discounted,” Jen says.

Well, that’s real.

“When women started reading these books it was dangerous,” she continues, “because now women had confirmed that there’s a possibility that exists beyond what they have. There’s a possibility to want more, and go after more, rather than sit and be thankful. Most importantly in romance, there’s a possibility of having a

partner who supports you wanting more and going after more.

“Women wanted more than the life they were given, and that was, and still is, a very dangerous idea for a lot of society. We’ve always lived in a patriarchal society. If you have a genre of books that promotes what women could want, and how they could be happy, and how they could triumph, and how men would, frankly, have to change in order to let that happen.”

The text for class was called DangerousBooksforGirls because they were.

“I’m not discounting men’s contribution to anything, of course,” Jen says. “We have amazing gay romances, now. It’s another situation where we’re expanding what it means to be happy.”

But that isn’t all. We touch on something I’ve wondered about for decades. Something about the strange preference snobbish people have for absorbing fictional misery.

“Those in charge are always going to think that giving ideas to those not in charge is dangerous. I don’t think people who criticize romance novels now have that in their conscious mind. They’ve been conditioned to think these are silly books,” Jen says, thoughtful. “I don’t understand… Why does it have literary value for love to be lost, but it doesn’t have literary value for people to work out their problems and be happy? I’ll occasionally read a sad girl novel. Those novels have value, but the value of the flip side needs to be recognized, as well. There’s a social idea that misery is good and happiness is pointless. So many people buy into that.”

Then there are people who love to pick the worst in the prolific genre of romance, and, laughing, point to poorly written passages.

But, as Jen says, “Like any other genre, some books are great, and some books are less great. But as a genre, it needs to be taken seriously. Love is the sole preoccupation of our lives, for many of us.”

A genre written off by society at large as fluffy and thoughtless, even disregarded by many of its readers, has a storied depth of history, influence, and rebellious dissent that buoys it upward (along with a cushy groundswell of profit). There’s more, of course. But, hey, take the class. Pick up a romance novel. And come back to read part two of “Romance Novels, Rebellion, and Literary Dissent: An Interview with Jennifer Safrey.”

INTERVIEW WITH LEAH KOCH, CO-OWNER OF THE RIPPED BODICE BOOKSTORE

by Marleigh Green

Isat down with Leah Koch, one of the two owners of The Ripped Bodice bookstore, an independent brickand-mortar bookstore that is proudly Woman- and Queer-Owned.

Sisters and owners Leah and Bea Koch opened TRB in Los Angeles, CA on March 4, 2016, following a successful Kickstarter campaign to bring their dream of a romanceonly bookstore to life.

The Ripped Bodice features a vast and diverse selection of romance fiction. In addition to books, the store has a wide selection of gift items with a focus on supporting independent, woman-owned businesses.

Q: You raised money for The Ripped Bodice via Kickstarter. What was it like to start your business using crowdfunding?

Leah: It was stressful, but it was also amazing, in that you’re able to bypass traditional funding models and go straight to who will be your eventual customer base. I say it’s stressful because as opposed to opening a business and having that be the first time that people interact with it, it was a theoretical business and the whole internet gets to have an opinion on it before it even exists. In general, I’m a big proponent of crowdfunding because it opens up access to people who need investment but aren’t able to reach investors.

Q: What initially got you and your sister interested in reading romance?

Leah: It’s mainly luck. We were big readers and grew up in a house that really emphasized reading. However, our mom wasn’t a romance reader; nobody in our family was. But we had bookstores. We used to go as a family every couple of weeks, and when we were old enough to be set loose, my older sister was the one who sort of wandered into the romance section after searching for historical fiction. She got totally hooked, and I had the more traditional experience of her sharing them with me or, more likely, me stealing them from her.

Q: I love that your parents emphasized the importance of reading. Did it matter to them that you both got into romance?

Leah: Luckily our parents had no issue with what we wanted to read, as long as we were reading. Romance was really accessible, we could buy them for 25 cents at garage sales so we totally devoured them. As an adolescent, I was drawn to the focus the books had on people’s inner emotional lives. They’re mainly about ordinary people, and I think when you’re a teenager and becoming an adult is so insane and terrifying, reading these books made us feel like our lives would be important. We just never looked back!

Q: Can you remember the first romance book you read that made you really passionate about the genre?

Leah: I don’t remember the actual first one ever, but the first one I have strong memories of is Nora Roberts’s BrideQuartet. I remember it being one of the first really formative series that stuck out to me. I loved that the characters continued in other books and I still reread it all of the time. It was based on a really utopian idea of living in a commune with your childhood friends and featured really strong female friendships at the center. Each book is a romance but all of them are such important parts of each other’s lives. I loved the payoff of getting to the final book and the characters getting their happy endings. It holds up pretty well.

Q: Are you a writer yourself or just a book enthusiast?

Leah: No desire to write, but I’m very impressed by those who do! I’m in the exact right position at the end of the publishing food chain. My sister writes, though. She put out a book a couple of years ago called Mad and Bad , which is about the real women who inspired romance novels.

Q: There are so many fun romance tropes we see in different novels. Enemies to lovers, friends to lovers, etc. Which is your favorite, and why?

Leah: Yes, I have many favorites. I would say forced proximity a.k.a. “there’s only one bed” is a big favorite of mine. Just because at this point, it’s the ultimate trope to me. They’re on a road trip, there’s a hotel, and you just know there’ll be only one bed. I also really like childhood friends reunited years later, and I think there’s something really sweet about that one. So those are my two picks.

Q: The Ripped Bodice is the first romance-centric bookstore opened in the United States. How did it feel to make history with the opening of your business?

Leah: It’s a little hard to say! I was thinking about this and within the last four months there’ve been three or four openings of romance-centric bookstores. We’re getting to a point where I won’t be able to count on two hands how many there are. It’s a remarkable shift to me, and I guess the answer to how I feel is pride. I’m proud and excited to see how the landscape continues to develop.

Q: If you could go back in time and give yourself advice when you started this venture, what would it be?

Leah: I recognize that the specific circumstances and choices we made at that time were the best we could do, and they led us to where we are today. So the first thing I’d say is “find more money” because we spent almost every penny we had, so our bank accounts were pretty low on opening day. But we didn’t have any more money, so we made it work with what we had. There’s a benefit to not waiting for the perfect moment, because otherwise, you’re never going to do it!

Q: That advice applies to writing too, that there’s never a perfect moment, so I love that. The topic of romance, particularly romance involving smut, can be sensitive for people. Romance is a genre that’s often dismissed as frivolous by the larger market. What would you say to someone who’s interested in reading romance, but is maybe put off by how it’s perceived by other people?

Leah: Well the flippant answer is “stop caring what other people think.” The more serious answer is consider the stories you’ve been told about romance novels and consider the source and what biases they might have. Because I think

that when most people are able to unpack the stories they’ve been told about romance, they realize there’s so much internalized misogyny and sex negativity.

Q: I do think misogyny is the main root of it, this idea of things that are women-centric or women-oriented being seen as shallow or frivolous.

Leah: It’s hard to remember where it came from but often it’s someone being dismissive of what their mom or aunt was reading. I think the more we can unpack those stories we’ve been told, the better off we’ll be. Younger generations are better about this, and in general when things are beloved by women and young women and it’s dismissed as lame and uncool, it’s more about the misogyny than the actual thing itself. I encourage people to unpack that. As long as you don’t believe romance shouldn’t be for other people even if it’s not for you, then I have no beef with that. There’s a romance for pretty much everything. There’s very little risk in giving it a try.

Q: Unlike many larger retailers, you accept books from indie authors. Was this something you set out to do when you came up with the idea for the store, or something you decided along the way?

Leah: Both. We discovered 8 years ago that most of the books written by POC and queer people were self-published, because the industry has historically shut them out, and it was important to us to represent diverse authors. It’s improved, but not as much as we’d like.

Q: That is such an important point to make, and it’s a great motivator for offering the option to self-published authors to shelve their books in your store.

Leah: A lot of bookstores don’t carry self-pubbed books because they’re not returnable and you make less money. However, to me, those things are worth it. And, a lot of people still have the notion that a self-published book wasn’t good enough to get traditionally published. It’s very different in romance when you consider the long long history of POC and queer people being kept out of trad pub. These books are often very high quality, it has to do more with racism and homophobia that they aren’t represented in publishing. We knew when we set out to do this that if we wanted to support those authors; that’s a compromise we are happy to make.

Q: The Ripped Bodice now has two locations, one on the West Coast and one on the East Coast. Do you have any plans for expansion at this stage? If so, where would you like to open the next one, and why?

Leah: Well we’ve only been open in Brooklyn for 4 months, but there are various places on the list. It’s so flattering that so many want us to come to their city, but cannot confirm or deny any particulars!

Q: Okay, I swear I won’t press you to tell me where next, but do you have an idea of when?

Leah: There’s no official confirmed timeline, but we waited 7 years between opening stores 1 and 2, and we probably won’t wait that long for number 3!

“THE WORLD NEEDS YOUR STORY” INTERVIEW WITH AUTHORS ELIZABETH HELEN

by Marleigh Green

Isat down with Canadian indie authors Elizabeth Helen, a sister writing duo whose recent romantasy book series BeastsoftheBriarhas taken off and become an Amazon bestseller. The series, a Beauty and the Beast inspired reverse-harem, stars a heroine named Rosalina, whose father has been searching for her mother ever since she was kidnapped by the fae. Rosalina’s father is seen as the town outcast, and Rosalina herself struggles to fit into the ordinary society into which she was born until her father mysteriously goes missing. The writing duo credits market research, TikTok, and their commitment to their craft for hitting such an impressive milestone in their careers. We had a wonderful chat about their impression of how authorship has changed, shifting from YA to adult, their advice for pre-published writers, and of course, Taylor Swift.

Q: So I have to begin by asking, what was the fantasy book or movie that started it all for you? Did you have a specific crush on a character, and if so, who was it?

Elizabeth: We were big readers from a young age, Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit were a core memory for us. Aragorn was the pinnacle of a gentleman.

Q: Lord of the Rings had my first crush, too, which was Legolas. But the Elvenking can also get it. On the topic of inspiring writing, in your opinion, what is the best way to begin a book?

Helen: We like to start our books in the middle of the action. We also like to put our characters in their normal lives before they get shifted to a new normal in a new world.

Elizabeth: Starting where the story’s already in progress, and you definitely want to ground your readers and show the difference between where they are at the beginning and the end.

Q: I know how hard it is to pick just one, but if you had to choose one song that represented each Beasts of the Briar book, what would it be, and why?

Elizabeth: This is tough because we love our playlists! For Bonded by Thorns: Taylor Swift’s Enchanted . We wanted the vibes of Rosalina being somewhere new. The line “please don’t be in love with someone else” is how she feels throughout the whole book. For WovenbyGold: We listened to Dance of the Druids from Outlander to give the mystical vibe of the Autumn realm. It represented Rosalina’s journey. For Forged by Malice: Across the Stars from Star Wars is so tragic and sad but so romantic and that fits the vibe.

Q: How do you go about editing your work, being two writers instead of one?

Elizabeth: Beasts of the Briar is our 11th and 12th book. We wrote under other pen names before, so people don’t always realize that. Typically we write the first the draft together, divvy up the scenes, write the rough draft, and edit each other’s work after reading the whole book separately. We print the entire document out and read it out

loud front to back. This is more to make sure we didn’t miss anything or write ourselves into a corners, especially the verbiage. We then send to our beta reading team that we recently cultivated, they’re trusted ride or die readers and we know if they’re happy, the greater audience will be. They call out scene blocking they can’t visualize, what needs to be built on, what can be cut, all of that general feedback. Our editor will also give us feedback. Final step is proofreading.

Helen: Over the years, when we edit now there’s a lot less cutting and editing. Maturing as a writer is finding your process and we did a lot more editing at first compared to now. We also outline very heavily, and having a firm outline helps us figure out what will and won’t fuel the plot. We throw everything at the wall first and see what sticks.

Q: What do you wish you knew when you started this endeavor?

Helen: For me, it would be to be consistent with writing and make it a priority every single day. There was a quote I read that said if you’re only doing it once a week, it feels like jumping into cold water and it’s harder to get into the groove. If you do it every day, it feels like getting into a warm bath. Consistency is mine.

Elizabeth: I did not realize when I was younger how much you have to be your own advocate in this business. If you’re going traditional or Indie, you have to advocate for yourself at every possible moment. Prioritize yourself and your business and you have to stand up for yourself and what’s best for your work. Grit is a combination of consistency and advocacy. Be too stubborn to quit! The series we published before Beasts of the Briar geared itself more to YA than adults, despite it being adult-centric. Readers are hungry and want more books. Fantasy is saturated, but readers will read! If you feel you have something special, you probably do.

Q: I’m glad you mentioned advocacy, social media marketing is a huge topic in the writing world these days. Which social media platform have you found the most effective for reaching your readers?

Helen: TikTok & Instagram. TikTok is great for new readers, it doesn’t always show your content loyally to your followers. Instagram is great for people who are following your career and want those daily updates. TikTok is for hooks & quotes, Instagram is behind the scenes life stuff. We also have a Facebook group for really loyal readers.

Elizabeth: There’s a different audience on each. TikTok is the platform that found the majority of our readers. We still advertise on TikTok and create videos that engage new readers. Instagram is all about connections. Facebook is our ride or die readers. Part of our marketing was finding out the age of our audience, that’s how we figured out we were leaning too heavily on the YA tropes. Disney Adults wound up being a huge market for us.

Q: What are some of the books you’ve read that inspired you to write your own?

Helen: When I was a kid, and I read His Dark Materials , it made me feel so many emotions and I wanted to be able to write something like that one day, that would make other people feel those things. It was so influential.

Elizabeth: As a teen I read Dune by Frank Herbert and I thought it was epic and it made me feel all of the things, and had so many different components. It made me excited to craft stories.

Q: Both excellent choices, did you also get into Twilight?

Helen: We both read Twilight as teens, and that series was obviously really influential for romance.

Elizabeth: We had such a great time with the YA resurgence during the Leigh Bardugo era and Hunger Games . Twilight is the friend you love to bully.

Q: Ah yes, we can’t help but giggle over those lines from Edward Cullen that used to make us swoon. In that same vein, what is your favorite thing about each other’s writing style?

Elizabeth: We love to add easter eggs into our books and foreshadow. Helen is a master at that. She’s the kind of person in the movie theater who in the first 20 minutes can predict the ending.

Helen: Elizabeth does amazing dialogue between the characters. She’s got some really great one-liners and she’s really good with grammar, and I can’t spell to save my life.

Q: Yes, some of Rosalina’s one-liners made me laugh out loud, especially when she calls Ezryn the “tin man.” How do you divvy up who writes what?

Elizabeth: We brainstorm the whole book together, we create the outline, and then we don’t choose characters but sometimes they lean more towards one of us than the other. We split things 50/50 and decide who will take which chapters and scenes. We divvy it up by arc rather than character. For example, I took more Ezryn and Helen took more Dayton.

Helen: What’s funny is, in the end we can’t often remember

Q: Speaking of Ezryn, Dayton, and the rest of the princes, Beasts of the Briar has a “why choose” approach to the romance between Rosalina and the princes, what made you decide to write multiple love interests instead of just one?

Elizabeth: It started with a marketing perspective. We came from a new adult series that was leaning heavily on YA and we did a lot of market research to find out what’s hitting in the Indie adult market. What are readers excited about, where is there a gap?

Helen: Fantasy romance was really hot and so was reverse harem. But there weren’t a ton of fantasy fairytales with those themes. We started to read “why choose” books but it was so interesting to see the way the relationships develop between the characters. We love multi-POV books as well.

Q: Yes, and her relationships with the princes are all so different, so you kind of get to explore all of the romance tropes in one.

Helen: Yes, exactly! It’s so fun to get to do enemies to lovers, friends to lovers, all of it, all in one book.

Elizabeth: For us, it started as a marketing move. But from the writer’s side we fell in love with exploring so many different characters. We wanted to stay in the romance genre and have it be a relationship-centered book.

Q: Romance is a genre that’s sometimes looked down upon. Do you have an opinion on why this might be, and what we can do to change this perception as writers?

Elizabeth: This is a very interesting topic that comes up for us. Romance is heavily written and read by women. Things enjoyed by women are seen as shallow and non-educational, and unimportant which is very sad. If some of these critics took the time to read these romances, they’d see these vivid emotional stories. I think it’s sad that there’s that perspective.

who wrote what because we edit each other’s work so much.

Helen: Because these are told through the female gaze, if a man reads they find it hard to relate to. Because they don’t understand it, they have to knock it down. If you’re intimidated by a fictional character that’s a you problem.

Q: I very much agree with that sentiment. Your series is an Amazon bestseller. How did it feel to see your book become such a success?

Helen: It was and still feels surreal. It did way better than our previous books, so it was amazing and then it was a couple of months after it came out. One of our TikToks took off and we got a lot of new readers. It was a snowball effect.

Elizabeth: Surreal is definitely the word. Social media can be a snowball effect, the more people who read it the more talk about it. We do feel like it’s a seven-book series and we’re not anywhere close to done. There’s an audience even bigger than what we have out there. We have been wanting to write full-time and have been pursuing publication for 11 years. This is the first time we haven’t gone back to teaching. It’s so special to have found readers and an audience.

Helen: We had so many failures over the past 11 years and our books didn’t get off the ground, and it came to a combination of studying the market really hard. Luck is a part of it, TikTok was hugely helpful. We had crafted our skills so much that we could produce a product that was going to hit with the audience. I wake up every day so grateful for this.

Q: What is the advice you want to give to other writers that most pre-published authors don’t have an opportunity to hear?

Elizabeth: I would say to remind yourself that the world needs your story. If you are motivated and this is your

passion, there is a place for what you’re writing. The book of your heart might not be the one that gets you on the map. Keep believing in yourself and why you’re doing this, writing at midnight and daydreaming at work. Keep learning and you can do it.

Helen: Something I struggled with in my mid-twenties was being jealous when other authors my age succeed. Instead, I now look at these authors and say “this is who I’ll be in two to five years”. Other authors succeeding in our genre shows the industry that people want your stories. Realizing that authors elevate each other and celebrate each other’s success and reframing your mind around that.

Q: Wow, that’s an excellent way to look at this, especially that reframe of the success of others being a positive and not a negative.

Elizabeth: Emily Rath totally reset my brain on this. The aspect of giving back in the industry is so touching. She gave this analogy of when you look at an author that’s so successful, don’t think that they have what you want. Think instead, that’s my future career.

Helen: Other authors are your coworkers, not competition!

Q: Well thank you both for meeting with me and doing this interview! It was a pleasure to speak with you and I can’t tell you how honored I am that you found the time in your schedules to share your wisdom.

Elizabeth: Absolutely! It’s okay to ask for help. We even had an author we admired reach out to us with questions, and it was so surreal and full circle. You can learn from each other and help each other. Especially for Indie authors.

Helen: The Indie community is especially important and supportive. Making those connections is vital.

FANFICTION, MICHAEL FASSBENDER, AND WRITING FOR YOURSELF A CONVERSATION WITH SIERRA SIMONE

by Marleigh Green

Isat down with hybrid author, Bethany Hagen, whose tenure boasts a whopping 28 books under her pen name, Sierra Simone. She began as a traditionally published YA author, and broke out into indie publishing when she decided she wanted to explore writing romance and erotica. Her books include the ever-popular spicy BookTok-recommended Priest , the dark and twisted Thornchapel quartet, and my personal favorite, MisadventuresofaCurvyGirl

We discussed the merits of traditional versus indie publishing, her thoughts on writing YA versus adult fiction, and how marginalized voices can be amplified outside of the traditional mold of storytelling.

Q: It’s so great to be meeting with you today! I have to start by asking, what made you decide to become a romance writer?

Sierra: I actually got my start writing YA fiction.

Q: Why the change?

Sierra: It was an organic evolution of moving from YA to adult writing. I worked as a librarian after getting my creative writing degree. I got my first publishing deal at 24/25, and since I was so young, I had no experience advocating for myself or having an anchored creative identity. So I got this publishing deal right as Penguin & Random House had their big merger. My contract got cut short because they were trimming off anyone with low sales.

Q: That must have been really nerve-racking, did you feel like you’d sort of hit a wall?

Sierra: I’d been asked to rewrite the second book in a series I’d been working on, and I was really burning out on this editorial process that seemed really geared towards pushing a book to trends versus what I imagined the book to be. I also got burned out on the idea that my agent wanted a big, high concept book, and that isn’t what I generate. So I couldn’t find anything new to write that she was interested in selling. A friend suggested I write something just for me, and what I wanted to write was fanfiction of the 2011 JaneEyre movie with Michael Fassbender. So that’s what I did. I wrote a smutty, Victorian gothic story. I decided to self-publish since my agent didn’t represent romance, and I figured I wouldn’t make enough money to pay for more than my Starbucks. That book was TheAwakeningofIvyLeavold .

Q: So what was that experience like, moving from traditional publishing to indie?

Sierra: I didn’t find a ton of readers at first, but I generated enough income to replace what I made as a librarian. I had two young kids at a time, and if I moved to writing full time I could avoid paying for childcare.

Q: Supplementing your income to be able to write full time is something I think many writers aspire to. What was the biggest difference between writing romance and YA?

Sierra: Romance is a really big tent, so essentially you can have almost every genre under the tent of genre. It’s the same with YA. But there’s things about YA that make it hard. In YA, you’re at the mercy of gate-keepers. You have to woo parents, teachers, and librarians, and you’re writing to two audiences. But that layer is always there. The second reason is there’s a lot of scarcity in the YA genre, it might be because of those gatekeepers, but when you’re talking about how big genres are, YA is really small compared to things like romance and thrillers. Your audience doesn’t have a ton of disposable income. Teens can’t drop $17 on a hardcover. Their books are found through libraries and whoever’s buying for them. It makes the genre very competitive, whereas romance is huge.

Q: How did you find the romance market in the wake of coming off the YA genre?

Sierra: I won’t say no authors have no sense of competition in romance, but it’s welcome to cross-promote and share. The better we all get at marketing, the more readers are trained to look for books in Kindle Unlimited, etc. Romance readers are voracious and read a book a day. They don’t give up after reading just one book a month. They want seven more! It’s a friendly genre and welcoming of so many different subgenres. You’ll always find a niche with romance.

Q: You decided to publish romance under a pseudonym, what was that like?

Sierra: It was so creatively freeing, because I took 30 seconds and picked a name, assuming I was making $100 a month. It’s the street I grew up on and my middle name that became my pen name for writing romance. I made a promise to myself that if I was going to take the time to self-publish, that this would be the name for me. My YA name involved a lot of compromises, but Sierra Simone got to be the name I used to write whatever I wanted to write. It was so transformational for me as a writer.

Q: Did you ever go back to traditional publishing after that?

Sierra: I did circle back to trad pub in 2018 with the Misadventures books, and now I have books with HarperCollins. But I’ve changed so much as a writer and adult, and now my relationship with publishers has been largely positive unlike my first experience. It’s because I changed and learned how to advocate for myself. I see publishers as partners, not patrons. It’s totally changed how I interact with them.

Q: Do you remember the first romance book you read that really spoke to you or inspired you?

Sierra: It was a book called Bared to You by Sylvia Day. It came out maybe in 2012. Sylvia Day wrote the Crossfire series, and it was the very first contemporary, erotic romance I read. I was so captivated by it because it was unlike anything I’d ever read. A friend handed it to me and I tore through that book in five hours. I was a young mom at the time and my reading time was very limited. Reading something so unabashedly sexual reoriented my brain chemistry.

Q: Would you say that despite how dismissive people can be about romance novels, that reading romance can be transformative?

Sierra: The popular perception of romance is that it’s a genre driven by women as writers and readers. The cultural dismissal of it as a genre is tied to a misogynistic perception. It’s disheartening when you see other women embodying this attitude. The call is coming from inside the house! This cultural disparagement has also been its superpower. It became a place where women were having conversations with each other about what constituted assault, etc. A lot of people bash on these books from the 1970s but some of these texts actually acknowledge SA and consent. It was such a departure at the time. This changing dialogue around consent, sex, and even birth control happened on a subterranean level.

Q: Despite how some may feel about them, romance is seeing a huge boom right now. Why do you think that is?

Sierra: You find wildly inventive stories that are representing marginalized voices or darker areas of emotion.

It fuses together genres that previously seemed separate like romance and fantasy. The fuel of that fire is coming from the indie side. There’s something really interesting about what storytelling can do when people with briefcases in Manhattan aren’t watching it.

Q: I love that perspective! It reminds me of how much fan fiction can be a vital exploration of the same things.

Sierra: A lot of people don’t pay attention to fan fiction, but you find incredibly creative things you don’t find in mainstream storytelling. Queer identity, etc., is often expressed in these writings.

Q: Since you’ve done both, what are your opinions on traditional versus self-publishing?

Sierra: Depends on the type of author you are. Some authors really care most about the writing, others care about having creative control. The marketing and business side of traditional publishing is really helpful for authors that aren’t comfortable with that and need a partner. There’s this perception that as an author the publisher does it all for you and you just get to do the writing. In trad pub, you still find yourself doing marketing and admin work. It isn’t all social media marketing work, but you’ll be best off if you’re open to events, and marketing yourself. No matter what path you take, the business side also finds you. If you feel uncertain with the nitty gritty of the formatting and business side, having a partner in a trad pub is valuable. But you’ll have much more control and agency as an independent author.

Q: Marketing oneself, especially on social media, is a really hot topic for authors these days. What do you think about it?

Sierra: I will say, there’s a feeling from authors especially that they sort of have to be an influencer themselves to market their books. But what I’ve found that sells the most books is not authors telling readers to buy their books, but readers telling other readers to buy their books. Facilitating word of mouth between readers is so much more important than people realize. The authors who have great personality-based platforms are not about their writing, but about them.

Q: What is some advice you would give to pre-published authors that you wish you had received before you started writing?

Sierra: For newbie authors starting out, something very helpful to me in my Facebook days, is to go after the smaller influencers just getting started instead of just the major ones. They are so valuable, because they’ve got more time. There’s synchronicity in them growing their platform and you growing yours. I kind of hooked up with smaller bloggers in my Facebook days, and we all grew together. It created a really nice bond of us taking a chance on each other. They had more time to be interested in me and my books because they didn’t have stacks of ARCs to go through.

TO HAVE LIVED

AN ANALYSIS OF ADAM SILVERA’S THEYBOTH DIEATTHEEND

by Sarah Burton

TheyBothDieattheEnd by Adam Silvera follows two teenage boys, Rufus and Mateo, on the day they know they’ll die. And it’s brilliant. I didn’t want to read this book. I like happy endings, and the title suggests tears. It delivers, but it’s worth the pain. TheyBothDieattheEndcaptures that “keenness of feeling” that burns through our teenage years. Teens hover on the moment’s edge, when, without their permission, and not of their volition, what comes next is life and death. I’ll tell you what I mean.

The start of Part 2 of the book shares the John A. Shedd quote, “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” Childhood, whether it is truly safe or not, is safe in that it isn’t the child’s responsibility. They are still being built. The big decisions, the big mistakes, the big responsibilities, are not theirs. Children can screw up, but

they have to screw up pretty badly before there is fallout that both affects the direction of their adult lives and is considered their fault.

As the teen years advance, rebellions and responsibilities increase, but it’s dress rehearsal. This time is an opportunity to try on the clothes and lines and roles of adulthood. Then there’s that moment in the dark hours when the clock ticks over and takes a person from child to adult. Some face that moment with exhilaration. Others face it with dread. Either way, they are launched. The world is not safe for them. And they are responsible, from that second on, for surviving it.

For every teenager in America, that knowledge is looming and unspoken. There’s no wonder that teens feel life and death in every decision. It exists there, in the fractal paths along which life unspools. Teenagers hopefully

haven’t made those choices. Yet. They don’t know if their path will take them to glory or to struggle. They only know, whether consciously or not, that every time they make a choice they take a step farther from their childhood, and a step farther from any of the other people they could have been. In They Both Die at the End, Mateo is sad for future Mateo. None of his futures will be. None of his choices will save him. Sometimes, that’s real, too.

Yet, even before he knew that he was going to die that day, Mateo, at 17, spent his youth agonizingly aware that any small decision could spiral into destruction, to the point that he’s missed out on life. Rufus, however, is already 18, legally considered an adult. We meet him after the tragic death of his family left him alone in the world, forcing him to forge a new family of friends. That is what adulthood does to people. They are alone in their choices.

No one else can make them. We have to bring together, through our own choices and will, a circle of people we trust. Mateo tried stalling adulthood by not making choices at all, by living vicariously in video games and hovering in the doorway to adulthood as he hovered in the doorway to the world outside his apartment. No matter how he stalled, though, the clock ticked over in the dark hours. His childhood died as he did, as Rufus’s already had.

My sister has a saying that follows me: “Time passes, anyway.” Mateo’s childhood was gone, regardless of his stalling. His dad was in a coma. He was alone, despite trying to stave off the change to independence and adulthood and responsibility and the inevitability of an end. The vast mystery and isolation of adulthood—of death—came for him. There was no running. Time passed, anyway.

Contributors

Jacquelyn Agliata wrote the horror story, His Face Was Abnormal . Jackie is a first-year Theatre Education MA student with a passion for teaching, theatre, and horror. When she isn’t educating the youth of America, singing on stage, or critiquing the latest horror franchise requel, she can be found exploring nature and hiking with her fiance.

Sky Allen is a copy editor and reader for PageTurnerMagazine . Sky hails from Denver, Colorado. She received a BA in English with a Creative Writing Specialization from SMU in Dallas, TX, and is currently earning her MFA on the Fiction track at Emerson College. Her main literary interests lie mainly in Gothic lit, as well as speculative, literary, and popular fiction. Her work has previously been published in Nowhere Girl Collective , PageTurner Magazine , and ChapterHouseJournal . Besides an obvious love of books, she enjoys pop-punk music, sunshine, throwing things at walls, and overstaying her welcome. When she isn’t reading stories or trying to write one of her own, she’s watching an A24 movie or wandering around an art museum somewhere.

Emily Andsager is PageTurnerMagazine ’s Submissions Assistant. With an English degree, Emily will further her education by getting a Master’s in Publishing and Writing. With about three years of publishing experience, she hopes to broaden her perspective, continue to write, and help others create beautiful works. Emily loves reading, writing, dancing, desserts, and sports.

Alexandra Ashe is PageTurnerMagazine ’s Social Media Assistant. Allie is a first year in Emerson College’s Popular Fiction graduate program. She is from outside of Boston, and in her free time she likes to read, spend time with her sister and friends, and listen to Taylor Swift.

Haley Brock is a reader for PageTurnerMagazine . Haley also wrote the DEI article, Neurodivergence . Haley is an author and activist living in Boston, MA. She is currently a MFA Creative Writing student at Emerson College. She got her Bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Trevecca Nazarene University in 2021. Haley is working on two major book projects, both of which focus on the realities for queer, neurodivergent youth in the Southern United States.

Sarah Main Burton is PageTurnerMagazine ’s Editor-in-Chief and an Art Judge. Sarah also wrote the feature article, RomanceNovels.Rebellion,andLiteraryDissent:AnInterviewwithJenniferSafrey . Sarah is a writer, editor, and devotee of genre fiction. She believes people were not meant to work within the constraints of reality. Escapist stories can be derided as unrealistic, as though what exists is all we can hope for, as though we shouldn’t strive for better. Sarah believes in fictive escapes and in their ability to make people happier and stronger. Her purpose is to create fiction and put it out in the world. She writes trapdoors into reality. Then she walks through them...

Andrew Busch wrote the science fiction story, Exit Wound . Andrew is a graduate of DePaul University and a third-year MFA candidate in Emerson College’s Creative Writing Program. He is obsessed with horror movies and lives in Cambridge with his fiance.

E. M. Chapel is PageTurnerMagazine ’s Board Co-Chair and a reader. Emily is also an author and educator. She is the author of TheWeightofSilver . When she isn’t writing or teaching, she can be found practicing martial arts, reading, or spending time on the water–all with a cup of coffee in hand.

Analisa N. Davis is PageTurnerMagazine ’s Communications and Administrative Assistant. Analisa is an 18-year-old creative writer from Atlanta, Georgia. She is a talented and driven individual, as seen through her published works Little Oak, a fully illustrated children’s book, and poetry in TheAmericaLibraryofPoetry . She is a Mercer University Spencer B. King, Jr. Scholar and an International Baccalaureate Certificate recipient. Analisa aspires to continue publishing books that challenge societal perspectives and influence how the world perceives humanity.

Elisa Davidson wrote the horror story, Lungs . Elisa is a last-semester senior in the Creative Writing major at Emerson College. She loves to write stories about the unusual and the thought-provoking. She has had works published in the Emerson Magazines Atlas , Gauge, and EFS , and will continue to write outside of college.

Zenia deHaven wrote the fantasy stories, Asterius and Goldtrace . Zenia is an MFA student in the Popular Fiction Writing and Publishing program. They primarily write fantasy with the goal of incorporating diverse characters from historically underrepresented groups. Their work has been published in the queer magazine FruitSlice . They enjoy group exercise classes, drawing, and playing video games when they’re not writing. They live in Virginia with their family and two dogs, both of whom love listening to Zenia recite stories aloud to them.

Ali Dening wrote the fantasy story, The Fox and the Box . Ali is currently pursuing a Creative Writing major and working on her first novel. Her writing playlist (the Skyrim soundtrack) recently dominated her Spotify wrapped, causing her to question her own coolness. When she’s not obsessively making asinine tweaks to her sentences, she can be found training for Nordic season by chasing her paraplegic dog around the house. Her work has won awards in the Telling Room’s Maine State Contest and has subsequently been published in their anthology, From TheEdgeofTheWorld

Maren Detlefs is PageTurnerMagazine ’s Art Manager and a reader. Maren is a creative writing major at Emerson College in Boston. Their work has been featured in the Fruitslice and Lookout Santa Cruz

Patrick Edinger is PageTurnerMagazine ’s Features Writer and Board Administrator. A writer, reader, and fan of all things fiction, Patrick Edinger is a current full-time student at Emerson College with focuses on Creative Writing, Psychology, TV/Film, and the pursuit of a Master’s degree in Publishing. Any free-time he finds is applied to reading and writing anything and everything (within reason). In the past, this has shown to be consistent with pieces of his writing being highlighted in Generic Magazine’s 19th issue as well as Robert Jones’ The Art Of Connection 2024 issue, and will continue to be for the future.

Meahgan Farrel wrote the horror story, TheLittleClayGodling . Meahgan is in her first semester of the Popular Fiction Writing and Publishing Graduate Program at Emerson College. She holds a BA in Anthropology from UC Berkeley and is certified to excavate archaeological sites, though she has an aversion to dirt. When she’s not writing spooky stories or listening to Taylor Swift, you can find her at a museum studying folklore or obsessing about the latest Mike Flanagan project.

Kenyon Geiger is a Board Member for PageTurnerMagazine . Kenyon is a fiction writer, filmmaker, and educator. He has a BA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Maine. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at Emerson College.

Daniel Golub wrote the story, NightWatch . Daniel is a current freshman at Emerson College studying Creative Writing. He enjoys writing and reading fantasy and literary fiction, and after graduating hopes to become an editor for the same genres. In his writing, he likes to subvert and play with the expectations of a certain genre or trope, especially in character studies.

Marleigh Green is an Editorial Assistant and the Social Media Manager for PageTurnerMagazine . She wrote the horror stories, TheThingsintheWoods and HellIsOtherPeople , and the thriller story, Faithless . Marleigh is a 32-year-old pre-published new adult fantasy author from Los Angeles, California. She graduates from Emerson College with a Master of Fine Arts in Popular Fiction Writing in Spring, 2024. A longtime writer, she resides in her native city of Los Angeles and is working on her debut novel, World Breaker , the first book in her Dark Horse series.

Rhiannon Guzelian wrote the horror story, A Wretch Like Me . Rhi is an emerging screenwriter from Maine. She is an alumna of the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, where she earned her Certificate in Television Writing in 2022, and of the Writers Guild Foundation’s Veterans Writing Project (VWP). Currently, Rhi is enrolled in Emerson College’s MFA Program in Writing for Film and Television.

Sarah Hart wrote the romance fantasy story, The Best Cakes in Town . Sarah is an Autistic and disabled writer who loves examining the underbelly of society and looking for the cracks of light under which forgotten people flourish. In her “spare” time, she is a freelance editor and a collector of office supplies. She lives in Virginia with her husband and their four cats.

Laurie Hilburn wrote the fantasy story, ForgetMeNever . Laurie is an editor by day and a writer by night (when she’s not sleeping, reading, or playing video games, which is always). She’s a southern transplant without the accent, and attending Emerson College has been her dream since she was 15 and thought it was named after her #1 guy, Ralph Waldo (it’s not). She continues kicking and screaming her way into the publishing industry; stories—writing them, improving them, sharing them, seeing them evolve—are her passion, and she can’t wait to tell more.

Katherine P. F. Holmes wrote the feature article Asphyxia , a “Through the Looking Glass” Literary Feature. Katherine is an English teacher and writer. Her work has been published in LitbreakMagazine , Capulet Magazine , CauldronAnthology , and Illnois’sEmergingWriters . She lives in Boston.

*ThroughtheLooking-Glass is a reference to Lewis Carroll’s work of the same name.

Natalie Intihar is Page Turner Magazine’s Communications and Administrative Assistant. Natalie is a romance author and an avid reader of all things books. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Trinity University and is a Master of Fine Arts candidate in Popular Fiction and Publishing from Emerson College. Her work has been published in the TrinityReview . When Natalie isn’t reading or writing, she loves watching football-Go Pack Go!-bingeing reality TV, or hanging out with her two cats, Burgers and Fries.

Miles Jacobsen created the art pieces, Asterius and Daedalus. Miles is an artist who illustrates and creates manga. He posts some of his art to his instagram @milesjacobsendraw. Miles hopes that his art can inspire others and thanks you if you follow/support him!

Savannah Jade wrote the science fiction story, Reality,WorthaShot . Savannah, the author of Beganwith a Rose , originates from all over Southern California as she’s moved over 20+ times due to a wanderlust spirit and an inability to commit to anything other than dogs and books. When she’s not writing or reminding Koda that he’s a good boy, Savannah enjoys studying evolutionary psychology, attending stand-up comedy shows, and eating enough Cold Stone ice cream to be able to afford paying the company’s rent. Her current works in progress include a YA Fantasy novel and a poetry novella illustrating indigenous peoples’ experiences. For more, visit her website: http://jadepoetry.com/

Clarissa Janeen created the art piece, Field Mouse . Clarissa is an author, illustrator, and editor from San Diego, CA. She has a BFA in Creative Writing with a minor in Illustration from California Baptist University; she is currently pursuing her MFA in Popular Fiction Writing and Publishing at Emerson and will graduate in 2025. Her writing has been published in Alethia and multiple editions of TheDazedStarling and she is the illustrator of the picture book TheSquirrelandtheMoon . You can find her online at clarissajaneen.com.

Natia Kirvalidze is a copy editor for PageTurnerMagazine and is the managing editor for The Independent Magazine. Natia is a Georgian student in the Writing, Literature, and Publishing program at Emerson College. She loves long walks, playing chess, and making lists.

Brigs Larson wrote the mystery story, TrailAngels . Brigs is a Creative Writing major from Rhode Island, with a love for hiking, cowboys, and 14th century marginalia.

Sophia Laughlin wrote the msytery story The Salesman . Sophia was born and raised in the beautiful city of Boulder, Colorado, where she spent her time reading books and daydreaming rather than the official Colorado pastimes of hiking and camping. Her first book was written in 2nd grade, a 7-page story about a magical kingdom with talking bologna and flying turtles. Though talking bologna no longer makes its way into her current novels, she won’t discount flying turtles yet.

Camryn Lehr wrote the science fiction story Macy’sAdventure . She is a Writing, Literature, and Publishing major at Emerson College. She has been published in ConcreteLiteraryMagazine in the past and enjoys reading, taking walks around Boston, and hanging out with friends.

Keera Lydon is a reader for PageTurnerMagazine . Keera is a Master’s candidate in the Publishing and Writing program. She plans to work as a book editor after she graduates. In her free time she likes watching TV, reading romance novels, and coming up with names for the cats she hopes to adopt one day.

Amanda J. Marshall wrote the science fiction story, TheAugmentedLife . Amanda resides in Northern New York and is currently a student in the MFA in Popular Fiction Writing and Publishing program at Emerson College. When she isn’t reading or writing, you will find her dragging her family to the top of the Adirondacks mountains.

Amira Mazzawy is PageTurnerMagazine ’s Submissions Manager. Amira plans to become a professor of English and creative writing, and will soon endeavor the daunting task of applying for a Ph.D. For now, she hopes being a submissions manager will expose her to more creative works and what the world of publishing is like to help teach her future students.

Casey McCarthy is an Editorial Assistant and the Website Design Manager for PageTurnerMagazine . She also wrote and edited the digital feature Over50PiecesofWritingAdvicefromPTM&GuestAuthorsSummarized Casey is a student and writer from Miami, FL. She’s studying at Emerson College for her MFA in Creative Writing for fiction. Casey is taking publishing classes and also working for the Redivider as Chief of Staff. She plans to work in the publishing industry after she graduates in May 2026.

Katie McGuire is a reader for PageTurnerMagazine . Katie is an MFA student in Emerson College’s Popular Fiction program and an editor with the Epic Ink imprint of Quarto. She lives in Queens, NY, with her cat, Moneypenny.

Clarissa McLaughlin is the Board Chair, an Art Judge, and a copy editor for PageTurnerMagazine. Clarissa is an author, illustrator, and editor from San Diego, CA. She has a BFA in Creative Writing with a minor in Illustration from California Baptist University; she is currently pursuing her MFA in Popular Fiction Writing and Publishing at Emerson and will graduate in 2025. Her writing has been published in Alethia and multiple editions of The Dazed Starling and she is the illustrator of the picture book TheSquirrelandtheMoon You can find her online at clarissajaneen.com.

Ella Miller is a reader for PageTurnerMagazine . Ella is a freshman Creative Writing student at Emerson College. She enjoys writing and reading weird sci-fi.

Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz created the art piece, Abstract 24 . Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz is a writer and photographer. Her work has appeared in various journals and anthologies. Check out her work at: http://gwendolynjoycemintz.com

Amber Morrison is a reader for PageTurnerMagazine . She currently lives in Dallas, Texas, with her boyfriend and their three cats (Wanda, Bruce Wayne, and Cheddar). She is in the Popular Fiction Writing and Publication program at Emerson. Amber loves writing, reading, and rewatching her favorite TV shows. Her favorite book genres are romance and thrillers! She owns over 600 books and plans to write one of her own someday!

Dikshya Pattnaik is PageTurnerMagazine ’s Layout Assistant. Dikshya is pursuing a Master’s degree in Publishing and Writing at Emerson College. She’s currently working as a freelance editor and proofreader. In her spare time, you can find her reading romance novels. In the future, Dikshya hopes to work for an imprint that encourages diverse voices.

Ember Richardson (he/they) is a copy editor for PageTurnerMagazine , and he wrote the DEI article, DisabilityisDiversity:TheCaseforReadingOutsideComfortZones . Ember is a writer, through and through. He is currently a student at Emerson College, working on a young adult science fiction novel. Ember began writing as part of his mission to create compelling conversations to foster a kinder, more equitable society. As a deaf, disabled, transgender individual, he knows firsthand how stories have the ability to change lives when people see themselves represented in the media. When Ember isn’t doting on his cats, he daydreams about stories or plotting his next trip around the world. He currently lives in Lakewood, Colorado.

Melody Rivas is the Communications and Administrative Manager for PageTurnerMagazine . Melody is a Massachusetts native with a passion for volunteer work and artisinal tea. She hopes that an editing job lies in her future, but for now, she composes language for the PTM team instead!

Tess Rossi wrote the feature article, CraftingtheScienceinScienceFiction . Tess is currently pursuing her MA in Publishing at Emerson College, where she also received her MFA in Creative Writing in 2023. She serves as Page TurnerMagazine ’s Copy Chief. She writes speculative and science fiction and aspires to be a published novelist. She loves reading, writing, crocheting, and finding errors in restaurant menus.

Savannah Rush wrote the romance story, WaitingforThursdays . Savannah is a small-town writer from New Jersey eagerly pursuing an MFA in creative nonfiction. When she’s not struggling at the keyboard, she can often be found wandering the city or making new friends on the T whilst almost always consuming an overpriced coffee.

Erika Lynet Salvador created the art pieces, Coral Conclave and Siren’s Solitude. Born and raised in the Philippines, Erika is an incoming first-year student at Amherst College, Massachusetts. With a passion for art cultivated since childhood, she intends to complement her STEM major by immersing herself in a variety of art courses. While oil remains her preferred medium, Erika also explores ink, charcoal, and watercolor. Her artistic focus revolves around creating vibrant impressionist paintings, often featuring women as the central subject. As an emerging artist, Erika has already made appearances in literary magazines such as the CosmicDaffodilJournal , the MossPuppyMagazine , and the Ambrosia Zine

Jen Sexton-Riley is an Editorial Assistant, Board Member, and Art Judge for PageTurnerMagazine . Her short fiction and poetry has appeared in TheMagazineofFantasyandScienceFiction , LadyChurchill’sRosebud Wristlet , DailyScienceFiction , on CapeNoirRadioTheater , and elsewhere. Jen is a 2018 graduate of the Clarion West Writers’ Workshop, and plans to graduate in autumn 2025 with an MFA from Emerson in Popular Fiction and Publishing. She lives in a haunted seaside cottage on Cape Cod with her husband, daughter, and many beloved pets. Find Jen at http://jensextonriley.com

Brianne Simone wrote the science fiction story, Memories™ . Brianne is a PopFic student at Emerson College who enjoys writing all fiction genres. She is currently working on her first novel. When Brianne’s not writing, she enjoys listening to music, watching foreign films, and sipping a hot cup of tea.

Alanna Smith is a founding member of PageTurnerMagazine and currently serves on the board as an alumna. Alanna’s a Boston-based copywriter by day and a fantasy-horror author by night. Her short stories have been published in BlindCornerLiteraryMagazine and New Gothic Review . When she’s not writing, you’ll find her looking for birds, playing Pathfinder, and leading local hikes.

K. R. Stanley is a reader for PageTurnerMagazine . K.R. Stanley is an autistic storyteller with a love for entertainment. Before getting their film degree, they have spent over 15 years on stage and in front of the camera. Their biggest passion is writing that helps inspire, dream, and escape.

Shannon Stockdale-Elftman is a Features Writer for PageTurnerMagazine . Shannon is a wanderer in the Midwestern wild, a teacher, and dreamer. She is approaching her final thesis semester in Emerson’s Popular Fiction and Publishing MFA program in the fall of 2024. Her thesis project is entitled The Fated Forest and is NorthernExposuremeetsWelcometotheNightVailewithadashofNarniathrowninforflavor . Shannon lives in Indiana with her husband, four children, and a TBR pile that constantly threatens to fall on her.

Tehya Tenasco is a freshman at Emerson College studying creative writing with a focus on fiction. She is a reader for PageTurnerMagazine , her preferred genre to read is horror, but she enjoys anything psychological and gothic. Tehya’s favorite books are Frankenstein and WutheringHeights , and she takes great inspiration from both in her writing.

Logan Ward is PageTurnerMagazine ’s Design and Layout Manager, an Art Judge, as well as an illustrator whose work is featured on the front and back cover and in several different credited illustrations throughout the magazine. He also wrote the DEI article, FanfictionandRepresentation . Logan is in the Media Design program at Emerson and currently finishing a documentary as a part of his Master’s thesis. After graduating at the end of summer 2024, he plans to work in magazine publishing to pursue his passions illustration and journalism.

Check out his website at: http://loganward.net

Rowan Wasserman wrote the thriller story, ThirdandFinally . Rowan is a creative writing/publishing student, currently in their freshman year. They are excited to work with more magazines and see what their fellow students publish!

Wei Zhao is an Art Judge and reader for PageTurnerMagazine . Wei enjoys reading and writing sci-fi and fantasy fiction. He is currently working on a mystery novel called The Testaments of Rosa SP

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