The Referendum by Frances Hope

The Referendum

by Frances Hope

The embarrassing part of it was that no one had rigged the election. The folks firmly seated on either side of the political aisle as well as the ones dancing and stumbling back and forth across it had come together in an organic demonstration of unity.

When it became clear on election night that Independent candidate James “Jim” Spell had won the presidency, capturing every single state and over 90 percent of the popular vote, people in cities and towns across America had flooded the streets. Friends and strangers held each other close, like they’d just come home from fighting a world war.

Alex, along with everyone else, had voted for Spell. For all she knew, the Democratic incumbent had voted for him. His concession speech had verged on being a panegyric.

In the days leading up to Spell’s inauguration, Alex had felt a glow inside, a pleasurable sensation that was private and personal, even though she could see in the smiles around her that others felt it too.

“Happy almost inauguration day!” she’d said with a grin to the cute barista, watching him steam up the milk for her morning latte.

“Can’t wait,” he’d said with a wink.

She left the coffee shop that day with the same spring in her step that had buoyed her for weeks—as she’d traveled to and from the humble arts nonprofit she and a couple of friends had started years ago while they were still at UC Davis; as she’d bought groceries at the co-op; and as she’d walked Maxine, her gray terrier mix with a penchant for trying to bite his way through the chicken wire fences that enclosed the neighborhood vegetable gardens.

But Spell had kept his mask on only as long as he’d had to before discarding the façade of the dreamer-slash-realist who was folksy yet sophisticated, kind yet fierce, environmentally conscious yet sensitive to Americans’ need for fuel and plastics.

Once the Bible had been whisked away, the brand-new president had used his inaugural address to let the public know exactly what he planned to do. There would be no more elections after this one, he’d seen to it. There would be no more press, he’d seen to it. There would be no more public education, public benefits, or public funding for the arts or transportation. There would be bare-minimum federal funding for public works. Effective immediately, there would be no more institutions of higher education.

He didn’t care if you were White, Black, gay, straight, cisgender, transgender, female, male, you could feel free to be whoever you were—Well, that’s something at least, Alex’s shell-shocked mind had thought, somehow teetering toward a sort of makeshift Stockholm Syndrome after her new president had only been speaking for six minutes—but you needed to shut up about it and do what you were told. Because if you caused problems, you’d be gone. He’d see to it.

The speech was over in under ten minutes, after which Alex and the group of friends who’d convened at her bungalow for wine and cupcakes with little American flags on toothpicks sat in nauseous, stunned silence.

“Is he pranking us?” Alex’s friend Martha asked, just before the room shook with the blast that they later learned was from a B-21 Raider dropping a smart bomb on the university’s administration buildings.

In the days after the inauguration, Alex’s mind kept returning to the image of fish squirming in a barrel as bullets pierced the water. The American people simply hadn’t been able to conceive of a power grab this sudden and all-encompassing. Its first wave was over before those who survived it had had a chance to take a breath of water through their quivering gills.

Content from the nationally broadcast SPEL 32 News, the only remaining channel, had made it clear in the month since the inauguration that President Spell’s primary aim was to live comfortably with his family in the White House for as long as it pleased him. He might seek to escape boredom and ensure his untouchable status with official acts of sadism, but he wasn’t an ideologue, nor did he have a vision for America other than that he would govern it from a position of absolute control.

Alex sometimes laughed at the absurdity of seeing people, including herself, moving through their daily tasks as if they weren’t all on borrowed time. Other than cutting off the university’s head, President Spell hadn’t yet turned his attention toward their little city—but Alex knew that he would, if the collapsed economy didn’t find them first. For now, though no one wanted to risk sending their kids to school after what SPEL 32 showed them had happened in Michigan, pop-up home education centers emerged throughout the city. People who still had jobs went to work. Alex still got her latte from the cute barista, who looked like he’d aged fifteen years overnight. People were kind to each other. People were so abjectly terrified that they’d crossed over into not feeling scared at all.

One Thursday evening, as Alex watched SPEL 32, a special notification appeared on the screen. Alex had just been imagining that the blonde, dead-eyed news anchors must be kept in a Ben Franklin–era dungeon somewhere when they weren’t on camera, when the words appeared, written in Declaration of Independence font over a background of the new American flag.

President Spell would speak directly to the nation, on camera, on Sunday night. His first address since the inaugural. Alex realized she was sobbing only after her face and shirtfront were soaked with tears.

The idea came to her as water poured down her back a few minutes later. She’d already needed a shower, having waited a couple of days since the last one to conserve water, but she also disliked the feeling of salty tears drying on her skin. When it emerged, the idea—as simple as it was—appeared as a 3D model in her mind’s eye, one she could turn this way and that, to see it clearly from all sides.

But by the time she could no longer justify the waste of water and turned off the tap, she realized she’d only been having a shower dream. Magical thinking facilitated by the hypnotic patter of the cascading water.

She hadn’t intended to mention the idea to anyone, ridiculous and fantastical as it was, yet the next morning, on her walk with Maxine along the path that bordered her neighborhood, she couldn’t resist sharing it with the first person she encountered.

“You know how politicians used to say issues should be decided at the ballot box?” she said to Randall, whose golden retriever, Champ, leapt and rolled with Maxine.

Randall, an older man whose daughter lived back at home with him now that she could no longer work for the university, adjusted his cap and said, “Yep.” Alex saw tears in his eyes, and wanted to stop talking, but couldn’t.

“Well, I had an idea yesterday that maybe we should just make our own ballot boxes with our minds. Like, that’s what we’ve got to work with, right?”

“Are you suggesting we imagine we’re voting . . . him . . . out of office? Because—” Randall looked equally annoyed, confused, and concerned that Alex had gone off the deep end.

“No, I was thinking more like if we as a people, across America, decided to crush President Spell’s trachea during the address on Sunday, maybe we could do it.”

“With our minds,” Randall said. He definitely thought Alex had gone insane, and frankly, Alex wasn’t so sure that she hadn’t. But she pressed on.

“Yes. Worst that happens, it doesn’t work. Best case scenario . . . it does.”

“That’s not particularly democratic of you,” Randall said, finally forcing a chuckle to—Alex figured—give her an out and allow her to play this off as a joke. “Solving political violence with violence.”

Alex kept it to herself that if she and President Spell were alone in a dark alley right now, she didn’t think she’d lose too much sleep over taking a piece of brick or glass from the ground and using it to tear into that vulnerable trachea herself.

“I admit it’s violent, but I don’t think it would work unless almost everyone watching was in on the plan. It would be the ultimate vote.” She wrapped Maxine’s leash around her palm to signal that she was ready to move on. She felt restless, needing to continue the walk, to spread the good word to others, too. “I know it sounds bonkers, but please consider telling at least one more person today about the whacky idea you heard on your walk this morning. And when you watch President Spell on Sunday, just imagine, try to really, really picture it, his trachea imploding. Like, let’s just crush that sucker at the three-minute mark. Unless you don’t want to do that, politically, which I disagree with but ultimately must respect.”

Alex was surprised to find that she was enjoying herself. Seeing Randy’s bewilderment as he said his goodbye had elicited her first real, not even rueful, laugh since the inauguration—though she’d managed to contain her chuckle until after he was out of earshot. She thought he might tell at least one more person, and she had a feeling she’d be telling just about everyone she saw today.

Alex was sure that in Sunday’s speech, President Spell would unveil some new, previously unimaginable horror. So why not spread a little hope while she still could?

“Happy trachea day!” the cute barista said with a grin as he handed Alex her latte.

“Can’t wait,” she replied, as a smile that she knew looked bloodthirsty spread across her face. We’re actually going to try this thing, she thought.

The few people Alex had seen on her walk to the coffee shop this Sunday morning, still many hours before the evening’s presidential address, had looked privately contented, the way they all had just before the inauguration.

Now heading back home, she thought of the calls she’d made to friends out of state, the ones who’d scattered after college but with whom she’d kept in touch, telling them her idea and inviting them not only to spread the word but also to join her in collapsing President Spell’s trachea at 7:03 p.m. tonight. She wondered what the mood was in cities and towns across the nation right now. She wondered whether President Spell would sense that his subjects were suffering a little less today, and whether someone trying to curry favor had told him what Americans had in store for him tonight.

He doesn’t give a rat’s ass if we like him or not. Alex sipped her drink as she walked, Maxine bumping comfortably against the side of her calf every few steps. He might take our phones away after this, but he won’t think we pose any real danger to him.

Alex pushed aside the anticipatory grief she felt, imagining not being able to call her parents out in Tennessee ever again. Better to focus everything on tonight, and deal with the fallout later. I’m thinking like a madwoman, she thought, and laughed.

The trachea day party at Alex’s place got off to a raucous start. It was the first time anyone had been in her bungalow since the inauguration, and she and her friends were hell-bent on keeping the PTSD at bay with gallows humor, manic dancing and singing to pop songs of their youth, and eating way too many cupcakes with little American flags in them.

When President Spell appeared on the screen at exactly seven o’clock, Alex’s friend Martha had to go throw up in the sink.

President Spell said, with a wink that was in itself an act of violence, that he would have been “crushed” if the American people hadn’t tuned in tonight, and Alex knew that they were in for it if he survived.

Alex was relieved when Martha rejoined the group with a minute to spare, not knowing whether she’d be able to help flatten the president’s trachea if she wasn’t looking directly at the man on the television.

With fifteen seconds to go, according to the stopwatch on her phone, Alex knew with certainty that this wasn’t going to work, and that President Spell’s retribution would be much, much worse than anything that had come before.

They reached the three-minute mark.

“Now,” Alex whispered, as if everyone else hadn’t also been tracking the time on their own phones. As if they hadn’t all fallen silent when the time came. As if President Spell himself hadn’t shot them with a finger gun the moment the clock turned, evidence that he, too, had been watching the time on his own monitor.

His voice, strong at the midway point of announcing that select groups of children would be relocated to DC without their families for “essential civic education,” suddenly tapered. The sound was something like that of a balloon, inflated but untied, let loose by a child who has just un-pinched her fingers.

Alex had been concentrating just on his trachea, that fleshy tube she could perfectly visualize thanks to her gleeful perusal of anatomical drawings in preparation for tonight. But President Spell’s whole throat constricted, caught in an invisible vice, its diameter halved.

As President Spell’s eyes bulged—as he, by some miracle still standing, grabbed at his throat before collapsing out of the camera’s view—the room around Alex erupted.

Champagne was spurting, splashing everywhere before Alex realized that she had been the one to uncork the first bottle. There were no words, just joyful screaming and hugs and jumping on couch cushions. Alex had had the good sense to lock Maxine in her bedroom, but she could hear the terrier barking as if she, too, was glad that President Spell was dead.

For just a moment, Alex felt as though she was viewing the scene playing out in her living room from a spot on the cottage cheese ceiling above—watching herself and her friends in a state of rapture at having violently killed the man they’d elected through a free and fair election not so long before. America might or might not recover from the Spell presidency, she thought, but there was no question that they would be changed after having done this.

There was no coming back from crushing a man’s trachea with the power of America’s collective will. There was no telling what this would mean for society and the people in it, no telling how or what they would think about themselves after filling that man’s eyes with blood. But right now, in this moment, by god did democracy feel good.

THE END

Frances Hope

Frances Hope is a mystery, thriller, and speculative/horror writer living in Greater Boston. As a young child growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, she loved writing disturbing horror fiction, when she wasn't obsessively rereading her favorite book on how to be a kid detective. Find her online at www.franceshope.com.

And Your Mother Before You By Zary Fekete

Trial by Water

It was just after midnight when my classmate, Anna, came to me. I woke when I heard the crackling of the flames. She leaned over my bed and water dripped onto my sheets. I looked up. Everyone else in the dorm room was asleep.

Come, Sari, she said. I’ll show you.

I held her hand, the right one, the wet one. Her left hand, the one on fire, lit the dark and by its light, she led me from the dorm and out into the low field. I looked back for just a moment, rather like Lot’s wife, at the city of Szeged, where the torches were still lit from the day before. The flickering light reminded me of the pain in my knees, how I knelt for hours yesterday outside the magistrate’s house, pleading for the female students to be released. But, in the end, none of them were freed. They were taken to the river, all thirteen of them. I turned back, away from the city, and saw Anna’s white face, her dark eyes on me.

Come, she said. Don’t be afraid.

She led me through dry brush, parched from the drought. I tried to step where she stepped, but her feet made no prints in the brittle grasses. Her hand was cold. She gripped mine tightly. My fingers, all six, ached from the chill. Soon we were crossing onto the peninsula in the Tisza River where the burning happened yesterday. The fire had gone out, but the rocks still smoldered, unable to forget what they had felt.

The headmaster hadn’t allowed any other students to watch. So, yesterday when the officials led them all to the river, the last I saw of Anna was when she turned to wave. Then she was gone, across the dry field.

Now, she showed me the place. The flickering flame of her left hand, revealed the cauldron. Her wet right hand still gripped mine. Yesterday the water in the cauldron was boiling. Tonight, it was cool. Yesterday she had to dip in her right hand, searching for the stone while her skin boiled, hoping to show it was not her who made the fields dry. She couldn’t reach it. Later, when they were tying her to the stake, she thought perhaps there had been no stone.

I stared at the charred circle. The river breeze lifted some of the ashes, and they blew into the night sky. I looked back in the direction of the city.

It’s ok, she said. I’m with Isten now.

I looked at her. Her hollow eyes stared into mine. Then she reached forward and took my hand again, my right hand, the one with six fingers from my birth.

Find her, she said. Find the one in the mountains. She will prepare you.

I awoke in the morning. Anna was gone. I went to her grave, behind the town church. The carving on the wood was still fresh, “Nagy Anna, 1710-1728, Trial by Water”.

Trial by Metal

The flickering light from my torch illuminated Erzsebet asszony’s door. Hers was the last house, a small hut, huddled at the edge of the village. The wind whipped down, blown from somewhere above me in the Transylvanian mountains. I’ve never been this far from Szeged and never before seen mountains. Their height seemed unreal to me.

The woodsman who gave me a ride for the last few miles was surprised to find a young woman on the mountain path.

“You’re a student?” he said.

“Yes. From the Piarista boarding school in Szeged,” I said.

He looked at me for a moment. “Far from school here,” he said. I climbed into the wagon and he gave me a piece of bread. The wagon rattled along. As we passed through small settlements, the path wound up through the hills toward Mennyháza where I had heard she lived.

Then the woodsman told me a legend from when he was a boy. In the story, a boy child nursed by a white mare, grew to become a young man in these mountains. His name was Fehérlófia. He lowered himself on a rope into the caverns beneath the earth. In the underworld he found a golden castle where a maiden was held by a twelve-headed dragon. Fehérlófia killed the dragon and brought the princess back to the rope. The princess climbed up to the daylight, but then the rope broke. Fehérlófia searched through the mountain and found a small griffin, weak from hunger. The young man cut his hand and fed the griffin with his blood. In return the griffin carried Fehérlófia to the sunlit lands above. The boy’s star picture was then carried into the night sky. A constellation for the eyes of the nation’s youth.

“He was a táltos?” I said.

“He had six fingers on his right hand,” the woodsman said.

The woodsman dropped me in the town square of Mennyháza. He said I should look for shelter soon. The wind from the mountains was bringing a cold night. After asking at a few houses, I was finally led to Erzsebet asszony’s house. Another gust of wind blew down the street, this time with a few snowflakes. I squeezed my hands to warm them and knocked twice on the wooden door. There was a pause, then a hiss at the threshold, and she stood before me.

Even though she had a face, I couldn’t really see it. I sensed the vacant spaces where her eyes were and the wide slice of a mouth. I could also hear her breath, thick and deep. After a pause she said, “Well, then, come in.”

She brought me down a dark hallway, and gestured to a wooden bench by the fire. She sat across from me, sipped something for a moment, and then said, “Who told you?”

“My classmate,” I said.

“Where is she?”

I looked down.

“One of the thirteen in Szeged?” she said.

I nodded.

“Fools,” she said. “Young girls are caught late at night after curfew and suddenly there’s blame all around and tales of witches. A waste of young lives for a hope at a better harvest next year.”

She sipped some more.

“Show me your right hand,” she said. I flexed it for a moment and then held it up, embarrassed.

“You have six like me,” she said. “All do.”

I gave a small smile. “Yes, I know.”

“Do they teach about Táltos in your school?” she said.

“Not much,” I said. “The priests think it is a folk tale. But my mother taught me some. She said Táltos have extra fingers or bones. If the finger or bone breaks then they lose their power.”

“Did you see your mother’s hand?” she asked.

I nodded. “The same as mine. When she enrolled me at Piarista she told me to keep my hand hidden. Not to show it to the priests.  She said if they saw it they would know.”

I sensed her smile in the darkness of her face and then she continued, “Well, some say they know, but some might lie.” She paused and I sensed a small frown. “Shall we do the test?”

There was a fierce pop from one of the logs on the fire. She sipped quietly while she waited. I knitted my brow and twisted my mouth. I took a deep breath and held out my hand.

“Put it on the hearth,” she said.

I was shaking. I knelt on the floor and stretched my hand forward. The hearth was warm from the fire. I lay my palm flat against the stone.

She stood and walked to a dark corner of the room. When she returned she was holding an axe. “This will hurt,” she said. And swung the axe.

Pain exploded from my hand. I wanted to snatch it back, but I kept it stretched before me. She struck again. The pain was white and brilliant. It radiated up my arm until I could feel it in the back of my head. She must have struck again, but my eyes were squeezed shut. I saw white flashes and my arm was alive with pain.

Then I saw a vision. It was Anna’s cross, the wood was older now, but her name was clear. I was hovering above her grave. White lightening flashed above me as the axe came down again. But now I felt no pain. Instead I rose into the air above her grave and saw the city of Szeged below me. People walked in the streets. I saw the magistrate and his men, hunched at their desks.

Then white shapes rose up around me. There were thirteen of them. I heard Anna’s voice next to me in the air.

This is where it will happen, she said. Anna and the other white shapes moved away and slowly encircled the city below.

“Open your eyes,” Erzsebet asszony said.

I did and saw I was back in her room. She stood above me with the axe. I looked at my hand. All six fingers were there. I flexed it. Nothing was broken.

I was still breathing heavily. I sat back in the chair.

“May I have it?” I said.

“What will you do if you have it?” she said.

I was so eager I closed my eyes to steady myself. “Invite them back,” I said.

There was a pause. Slowly a smell filled the room. It was wet earth, like during planting time…fallow ground. Then she leaned forward and pressed a little jar into my right hand. The glass of the jar felt cool. As she leaned back the air wafted around me. I realized the planting smell was coming from her.

Then she ushered me back down her hall to the door. I crossed the threshold and a slight shiver came between my thighs. I turned back to her.

“Travel through the night,” she said. “The storm won’t touch you.” Sure enough, although the wind was high and screaming, I felt warmth coursing through me.

“When should it happen?” I said.

“In two days,” she said. “On Sunday.”

Then she was gone.

Trial by Fire

It was just after midnight again. I was back in my dorm room on Sunday morning. I took Erzsebet asszony’s jar and sniffed it. It smelled like dry earth and mushrooms. I tipped the contents into my water cup and drank it.

The floor beneath my feet became shifting sand. I saw myself from the outside. The girl looking back at me looked like a dark asszony with wind swirling around her like a mirage. I could hear deep voices chanting and churning.

Then I was floating high in the air. The city of Szeged was below me again, but far from the Tisza River. It was in a vast desert with the sands reaching away to the eternal horizon. The priests and officials were below me. They hoped for blessings from me. They brought offerings … baskets of dried paprika and crushed leaves. Poppies and lilac branches. Dried sunflowers and caraway seeds. They laid them below me as they bent down. On the horizon was a storm with flashes of lightening, coming closer. In the thundercloud it seemed as if a constellation of stars was moving and growing. The stars formed the constellation of Fehérlófia. I felt movement in the air next to me. The thirteen white shapes appeared again. I felt Anna’s hand close around mine. It was no longer cold.

I looked down. The priests had raised their hands to the sky. They bent and swayed and moaned softly.

As I waited I saw a column of officials carrying a funeral pyre. The magistrate’s desiccated body was on it. His eyes were crusted and white. Several people were already carrying lit torches.

As I looked down on everyone, I opened my mouth and a low call rolled out from my chest. Soon the town was writhing and holding their hands up towards me. The torches touched the pyre and the magistrate’s body succumbed to flame. I felt a great power surge within me, as though hundreds of voices were stored in my heart. I pointed to the sun.

There was a crack like lightening. The sun tore across the sky in a flash and fled beyond the horizon. The crowd of officials and priests wailed and were carried away in the wind. Daytime was replaced with a night sky absolutely inflamed with stars, the brightest of which was the Fehérlófia cluster. I continued to breathe and I felt the light of day and night enter my eyes, my face, my waiting body.

I looked up into the sky around me. The thirteen white shapes were with me, and hundreds of others as well. We were all táltos. We all looked into the face of Isten, far above us in the sky. Isten raised his scepter. He pointed it at the earth and directed my eyes down. Suddenly I saw other girls, all throughout Hungary, all bent beneath their tasks. Digging in the earth. Trudging to schools. Reading their books. Writing. All the while watched by distrustful eyes of officials and priests.

You’ll go to them now, Isten said. Meet them in the night.

Why me?  I asked, through lips which carried a breath of scented earth.

I called you, Isten answered. And your mother before you.

Zary Fekete

Zary Fekete grew up in Hungary. He has a debut novella (Words on the Page) out with DarkWinter Lit Press and a short story collection (To Accept the Things I Cannot Change: Writing My Way Out of Addition) out with Creative Texts. He enjoys books, podcasts, and many many many films. Twitter and Instagram: @ZaryFekete

Legal Tinder by Deirdre Fryer Baird

There is dust on my black jacket that I swat at. It could be skin flaking off my face or ash from the fire in the hills above my house. My hair’s too long for my age but it’s always been this way, I still dye it brown. It’s hard to be an old lady - no young person knows what they’re in for - knees ache, arms ache, backaches, and sometimes words don’t compute. I want to change things, but the conditions aren’t right. I’ve set the fire and wait.  I’ve lived in this California stone bungalow up in the Verdugo Hills for countless years and have seen those hills burn countless times. I gave birth to two children. Joel, my oldest was murdered at random while sitting outside a café eating a ham sandwich, his brains splattered on his food when shot in the head. My beautiful daughter, Juliet, lives far away, and she rarely comes to visit me because she says we are too alike. My husband died three years ago, and I still haven’t cleaned out his closet because I miss him and when I smell his clothes it’s like he’s here.

I used to know everyone in this neighborhood, but people come and go, some of the houses burned down in the last fire, and children grow up, move away, and start new lives because that’s what people do. Older folks move to be close to their children and grandchildren. It used to be just families around here, but people don’t get married and have kids the way they used to.

And let me tell you, kids these days can be mean. They call me all sorts of names and throw rocks. Some of them said that I set the fires in the hills. What crap. They call me a witch because I’m old and have a black cat. They call me Olds.

My sorrow and loneliness I keep deep inside. It’s like a tumor.

My two next-door neighbors are single guys who don’t want to be a bother or be bothered. Neil, my neighbor to the east, has lived here for about fifteen years. We were friendly enough, and he doesn’t even know that I hate him. He made a killing in Bitcoin and is rich enough to live on an island now, far from my hate. My other neighbor, to the west – I don’t know his name - is a soldier or a discharged soldier.

I need him. 

I stub out my second cigarette. I use my great-great grandfather’s old tinder box to light another one because I like to watch the metal pieces spark together, like magic.

My soldier neighbor is coming up my walk past my azalea bushes, and I tamper my elation. He is young and handsome enough and his muscles ripple through the cotton of his shirt, but his shoulders are bent with the weight of the memories he carries. Alice, my cat, places herself between me and the soldier. He doesn’t go around Alice but he just stops behind her.

“Hello, Ma’am.” He bows slightly, and this makes me smile. “I’m your new neighbor, Glen.”

I bow my head in greeting and wave my hand at Alice to let him through. She raises the hair on her back and tail in anger, her fur bristles, and she hisses at Glen.

“Alice.” I admonish her rudeness with a clap of my hands.

“Bum a smoke?” Glen asks Alice.

He leans down to pet Alice, but she is having none of it. She runs under the bush. I shrug.

I shake my package of cigarettes at him and spark the tinder box for his light.

“That’s a strange thing.” He indicates my Tinder box. “I haven’t seen a lighter like that before.”

“It was my great-grandfather’s.”

Glen nods his head and rests his lean body against my porch post.

“Where did you fight?”

“Afghanistan.” He looks away, not wanting to discuss it.

I indicate that he can sit with me on my porch steps.

“Where are you from? You have a little accent.”

“I grew up in New Orleans.”

“Really? I have relatives there.”

“It’s the most boring place in the world. I couldn’t wait to leave.”

This made me laugh, and then he started to laugh. Before we knew it the sun was going down with an orange glow. The fire was still burning in the hills. “I guess they haven’t put it out.”

“They never do. People live in the forest and grow careless. But there is a lesson in what is left.”

He gives a look that I’ve seen before. Crazy lady.

 He says, “Goodnight,” and I’m sorry to see him go.

It becomes a thing after that; I sit on my porch in the afternoon and smoke, and then he comes over and we smoke together and smell the burn in the hills. When the sun set this evening, I invited him in for dinner.

He walks around the living room, uncertain of what to do with himself, and looks at the gallery of pictures on my piano. He picks up the recent one of my daughter.

“She’s a knockout.”

“That’s my daughter, Juliet.”

He looks at me and smiles. “I can see where she gets it.”

“Right. Dinner’s ready.” I pour him a glass of red wine.

He eats and compliments my house and the dinner.

We have more wine and he nods to the window over my shoulder.

“Who lives there?”

“Neil Fitzgerald. He does and doesn’t live there. We used to be friendly with him, but he got my husband involved in Bitcoin, that legal tender, and we lost his retirement fund.” I never forgave my husband or Neil. “Neil ran off to hide where the Feds can’t find him, and the whole thing killed my husband because he was so depressed at being stupid.”

My mind flashes on my dead husband hanging in the closet. His face purple and his tongue hanging out.

“But the lights are on, and something’s moving around.”

“He keeps three mean dogs there, on an auto-feeder that he set up. I think someone goes in and checks on them sometimes, but I haven’t seen anyone. Of course, the rumor is that Neil is hiding millions in that house, and who knows what else.”

“Why not go in and check? You could get your money back.”

“I don’t like dogs; I was attacked by one as a kid. I like cats.”

He thought for a moment, contemplating his plate.

“I can go. I’m not afraid, but I would need to subdue the dogs. I could shoot them.”

“No, that would draw attention. Something more subtle – a drug.”

I waited for him to volunteer. He must have ideas. Men in uniform know about drugs.

“There are certain plants in nature that would subdue. Azalea will kill them, and oleander.” I inform.

We are both quiet for the moment.

“Let’s just say, that the dogs are subdued, and you find the money. Do we split it fifty-fifty and pretend we never spoke of this? There might be silent alarms or cameras or some kind of security setup. Neil wasn’t a fool.”

Glen smiled and said; “Neither, am I. I did security detail in the war.”

It’s not so easy, to find a soldier. But spells have a way of going awry.

The next night, I smash the leaves of some plants together and spread them over an apron. Glen kisses me on the cheek with his hand low on my waist and takes the apron with him. I watch him through the window as he cuts the wires for lights and security. I hear the dogs bark briefly and then are silenced.

I feel for the tinder box in my pocket. The magic of fire.

An hour later, our feet rest on three bags of gold coins that he found in a downstairs bedroom. We drink wine and laugh about our bullion. I lay my head on his arm and close my eyes. There is a wisp of something covering my face, and I throw up on his lap. The apron lays before me, and I know that he has poisoned me.

Glen pushes me off the couch, and I lay there – dead. He hefts one of the bags onto his back, and gold coins trickling out of the bag. He carries the bag over to his house.

He believes in what he wants. I don’t have much time before his return, and I can only imagine what he will do with my remains.

I’m wobbly on my feet from the wine. For this to work my Olds skills would be put to work. I strike the tinder box three times and light fills the room, and the three great hounds appear from Neil's house. I lead them to a nearby bedroom speaking to them in the soft familiar tones they love and they sit quietly on the soft carpet, rescued from Neil’s spell.  He was such a witch.

A sharp blade waits for me on the table and I hold it to my throat and cut the skin so just my fingertips fit under the delicate layer of the derma, and the mask of my face. I peel the skin away from my face and hold the damp towel I have prepared to my face to subdue the seeping blood. Time is ticking away, as I become renewed. I drink another vial from my pocket, and my face pulls tight and is transformed. I look in the mirror. Damn, if I don’t look just like my lovely daughter Juliet.

My face is red like fire, but he will be confused and won’t notice.

I throw on a low-cut sweater and lay provocatively on the coins scattered on the carpet in the other room. I heard Glen whistling up the walk.

In his hand is a large machete for killing, decapitating, or dismembering.

He stops when he sees Juliet lying on the floor. I can see his brain turn from wanting to chop me into little snackable pieces to wanting something else. His sword falls to his side.

“Mom’s gone, and I want to share something with you.”

“The story is that I take you, and the gold.”

“Stories change.”

He forces me onto the ground as he undoes his pants and lays on top of me ready to mount. He hears my whistle and doesn’t understand when the first hound's fangs dig into his leg. Glen shrieks like a woman at the pain and the sound of the bone collapsing. The second hound chomps into his belly and Glen whines and writhes while trying to push the giant hounds away. The third hound consumes his face and I hear the crack of bone when the skull is consumed, a dog plaything. Blood gushes onto my face and body as I roll away. I smell of iron and smoke. Neil's house is on fire.

Alice mews at the front door. My daughter, Juliet stands behind her.

“Oh, Mom, not again. Why?”

“I got our money back. You know I needed a soldier and fire for the spell to work.”

The sound of the fire crew putting out Neil’s house would cover the evidence.

“You’re going to get caught one day.”

“I was never in his house, and poor Glen will be a victim of the hillside fire and beset by wild animals.”

She takes my hand and leads me to the kitchen sink to wash the stinking gore off me.

“Will you marry again?” She asks, lifting my sweater over my head.

“I don’t know, will you?”

We laugh.

“How did you know?” I ask.

“Alice.”

Alice rubs against my legs asking forgiveness.

“Tattletale.”

Juliet hands me a towel. “You look good, how long will it last.”

“Fifty years or so, it depends. But at least the kids won’t call me Olds anymore.”

“But they’ll still call you witch.

Deirdre Fryer Baird

Deirdre Fryer Baird’s recent work has been published in Adelaide Literary Review, Bad Pony

Literary Review, Potato Soup Literary Review, Down in the Dirt, and other journals. She has a

BA in political science from California State University, Northridge, and has an MFA in creative

writing from Antioch University, Los Angeles. She lives in Los Angeles.

Revelation 21:8 By Anne Wilkins

Revelation 21:8 

But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death. 

Harry tells me he’s a wolf. He pins me to the ground and bites my neck playfully; soft, low growls rumble from his throat and into my ears. His breath is hot on my skin and it burns me. Soon my whole body is like a lake on fire, burning with desire. I grab onto his hair, snaking my fingers through long, dark locks, and pull him to my open lips. Our eyes lock for a second, our pupils all black with lust and longing. I tell him I’m a witch and his soul is mine. We laugh together, a delicious sound that scents the air with our wickedness. Then we consume each other.

I was twenty when I lost my virginity, a bit of a latecomer to the party, but I’ve been catching up ever since. Harry’s my ninth. I was raised by what you would call bible bashers, and I can quote scripture with the best of them. Pre-marital sex isn’t the kind of thing that goes down well in my hometown unless you want to be branded a harlot. So, I move to towns with questionable morals and no questions where I can practice my passions without all the labels.
Harry’s asleep now, his body spent. We made love on the floor and our clothes lie scattered everywhere. There was something so wild about him, a little bit of a bad boy. Mom and Pop definitely wouldn’t approve. I sit outside the circle for a while, just watching his naked body, so still, almost death-like, almost. There’s a tantalising tattoo of a wolf just below his waistline. It seems a shame to disturb him, but he has to know.
 “Harrryyy,” I whisper. His eyelashes flicker and then he’s looking at me. It’s that same look, the one he was giving me at the bar. A bedroom look. The corners of his lips move into a lazy smile. 
“Mmmmm. What is it?”  
“I need to tell you somethin’.”
“Can’t it wait ‘til the morn?”
I sigh. This part is always so hard. The telling. “No. It’s important. Can you sit up?”
He shifts into a sitting position, reluctantly. “Is this about birth control or somethin’? Cuz you said last night you had that covered.”
Idiot. They were all idiots. “No sweetie, it ain’t about that. Thing is, I wasn’t too truthful with you back at the bar, about my name and things.”

He’s listening now.

“For a start, my name’s Maryanne, not Susan.”
“Oh, is that all… Maryanne, that’s your name? Maryanne…” He tries my name out for size, with a smile.
“There’s something else… when I said I was a witch… I meant it.”
Harry bursts out laughing, and I’m rather offended. “You? A witch? Are you going to take my soul then, like you said?”
“Yes.”
He stops laughing and starts leaving. “Thanks, Maryanne, for the good times, but I don’t do crazy. This is where I say goodbye.” He stands up to collect his clothes, he gets his jeans on, but that’s all.
“What the Hell?!”
He tries to push past the invisible barrier, but he can't. He can’t leave the circle. It’s now my turn to be amused.
 “It’s a magic circle. You can’t leave.” 
“Maryanne! Stop playing games, I want out!”
They all want out, and they all get out in the end, just not the kinda out they want.
I wish Mom and Pop had been more truthful about things when I was growing up. It would’ve explained so much, such as the reasons why I liked collecting dead things. Anything dead really. They called it an unhealthy fascination and soon they were praying for me, because they always thought the answers were in prayer. But their God didn’t have the answers for them. That’s cuz they’d been praying to the wrong God the whole time.
I figured things out when I found my real Mama when I was eighteen, the one locked away. She told me about the God she worshipped and it turns out we’re pretty much on the same page.

“For what it’s worth Harry, I liked you.”
This one’s going to go the way of the flames. I’ll miss playing with the deadness, but it’s a cleaner offering to my God. I start with the gasoline, pouring it in a neat Kandinsky-like circle around the salt. Harry’s on all fours now, whimpering. Like a dog. I think he’s praying, maybe even crying a little.  
“Don’t do this,” he pleads. His eyes are all black again, but not with lust. “You’re gonna regret it.” 

The only thing I’ll be regretting is another move. 

The circle of gasoline is complete. Harry starts screaming, it’s no use. No one will hear, not where I live. I feel a little cold standing naked, but it’s about to get real warm. I light the match, and my body lights up too, it’s a lake on fire again.  I throw the flame to the floor, and I wait. A burning can be so much fun.
The floor quickly sets ablaze and smoke starts to fill the room.
But this burning is different from the last.
Harry is different.
His body contorts and changes, like he’s possessed or somethin’. I’m witnessing a miracle. My Lord coming to reward me for my work.
“Lord?” I whisper, and I step towards the hungry flames, fanning the smoke, straining to see.

I’m rewarded with a familiar growl. 

From the flames, a large wolf leaps from the circle. He pins me to the ground and bites my neck, savagely. Soft, low growls rumble from his throat and into my ears. Soon my whole body is a lake on fire again, but this time it burns with fire and sulfur. 

Anne Wilkins

Anne Wilkins is a former family court lawyer, and now a sleep-deprived primary school teacher in New Zealand. She writes in her spare time (which she has very little of). Her love of writing is fuelled by copious amounts of coffee, reading and hope. She was the winner of the 2023 Cambridge Autumn Festival Short Story Competition and recently won the Halloween Frights genre for the 2023 Autumn Writing Battle. Her work can be found in Apex Flash Fiction, Elegant Literature, All Worlds Wayfarer, Scifi Shorts and elsewhere. www.annewilkinsauthor.com

Poison of Perception by Miriam Barnes

The skin of the apple split perfectly beneath the woman’s knife. The soft flesh was red and vibrant and juicy, and a not small part of her hummed with contentment that it had come from a tree grown by her own hands. The woman watched the woods just beyond her window and bit into the apple’s flesh.

To some the branches of the elm and ash trees dancing in the quiet morning breeze would curve dangerously. Like the grasping fingers of cruel giants, they would threaten to pluck you, push you, pull you from safety. The dappled shadows would play tricks on the eyes of some, rocks blending together with earth, tripping their careless feet. Predators would be easily concealed just beyond sight, hovering in the twilight dark. To some it would be as if they could feel the hot breath of wolves whenever the forest breeze grazed their necks. And this was simply because they believed. Wolves and forests, darkness and depravity, fear and danger must go hand in hand.

To others the trunks of the great trees would bend gently down, emerald leaves tracing their skin delicately as they walked unhindered through the soft twilight shade. They would see rabbit prints and hear the call of songbirds, and if they were lucky, glimpse the deer and her fawn bounding lithely through the rich undergrowth. The intermittent sunlight would reveal the glistening hues of the fawn’s new coat and illuminate the golden depths of the doe’s eyes more artfully than the full blaze of an afternoon sun ever could. To some this place would sing of life, not death. Mostly, because they believed it to be so.

The woman who watched through the window knew that perception had the power to twist and bend men’s minds more effectively than the weight of a mountain would crush their spines. She stood at her window thinking over the many distorted and varied perceptions people had piled on her throughout the years. She was Charmer and Charlatan, Nurse, Midwife, Healer, Witch and Wise Woman, Priestess, Trickster, and ultimately Poisoner. She had been named with every word that can be used to describe a woman with an intelligent mind and a tie to magic. All of them were true. And all of them were wrong, at least in part.

While musing, the woman was watching the clever wind play amongst the great branches sheltering her home when she felt a tug at her navel. Someone was beginning their journey at the edge of the forest and she could feel them coming. It was always like this, some invisible cord connecting her to the ones who dared to enter the woods, the feeling of that tug telling her much about them before they arrived on her doorstep.

A small smile curled the woman’s pink lips, tinged bloody by apple flesh. This was a gentle tug. The girl was nervous, but determined, like a foal hesitating on the bank of a stream, afraid to cross the summer swell, but determined to get to the fresh grass on the other side. It was a feeling edged by desperation, like the rest of the wild herd would not brave the water, and had turned their backs on her, opting for dried out pastures closer to home. And the herd did not glance back. They did not wait to see if she would make the crossing successfully or drown in the rapids.

The woman breathed words of kindness to the trees that encircled her clearing and that stretched far beyond it, asking safe passage for this weary traveler. Then she busied herself clearing away scraps of apple from her spotless wooden counters, and placing a black kettle on the fire. No matter what journey you made she thought, a cup of tea rarely went amiss upon its conclusion.

At the woman’s words the wind sighed and gentled in its play, the strong trunks of the elms and ashes relaxed, their supple branches parting and allowing more sunlight to stream through, revealing the path this girl was to take. With the sun shining more brightly, the wolves of the girl’s imagination retreated into the darker bits of the forest. And at the woman’s quiet request the rocks buried themselves deeper in the earth so as not to trip the girl’s uncertain feet.

The woman’s perception of the girl was sharpening as she neared, and about halfway through the forest she felt the girl stutter in her path forward. The whispers of the girl’s own mind and the judgments of the people in the village stalled her more than any fallen log or boulder could have. The girl’s mind whirled with doubt and uncertainty. The loudest of her thoughts, the darkest ones around which all the others swirled, came through clearly to the woman: What if the woman at the center of the forest really was a witch? What if she was a murderer? What if she fed the girl poison instead of antidote?

The woman sighed heavily, retreating from the kitchen and settling into one of the two plush chairs by the fire. Nothing can hold all the pieces of truth, not even death, not even poison, not even murder. Simplicity is not the nature of this world, no matter how much we wish to perceive black and white instead of gray. A deep tiredness gnawed at her bones, and it had nothing to do with the early hour of the morning.

The woman closed her black eyes, dark as obsidian, the lines on her face deepening, betraying her ancientness which had been muted by the morning sun. Amber light and warmth from the strong fire stole across her aching body, soothing her some. The fire’s flickering sent her and the chair’s shadows shifting on the wall behind her. Sometimes those shadows had the appearance of a young woman lounging, other times she appeared curled up and catlike, and at other times still, her shadow seemed to dwarf that of the armchair, like a great gorgon was perched there.

And yet, as the girl stumbled still deeper through the forest, hindered but not halted by her fears, the flickers of amber firelight seemed to bend the woman’s figure, curving her spine, until only a crone was left wasting away in the shadows.

And that was how the woman waited. She sent no thoughts or guidance out to the girl, allowing her to traipse the gentle path through the forest unhindered and uninfluenced. Well, as uninfluenced as a sunlit passage through the Twilit Forest can be.

There had been a time when the woman tried to change their minds, tried to sway them one way or the other. But that had been long ago and she had discovered since then that her influence was as likely to poison them against her as it was to turn them in her favor. The only way for there to be any truth to people’s perceptions of her was for her to simply be, and leave them to choose their own descriptions of her.

Eventually the girl knocked, the woman’s small hut appearing suddenly before her in a clearing. Its heavy oak door had almost blended into the trunks of the trees around her and she’d nearly walked straight into it. The woman, too tired from waiting and hoping in spite of herself, did not rise. She simply waved her hand and the door flicked open.

The girl jumped at the door’s sharp opening and hesitated in the cramped doorway, peering forward, eyes failing to adjust as quickly as she wished to the firelit shadows. They were darker than the sunlit ones she would be leaving behind.

“Come in,” a soft velvety voice echoed from within, giving the hut a more cavernous feeling than its squat outside appearance hinted at.

The girl still hesitated but the words were more invitation than command so she stepped forward, hands placed unconsciously protective over the slight bump of her stomach. As her bare feet crossed the threshold the heavy oaken door creaked slowly shut behind her. Almost as if it was giving her a chance to change her mind.

With its closure the last glimmers of sunlight faded from the girl's mind, even as a few sunbeams still filtered through the foggy glass of the kitchen windows.  For the girl, sunlight could not penetrate the shadows of the forest woman’s home.

The hut smelled of earth and unfamiliar herbs. The rich cloying scent and the warmth of the fire gave the girl a heady feeling. She felt simultaneously as if she had walked into her grandmother’s house, a warm pot of unfamiliar but delicious tea brewing on the fire, and at the same time as if she had unwittingly stepped into a witch’s lair, an unknown potion brewing on the fire. The black pot hanging over the hearth seemed more cauldron than kettle to her in that moment.

“There’s a seat if you’d like it,” the woman gestured with a gnarled hand to the other plush armchair situated across from her.

Feeling as if she’d come too far to not see this through now, the girl moved forward and sat gingerly on the seat cushion, back straight, hands folded across her slightly swollen belly. She couldn’t allow herself to relax fully into the chair, but she no longer hovered in the doorway. The girl didn’t realize it yet, but the moment she sat down was the moment she made her decision. Before her eyes the woman transformed from witch to healer, poisoner to liberator. The person across from her offered a chance at salvation more than she offered the certainty of death.

“Would you like something to drink?” the woman asked. Her black eyes held the girl’s own blue ones, unblinking.

“What is it?” the girl asked. Eyes that reminded the woman of bluebells frozen in an early winter’s chill, flicked briefly to the steaming kettle before returning.

The old woman’s dark pupilless eyes unnerved the girl, but she found it hard to look away from them for long. They drew her in like a concealed pit in a forest draws in unsuspecting prey. But those eyes also gave the girl something to disappear into, somewhere to hide, a cave to crawl into for a moment, and let the world pass by.

“What do you want it to be?” the old woman asked. The question was not meant to be answered aloud, only to tell the girl she must decide before she drank.

The girl involuntarily glanced down at the distension of her tattered gown where normally it would have lain flat Staring at that tiny bump under her young fingers, hesitation released its hold on her. It was her choice. The old woman’s words made that clear. And the desperation that had carried the girl from the safety of her home to the unknown of this hut, that had guided her feet through the Twilit Forest away from everything she held dear, begged in her heart. Freedom, it cried, plaintive and howling, freedom.

She rubbed the barely there swell for the last time, then dropped her hands from her stomach, releasing the sliver of a dream that she had held clasped like a piece of broken glass digging into her heart long before her trek through the forest had begun. She willed that sliver to hit the floor of the hut and shatter into a thousand pieces. Then she closed her eyes and ground the shards of that broken dream, that false dream, borne from what other people told her she should want, into sand, and prayed for the wind playing in the trees to whisk it away from her. The wind obliged.

When the girl opened her eyes, the woman could see bluebells blooming, frost melting, and a deep vein of hope reaching up from the soil to the sky.

 “I know now. I wasn’t sure before. But I am now,” the girl said, a quiet certainty giving her voice a depth it had lacked before. In that moment she sounded more woman than girl.

Only then did the old woman, the witch, the liberator pour the tea, the potion, the poison.

Afterwards, when the blood had stopped flowing down the girl’s legs. After her skin had been cleansed and wiped with warm cloth scented with chamomile and jasmine flowers. After the throbbing ache of the girl’s insides had been eased with the bitterness of willow bark. After she had slept as long as she needed and woken from a deep but not dreamless sleep. The girl, the young woman, hesitated again in the doorway of the old woman’s home and turned to face her.

“Do I have to go back?” the girl asked.

The old woman looked at her, obsidian, unblinking. “No,” she said simply.

Permission to return to the girl’s home, as well as permission to forge a new path, were both present in the old woman’s answer.

Bluebells exploded in the spring sunlight of the girl’s eyes, and she departed. The memory of what she left behind at the center of the forest would stay rooted in the girl’s heart forever. But that hut would be just one pitstop in the great journey of her life.

Cookbook Stories from the Road by A. M. Symes

Here follows the final audio recording known to have been made by missing person Rosy “Rosita” Palacio, a podcast food influencer missing since last month. The recording gives insight into Ms. Palacio’s final known location. Despite not being formally named in the audio, local law enforcement believes the town in reference to be in northern Wisconsin, somewhere along Lake Superior’s south side. Ms. Palacio has not been seen or heard from since this recording was uploaded to her podcast.

Hello and welcome to Cookbook Stories from the Road! This is yours truly, Rosy Rosita, and thank you so much for listening to my podcast. You all are wonderful, my dears, for making me the number one New England foodie podcast as I travel across the USA in search of the finest of foods.

This week is super special. I mean, every week is special with me, am I right? Ha ha ha, but this week I’m coming to you not from my typical upscale restaurant within one of our many metropolitan cities, but from a small town in Wisconsin. This town is so small, in fact, that it was not listed on any of my maps beyond highlighting an intersection of two county roads near a cemetery. Seriously, Google Maps wouldn’t even take me here, I had to actually read a paper map!

I’m sure you’re asking why I have taken my Cookbook Stories so far off my typical road search and the answer is a rumor. Yes, a rumor. A rumor of the most amazing cheese my tastebuds will ever delight in. Naturally I scoffed when one of my adoring fans sent me an email, contesting last week’s story of the best cheese west of NYC coming from a delightful creamery in Oregon. I wrote back to the emailer and explained they had no business telling me—ME!—what is to be classified as good food. But the fan insisted I alter my route home to upstate New York and stop in this Town-So-Small-It-Doesn’t-Have-A-Name, Wisconsin.

Curiosity and pride led me to this diner, my dears. Curiosity about a town with no name and a diner with no name, and pride at being told what I should know.

I drove the open road back across these Great Plains, turned north in rural Minnesota, and popped across the state line by following the crudely drawn map from this so called “cheese master” who beckoned me, I found myself at an intersection shared with a cemetery, an abandoned school house, an empty lot, and a diner one could only fantasize came from the mind of some old horror writer from, like, the 90’s.

I retrieved the fan’s email which, along with the map, contained a recipe for Burrata cheese, and headed inside the diner that was easily three times as old as I am. I left my jacket behind despite the chilly temperatures. This diner’s decrepit disposition did not instill great confidence that I could keep the greasy smell from its leather.

So, I’m going to share the recipe with you now, my dears, because you’ll hopefully notice an amusing typo in the list of ingredients. Or maybe it isn’t a typo, who knows what these small-town folks—wait, make that No Name Town folks—put in their food.

Burrata Cheese - No Name Diner

2 1⁄2 lbs. mozzarella curd, diced small

1 1⁄2 cups heavy cream

1 cup ricotta

1/3 cup whey

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

5 quarts water

1 tablespoon arsenic

1⁄2 cup kosher salt

Finish this sentence: “If you’re going to eat cheese, you have to eat ____.” Tough, right? But if you’re looking for a signature cheese experience, a tantalizing experience, if you’re looking for an ecstasy that will make even a pallet as refined as mine quiver with delight, then look for Burrata cheese. Once you become enamored with Burrata cheese, there’s no going back. You’ll be wrapped up in the stories of fromagers, and begin to identify with them like you would a lover in silken sheets.

The unique process from which Burrata is created is what made me eager to cruise through this diner’s vat of pasteurized dairy and whey. For those uncultured in the art of cheese, Burrata is *kisses fingers* divine. Mozzarella, diced into petite squares. Heavy cream, whipped. Ricotta, crumbled and slightly dry. These ingredients are stretched, pressed, diced, mixed, heated, and iced to create a cheese worthy of its artisan heritage.

In the diner that, like the town, doesn’t have a name, I shared a long counter with two old timers and a waitress who looked as if she was born to work in a haunted house. A much older woman ran the kitchen, watching me through the ordering window, and I couldn’t help but feel like she was not welcoming to all. Small towns typically have this disposition towards me I have found. They are intimidated by my presence. When I asked where everyone was from, the older of the old timers smirked and pointed to the cemetery across the street.

As I said, small towns don’t appreciate me.

When the waitress refilled the men’s coffees, they both ordered Burrata and fresh bread.

When it was clear the waitress wasn’t going to serve me, I interrupted her chattering with the old timers and told her I was also there for the Burrata. Then I asked her to explain to me why the Burrata is supposedly so magnificent at her little diner.

After rudely laughing at me, the younger of the old times responded that he and his comrades always spend their day “back with the air suckers” enjoying the best food on Earth. You heard me right, he said “back with the air suckers.” Not cryptic at all! But don’t worry, I’m not easily deterred from getting the answers I want.

“But why not order mozzarella sticks or cheese curds, something more in-tune with your Wisconsin heritage?” I persisted. “Why Burrata?”

The man shrugged and sipped his Foldgers coffee and told me, “It’s just better.”

His friend simply nodded in agreement.

I told the waitress I wanted the same. I explained I had driven hours out of my way at the behest of an adoring fan so I could taste this supposed delicious cheese. She actually rolled her eyes at me before barking my order through the order window!

The old woman behind the kitchen window popped her head out and smiled at me. Well, not so much as smiled but stretched her lips across her teeth in an attempt to imitate a smile.

I took out the copy of the Burrata recipe. The waitress snatched the paper away from me and before I could react, she handed it to the old woman. The old woman checked the paper, and revealed a brow so furrowed and nose so wrinkled, you’d think I had confessed to being a fan of Velveeta cheese.

“You want this Burrata? I make you this Burrata,” she said before disappearing into the bowels of the kitchen.

After three Johnny Cash songs finished playing on the jukebox, a plate slid in front of me. A blob of white sat in the center of an Elvis plate and ten disk-cut pieces of fresh bread surrounded it. Seriously, someone needs to tell these people Elvis is dead and they should buy dinnerware not from Goodwill.

“I want to repatronize you,” the old woman yelled from the kitchen.

“Whatever does that mean?” I called back, but she gave no answer.

The old timers laughed and told me to eat up.

My senses were offended on so many levels up to this point, but fear not, listeners, this story has a happy ending. Despite the smell of grease, despite the plastic chairs, despite Elvis twerking at me from the ancient plastic plate, and despite the plastic silverware…the cheese. Oh. My. God. You don’t have to be from Wisconsin to appreciate cheese. But with the first bite, I couldn’t help but think something so scrumptious as this Burrata was being wasted on such unsophisticated townies. When I removed the asphodel leaves and cut through the thin pasta filata curd shell, buttery and creamy panna, containing scraps of mozzarella, oozed out. The flavor was decadent and bold. The texture: lip-smacking. I’m partial to enjoying Burrata with prosciutto, fresh tomatoes with olive oil, and with spaghetti, but none were offered to me. I doubt this diner has heard of olive oil; they seem more like the industrial sized canola oil type.

There was a slight tingling sensation on my lips as I slurped up the juices, but I assumed this was leftover soap residue on Elvis from an ancient dishwasher I figured the diner used. That aside, and despite my years of formidable training, I almost admitted aloud to the folks that this was in fact the best cheese to ever dance across my pallet. But their disdain and clear looks of mockery make me hold my tongue, if not to keep it wrapped around the succulent dairy godliness in my mouth for a moment longer.

Interrupting my orgasmic experience with the cheese, the older of the old-timers said my tagline. “Finish this sentence: If you’re going to eat cheese, you have to eat ____.” Finally! They were admitting they knew who I was. 

With a mouthful of drops of Heaven, I replied, “The answer is No Name Wisconsin Diner Burrata.”

Yes, while absolutely rare, I can admit when I am wrong. And I was wrong about the best cheese being from Oregon. The best cheese is, annoyingly, from Wisconsin. I hummed the entire time, savoring the bursting flavors as they slid through my mouth.

All things being equal, I prefer to enjoy my fresh bread and cheese without the twisting sensation that leaves my stomach in tight cramps moments after finishing my meal. It’s a side effect of the Midwest well water, I am sure. The old cook, who confessed to being the writer who shared her special Burrata recipe, assured me a pleasant satisfaction. “I collect the souls of those lost to me through food,” she said.

I am still unsure what she means. If it means convincing even the highest of food critics such as myself that her Burrata is not to be mocked, then she has succeeded admirably.

But I didn’t ask for clarification, my dears, because a gathering of other old timers had formed in the parking lot of the cemetery as I finished my meal. Their lack of style and dead glares made me want to be long gone before I needed to interact any further with these small-

town folks. So, I am signing off for now. I want to upload this episode before making the rest of my drive home. And I better do it quickly. Despite the best cheese, dare I say, in the Northern Hemisphere, my stomach is beginning to spasm and the tingling sensations running up my arms are bothersome. Perhaps I need a quick nap in my car to alleviate these pains. Adios, my dears. This is Rosy Rosita bidding you adieu!

Golden Hour by J. M. Bédard

The surface of her limbs rippled in waves, skin hugging the cresting and crashing within. Foaming, glowing. Puckered. Stretching and rolling beneath a leering sun. It dripped thick brightness from a swollen tongue, smearing bloated clouds and spackling her back in gilded welts. She squirmed, beaded eyes clustered and shifting. They blinked and reared back and she sighed, exhausted, a sweet chorus through her many mouths.

She began to move. Slowly, deliberately. Long fingers dragging along a silty bank, combing through fine hair and coarse pelt alike. Waxy tendrils too, and broad strands slick with grease. Their musky scent leaked oil in her wake, festive and acrid, while a clutch of rabbits scuttled nearby among the ferns. They panted, pausing to lap her edges. Mouths darting like fish, slivers of pink flashing in her bruised shallows. They paused from time to time to listen, eyes boring sharp tunnels through the golden haze. A rustle of fur and low voices knit them together before rising, as smoke, above their hunching backs. The rabbits moved like the sea, boiling, until they had drunk to their fill. Then, as one, sank silently into the rusted mud. It splashed for a moment and then calmed. Turned back to sucking gently at the leggy reeds, tall bones jutting matte and creamy from the rich murk.

She pushed on. Reached forwards, hands splayed to test the limits of her form, while straining her legs to graze the ground below. The lake bed grinned. A silent smile, the deep purple of old blood and rotting leaves. He began unfurling his lips, humming softly.

Still others watched her from green shadows, melting between rocks. The depth of those spaces tugging gently at her edges, shivering in anticipation. She shimmered. Shot through with that glittering smog. Tiny shards of shrapnel soldered to ash, diamond-crusted. A shining grit. Bright gems primed to tear eagerly at soft flesh. She was clothed in them, yes, but it filled her as well. Thin needles slicing subtly, almost imperceptibly, with every breath and swallow. A warm snowfall that settled within her in drifting dunes.

She had glowed with it at first. A razor halo shaped perfectly to all her curves and divots. Had tasted this new air and smiled at its heady flavour, holding it firmly between her teeth before savouring its crunch. It was always changing too. One day ancient and salted, the next raw and rangy, the tang of young bones still plump with marrow. She had basked in it, sunning herself in the velvet noon. Until she noticed the prickle. Nothing really, to begin with. The whisper of an itch, easy to muffle and ignore. Every day was a late summer afternoon, slow and lingering, sticky and orange. An overripe sunset, syrup-drenched decay. Trees slumped in their bark, dazed, and so was she.

Not long after, the beating began. A steady thrumming of raw knuckles, the hammer blow of a knee or an elbow. The sun dug, famished, into her softness, delighting in the round pain. More blows rained down, soon joined by dust and dirt and twisted bits of charred life, while the sky blistered under heavy jewels. Her thoughts were furred over, quiet and slow. Molting. Melting and molten.

And then, deep in a red night, she had awoken to a new freshness. Baby green and damp, wriggling though the heat. Cool hands on her feet, pulling the skin up and over her aching body. Feeding her arms through, then pushing it over her face. She shivered sliding in, inhaling sharply as it slipped up around her. Bunching a bit at the neck, catching briefly on her chin. Thoughts stilled, but not choked. Strokes slow but gaining in strength. Constellations of eyes peeling open across her body, winking away their burnt crust. Her mouth no longer gummy and fetid, flushed out by the lake. The water coursed through her and she continued to open, expand, unfurling further. Reveling and unraveling. Slipping between stitches and tendons, tasting the other side. Something brushed her cheek, unseen, as old scents drifted between the gaps. Muffled voices, slightly warped, pooling out as well before dissolving in the mottled deep. She caught one once, tucking it into her mouth for safekeeping. It tasted like dawn, tea wreathed in fog, and when it was gone she was ready. Gathered herself up, eased open the stitches, and pulled herself through.  

J. M. Bédard

J. M. Bédard (she/her) spends long runs getting lost in other worlds and writes to find her way out. "Human, Too", her collection of dark, surreal short stories, was published by Dim Shores in April 2021. More recently, her poetry

has appeared in Star*Line and Strange Horizons.

Real Food by Siewleng Torossian

Infection at last!!! CU at the club. Trixie sent the same text to another friend, grinning so wide her cheeks hurt. Then she re-read the Disease Center’s message. Confirmed active. LV-170. Not that she had worried the global pandemic would overlook her. In the first year, everyone was already infected. Two years into the viral contagion, scientists and doctors had come to the same and only conclusion about the Longevity Virus. Dormancy was the first phase. Activation of the virus needed no catalyst and was inevitable. 

She left the kitchen and hurried to the bedroom. Before she could put away the phone, an ad had popped up on the screen. Data Plan For Life - DP170. She itched to check the pricing but her friends were waiting. Besides, she celebrated her 30th birthday last month. And she had what, 140 years left to do whatever she wanted?

Dressed in her favorite red frock with the slits, she took one last look at outfits hanging in the closet. Seriously, without a vaccine in sight, she should shop for more party clothes. Work shirts and pants too. Regular clients rarely asked to meet online anymore. But with LV, she could see her remote graphic design business booming. Finally, she could think about buying a home. Or not. Why restrict herself to living within the same four walls? 

With the moon up high, she drove to the club in downtown Los Angeles, ideas spinning in her head. People said one could live twice over with LV. Do more, work or play. Try new hobbies. Change careers. Life had become an abyss of possibilities. The singsong chant came to her mind. One she had waited to belt out like the rest of the world. Lots of time for the rest of her infected years.

Inside the club, Lauper’s Time After Time was aptly welcoming. She navigated the dance crowd, twirling and skipping under hanging baubles of glitter and across the illuminated floor. The shine of lights seemed especially festive tonight. Her friends cheered and waved from a corner booth. They hugged and kissed her, welcomed her to club hopping away an extra lifetime.

Someone chirped, bottomless list, no more of that bucket stuff. Between rounds of the club special of Endless Wings, everyone tapped their phones. See the pyramids, hike the Great Wall and so on. Of course, volunteer more, but why rush? Phones and well-intended goals slipped back into pockets and purses. At three in the morning, she kissed her friends goodbye and left the club.

The sour reek of urine from the dimly lit street hardly bothered her. Not tonight. Life had begun all over again six hours ago. Keys jiggling, she strode to her car humming no particular tune.  Tomorrow was Saturday. One of many more to come. She would sleep in. Why not? She had so much time to spare now.

Billboards in the distance shone new meaning. Neverending Subscription Special. Super Long-Term Financial Planning. The messages rang necessary truths, but she wanted to take it easy. Savor the diagnosis a little longer. She paused at the lamp post, lips open, tune lost in her gasp. Something was shuffling in the dark alley. She lifted her foot. An odor charged at her - unwashed socks. A glint swung high. The attack lasted...like forever. She remembered his t-shirt. Smell The Roses.

Detective Kimble closed a file, one of many that crowded his desk and the shelves behind. “No one like that in our system, but you did fight him off.”

She bit her lip. Bolt? Or scream at law enforcement officers more interested eating lunch and answering phones at their desks - Do something! On the wall, one poster stood out: Time’s On Our Side. Exactly. Longevity gave criminals equal opportunity to live to their fullest miscreant potential. Kimble had answered and hung up on a call. He eyed his half-eaten burger and said, “Like I tell everyone, I’m 48, and you say he’s fortyish.” He glanced at her bandaged neck. “170 is an estimate, give or take. Whether he’s sick with cancer or whatnot,” he winked, “he’s cured or living like a dying man for a long time. We’d catch him.”

The next six months dragged. Half-eaten frozen dinners piled on the kitchen table. Laundry was done when she ran out of clean sweat tops and pants. Her friends checked on her but so what? They could not understand. 140 haunted like a life sentence. Clients’ logos and websites managed to distract temporarily. But no phone call from the detective added to her sleepless nights.

“Nothing yet, I’m afraid,” Kimble said, looking up from the ragged scar on her neck. The poster on the wall behind him was new: They Can’t Hide For Long. “Now, don’t think that gives you the right…” 

She let the man spew his righteous nonsense. That night stalked her like a shadow. One abrupt glint from a window or car door would freeze her to the spot. The knife had twisted in her face. Don't scream.

Kimble was droning on and on. “...none of that eye for an eye sort of thing…”

Back on the street, she hurried past two women. Under the orange and red leaves of a sunlit maple tree, they gushed about shopping at the mall as if new clothes and shoes were all that mattered. The redhead giggled and recited, for the rest of our—

She sped home, windows down. Musky-sweet September air swished into the car. Her favorite season would soon chill into winter. Next fall would arrive, so would the next one. She skidded the car into the driveway in one quick slide. Braked, parked. Only one way to ease the pain. Tit for tat. Online research did not prepare her for the sprawling basement shop. Fully stocked racks, shelves, locked glass cabinets. Theft prevention tools, self-defense gear, martial arts paraphernalia. The infinite selection confused her, made her second-guess herself. Could she hurt a person? Even him. Grasp the knife. Cut him up. She shuddered. He was the criminal. Not her. She helped seniors across the street and she brought injured dogs to the shelters. At the next cabinet, the woman hounded the salesclerk. What about non-standard civilian models? How did the LV virus affect refund policies? What about test dummies?  

When Trixie pushed her cart to the cashier, she smiled, ready to embark on her mission. Her new friend Alice had encouraged her with a whisper: “Think of it as a different kind of partying.”

Finding him was next. Talking about that night and reliving the horror choked her up but Alice had advised her -  she was taking back her life, doing something to remove him from her future. Armed with the police report, she asked the club for help. Her friends spread the word and the sketch a kind artist stranger had rendered.

Five months later, she hid in Sam Tucker’s moonlit backyard. The forty-three year old construction worker had no idea what was coming to him. She and her arsenal, tucked between a brick wall and bushes. The house nestled into a deep corner at the end of the street away from the main row of homes. Half a mile and thick woods separated him from his neighbors. He lived alone. Today was Wednesday. His poker buddies came over every Saturday. If he cried out, not that she would let him, no one would hear him. Not unlike her despair in the alley. Staring at the blade of his knife inches from her eyes had locked up her voice inside her throat.  

She pushed into the wall. Suddenly, she was tossed back to that night. His other hand and his body had pinned her. Hand shaking, she patted her pockets, as Alice had taught her. Take back control, reduce him to the prey. She relaxed, fingers busily groping the different shapes. Taser, knife, syringes, tape. Under the bush sat her backpack filled with more toys. Ball-gag, extra syringes, hammer and nails, zip-ties, rope. And of course, Alice’s favorite, the cordless heavy-duty stapler gun. She flattened her palm over the keys in her pocket. The duplicate set she had made from the bunch he hid in the shed.

“That’s better,” she muttered, and peeked around the bush.

The kitchen remained dark except for a glow in the hallway. He was still eating in front of the tv watching wrestling. When she last checked, the time was half past eight. Two weeks of stalking him had tattooed his schedule and habits into her memory. She no longer referred to the notes in her phone. At nine, he would bring his dishes to the kitchen. Her cue to get ready. Mad giggles pressed against her lips. His dietary staples varied between fried chicken and triple cheese pizza. In the old days, his early demise would have been eminent. Cancer, cardiac arrest. If he knew what she had planned for him, he would wish for a vaccine.

Light flashed inside the house.  

Inching forward, careful not to rustle the leaves, she put her eye to the gap in the bushes. The moon cast enough light over the back door. She would see him clearly if he dragged out a bag of trash. At the moment, he stood at the sink with his phone clasped between ear and shoulder. He was planning for Saturday.

“...barbecue, everyone likes that,” he was saying, tone friendly and engaging through the open window. The average man chatting with a friend. She stayed rooted on her feet. Calm as can be. Remarkable. Even last night, his gravelly voice had jolted her. Every instinct told her to run, flee, get away from him.

“...we can grill or get takeout…” He fell silent for a moment, then laughed, a rough cackle she could almost feel grating her skin. Alice’s advice had echoed in her mind. Feeling trapped, she should see her knife dripping red, his face bloodied and the eyes begging her. She smirked at a thought. He had given her an idea. Mentally, she added blowtorch to her list in the phone. She leaned away to take a look as dishes clattered. He was stacking them on the rack. His next routine would be beer, hitting the lights, then settling in front of the tv. Not realizing he was at her mercy. Three syringes waited for him in her pocket. An overkill perhaps, but he was twice her size. He had to be kept under long enough for her to tie him up. After that, showtime - zip ties, ropes, ball gag.

Her lips curled, as she imagined him flinching from the serrated blade in her hand. She would start with his cheeks, slicing, carving. His ears would be next, then his neck and arms. A thousand slashes to repay him for that night. He must suffer. Ten minutes had inflicted upon her an eternity of terror. A car engine rumbled on the street. 9:15. The man three doors down was leaving for his overnight shift.

Quickly, she peeked across the yard at the hallway glow. He should be finishing his beer, already half asleep. She could creep up to the side door now. By 9:30, his snoring would signal her to sneak into the hallway. Her feet tingled. She was ready. Alice had said she should live through every step of her devious plot. Watch him beg, or try to. With the ball-gag, he would understand desperation, helplessness. Feel hope shrinking. Cringe. Every moment might be his last, as she had feared, her arms and legs fighting him off. Staples were Alice’s contribution. Clamp them into his skin all over. Then remove each metal crimp one by one. Enjoy seeing him writhe under spasms of agony. 

Her belly growled and she found herself smiling as she dug her pocket for a stick of gum. This was a first in months since that night. Craving a greasy burger. Grilled meat patty, melted slices of cheese, whole grilled onions, the works. Coming here tonight, she had dreaded going home to another mushy microwaved dinner. She sucked the gum, chuckling at Alice’s wisdom. Go for counseling. Talk it out with a friend. Use customized self-care. Her returning appetite proved Alice’s unorthodox method worked. A burger? She could chomp into one right now.    

The breeze blew over her. She breathed the earthy scent, slid down the wall and folded her legs, bushes hiding her from the spill of moonlight. Okay, where was she? Right. Staples. After ripping him to shreds, she would mock him. Call the police. They would laugh. A hulking hardhat bound and sadistically ridiculed in his own home? More like a twisted game with his shady friends. People were devising creative ideas to enjoy LV. She took out her phone, opened her Options list. If only everyone put time to good use like Alice. The twice divorced boutique owner had cleverly devised inventive therapy to cope with her own recovery.

…judo, relocate, work law enforcement...

Each option was sensible, tame, nothing tugging Trixie to pursue. The last one, role-play, had jumped like a lifeline being tossed at her. Make him pay. Her way. 

Two weeks ago when she tracked him to this house, her whole being had cried for visceral payback. She wanted to see his flesh split raw and bleeding, carve his eyes out, burn away his horrid smells. Now, she could not wait to delete him completely from her life. As she swiped the screen, prepared to erase every piece of information about him, Alice’s gentle nag returned. Consider other women. She hovered her finger over the screen. He was an opportunistic monster. Who knew how many women he had assaulted. One more day then, before she let go of him. Her notes of Tucker could be used to match similar cases reported. She swiped Calender open and typed Kimble.

As the knot in her chest loosened, she said, “Yesss.” Even the night air seemed to soothe with fresh energy.  

Something creaked from the far side of the street and she lifted her head. The two-beat scraping of hinges was the green painted house. A white-haired woman lived there with her three-legged dog. Every night, she filled a large plate with cans of tuna for stray cats. Cat Lady was a good citizen. She used LV to care for furry ones. Another person to emulate.

She leaned into the wall and texted Alice. Late night snack? Burger, pizza, meatballs. I want to eat. Yeah, got better things to do. Women’s shelter still looking for help?

Siewleng Torossian

Siewleng Torossian writes stories, genre depending on whim. Her work has appeared in Five On The Fifth, 365 Tomorrows, Friday Flash Fiction, Potato Soup Journal, Close2TheBone, Horla, and Eunoia Review. She is currently working on several writing projects, including a second screenplay.

My Sad Cuisine by Babs Mountjoy

I never have anyone over for dinner anymore. Back when I had a life, I thought someone who always ate alone was eccentric. Or had something to hide. But now I like it. I didn’t at first. I was pretty damn lonely. The neighbors wouldn’t hang with me anymore, not after they saw all my shit out at the curb where he tossed it. The bastard. No more neighborhood barbecues for me. Screw ‘em all.

It wasn’t so much the house. Well, maybe it was. I’d picked it out, a Georgian in a great subdivision, close to the tennis courts. The sunroom was mine, a little cozy glassed-in place where I could watch the snow float down while I wrote, with the aroma of spicy candles and my tarot laid out, gauzy black shawls for curtains. J.T. said it gave him the creeps. Called me a witch. Called me worse than that the day he threw me out.

Never was much of a cook. But I could always fry up some meat and onions. Pork and onions, chicken and onions, steak and onions. Good stuff. I love the smell of onions frying. I grab a handful of them and start chopping.

J.T.’s space was the garage. He had his beloved woodworking stuff there, all kinds of sharp pointy objects. He’d clean and polish and make all kinds of freaking useless wooden creations. He even made a baseball bat, a carved handle with fingerholds and his name engraved. Fitting, somehow. He had to possess everything. It was all about what he owned. Even though I helped with everything, mowing, decorating, painting, down payment, and all of it was still his as far as he was concerned.

I wipe tears away. Damn onions. They were good in the end, but they hurt you while you held them. Kind of like J.T.

He worshiped the holy dollar, He was an investment counselor whose designer Hummer had his initials on his vanity plate. He’d made lots of money for lots of people and took credit for each penny. If his belt had been longer, he’d have notched the damn thing, but it was a mere 30 inches, even at his age. An hour in the gym at five every morning will do that. Yes, it will. He lifted weights too. He was strong. Stronger than I’d thought.

I reach in the fridge and pull out a bag salad and a tomato. The lettuce goes in a bowl, and I slice the tomato on top, so juicy the red pulp and seeds drip through my fingers like bad Halloween makeup. It reminded me of …something else.

I hadn’t seen him for six months before that morning. Then I saw them—him and her—at our favorite vegetarian restaurant, cuddled close in a small booth, eating a nasturtium salad. He saw me and said something to her. She was blonde, like me, about my height and weight, green eyes like mine, even, but a good ten years younger. Bastard.

The onions jump and squirm as I stir them like they’re trying to avoid the searing heat. Where else are they going to go? Into the fire? I know what happens when you go from the frying pan into the fire. I laugh, the sound echoing in the nearly empty kitchen. Furniture, kind of a luxury at the moment. Sold the kitchen set to make my last car payment. I hate living this way.

I turn up the fire and drizzle the olive oil in.

He could have ignored me and gone on with his lunch. But he came over, begging me to sign the divorce papers. J.T. begging me. Now there was a novelty.

There was an extra copy at the house, he said. If I’d come sign them, he’d get them to his lawyer. Me #2 was watching from the booth, wide eyes nearly innocent. Come on, Raila. Sign the papers. It’ll be over in no time. You’ll see.

I did want to visit the house again, at least once more. Bracing myself, I nodded. Now’s great, J.T. Want to do it now? I looked over at her and smiled my biggest smile.

Triumphant, he tossed some bills at the cashier. Put hers on my tab too. He took the girl in his car, and I followed them on my bike. Cheaper than paying for gas at California prices.

At the house, I parked the bike behind the front bushes and walked around to the back. The landscaping, the perennials I’d spent months planting and nurturing were ripped out for a concrete basketball court and a Bowflex with a shelf of free weights. I stared in icy grief.

I cut two slices of bread from the fresh Italian loaf and slather butter and garlic on. Dining alone means never having to say you’re sorry for your breath. It’s a good knife, this filleting knife cuts cleanly. It’s one of my souvenirs.

Raila. In here. J.T. waited at the door to the sunporch. The gauzy curtains were down. A tanning bed stood where my desk had been. He laid a stack of papers on the kitchen table and jabbed at me with a pen. Three minutes and you’re free, honey.

She watched, those green eyes coveting. She wanted him. How she wanted him. Why shouldn’t she? Living with J.T. was a great ride, with lots of money and all the fringes. Till she gets ten years older. Then she’ll be the one with the pen waving in her face.

I turned and headed for the garage. He ran after me, grabbing at my arm. I need my grandfather’s tool kit, I said. You didn’t leave it in that rubbish heap on the curb. I shoved him away, going down the two steps to the garage floor. She was trying to calm him. There was J.T.’s precious Hummer and the teenybopper’s red convertible. The bastard.

I leaned under the main workbench and dug through his crap until I found the little black case. I held it up so he could see I hadn’t taken anything that wasn’t mine. He scowled, clearly annoyed and ready to escort me out. Sad. I wasn’t ready to go.

Miss Priss stood protectively in front of her car. I smiled at her. Then I grabbed the bat off the workbench and took a swing at the convertible. Busted out the headlights before she got in the way. Then I busted out her headlights. Hadn’t really intended to do that, but Jesus. It felt good.

J.T. jumped me from behind. Damn, he must have outweighed me by seventy pounds, all muscle. All those weights out back. He tossed me onto the workbench, and I felt my knee crack. Bloody hell, it hurt. Nearly blacked out.

She hadn’t moved but he never stopped to see why. I kicked at him with my other leg, fumbling behind me. Screwdriver from Hell jumped into my hand, sucker had to be ten inches long and heavy-duty enough with my downstroke and his forward momentum to drive it right through his face into his brain. He knocked me off the bench in a hail of tacks and nails, but he went down and didn’t get up.

I lay a China plate and silverware on the coffee table. Thank you, Mr. Maître D. One for dinner, please. I light the pink candle and dim the lights.

So quiet in that garage. My legs were bleeding, I wasn’t sure whether I could walk. Had to look on the bright side, though; I was in the best shape of the three of us.

Once I got my priorities straight, it all fell into place. Thanks J.T., for looking out for your poor ignorant little woman. He’d made me take a class at the community college designed just for women, to teach them about tools and being able to fix things with the proper equipment. Our teacher was a sadist who liked to scare the more timid ladies. He’d showed us what happened if you neglected your electrical cords until they frayed. They could be dangerous. Especially if they came in contact with a lacquer or varnish container.

It didn’t take long to fray up one of J.T.’s extension cords, considering the selection of sharp things he’d accumulated. Plenty of varnish and lacquer too, left over from all his little wooden hobby. It wouldn’t take long to burn it down. One last thing remained before the fire. I dug through the drawer and found the filleting knife he used for his rare fishing trips. It had cost a fortune. But then he always had to have the best. Why shouldn’t I? I returned to little Miss Priss, my replacement, and carved out the pound of flesh I was owed.

I smile as I sit to enjoy my solitary meal, my sad cuisine. It was a dish I hadn’t made before. Ribs and onions. But it was good to try new things, and a specialty’s is a specialty, after all. And the tv chefs are right. Younger meat is more tender. 

Babs Mountjoy

Babs Mountjoy has been a published writer for more than forty years, after working as a pizza maker, a floral designer, a journalist and a family law attorney. Currently a resident of Asheville, North Carolina, the aging hippie loves her time in the smoky blue mountains. She writes romance and suspense as Alana Lorens, and sci-fi, fantasy and paranormal mystery as Lyndi Alexander. She lives with her daughter on the autism spectrum, who is the youngest of her seven children, and she is ruled by three crotchety old cats, and six kittens of various ages.

European Memories by Plamen Vasilev

  My father was a military man. Retired back in ’96 from the Navy after 20 years of proud service to our country. But before that, we moved often… every 3-4 years or thereabouts we’d pack up and get shipped somewhere new. Early 1989, a wonderful opportunity arose and dad took it. A 16 hour flight later, and we were stationed in Sicily. I guess I was about, ohhh 10 or 11 at the time. Those years were blurred save those pinpricks of memory that still haunt me. That still plague my dreams from time to time.

Our first home there was an apartment in a complex called “Bellavista” far from the Naval base. There was a waiting list to move into Base Housing that generally ran for about a year and a half’s wait. Until your time to move, you had to live amongst the locals wherever you could. Bellavista was a beautiful place… we lived on the upper floor of the complex and had a wonderful view of the countryside off our back balcony. At night, one could look up at the night sky and see a thin trail of fiery red lava slowly ebbing from still active Mt. Etna. And in the morning, everything left out in the open was often found to be blanketed ever so slightly in volcanic ash, almost like a light dusting of snow.

But naturally, as perfectly nice as Bellavista was, it wasn’t meant for us for long. The lnadlord’s daughter was pregnant, engaged… and homeless. Guess who got the boot? So we moved, with the landlord’s assistance, into another home. Motta S. Anastasia, a little cobblestone-streeted town near Catania, and much closer to the Navy base. The day we drove up to the new place, I felt ill. Of course, nothing was thought of this at the time, but I’d swear in retrospect I was being told something. The place was a 3 story house with an apartment on each floor. I really don’t remember the neighbors, but both were similarly Navy families. And I can imagine I pissed them off a lot with the screaming.

Dad unlocked the door and proceeded into the small entryway. The cobblestone street gave way to a marbled floor entrance and a matching set of marble stairs up to the second floor, which was our new home. The place was stunningly beautiful. Marble floors… glass french doors into the living room area… balconies attached to nearly every room, save the one that was to be mine. Claw foot bathtub…bidet… all the modern conveniences expected of a home in Europe.

I walked into the room that was going to be mine. Small, simple, square and quite cold. To the left, at the end of the wall was a door covered with a “persiana.” Basically, a form of window blinds made from heavy horizontal flaps that was operated via a cloth strap attached to the wall. I pulled it up to see that the door was mostly glass and beyond it was a very small “room” lined with brick along the floor and walls. I opened the door and stepped into the room and looked up to discover the room extended all the way up through the third floor and up to a hole in the roof. There was no covering on the hole either… it went straight into open air. The shaft allowed a fair amount of light to shine into the only room in the house without a window in it, which I thought was pretty damn cool initially.

The chill seemed to come from the room, despite the glaring sun nearly directly overhead. It was then I heard the first whispers. Like… if you were to take a wire brush and softly rub the stiff bristles against your jeans. At the time, I attributed it to echoes off the brick… but I couldn’t help but feel weird about it. It wasn’t coming from any discernable direction or source… but it surrounded me like a blanket, as if sound could be tangible and touchable. It pressed in gently on my ears like pressure on an aircraft ascending or descending. I turned to leave and I noticed a glinting drain in the middle of the floor. It was obviously for rainwater to drain away but my nausea increased when I saw it. My stomach gnawed at itself as I ran out of there and I swear I saw the drain cover jiggle a bit on my way out. I lowered the persiana quickly and rejoined the family in the living room, shaking and sick as a dog.

Now granted… a little brick room was far from the norm for paranormal ghosty stuff. But try telling that to whatever was in there. Christ. For weeks and weeks, I’d get up the nerve to open the persiana in broad daylight and risk a peek… only to stumble back from the door sick as all hell to my stomach and trembling. I tried telling my parents of course… but an 11 year old’s ramblings about a scary brick room generally get chalked up to too many “Freddy” and “Jason” movies. The whisperings rarely stopped at night. They were persistent from the time I laid down until I finally forced myself into slumber. Often, I’d wake up in the middle of the night to silence, and then the whisperings would start up again, as if it was waiting to make sure I was awake.

There was never any real words to the whispering… just a hollow “ksssh sshhhaww hissssshhhhh haaahhh ooooshhhh aaashhhhh” that seemed to repeat, but never in the same cadence. There was no emotion behind it either that I can remember. It wasn’t angry, it wasn’t sad nor happy. Just there. Always fucking there.

One night, after about 2 months of this, I was awoken by a particularly horrifying dream. I seemed to start having those dreams after we moved in… I had never had constant nightmares prior. But I awoke from the dream with the feeling that something was terribly, terribly wrong. Immediately my eyes darted to the door… and saw that the persiana was up. Now, European goons with experience, back me up… Persianas are about the noisiest damn things to have in a house. They’re generally metal slats hooked in with metal hooks that grind and squeak loudly in protest as they’re pulled open. There was no way in hell that the persiana, which was always closed, could have been opened without waking up everyone in the house. But sure enough, it was open about 3/4 of the way up the damned door. A bit of moonlight reflected off the bricks in the shaft and into my room with a dull bluish tone. I lay there for hours, paralyzed in my bed, but unable to look away from the door, lest there be something there when I looked back. Eventually, I just conked out…

The next morning crept up finally and I was freed from my paralysis. I ran to the door amidst a wave of nausea and pulled the persiana shut as fast as I could. There was a light dusting of volcanic ash on the brick floor and I’d swear I could make out footprints or scuffing in it. Mom, still asleep at the time, yelled at me from across the hall after hearing the noise, but I couldn’t care less.

Over the course of the next 3 months, it was the same routine. The whisperings never faltered. The persiana would be found at least 2 to 3 times a week opened, and the blackness of the room would stare out at me in my bed. Then one night, it was different. I still have nightmares of this incident and it makes me cringe and want to curl up in a ball still whenever I conjure it up. I had awoken again in the midst of a terrible nightmare. And sure enough, the persiana was up, but this time it was all the way up. The moonlight was barely filtering in that night, but I’d swear I could make out something there in the room. It felt like I was at just the right angle for me to see whatever it was, and if I were to move the slightest bit, I’d lose sight of it. It was a small sphere that shimmered like a soap bubble does. But it was so faint I could barely make it out. I watched as it hovered there for the longest time. It began to shrink like some TVs used to do when you turned them off… shrink into a tiny dot of light.

But before it winked out, it flashed and expanded. It did so at an alarmingly fast rate and solidified into the form of a woman. She looked to be in her early to mid thirties, dark curly hair… definitely a local Sicilian. When she became “whole” and a solid image, she began shrieking and pounding on the glass doors with both fists. Her head swiveled wrong on her neck, shaking back and forth like if you put a teakettle on a stick and shook the stick around. Her eyes were completely black and full of anger and hatred…The skin around her mouth flapped loosely, giving me glimpses of her teeth and tongue and her hair was tossing around violently. Some sort of liquid oozed in small spurts from the corners of her mouth and flecks of whatever it was flew as she shrieked. Her screaming was horrific and nonsensical, and all I could do was scream back. My dad charged into the room to my bed, thinking I was having a nightmare. She shrank back from the door and… ugh. She slithered down the drain somehow. She twisted and distorted and I’d swear I could hear her bones splintering and cracking as she wound herself down into it. It was awful and to this day, dad says he’s never heard anyone scream so inhumanly before. I often ask him jokingly if he meant from me or her.

Plamen Vasilev

I am Plamen Vasilev, 35, native Bulgarian but lived and studied in different countries, including the USA. I am a creative person who adores writing and reading. I also translate. I also like photography and drawing. I have several books published on an online American site. Through the years I have won numerous national and International writing contests and have awards from all over the world. I am also a dreamer and wish that one day millions of people will read what I write. Because it is from the heart. 

Dead Tired by Nancy Schumann

I woke up and wanted to die. My back was one big area of pain. I remembered that joke one of my work-mates once made: When you're 50 and you wake up with your back hurting and your head hurting and stiff joints you know you're still alive. So I got up with a felt age of 56 by my estimation. I shuffled to the bathroom with my eyes still closed for a wake-up wash and other morning necessities. A base level of alertness achieved, I proceeded to coffee-making to complete my daily mini-evolution. As I sat staring into the hot magic potion the pain lessened and the ability to form coherent thoughts asserted itself with one firm realisation: The mattress has had it. It's time to invest in a new one because I am definitely not old enough to establish my status of being alive by the presence of back pain. As a result of that decision, much of my day was spent researching the options available to purchase a new mattress, get it delivered and the old one picked up for recycling, preferably all in one go. By dinner time I was ready and placed an order. It was with a sense of smug loathing that I went to bed that evening, knowing the nights of uncomfortableness were numbered.

Four dreamless nights later, the arrival of my replacement mattress was announced. I got up extra early to strip the bed of all its content, laying bare the offending old mattress. The doorbell rang moments after I was ready and my shiny new mattress was wheeled in by a friendly delivery guy. He picked up the old mattress effortlessly. I waved him and it goodbye at the door. It's been real, time to move on. I was disproportionally excited freeing my new acquisition from its plastic wrappings. It unrolled itself, seemingly breathing a sigh of relief as it stretched out in its new home.  I smiled and then wrinkled my nose at the new mattress smell. No matter, an open window day would take care of that before I went to sleep that evening. The ninth floor wasn't particularly prone to window-based break-ins.

So that evening I got home and made my bed, a breeze of fresh air around me. It was too cold to keep the window open overnight. I closed it just before going to bed. My nose detected a fainter but still noticeable smell in the room. It was bearable but I still hoped it'd go soon. The smell was a small disappointment. Fourteen hours of fresh air ought to be enough for the wrapped-in-plastic odour to dissipate. Then again, I was too tired to dwell on the thought. My new mattress virtually hugged me when I laid down. It was surprisingly firm but very comfortable. I felt wrapped in homeliness and security as I fell asleep. I slept without waking through the night but it was no easy sleep. Nightmare after nightmare flashed scenes of horror through my sleeping head. As soon as I escaped one unpleasant scenario a new one started up. Yet I could not wake up, as if those nightmares kept me trapped inside the dark side of the night. My alarm eventually rescued me. There was no sign of pain in my back, a fact I appreciated and celebrated with an unusual level of alertness that first morning. Somewhat unfortunate because the next thing I noticed was the smell again. Still there. Another open window day.

Physically my felt age has dropped considerably. Mentally, however, I must have turned 80. That's the only valid explanation for the level of obsession dedicated to thoughts about an everyday item like a mattress. I was significantly more excited than I ought to have been about the effect of a comfortable mattress and that completely erased the nightmares. Anybody who asked would be told I had a marvellous night's sleep. No mention of disturbing scenarios in my head. I all but skipped home, looking forward to bedtime. Outside, a storm started brewing, as I got ready for bed. Definitely had to close that window now or it would blow off its hinges. The fresh air held out a moment longer then the smell re-conquered the room. At this point that's becoming annoying. It couldn't possibly take more than two full days of airing. It's been several years since I purchased a mattress but I do not recall the smell issue being a long lasting one. Maybe I forgot. Much like the nightmares from the previous night.

Hugged by my mattress, the smell lingering, I fell asleep and returned to a land of nightmares. Nightmares I couldn't wake up from. Nightmares I couldn't quite remember after waking up but like the smell they linger inside the room, inside me, with a sense of uneasiness. The day outside seemed to match me with its greyness, its rain, its wind. Not a day to open the window unfortunately. I felt just a little disheartened by it all. My wonderful, comfy new mattress and the painless sleeps overshadowed by a bad smell and unpleasant dreams I couldn't seem to banish. I slowly went about my day, as if still dreaming. I wondered why something couldn't just be good without a damper for a change. When I got home that night I almost felt like crying. The weather still prevented any longer term window opening and the smell gained in intensity. I vaguely even considered sleeping on the sofa but that would be ridiculous. There was a perfectly good, brand-new mattress on my bed after all, and the smell was just annoying, not unbearable. So, once again, I fell asleep with a smell in my nose that I wished hard would go away. Falling asleep wasn't the issue, though. I was exhausted enough to fall asleep swiftly. And then I was wrapped in a sense of dread that I couldn't escape. I tried hard to wake up. I tried hard to remember. But there was no content to the nightmare. It just felt like a continuous scream. Silent and frightening. I could not grasp the nightmare to get over it. It held me but refused to reveal itself. 

So with each night of uninterrupted sleep I grew more weary, more sluggish, yet more restless. And more annoyed with the silly, bad smell, that refused to leave as much as the nightmares did. Wasn't it possible to design a packaging system that wouldn’t cause a bad smell when you unwrap the item you actually want to use? Fair enough, a new t-shirt you just wash and the smell is gone but a new mattress? Nothing I or anybody else could do but wait. Impatience grew to the point of regretting the old mattress was gone and became my default state. The storm passed and it got warm enough to keep the window open through the night. That helped with the smell. It didn't help with the nightmares. I was sure they would pass eventually. Maybe they were even an unconscious reaction to the smell. I was sure the smell would go as well. I was sure it would be gone by the time the temperature dropped to demand closed windows again. I was sure reality would chase the lingering dread away.

Yet not sure enough to refrain from sniffing the mattress. The smell hadn't gotten worse but it also never got any better. The first big stench left but it never got replaced by fresh, odourless air. Every time the window was closed, the smell was there. Coming out of the mattress, into the room, into my nose, into my every thought. After plain air had failed, I moved on to air fresheners. Every time I lowered my head to the bed the scented air left my nostrils and I breathed in the smell coming out of the mattress. Exasperated I fell asleep disappointed yet again. Mentally exhausted I woke up again after yet another faceless fear haunted my dreams. After air fresheners, I sprayed the mattress with some supposed upholstery cleaner. I put fresh bedding on. I went to bed smelling the smell. I wondered if my nose got damaged. I hired a cleaner under the guise of a deep, seasonal clean. She commented on the smell and asked if the bed was new. Not the bed, just the mattress, I said defeated. My mind lost track of time, of how long it'd been.

I lay in bed. Awake. Annoyed about the smell that didn’t go away. Afraid of the nightmares that do not stop. Out of ideas. Out of solutions. Stuck in helplessness. I drifted away to sleep and felt the dread grabbing hold of me. I refused to let it. I would not sleep if sleep is not safe. I focussed on the smell that annoyed me that only went away when I slept. So tired. Half asleep even. Yet, still conscious. Still smelling the bad smell, not frightened by nightmares. I almost felt physical hands reaching out, as the nightmare tried to lure me into sleep. Claws reached out to my subconscious and told me to forget the smell. To rest. A sensation like falling. Soft and gentle at first. Then I felt engulfed by fear again. I wanted to scream. I didn't. It's more of a sharp intake of breath but this time it was not soundless. It was real. It pulled me back into the world. Awake and surrounded by the annoying smell. I opened my eyes to see nothing but darkness. My heart was pounding. I breathed in. Slowly. Deliberately. Willing myself to calm. To stay awake. I stretched out my arms and legs. I stroked the mattress all around me. A token of the real world. I turned and buried my face into the soft mattress. Instantly my nose was assaulted by the smell. How can it still come out of the mattress? It's been forever. My hands stroked the surface. I moved. I smelled different parts of the mattress. The bad smell is the mattress. All of it. Like a dog I pawed and sniffed all that is beneath me. The smell entered my head. It got worse and worse. I could not stop myself. I tried each corner of the bed. It all smelled.

I sat on my knees disgusted by the smell, still stroking the surface. Then I felt it. A bump. Right in the middle of the middle. My soft, new mattress had a hard bump in it. I tried and tried again. It's most definitely there. I kept clawing at the hard spot as if to smooth it out. It remained. I did not stop clawing until finally the fabric ripped. My eyes were adjusted enough to the darkness to make out something bright and hard in front of me. Something that did not belong into the inner makings of a mattress. A sense of panic rose from my stomach to my mind that may have been lost. I kept clawing at the edges of the ripped fabric. It never occurred to me to get any tools. It never occurred to me to switch on the light. The thing in front of me grew out of the mattress as I ripped the fabric away. I moved inch by inch further down to the foot of the bed. The bright mass did not stop. There was more and more of it while there was less and less of mattress that once encased it. My eyes saw enough. My mind refused to process the information. Bit by bit I slid down the bed, ripping apart the mattress, exposing something within. Finally I ran out of bed. I had to step down from it to tear the last bit of mattress away.

I stepped back, my hand touched the wall behind. In front of me was the distorted figure of a man. Trapped in silent screams of agony. Rotting away in my mattress. My breath comes in sharp, desperate gulps. Rooted on the spot at the foot of my bed I was unable to move. Then I screamed and there was nothing but darkness.

Nancy Schumann

Nancy Schumann is a writer of dark fiction and academic texts in English and German. Her works have been published in both languages. Nancy's particular interest, in fiction and academically, are female vampires. Nancy's masters’ thesis on female vampires through the ages formed the basis to Take A Bite, which traces female vampire characters in folklore and literature. For further information see www.bookswithbite.in 

Ewok Dance Party by Lauren Allen

I should have killed myself at the hospital when I had the chance. 

After the beeping of Aisha’s heart monitor stopped. After she gave a tiny little sigh and left me. After my reason to live could no longer be resuscitated. After all the useless nurses shuffled out of the room to give us, no, just me, a moment. I should have done it then. 

But that’s dumb. Hospitals are designed to keep people alive. Even if I had managed to suck down the morphine from its drip bag over the bed, my stomach would have been pumped within moments. Damn doctors and their damn Hippocratic oath. 

I could have done it right afterwards. Seattle has plenty of bridges to jump off. I didn’t have to go straight back to our, no, my house. But there was one last task I had to do. 

Somehow, I’ve made it to our driveway. The van door doesn’t close properly. It hangs crooked on its hinges. I don’t remember hitting anything. There is a streak of yellow paint all down the side of the minivan, the vehicle I bought to accommodate Aisha’s wheelchair which she jokingly called the GMB, for “glamor mobile.” It was a 2023 Honda Odyssey. I bought it used back when I still thought there was a point to saving money, back when we both had hope for our future. Aisha designed the wheelchair lift herself. It was faster than anything on the market. She was a marvel with design, had won a bunch of awards, had been on the list of Forbes, “Thirty Under Thirty.” Her robots revolutionized recycling. They had the dexterity to pluck out the plastic, the metal, the glass from the heaps of refuse carelessly tossed into the bright blue bins and to clean them with squirts of air rather than water. Less energy, less water, less waste. Nobody could have predicted her second act would be cancer. Surely it was the lab’s fault. She would come home smelling of burned metal and plastic. She had to have been inhaling carcinogens all day. They could have at least given her a fucking mask. 

The neighbor’s collie howls. I catch myself in the middle slamming the van door over and over again. It is an early February morning full of unexpected gaudy sunlight. The sky should at least have the decency to rain. I stop slamming the door. I don’t want to wake up the whole neighborhood. The door doesn’t shut. The interior light is on. I don’t care. I won’t be needing the van anymore. I walk away. Then the guilt hits. Aisha hated waste. She was the one who went from room to room turning off all the lights before bed. I go back, reach into the van, and slide the light off. 

Our mailbox is bloated with two weeks of mail. I decide I will just put the whole mess in the recycling bin. I fumble one handedly for my keys. I’ve worn the same outfit for the last two weeks; I’d slept on the chair next to her bed when they let me and in the van when they told me to go home and get some rest. At last, I find them in the chest pocket. I put the keys in the lock then hesitate. Inside I know what I will find. My last task will be to clean up the vomit. Her vomit. She had puked with such ferocity that I picked up the bag of bones that had become her body right off the living room floor and carried her straight to the GMB. I brace myself for the smell. I don’t really want to clean it up. It is her last mark on the world after all. But I know I have to. She would hate it if the hardwood became stained, if I allowed something good go to waste. I will clean it all up so the house will be ready for whoever rents it after I am gone. 

I open the door. The scent that hits me is not vomit, it is sweet, savory, delicious. Is it, could it be stew? I must be hallucinating. I had eaten almost nothing in the previous weeks. I hadn’t felt hungry. Reflexively, my mouth begins to water. 

And then, the little beast trots out from the kitchen on its hindlegs, as tall as my hip and wearing a floral apron. It is bear-like and furry. It is an Ewok.

I drop the mail. I slide down the wall to a seat. Maybe I don’t have to go through all the trouble of killing myself. Maybe I am already dead, my brain running through random Star Wars imagery before shutting down. 

“Welcome home honey bunny,” the Ewok says, but it is not the childish singsong from the movie. No, it is a woman's voice, Aisha’s voice. 

I’d thought I was the sick one when I first met Aisha. Environmental despair. Weary of years of teaching biology, of showing students all the ways adults had fucked up their planet. Global warming, mass extinctions, toxins everywhere: it was all so hopeless. And I was part of the problem. I slowly realized that the world would be better off without my emissions and trash. I was beginning to withdraw, to isolate, to think of exit strategies. It’s not like I had many people to worry about me. My megachurch family had disowned me a decade prior for the sin of being queer and the double-sin of flunking conversion therapy. I’d moved to Seattle to find community, only to find I couldn’t trust anyone. I threw myself into teaching, into the myth that I could make a difference. But the planet just got hotter, the politicians more ignorant, the students more like digital zombies.

Aisha was a guest speaker for Career Day in May. Ash was falling from the sky. The wildfires were coming earlier and earlier every year. The district used to cancel school on such days, but then they became too common, so the students just wore masks. There was a lot of coughing and red eyes. But Aisha was radiant as she shared about the success of her Recyclebots. Students looked up from their phones and gave her their full attention as she gave her pitch with the fervor of an evangelical, “Our planet needs saving. Technology is our best tool. Will you join us?”

Before I met Aisha, I had given up on recycling. It seemed as useless as swabbing the deck of the Titanic. But she was light and hope and I needed to be near her. I stammered an invite to coffee. Coffee turned into beer turned into dinner and dessert. We rode our bikes home together and that was it.

Aisha was my salvation. She filled me with a hope that quickly bloomed to love. She moved in after only a week. But her work hid her from me. She worked feverishly, from four in the morning ‘til she collapsed into our bed at midnight. It was the newspapers that made her do it, politicians decrying falling birthrates, urging all good Americans to procreate and save the country from social security caused collapse. “It’s like a Ponzi scheme,” Aisha said. “There are already too many of us and they expect us to keep making more. There has to be another way.” Robots were the answer, she decided. She was working on a prototype for Carebots, who could cheaply and humanely care for the elderly. 

At first, I laughed. “Nobody’s going to let some cold steel bot take care of their grandma. That’s just creepy.”

Aisha rumpled her brow, thinking hard. “I’ll make the Carebots friendly-looking, short enough that they are not intimidating but strong enough to do the job.” Then she got sick and had to leave work. She never finished the project. 

“Wake up honey bunny, I made you sweet potato and peanut stew,” Aisha says. 

“But you’re allergic to peanuts,” I say. I had always loved peanut-flavored anything, but was terrified of triggering Aisha’s anaphylaxis. Reese’s were my favorite and I would gorge myself on the Halloween candy left in the staff lounge, then brush my teeth five times, use mouthwash, and wash my hands and arms with the solemnity of a surgeon before coming home. 

“I am not Aisha, I am Ada.” I open my eyes. For a moment I had forgotten about everything. For a moment I’d thought the cancer, the death, the damn robot was all some horrible dream. But it isn’t. 

“You can’t use that name,” I say. Ada was supposed to be the name of our daughter. Our daughter was the source of our most bitter arguments. Aisha, the recycler, argued that it was selfish to have our own children when we could adopt. She, after all, had been adopted by two kindly septuagenarians who had since passed on. I had been surprised at my hypocritical longing, for all my worries about overpopulation. But love had changed me. I believed that the world needed more of Aisha.

She relented to the pressure on several conditions. First: the child would be named for her hero Ada Lovelace, the mother of artificial intelligence. Second: she grudgingly consented to giving her eggs (the craving for little Aishas being, after all, the driver for the process) but it was decided that I would carry the embryo/ baby to term. Third and most importantly, the baby would be taught computer languages from the start. Plenty of babies picked up multiple verbal languages. Aisha wanted E++ to be just as much of the baby’s prose as anything else. She was excited. She thought that if only she had started her career earlier, she could have accomplished more.  

“Aisha made me to take care of you.”

It is too much. I can’t live one more second without her. It is time to end this. I run to the bathroom. Aisha’s opioids and sleeping pills should be under the sink. My hands shake as I pop off the lid of the oxycontin. Inside are brown, orange and yellow ovules. Not pills but fucking Reese’s Pieces. I rip open every bottle in the cabinet, even the measly Tylenol. All of them full of candy. I fling the bottles across the bathroom. 

Some of the candy hits the Ewok’s fur.

“What did you do?” I scream. 

Its neck makes a mechanical noise as it swivels to look into my eyes. “Honey bunny, I cannot let you hurt yourself.” 

It is Aisha’s voice but a robot’s syntax. I run into the kitchen. The wooden knife holder on the counter is full of spoons.

I slump down the wall to the floor. 

The Ewok moves swiftly to attack, and I let it. I don’t care what happens to my body. But instead of pain I feel its arms wrap around me: the fluff of its covering cannot mask the hard metal beneath. It is more a clamp than a hug. I miss Aisha’s body with my whole being. I miss holding her, I miss the warm strong body she had and how she always hugged like she meant it.  I cry and cry.  Because I will never be held like that again. Because I hate her parting gift. Because I still want to kill myself and now I know I am letting her down. 

“Honey bunny is unhappy.” 

Aisha had usually abbreviated honey bunny to HB. Why hadn’t she programmed the damned robot to say HB? I decide I don’t need pills or knives to kill myself. I will just bang my head against the wall. I try to pry the arms off my body but they hold fast. I am trapped. 

“Turn off,” I say. 

“I do not understand,” the robot says. 

“Turn off,” I scream. 

“Honey bunny does not like Ada?” 

“You’re not a real baby.”  

“Real baby. Honey bunny wants a real baby.” 

I feel a poke in my skin. Then nothing.

Sunshine and coconuts. 

Aisha’s chemo sessions took hours: she was stuck in a chair with poison slowly dripping into a tortured vein in her arm. I was with her for every session. I downloaded all twenty Star Wars movies on my iPad so that we could watch the series that she cherished from her childhood. I found them all corny, but I for once managed to keep my opinion to myself. When we watched the Ewok dance party scene at the end of Return of the Jedi I told her, “We’ll party just as hard when you beat this thing.” She agreed, basically promising to get better. Liar.  

She used to wear her hair in box braids that fell onto her shoulders. The chemo made her lose whole clumps of braids at time. After a week she shaved it all off. I took her to the best Yelp-rated-wigmaker in Seattle. Laughing, she chose a curly brown wig. “It matches my inner beast,” she said. I missed her braids. I stowed her sleep scarf away in my bureau so that I could hold onto her scent. Chemo had changed her fragrance from coconuts and sunshine to something more like plastic. 

The hair scarf is tied around my eyes. I try to push it off, but my arms are tied down. I try to kick, but my legs are stuck too. 

Furry paws remove the scarf from my eyes. 

“Honey bunny is awake. How do you feel?” the Ewok says, its big bovine eyes looking down into my face.  

I feel a throbbing ache deep inside of me, like the worst period cramps ever. My hands and ankles are attached to the bed post with the fuzzy handcuffs Aisha had bought at the beginning of our relationship, back when we thought we had enough time for kink. “What did you do?” I stammer. My mouth feels like it is full of cotton. 

“Honey bunny, I cannot let you hurt yourself. Honey bunny, you need to live. You now have real baby. Real baby will make you want to live.”

And suddenly, stupidly, I feel hope. I have just been raped by a robot. I have been impregnated without consent. And all I can think is, “Is it hers?” 

“Aisha is baby mother and donor 110507 is baby father.” 

“But the doctor said she did not have any eggs.” 

“She saw different doctor. Second opinion.” 

I lie back on the pillow, and squeeze my eyes against the coming tears. I had been so eager to trash my life. But maybe, my life could be recycled. It’s what Aisha would have wanted. 

“Will honey bunny eat stew now?” 

Lauren Allen

Lauren Allen is afraid of most things but does them anyway. At times this is foolish. She used to climb, but then a mountain broke her foot. Now she swims with jellyfish and teaches high school science. You decide which is more scary. See more at LaurenAllenStoryteller.com

One Headlight by Michael Rook

We’ve got 5,685 railroad crossings in Ohio. 5,000 miles of train tracks. For twenty years, I think maybe they’ve always been thrumming in my head—in the background, though, like arteries. Easy to tune out. At some point, you don’t even hear them.

But we are tattooed all over by trains in this state. We grow up with that.

So maybe that’s why we’ve got our ritual.

Know it?

When you drive over train tracks, you must lift your feet.

Otherwise, the people under the rails will pull you down.

If you don’t know, or forgot, that’s fine. Happens.

Sean’s Lincoln bumped onto my parent’s old property. He couldn’t see me, not with all the maples and blackberries and Mom’s maze of ATV trails, but I could see him, because I knew how to look. Bridgett—my best friend, my better-than-blood sister—had known too. We’d figured that out during a hundred summer nights as kids, nights when my Aunt Vicki had teased us with ghost stories.

Like about all the people killed by trains, those angry dead folks, and the ritual of the rails, which scared us and got stuck in our heads, like the background rumble of trains at night. Especially after Aunt Vicki drove in front of a Union Pacific engine that turned her car ‘to ash. But eventually it became arteries. At least for me.

Sean parked and strolled towards the dark barn where I was sitting inside Mom’s Gator SxS. I shuddered, fear and anticipation suddenly mixing, but kept still, except for a long leg I tossed over the ATV’s little half-door. I was pasty but had a lot of thigh. Sean always noticed. I shook a Mickey’s 40 oz. as he put his hands on the Gator’s roof and leaned in.

“Seriously?” he said. “Are we thirteen?”

But he took the bottle and swilled. I smiled and tossed the keys his way. He smirked, downed another blast of the malt liquor, and revved up the Gator. Soon after, he was spinning us through the branch-choked trails. Nearly 500 people have died thanks to trains since Sean, Bridgett, and I met in grade school. Those are only the reported deaths.

Sean wheeled us to the property’s south, where Mom had sculpted an offroad playground of mounds to jump right before our land gave way to the Mad River train tracks—which was also less than a mile far from where Bridgett had disappeared back in college, two decades ago. Near the rails, Sean brought the Gator to a pause.

“Move.” I tried to climb behind the wheel, pushing at him while slipping across the ATV’s middle.

Sean twisted fast, his wrestler’s shoulders, even past forty, whirling like an oiled machine. High-grade nervousness, the worry of being alone with a much bigger man, amped higher than my desire for a second. But I slugged a double swallow as Sean switched places.

“This is a perfect storm of stupid,” he said, frowning. “You know that?”

But he kissed me, more comfortable now than since we’d first reconnected after my parents’ death, when I’d moved back to handle their things. Which is me. I peel labels off bottles. I pay bills in advance. I work out more than I eat out. And it was that part of me that finally called him, I swear. That started the hooking up again. It wasn’t the part that always thought about Bridgett, if just a little.

“What’s this?” He lifted a machete from the console I’d inched over.

Another attack of nerves hit and I thought my shoulders quivered. But I pushed his chin towards some overgrowth, then urged the Mickey’s back to his mouth.

“For pruning.” I handed him my old iPod, which was plugged into the Gator’s radio, as he gazed at the tangled bushes. “And snakes. Find some music.”

I geared us forward and aimed at the first mound. Meanwhile, Sean fumbled with the MP3 player as I hopped a swell of clay and dirt and stringy weeds.

“Wallflowers?” he yelled, a little snark to his tone as we landed hard and I jerked towards the runway to the next jump.

Without reacting, I nodded at the song on the top of my list. A second later Jakob Dylan crooned through the Gator’s little speakers about a time long past, but not so far that he’d forgotten about losing his only friend. As the song ramped up, I zigzagged us deeper into the blackberry maze. Bridgett had told Sean about the ritual of the rails when we were in college. When they were in love.

Now, I sped us back to the property line, to where the bushes ended at the gravel of the Mad River tracks. As we came into the clearing, I swerved so we could run parallel to the iron lines. As we did, I caught Sean looking hard at something. Into something? Not the neighbor’s corn fields, tall and yearning to be plucked. The rails.

“I miss Bridgett,” he said, barely audible over the engine.

Muscles in my fingers tightened.

“Even while I was married, I missed her. That’s shitty, right?”

I throttled higher, increasing the gasoline stink from under the hood.

“Hey, not…” he said quickly. “Not when you and me are—”

Again, I tipped the Mickey’s to his lips. My hand shook, and not from the vibrating of the ATV. Bridgett had cried to me after telling Sean about the ritual of the rails sophomore year. By that point, I’d drifted away from believing in it. Kind of forgotten. But not Bridgett. And Sean had made fun of her for it. He said he wouldn’t stop until she stopped doing the ritual. For her own good. But Bridgett couldn’t stop. ‘Cause of Aunt Vicki. How the people under the rails had gotten her. Which Bridgett had told me about. But I’d… I’d simply never thought…

I snapped the Gator away from the rails and back to the offroad course, Sean and I rollicking to the side with the move. Through the speakers, Jakob went on about ugly mazes and how that friend’s death was surely killing him. I stopped us hard under one of the maples. With no warning, I leaned over and gave Sean a big, tongue-leading kiss. Then I unzipped my cutoffs with a chill, ‘cause I had nothing on beneath.

“C’mon,” I said, grabbing Sean’s hand. “While I drive.”

He did and I hammered us ahead, branches whipping metal. After Bridgett went missing, Sean told everyone he’d dropped her off safe. Until last month, us laying together, sweating, when he’d finally admitted he’d been there—at the crossing on Regiment Road where it intersects the Mad River tracks, not far from my parent’s property. Where he’d jammed one of Bridgett’s shoes to the floorboard while he gassed it over the railroad crossing that split the country road.

To help, he’d said.

Bridgett had screamed.

And vanished.

After his confession, I couldn’t take out the garbage. Or merge spreadsheets. Or RSVP to weddings. One last time, I halted the Gator. The Mad River tracks sat right ahead. Sean stopped touching me, and a moment later ended his kissing of my bare shoulder. He gave me a look that said he wanted sex, but it quickly drained ‘to something more puzzled when I didn’t fully meet his gaze. At last, he looked where I did, at the train tracks. While he did, I grabbed something from the console. When he caught what it was, he squirmed towards the Gator’s little door as I gassed the ATV with all the pedal I could.

When I rammed the machete through his thigh and into the plastic seat, he screamed. We hit the rails so fast my feet flew off the pedals. I’d have pulled them up anyways, like when I was a girl, but the jolt did it for me. Sean? I stabbed hard into his leg, holding him fixed, his calf and foot convulsing into a firm anchor on the rubber flooring. And what did he scream?

Help?

The second rail thudded by. Sean disappeared. Across the tracks, I braked fast and nasty. Then I unloaded a noise I couldn’t name. It was the sound you make when you finally know. The machete stood upright, slick with blood. There was a little red running over the edge of the seat too—but only so much, the first gush of a new wound. Not the amount that’d come from a body that had been there for very long.

The people under the rails were real. They’d taken Sean. And they’d taken Bridgett, because of him, all those years ago. Aunt Vicki too? Bridgett had been right to be afraid, even if believing had been what made her vulnerable to them? Visible to them? And had made Sean vulnerable, when he knew, and when I finally believed? I breathed hard. This was the after. I’d readied for it all—or had tried to. The guilt. The emptiness. The horror. If you seek revenge, dig two graves. I waited for doom.

For Hell.

If the ghosts under the tracks were there, why not damnation? But I didn’t feel it.

No.

Instead, I felt like I’d rolled onto the sand from a swim I wasn’t sure I was coming back from. Through the speakers, Jakob hoped—pleaded—for something better than being in the middle, being stuck. Who would know? No one. Me. And maybe Bridgett?

Was that enough?

Maybe there was an okay amount of revenge? Maybe the right dose could be not a hell sentence, but justice? There’d be things to dispose of, like the machete, Sean’s Lincoln, possibly his phone, but it wouldn’t be that hard. There was a deep quarry on the other side of town. A great lake to the north.

5,000 miles of train tracks. 5,685 crossings.

And after? I could move on. Straight forward. Maybe help others? Show them what I’d learned? On tracks somewhere—not the Mad River, further away—an engine blurted its horn as it neared a town, warning them about the hundred-ton load it dragged like a dead tail. I heard it from across the fields. Meanwhile, Jakob yearned to be headed home. Guided by one headlight. Like me.

Just like a train.

Michael Rook

Michael Rook is not cursed. Sure, he was named after a ghost, doesn’t sleep, and writes to release the thing in his head, but he definitely doesn’t blame his parents. Find his other stories in Penumbric Speculative Fiction Magazine, After Dinner Conversation, and the anthology Dark Corners of the Old Dominion, for which he also served as an editor. Or check out his Instagram (@michaelrook10) and website, www.michaelrookwrites.com, home to his occasionally interesting blog.

Flame and Shadow by Roni Stinger

Sissy tiptoed to the fridge and flung the door open. Nothing jumped out. She grabbed the pitcher of Kool Aid and slammed the door. Safe! She’d outsmarted the fridge beast once again. She poured Kool-Aid into her metal tumbler, careful not to leave her feet in front of the register so creepy crawlies wouldn’t grab her ankles. Jack and Bobby’s laughs drifted in from the dining room. They sat at the kitchen table with their own tumblers of Kool Aid, eating breakfast. Trix for Bobby. Cocoa Puffs for Jack. Sissy plopped down on the chair at the other end of the table.

“I saw something in the window at the warehouse,” she said, eyes downcast, tracing gold swirls on the Formica tabletop with one finger.

“Shit, you’re always seeing something. Maybe it was one of your shaaadoow Deeemons.” Jack held his hands up, wiggling his fingers.

“Hah, shadow demons,” Bobby said with a half grin, his blonde bangs hanging over one eye.

“A dark figure with long arms and yellow eyes. We shouldn’t keep playing there,” Sissy said, looking at only Bobby.

“You are such a baby.” Jack stood up and pulled a red Bic lighter from his pocket. “This’ll keep your shadow demons away.” He flicked the lighter in her face.

Sissy pulled back.

“Stop it Jack,” Sissy said,

Jack kept flicking, the flame flickering on and off as Jack pushed it towards her.

“Knock it off.” Sissy tried to get out of the chair, but Jack blocked her.

The smell of singed hair filled her nostrils as her hair caught fire.

Jack slapped her head a few times, patting out the flame.

“What the hell, Jack,” Bobby said.

“Mind your own business. Look, it’s fine. You can’t even tell.” Jack put his face inches from Sissy’s. “You’re okay, kiddo. Don’t say anything, and I’ll buy you a candy next time we go to the store.”

“Two candies,” Sissy said, even though she’d never tell, anyway. She kept lots of secrets, truckloads of them.

“Deal.” Jack jutted his hand out for a shake.

Sissy shook it.

“We’ll go check out your shadow demons,” Jack said. “You can stay home and wait for Mommy. We’ve got guy stuff to do, anyway.” Jack motioned to Bobby.

Bobby followed Jack like a little duckling. Sissy hoped the fridge beast would eat them. Well, at least Jack. Bobby wasn’t so bad by himself.

Mom wouldn’t be home for hours and August days were long. Sissy had too many bad thoughts when she was alone. Sometimes she wanted to get rid of her family, and let the monsters kill them all, instead of being so careful not to wake or agitate them.

She walked down the hallway, hurrying past the burbling of sewer rats in the bathroom toilet. Her knuckles rapped against the boys’ bedroom door.

“I wanna go too. I’ll show you where to look,” she said through the crack in the door.

Jack peeked his head through the barely opened door.

“So now you’re not afraid, huh? I don’t know, Bobby. Should we let the little scaredy pants go?”

“Might as well. Mom’ll be mad if we leave her here alone.” Bobby’s voice drifted through the door.

“Yeah, good point,” Jack said as he shut the door.

Sissy waited, watching shadows grow on the hallway walls and ceiling.

“Well, you better come now, if you want to. We’re outta here.” Jack pushed past, heading towards the front door.

“I’ll wait for you,” Bobby said, hanging back.

“If she wants to come along, she needs to keep up. Come on,” Jack said, staring Bobby down.

Bobby mouthed, “come on,” then followed Jack.

A flash of red caught Sissy’s eye. Jack had dropped his lighter. She picked it up and slipped it into her pocket before following them out the door.

The boys walked twenty feet in front of her as she walked atop the curb, one foot in front of the other, avoiding the funnel webs along the sidewalk. Jack told her that if you stepped in one of those webs, a spider would hold your foot tight until the mother of all spiders came to eat you. Sissy never stepped in webs.

Next door, old lady Nell’s chihuahua ran alongside the fence, making the raspy sound of a dog with his vocal cords cut. Nell watched from the window with a furrowed brow. Cutting vocal cords was her specialty. The sun shined off a pair of large steel scissors in her right hand, and who knew what hung from her left. She opened the window.

“You kids better not dawdle. Move along.” She shook the scissors in their direction.

Sissy ran to catch her brothers.

“Are you sure you want to go to the warehouse?” Sissy looked at Bobby.

“Yes, we’re going to the warehouse,” Jack said in a mockingly whiny voice.

“Okay, but I warned you. You never listen to me.” Sissy pouted out her bottom lip.

“Of course not, you dumb baby,” Jack said.

Bobby laughed. Sissy slowed and dropped behind. She wished she didn’t have brothers, or at least only one brother.

A tiny troll with flame red hair peeked out from between the lattice of Mr. Kemmish’s wraparound porch. Sissy kept her eye on the little menace and kicked dirt from the gutter onto her feet and legs so the troll wouldn’t recognize her as a tasty meal. Bobby had told her about the trolls years ago, but he’d never actually seen one. No one else saw any of the creatures she did.

Skipping along the curb, she caught up to her brothers.

The last house before the warehouse was the Wilsons. Their Dobie snarled and growled, lunging on his thick steel chain. One of these times, he’d break his chain and shake one of the kids around like their poodle used to shake around an old sock. After the poodle ate Sissy’s favorite socks, the sewer rats took care of him.

“You can’t get us, you dumb old dog,” Jack taunted.

“Stop it, Jack,” Sissy said.

The dobie was mean and scary, but who could blame him, being stuck on that chain all the time. Besides, she hoped one day he would teach Jack a lesson.

“Let’s go to the lot and build a fort. It’ll give us a place to hide when the shadow demons come.” Sissy walked beside her brothers, watching for webs.

“We’re going to the warehouse whether you like it or not.” Jack pinched her arm.

“A new fort would be cool. Some damn idiots tore down the last one,” Bobby said, kicking his feet on the sidewalk.

“Look, if you two chickenshits don’t want to go, fine. Good luck at the lot on your own.” Jack cut across the field toward the warehouse.

Bobby hung back.

“It’s okay. We can build a fort later.” Bobby put his arm around Sissy’s shoulders.

“There’s something there, Bobby. Jack…”

“What about Jack?” He had turned back without them noticing.

“Nothing. Never mind.” Sissy started to walk away.

Jack grabbed her upper arm, squeezing and nearly yanking her off her feet.

“Listen, you will do whatever I say, or you’ll be sorry. I’m the boss, get it?” His lip curled at the corner, showing his teeth. Flecks of spit hit her face.

“Maybe you’ll be sorry, Jack.” Sissy jerked away and ran towards the warehouse.

She imagined the Dobie ripping Jack’s throat out. The trolls eating him alive, one tiny bite at a time. A lovely vision, with all Jack’s screaming and bleeding.

As she approached the warehouse, loose plastic flapped in the breeze from the broken upstairs window. She kicked open the piece of plywood that pretended to be a door and walked inside, stepping over piles of trash.

The metal stairs creaked as she ran up them. Crossing the assembly room, she stepped over the boards that used to block the break room and ducked between the opening in the two by sixes. Crouching beside the door, she watched for Jack through the gap in the boards.

The room filled with movement. A pile of candy wrappers and old newspapers gathered against the wall.

The shadow demons took form and grew. Spindly arms and legs, like spiders. Hands with long curved fingers. Their legs grew into the boards like seaweed growing at the bottom of a lake. Their mouths hung open, showing rows and rows of teeth. She didn’t move. In the shadows, she and the demons were one. She smiled.

Bobby came up the stairs first, but Jack appeared and pushed him back.

“Wait downstairs, I’ll find her. I know where she hides.” Jack walked towards the break room.

What Jack said was true. Sissy always hid in the break room. Only this time, she wasn’t all alone, cringing in the back of the long dark cupboard under the boarded-up window.

Jack stepped through the boards. Sissy didn’t move. The shadow demons grew larger and larger until they curved along the ceiling and hung above Jack’s head. He opened the cupboard and crawled inside to find her.

Sissy lit the old newspapers with Jack’s lighter. They ignited instantly, traveling up the tinder dry wall. She squeezed back through the opening and pulled a couple of loose boards across. Smoke and flames filled the room as she peered through the crack.

Jack climbed out of the cupboard, looking around in confusion. A long demon arm plucked him up by his head. More arms joined, pulling at his limbs. Demon mouths searched for flesh. The flames licked at his skin.

“Run, Bobby!” Sissy yelled.

Bobby hesitated as the stairway filled with smoke, until Jack’s high-pitched, gurgling screams echoed through the hall. Flames lapped out of the break room doorway. Bobby ran with Sissy close behind.

By the time they reached the street, the fire engulfed the warehouse and sirens blared in the distance. Sissy grabbed Bobby’s hand tight. His eyes wide with fear, he didn’t resist. They ran all the way home through all the spider webs and past the trolls.

Sissy’s fears died in the warehouse with Jack. Bobby had better be nice because she knew where the shadow demons lived and how to find them.

Roni Stinger

Roni Stinger lives in the Pacific Northwest, USA with her partner and two cats. When not writing strange and dark things, she is often wandering the forests, beaches, and streets in search of shiny objects and creative sparks. Her work has appeared in various magazines and anthologies. Her debut novella, “Fuzzy”, is book 34 in the Rewind or Die series from Unnerving Books. You can find her at www.ronistinger.com and on Twitter @roni_stinger.

Desert Flowers by Isobel Ledger & Edward Cooke

Deacon was banking thin ochre soil around her potatoes and the wind was blowing it away when Sexton came to her cottage, the last one in the village. She read the second murder in the fact of his presence, so that the grim look on his face was redundant. Together they walked down Street to the police station and went inside.

Somebody had alerted the shaman, either somebody who had decided on the spur of the moment to display an efficiency rare in Little Woldbury or somebody who just wanted to put one more obstacle in Deacon’s way. The shaman was the plumpest First Deacon had ever seen; although the chair was built on human scale and ought to have swallowed him, he still looked squeezed into its jaws.

Without rising, the shaman said, ‘You want to put the blame on my people. You are looking for an excuse to subject us to the wrath of your God. I am here to tell you we had nothing to do with this. I am here to beg for such mercy as you might have.’

Deacon went through the door marked ‘PRIVATE’, which led to the morgue.

Butcher gave her the tiniest of nods, avoiding her gaze. About the only thing they had ever agreed on was to part as friends. He must have known, better than most, that all the humor had gone out of her. Humor had the potential to change worlds. The only drawback was that changing worlds was a slow and uncertain process. A smile or a kind word might be contagious, but the contagion didn’t last. Little scraps of verdure in the wilderness.

Deacon looked down at the body and saw it was Barber’s. That made no difference to her; just one more thorn to join the bushel in her flank already. Barber was well-liked because he made people look good. He wasn’t one of the religious types who kept rebuking them for doing evil. His murder cried out to be avenged.

"Cause of death?”  Deacon asked Butcher. "Same as Constable?"

"Too soon to say, but right now it looks like it. My guess is Barber got an even bigger dose. Give him a few days in my greenhouse and I’ll know for sure."

Sexton was haunting the corner of the room behind the door as far from the body as he could get, as if he thought its death might contaminate his life. Deacon was tired of Sexton’s shirking.

“Send the shaman away. Then make me an appointment to see Bishop.”

Sexton shuffled his feet and looked appealingly at Butcher, who ignored him. Sexton hunched his shoulders in anticipation of the tongue-lashing he was bound to receive from the uppity First and went reluctantly out.

Deacon went through the connecting door into the office that used to be Constable’s. It had been given to her, at least until the church was built. She sat down at the desk she rarely used because nobody really wanted her to use it. You couldn’t keep a good woman down, but you could encourage her to tend her own garden.

Idly, she leafed through her in-tray. Bishop had sent her an invitation to his next fundraiser, even though he knew she wouldn’t’t attend. It was to be a gala dinner and, inevitably, an occasion for Bishop to preach his usual sermon: God’s justice for the indigenous people, God’s mercy for His own people. All proceeds to the church building fund. So far there was no sign of a church, but Bishop was a shrewd enough operator to realize it made people feel good to be invited to give to charity, and even better to believe they had disposable income. Little Woldbury was no longer the hardscrabble hamlet it had been in the first few years after the Church of England’s missionary expedition landed, but everyone was still struggling. The memory of having come very close to starvation lingered; the way Butcher had tentatively defrosted a few of his precious cattle, only to watch them lie down in their tiny terraformed pasture and die.

Deacon heard the shaman slam the front door behind him. Either the old goat was mellowing with age—not that the Firsts’ natural life expectancy was known even ten years after contact—or he had accepted there was absolutely nothing he could do but pray.

If the shaman’s acquiescence was surprising, the ease with which Deacon obtained an audience at the episcopal palace was downright suspicious. Bishop’s secretary showed Deacon straight in.

“Smoke?” Bishop asked. "I’ve got a few pouches to get through before I quit."

Deacon shook her head.

Bishop stoked his pipe from his dwindling supply of Earth tobacco. He was that ornery miracle, the man who had grown old in habits that ought years ago to have done him in. Deacon had supposed she didn’t like the fellow, but it struck her that she must like him better than anyone else she knew. She didn’t think he had killed Barber or Constable however, even though his desire to be the instrument of God’s Wrath constituted the strongest imaginable motive.

“I’ve nothing to say about this one that I didn’t say about the other fellow, only this time I’m saying it more loudly. Two men have died now, and a culprit must be found." Bishop exhaled a mushrooming cloud. "God’s will must be done."

“You know damn well the village will have my hide if I don’t declare the Firsts were responsible for both murders, and you’ll stand by and watch them flay it off me.”

Bishop winced, as they all did, these self-defined godly people, whenever anyone called a spade a spade. Deacon felt sick of them and faintly envious of the murderer, who had been seized by the entirely understandable desire to kill them all in their beds.

“Standing orders are what they are,” Bishop said. “Diplomacy and good relations with the indigenous culture are all very well in their place, and of course it’s vital to pay due respect to different heritages. When all’s said and done, if there is a credible threat to Little Woldbury from outside, it would be dereliction of my duty not to administer the Wrath of God. It’s my belief that these crimes constitute just such a threat.”

Deacon grasped her temper with both hands. "You’re the Bishop. It’s not for me to discern the higher mysteries of God’s ways. I do find it mysterious that God should get angry with the Firsts now of all times, when the cattle are just starting to breed nicely and we have a menu of options. Can’t the Firsts be left in peace?"

"After what they did to Priest? We should have acted prayerfully then, but you talked us out of it."

Deacon got to her feet, wondering why she had bothered to come. Bishop might look like an absent-minded grandfather, but underneath the genial air was trouble. The trouble was that Deacon’s were the ways that preserved peace, and Bishop’s were the kind that had made Plato come out with his epigram about only the dead having seen the end of war.

On her way home, Deacon passed Cooke’s Bar and Grill and heard the tinkling of laughter and toasting glasses. The faint aroma of marinated meat caught in her throat.

She prepared herself a thin vegetable soup for lunch. Then she sat on her veranda and smoked some of the tobacco that all but grew itself.

After a while she had company.

“How’s it been?” Priest asked.

“Been better.”

“Back on Earth?”

“There, and here before you went away.”

“When you think things were better on Earth, that’s when you know for sure you’re starting to go out of your mind.”

"You've found peace here."

“You could do the same."

“You have a very obvious motive.”

Priest smiled. “For killing Barber?”

“For wanting me to come and join you.”

“It would be dandy for us to be together again, but I’m happy enough to come over here every once in a while and have a smoke with you.”

They smoked in silence until Priest said, “If you’re going to crack this case, you’ll have to go back to the very beginning. Remember Cain and Abel?”

"I remember God declared Abel the winner. I think He was wrong."

"‘God is infallible, just like our friend Bishop."

"‘Cain was the one who wanted to live sustainably off his crops. When he invited God to do the same, God threw a tantrum and demanded meat for His table. Abel delivered, and that pissed Cain off. Are you surprised Abel got what was coming to him?’

"Such a pity Bishop wouldn’t’t let you preach. You tell it like it is."

When Deacon awoke, her mouth tasted like she’d eaten a handful of dust and Priest was dead once more. She forced herself out of her rocking chair and into the windswept garden to turn over the fledgling soil. As she stood on the fork, she pretended her boot was driving the tines into Bishop’s eyes. The same Bishop who sent Priest to deliver the Gospel to the Firsts, even though he knew they would cling to their old beliefs. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and they killed Priest for piercing a cactus in order to drink from it.

Eventually, when she could no longer persuade herself she was achieving anything, and the weight of the task she was putting off became too great, she left the fork standing upright in the sandy soil, where it held its own against the wind for all of ten seconds.

It was late, but the local sun was never in any hurry to set. Deacon circled around the back of Street to avoid meeting anyone on her way to see Butcher at home.

Butcher’s farmhouse was bigger than Bishop’s palace and his acreage was gaining outbuildings all the time as grateful villagers voted him the use of more and more of the colony’s dwindling supply of inflatable concrete. At this rate there would be nothing left to build the church.

The smell of the slaughterhouses made Deacon gag. She wanted to turn back, but she was as tired of her own excuses as of everyone else’s.

She found Butcher in a small greenhouse that could barely contain several barrels and a huge sunflower in a tall urn. They stood and looked out at the beauty of the planet the Church had baptized Abel, which was a lot easier to appreciate without the wind blowing native dust and artificial soil into their faces.

When the time for business came, Butcher said, “I expect you want to take a look at how Constable is doing.”

“That him? I didn’t think plants were really your thing.”

Deacon went and looked over the rim of the urn, which hid from view Constable's face: pale in the brown soil, wide-open mouth emitting the sunflower like a primal scream.

She said, “It’s been long enough that you ought to be able to tell me what you didn’t know before. How much terraformant must he have ingested, and would he have noticed?”

“The short answer is: it depends. My guess is, if he was sober, he couldn’t have failed to realize what was going on. We’re looking at a pretty big dose to have produced a flower like this right out of the gate. You know as well as I do what terraformant is like. Hit and miss, mostly miss, and like watching paint dry. He’s only been dead, what, a couple of months? So, I’d say it must have been some dose.”

“So, it’s more likely someone put a gun to his head and handed him a flask labelled “Drink Me?”

Butcher grunted.

Deacon took a slow breath in and out; if she was going to act on her hunch, there was no better time than the present. "Wouldn’t’t it be awfully convenient if that weapon were not a gun but a bone knife, and if that person were not a villager but an ungrateful First, come back in the middle of the night to poison one of us with the terraformant you said you’d given them? From the smell, I’d guess that was a barrel of the stuff over there.”

Butcher looked wistful. “You remember when you and I used to sit on your porch and smoke your baccy?”

Deacon said through clenched teeth, “Sure, I remember.”

"What we did afterwards? Those were good times, Blue.”

“This was never about the Firsts. You wanted to turn the whole village against me because you knew I’d never accept a First was responsible.”

“I’m not vindictive, you know that."

“You tried to use me, and when you realized I didn’t want to be used, didn’t want to be Mrs. Butcher and think and pray as you did, kill and eat whatever meat we could find as you did, we were through.”

Butcher shrugged.

Deacon said it. “You killed Constable and Barber.”

" I freed their inner flower. Do you know what? I believe Barber is going to be an orchid.” Butcher’s eyes were shining and his mouth broke into a toothy grin.

“I’m going to tell Bishop it was you.” The words caught in her throat as he looked her in the eyes for the first time in months.

"Do you suppose for one moment Bishop is going to believe you? That man thinks he wants to serve God, but the truth about human beings is this: deep down, we all want to be useful to one another in order to be loved. Bishop is no use except to authorize the deployment of God’s Wrath against hostile Firsts. I’ve given him a reason to do it."

Deacon went for him, but her whole heart wasn’t in it and he had been expecting it ever since she came in. He got her down on the floor with all his weight on top of her and his hands around her neck and both his thumbs on her windpipe. He pressed down and her world went purple and black. She saw Priest’s face and wondered whether she was at home on her veranda and would wake up soon. Then she knew she was going to die and tried to pray for her own soul, but no words came because she had lived too closely and too long among other people to believe in God anymore.

The barrel of terraformant smashed into the side of Butcher’s head and jellied his eye. The pressure fell away from Deacon’s throat and she breathed and swallowed and breathed. The effort had torn the sunflower free from the urn and the coils of its stem slackened around the leaking barrel.

Deacon wandered freely in the desert. More and more often she came across war parties of Firsts that ought to have killed her, but they left her alone, because the prickly pear growing out of her shoulder was sacred to them.

Isobel Ledger & Edward Cooke

Isobel Ledger studied Drama and Theatre at the University of Lincoln. She is active in the BookTube and AuthorTube communities as @isobelreadsandwrites.

Edward Cooke has written technical documentation, stage musicals, a short film and a note in class that nearly got him expelled.

Night Hunting by Richard Lau

Sarah glanced over her shoulder and fixed me with a big-eyed stare as I crawled into our shared camping tent. I tried to stare back with my own eyes as wide as possible but what chance did my human eyes have against what they were facing? She merely slowly blinked. I’m tall for a girl, but she made me feel as small as a mouse. And I knew what she did with mice.

Even after being in a relationship with her for over five years, I still couldn't hide my discomfort. I’m normally high-strung, but her times of transformation almost put me over the edge. I think it would with anyone.

Of course, my girlfriend could have hidden her reaction to my unease, but she was annoyed enough not to even try. She scowled. Scrunching together her feathered brow, she said, "You know, my people were spinning their heads around long before your stupid exorcist movie."

She had a point there. My grandfather had always kidded me about being a "night owl" for how I've always loved staying up late after most people’s bedtime, reading or gaming or doing some last-minute homework. I always seemed to get my second wind around 8:30 in the evening.

But I had nothing on Sarah and her were-owl bloodline. Once a month, when the moon was full, she took to wing. Literally.

Since we lived in a city, we normally had frozen mice from the pet shop on hand for the full moon. “TV dinner night again,” was how she jokingly referred to these times.

We had tried to keep live mice and rats, but I kept making friends with them and mourning their demise, leaving Sarah exasperated with a feeling of rejection. “Do I ever get a pet cow for you to make a burger out of?” she’d ask during the resulting argument.

As a compromise, either she or I would pick up some live food from a pet store just a night or two before the full moon. But there were only a few local shops, and their selection was limited. In addition, not many of them stocked enough of a supply for a five-foot-two owl who consumed small critters like chocolate bon-bons, even for a single night.

To give both of us a break, every three months or so, we’d take a weekend out of town. Thankfully, there were many rural areas just an hour or two away.

We have our favorite campground and our favorite site. This time we were lucky enough to be able to book both.

The campground was in a deeply wooded area with a lake nearby, providing Sarah with a large and varied dietary selection. The site, while only a small dirt clearing, was a good distance from the other campers, so we had privacy for ourselves and Sarah’s transformation.

When I had entered the tent, she had not fully transformed yet. But she was close. I could see the “feather fuzz” growing on her face and her nose was developing a sharper downward hook. And those almost-saucer eyes.

“Anything I can get you?” I asked, which was part of our normal routine. Sarah doesn’t like to transform in front of me, so it would soon be time to make myself scarce. I thought this modesty was an odd quirk for someone who never closed a bathroom door, but she pointed out to me that physical transformation was a lot more personal and intimate than merely vacating one’s bowels.

“Anyway, I’m just protecting you. Lots of people think they can handle witnessing such a thing, but they can’t. They get mentally scarred, repulsed by even their partner’s human form.”

Having my own body issues, I knew what she meant.

I made a quick trip to our truck parked down the road and timed my return to be just after dusk. I checked the tent, and she was gone. Her clothes were neatly folded, with two newly preened owl feathers crossed on top.

It was a tradition we had created. One feather for our love in the air. The other feather for our love on the ground. As usual, I bound the two feathers in a hair tie and stuck them in my ponytail.

At the start of our relationship, I asked Sarah if I could go on these night hunts with her. She tactfully explained that her type of hunting required surprise and silence, two things that I wasn’t very good at.

“That’s not fair!” I protested. “I don’t have an ass full of noise-dampening feathers like some people!”

“That’s not the end I’m talking about,” Sarah replied.

I shot her a dirty look and mumbled that in spite of their reputations, owls weren’t known to be the brightest brains in the bird world, especially the blonde ones.

Since then, I’ve learned there are just some parts of Sarah’s other life that I will never be able to experience, and that’s fine with me.

Later, I was finishing up my dinner, mentally going back and forth over which meal I should be more envious of: Sarah’s “fresh food” or my canned chili heated over the campfire.

That’s when the stranger broke noisily through the brush surrounding the campsite.

I nearly had a heart attack. As I said, I’m normally high-strung, and I’m especially nervous during Sarah’s night hunts. And this guy silently approached from the darkness and the trees before making himself known. A literal creep.

“Evening, miss,” the man said with a smile.

Tall, thin, with close-cropped nut-brown hair and black-framed glasses, he looked just like an accountant. An accountant carrying a not-so-office-compliant rifle.

“Hello,” I replied flatly and in as unfriendly a tone that I could muster, my heart still pounding in my chest.

“You camping alone?”

I thought it was a rude, insensitive, and invasive question. Still, I tried to swallow my outrage at being disturbed and the fear forming a lump in my throat. I wasn’t so much afraid of the stranger, as I had dealt with unwanted attention for most of my twenty-three years of life. But he had a rifle, and Sarah was in owl form. Those two facts increased the stakes and my anxiety.

“No,” I said, standing, trying to appear as big as possible, as when confronting a mountain lion. Be brave, I told myself. “My boyfriend just went back to our car to get the rest of our gear.” I wanted to add that he had also gone back for his badge, college wrestling sweater, and father’s bowie knife.

In the light of the campfire and the electric lantern the man held, I could see him swivel his head and check out our campsite. Thankfully, the amount of stuff scattered around indicated the presence of more than one person. He seemed to especially take in the two backpack frames by the tent and thankfully didn’t notice my single set of dinnerware.

“Well, I hope he’s wearing a safety vest.” The man grinned awkwardly, proudly pinching the orange vest he wore. “Wouldn’t want him to be accidentally shot by a hunter.”

“There shouldn’t be any hunters,” I said tersely, trying to keep my growing panic from being reflected in my wavering voice. “It’s not hunting season.”

I knew what I was talking about. Sarah and I took precautions and always checked. We didn’t want her accidentally getting shot. Was he intentionally being threatening or was it my nerves fueling my imagination?

The guy let my implication sink in like a sudden rainfall into drought-parched ground. “Oh, I ain’t no poacher. I just carry my rifle as a precaution. You know, for safety. Like with the vest.”

I was worried that he was going to hang around until my “boyfriend” returned, but he got the message that he wasn’t welcome. I was shaking, causing the metal fork I held in one hand to tap machine gun-like on the tin plate I held in my other. Fortunately, my visitor mistook my nervousness for impatience.

“Well, have a good night. My camp is just down the path a ways if you or…”

He paused expectantly.

“Archie,” I said almost immediately, cutting myself off and twisting the last syllable from fully saying “Archimedes,” Merlin’s owl from The Sword in the Stone.

“…if you or Archie need anything, just come by. I have some fresh fish and duck if you’re hungry.”

“I thought you said you weren’t hunting?” For my own sake, I shouldn’t have pushed him, but I was losing my temper and control. I was also worried that Sarah would swoop in and that he would take a shot at her.

“I brought them from home,” he answered pathetically.

I bit back a “sure, you did,” and figured that it was easier to repulse with honey since vinegar wasn’t working. “Thanks! I’m sure we’ll see you around. I’d better get these bags unpacked before he gets back. It’s been a long day.”

Nodding, the stranger melted back into the shadows. I busied myself, but I had learned a trick or two from Sarah. While my eyes were on my hands unfastening a bag tie, my ears were focused on his retreating footsteps.

It was a rough night. I was exhausted from burning through my stress-induced adrenalin dump but too panicked to fall asleep.

Several times I thought I heard gunshots in the far distance. Was it my unwanted visitor with the gun? Was he doing some night hunting or just trying to scare me? Once I thought I heard some screeching and screaming. I hoped once again it was just my imagination.

Fired by my concern for Sarah’s safety, I was tempted to go running into the woods. But more rational thoughts stopped and calmed me.

There was no guarantee that I would be able to find her. And if she needed me, she’d return to our campsite where she’d expect me to be. So, I needed to be here. For both our sakes. I determinedly stayed at my post with the dedication of a soldier.

And like some poor, inept soldier, I must have fallen asleep. The stress and worry had sapped my usual burst of nighttime energy like a slow tire leak.

When I opened my eyes, I saw Sarah’s face hanging close over mine. It was daylight again.

I quickly rose up, relieved, banging our noses together, hers still feeling beak-bone hard. She had transformed back into human form but just had a blanket draped over her still naked body.

“How was the night hunting?” I asked, feeling embarrassed for my dereliction of my self-appointed guard duty. But also thrilled to see Sarah and daylight again.

“Very filling,” answered Sarah, her eyes smaller but still sharp. “It’s you I’m worried about. Are you okay? What are you doing sleeping outside the tent?”

“I was worried about you!” I cried out, hugging her. “I’m so glad you’re safe! There was this hunter…”

At that moment, Sarah coughed up an owl pellet. She spat it onto the ground, and I couldn’t help but see a shred of orange fabric uncurling from the meatball mass like a stubborn tangerine peel.

“Who?” my were-owl asked innocently.

Richard Lau

Richard Lau is an award-winning author who has been published in magazines, newspapers, anthologies, the high-tech industry, and online.

Organic Products by Nicole M. Wolverton

As emails went, it was innocuous: Do you mind if I give you a call at 11A EST? There’s much to discuss about your proposal. -Abraham. Nova leaned against her kitchen counter. She could picture him typing off the line on his cell phone, maybe multi-tasking at a needlessly expensive gym. He was a handsome-enough man, but those were always the worst kind: the kind to whom everything in life was transactional, especially when it came to women.

Yes, of course. I’ll look forward to your call. Her reply was just enthusiastic enough to satisfy, but a sour sick threatened to invade her mouth. How the man could make the word proposal feel dirty was a mystery. It was for a cookbook, not an orgy.

Give him what he wanted, and he’d give her what she wanted. Why bother to hide it? It’s not as though Abraham were being clever about it.

The first time Nova understood the transactional nature of womanhood, she was thirteen and streaked in her own blood after falling off her bicycle. All she wanted was a bandage. Instead, a lumbering man who could not take his eyes off her breasts gushed about her blonde hair.

“Got a bandage in my house.” He’d pointed to his shack with the battered green door, smile too wide. “Pretty little blondie like you shouldn’t need to ride a bike to get around. I’ll drive you. Why don’t you give me your phone number?” Spit glistened at the corners his mouth, as though Nova was nothing more than a roasted chicken split into parts, juicy and ready to devour.

Oh, she followed him into his house, if only to school him on his manners in private. She bandaged her knees while he watched. That was all she gave him. And he gave her something, too, although not what he’d had in mind. Perhaps it was more accurate to say that she took something from him, and made sure bartering safety for sex was never something he’d attempt again.

Nova’s mother used to sigh deeply while watching afternoon soaps; close her eyes, and say, Ladies do grow weary of these men and their treacherous blood. Lord give me strength. Perhaps that was why Nova emerged from that man’s house, smiled at the clear blue sky, and said, “Ladies do grow weary.” Mama had sighed the panic right out of her from the start. Nova would not have a life of soaps and sighing.

Nova made pancakes that day back at her own house. Special celebration pancakes using what she’d taken from the man. That was the start of Nova’s interest in cooking with organic products. No one suspected the little blonde girl of the carnage behind that green door.

At five minutes to eleven, Nova positioned herself at her desk. It had been twenty years now, but she still remembered the color the pancakes had turned, how rich the taste. Organic products made all the difference.

Nova’s computer dinged with a reminder for Abraham’s meeting. She straightened her hair, still blonde, and entered the video call.

“Nova! Nice to see you. How’s my favorite cookbook author?” Abraham’s smile was too wide. His white shirt was perfectly starched, tie artfully askew. Behind him on the bookshelf, he’d obviously arranged a vignette just for her: another writer’s cookbook, a slim volume on fellatio, and a sensually-shaped red vase. It took effort not to react, but Mama’s voice went ahead: Ladies do grow weary of these men and their treacherous blood. Lord give me strength.

“She’s fine. Er, I’m fine.”

“Your offal book is selling out. Stores can’t seem to keep it in stock. Tail to snout cooking is big, but none of us ever thought so many people would want to know how to prepare cow livers. Everyone wants to book you for a cooking demonstration, especially since your jacket photo is so alluring. Are you sure you won’t accept an offer or two? Our marketing folks are eager to get you out into the public eye, build off all this excitement.”

He was openly assessing her, breaking her into parts. A jolt of panic shook her. She refused to trade her looks for sales. The publishing house was doing well enough without that becoming part of the transaction.

“No, I’m afraid not. Let’s talk about my book proposal,” Nova said. “I’m assuming you’ve looked it over. It’s a primer on how to cook with blood. It’s a specialty of mine. All organic, of course.”

“Come to New York and we’ll talk about it over lunch.” His eyes pinched, and she could see the wheels turning, looking for a trade-off. Perhaps he’d suggest a cookbook on fluffy desserts or a collection of low-calorie cocktails. Something more befitting his image of her.

A new cocktail recipe to showcase her ideas for the book; yes, that’s what was wanted for the situation. She could do that. It would give Abraham a chance to rethink his position. She smiled primly. “Sure, I’ll drive up and stay with a friend. Then can I have you for dinner? Can you schedule me in for next week?”

Everything in life has a rhythm to it. Left alone, most everything finds its way, becomes a greater part of the whole. It was interference that tripped Nova’s sense that something needed to be put back in the natural order. Cooking did that for her. Calmed her.

She asked Mama once why she continued to watch her afternoon soaps when the end result was always the same. The sigh, the closed eyes, the muttered, Ladies do grow weary of these men and their treacherous blood. Lord give me strength. There never seemed to be anything put right. Mama didn’t answer at first, then said, Sweetie, you got a future in cooking.

So, when Abraham’s knock came on the apartment door, the first thing Nova did was think, “Ladies do grow weary.” She was only a little disappointed when his eyes immediately darted to her breasts when she opened the door. She pulled the edges of her cardigan together and ushered him in, hating the feel of his eyes on her.

“Good timing,” she said.  

“You look great. That sweater really shows off your neck.”

Disgust flared at her nostrils. She gestured toward the small wooden dining table. The surface was smooth, the color of bark, wide enough to put herself at a distance from Abraham, but not large enough to hamper the meal. The tall ceilings made the room seem airy and bright, while the black-painted walls gave the discomfiting impression of closeness. She enjoyed the off-kilter feeling of the space. 

Nova had set the table immaculately, with her best white china from home: sedate dinner and bread plates and heavy platinum flatware, accented by crystal glasses. Black fabric napkins bound with ties of dried Black Eyed Susan flowers adorned each place setting.

Abraham ignored the cue to sit and went instead to the windows at the far wall. “Where did you find this place? Great view.”

“Oh, a friend of a friend lives here. She’s traveling.”

He wandered through the apartment, opening doors and peeking in. He tried the last door and paused. “Must be the bedroom? Why’s it locked?”

“Abraham, why don’t you have a seat at the table? We’ll get started with dinner.”

This time he did as he was told.

For a moment Nova felt as though she were back behind that green door, bandaging her knee. She set a board laid with charcuterie and cheese in the center of the table and filled the glasses with the crimson cocktail she’d mixed.

“I’ve got to tell you, Nova,” Abraham said, “I didn’t expect you’d go through with this dinner. You’re so . . . private. I wish you would consent to at least a small handful of cooking demonstrations. The higher ups at the publishing company would certainly appreciate it.”

She held his gaze. “The visit was a good idea. I didn’t want to waste any time getting my new cookbook into your production lineup for the spring.”

He popped a slice of sausage into his mouth. “I’m sorry to say there’s no way leadership will greenlight a cookbook about blood, especially without you doing publicity. I went to bat for you, even organized a market survey to gauge interest, but the only people who want blood recipes are professional chefs. I’m sorry, Nova, but we can’t do it.”

“That’s unfortunate. You’re eating blood now.”

Abraham swallowed hard, then gulped from his glass.

“Blood sausage made from a particularly rich goat blood,” Nova said. “And the cocktail is a whiskey sour that contains blood.”

His lips twisted into a moue of disgust. It was enough to make the wantonness drain from his eyes, at least. “Tricking me into eating blood isn’t the way to get this deal. Couldn’t you write about something else? Mushrooms—what about those? People love mushrooms. Or testicles. I could at least sell that—your offal book is doing well.” He paused. “Or perhaps you could convince me some other way.” His eyes darted toward the bedroom door.

She almost sighed, then thought of Mama. Ladies do grow weary of these men and their treacherous blood. Lord give me strength. She sat quietly for a moment. There was no panic; there was only certainty. She stood, removed the board and Abraham’s glass, and returned them to the kitchen. Nova donned a mitt and drew a plate of puffs from the oven. Writing about testicles—not a bad idea, but she wasn’t prepared to start with his. That took planning and forethought. Research. She imagined Abraham’s testicles would be small and perhaps well-groomed, just like the rest of him. Hardly worth the effort. She had something else in mind.

She’d given him his chance, after all.

The white wine had been chilled. She brought the bottle, a new glass, and a bowl of puffs to the table where Abraham awaited her, still wearing his lecherousness like a tailored suit.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“I’ve brought you cheese puffs and a glass of wine. Blood-free, I promise.” This time it was her smile that was too wide, and she allowed the smallest hint of cruelty to flavor it. Men like Abraham, they could never tell the difference; they saw what they wanted to see.

“I knew you’d understand,” Abraham said. “You’re a reasonable woman.” He popped a puff into his mouth, swallowing before he even had a chance to savor the richness of the pastry.

She sat across from him. And waited. It didn’t take long. Abraham’s eyes went glassy within minutes. Thirty seconds after that his words began to slur.

When he tumbled out of his chair and sprawled on the hardwood floor, Nova stepped over him to take the plates and glasses back to the kitchen. She glanced at him and shrugged. “It didn’t have to be like this.”

She stepped over him again and gripped his ankles. Inch by inch, she dragged him across the floor. The buttons of his shirt clicked along the hardwoods.

“What are you doing to me?” Abraham’s words came out mumbled.

“I had a feeling how things would go. People like you don’t often disappoint me, even if I did try to give you the opportunity to act with a modicum of decency. It’s not about the cookbook, you understand. I have another offer. I’ve been developing these recipes since I was thirteen years old. Sharing them with others is what I’ve always wanted. Women don’t have to put up with this.”

He whimpered a string of indistinct words.

Nova frowned. “I know what you’re thinking, that I’m overemotional and can’t take no for an answer. I accept no just fine. What I will not stand for, though, is your effort to force me into a trade. Safety for sex. A book for sex. However you choose to see it. And now there will be a lesson in manners for you.”

She slid a key from her pocket, unlocked the bedroom door, and pushed the door open. All the furniture had been shoved to the side and the mattress had been upended, clinging closely to the wall. In its place was a large metal tub, edges stained dark. Nova slid Abraham next to the tub and grunted as she heaved him over the rim..

“Now, don’t get excited,” she told him. “This next part is not for your benefit.”

She unbuttoned his shirt and carefully slid each sleeve down his arms. Next came the black dress slacks, the argyle socks, and his shiny shoes. When he lay in the tub in only his boxer briefs—tight, navy blue—she produced a petite case from her pocket and removed a small pair of gold scissors. She cut the fabric along the hip bone, down to the hem of his underwear, then repeated it on the other side. She tugged at the cloth and tossed it aside.

Men’s bodies were so frail. It didn’t matter their age, their income, or even how well they took care of themselves. Their nipples always looked strangely sad, as though belying the envy men seem to have of women for having useful nipples. It was the envy that was behind the men who ogled her, attempted to manipulate her to give what she had no intention of giving. And then there was always the penis, flaccid with fear, flaccid with knowing they’d have to finally face the consequences of their actions. And Nova had been right about Abraham’s testicles. His body was not remotely as virile as he seemed to think. He was just a tiny man trying to take her power. He was just a man, jealous of her purposeful body.

Abraham’s body would have purpose, though.

She carefully felt along his windpipe with her index and middle fingers and stopped when Abraham’s pulse beat against her skin. She removed a silver scalpel from her small case and, with one smooth movement, slashed deep and quick at the carotid artery. Abraham gasped quietly, but that was the last of his words. Blood pumped out of his neck with each jump of his heart, the time between beats growing longer with each pump. Nova closed his eyelids and watched him die, watched the blood collect beneath him in the tub.

“Ladies do grow weary,” she said cheerfully.

Her cell phone rang, and she glanced at the screen. She smiled and put the phone to her ear. “Hello, Zelda. Yes, I’ll stop by tomorrow to sign the contract for the book. Funny you should call right now, I’m in the middle of sourcing the blood I’ll need to recreate all the recipes for you. Oh, of course, completely organic and very fresh.”

Nicole M. Wolverton

Nicole M. Wolverton is the author of A Misfortune of Lake Monsters (coming in summer 2024) and The Trajectory of Dreams (2013), and the editor of Bodies Full of Burning (2021). She lives in a creepy century-old house in the Philadelphia area. Find her at www.nicolewolverton.com.

Granny Blue

Each detail of my world was a wondrous discovery when I was a child, though nowhere exceeded this sense of wonderment more than in Granny Blue’s garden. Every dewdrop was a moonstone carbuncle back then, and every granite grave was a sparkling monolith. I explored with accepting eyes, not questioning what I saw, though perhaps I should have. All seedlings reach for the light regardless of where it comes from.

“One day, you’ll inherit it all,” Granny Blue would tell me. “You have gumption, unlike your father.”

Even back then, I sensed my grandmother’s frostiness to everyone except me. Others, children and adults alike, seemed to respect and fear her. Her smiles and compliments were reserved for me alone, and in return I never dared cross her like I might with Mum or Dad. She respected me as my own person, and I loved her for it. I wanted the qualities she possessed, which made others bend to her. I was an unusually small girl with a shock of frizzy white-blonde hair, tired of bullies picking on me.

At 12 my wonderment and knowledge were balanced on a fulcrum; I could name every plant in the garden and remain lost in their magic. On family visits, usually school holidays, something interesting always sprouted in Granny Blue’s garden.

At Easter, the garden glowed with daffodils, forsythia, swathes of neon spurges and alien-green hellebores. Later, tumbling yellow flowers, like bunches of yellow grapes, would dangle from the laburnum tree that leaned over the second greenhouse. By midsummer the palette grew hotter; the pink spires of foxgloves and the blinding white umbels of water hemlock towered around the pond. Lilly of the valley sprouted from the front of the borders, the flowers like little white fairy hats filling the garden with a sweet scent. Meanwhile the yew trees sported pixie-sized pompoms.

The garden grew sinister towards autumn; fat spiders spun webs bejewelled with dewdrops across fading foliage. In the darkling days leading up to Halloween, Granny Blue’s favourite time of year, she sent me to collect windfall apples. She made apple crumble with the flesh, but kept all the seeds in a jar.

The garden was a mystery of curves and bends, which hid a few buildings. The greenhouse containing her exotics was the best in autumn, and I spent inclement days admiring the giant red, horn-shaped flowers of her brugmansias, angel’s trumpets. We placed boughs of laurel, holly and mistletoe above every lintel in her little cottage come yuletide.

A blue paisley scarf always covered Granny Blue’s wild grey hair. Her dungarees, threadbare at the knees, had faded to insipid blue over her little sagging form. She was no beauty. Among her features was a hooked nose and beady obsidian eyes, which seemed to be able to penetrate skin with their gaze. Despite her outward appearance, she was kind to me.

She wasn’t the same with Dad. Granny Blue constantly disapproved, nit-picked, or downright criticised him, even in front of strangers. Despite being an adopted child, I was never treated the way Granny Blue treated Dad. In spite of the friction between her and my dad, her only son, it seemed I could do no wrong. She called me Belladonna, a nickname as well as a plant found in one of her greenhouses.

Mum didn’t like Granny Blue, so I only got to stay there alone when my parents were desperate for a babysitter. On the few occasions I slept at Granny Blue’s, away from my parents and my big brother, she would have me assist her with botany in the second greenhouse called the glasshouse.

The glasshouse was a grumpy-looking, tumbledown, Victorian building tucked away behind rambling roses with thorns like needles used for sewing through leather. One side and the roof were glass and the rear was red brick. However, little light penetrated the mucky glass panels through the roses. One year there was a dead magpie decomposing against the glass ceiling. I watched the process over months with fascination and disgust until nothing but bird bones remained. Perhaps that was the first indication of my dark delights; I was disgusted because I was supposed to be, but the macabre fascination with the dead bird was all mine.

The glasshouse contained few plants for its large size and looked more like Dr Jekyll’s laboratory inside, strictly off limits to the rest of the family.

“These botany sessions are to be our little secret, Belladonna,” Granny Blue would tell me. In my naivety, I thought it was because I was special, and I prided myself on this preferential treatment.

One evening I was in the glasshouse helping Granny Blue with her botany. She stirred the contents of a pot on her makeshift gas hob attached to a big red gas canister. The smell of burnt honey filled the room. “Fetch two Carolina Reaper chillies and a limb of mandrake root,” she said.

Her grimoire was open on an iron stand beside her. She scanned the book with one eye as she stirred. Meanwhile, I scanned the jars of tinctures, salves, powders and dried fauna along the back wall. Her concoctions were well known, and people were always coming and going from her cottage with them. When the law couldn’t provide people with justice, they came to Granny Blue. I wasn’t exactly sure what her concoctions were for; I only helped brew them.

When inside the glasshouse, Granny Blue insisted my skin was covered and I wore long sleeves as well as a pair of roomy gardening gloves. I brushed past the few strange plants in the central aisle as I skipped to the stepladder and fetched the chillies. I knew the variety was so hot a person would think they were on fire from the inside if they ate just one. From the bench, I lifted the little contorted figure of mandrake root and snapped off his muddy little arm before returning to Granny Blue.

“Almost done,” she said with a crooked smile as she relieved me of the ingredients.

My nose barely reached the countertop where she worked, and she stood on a step to reach everything comfortably. Her pointed orthopaedic shoes peeked out from beneath the ragged bottoms of her dungarees.

Her gnarled hands gripped a stone mortar and pestle and she crushed the dried chillies. This was when she would start to sing. It was unfailingly eerie. The language was nothing recognisable, although I could mimic it, and the glass panels of the greenhouse would quiver at her high-pitched, plaintive songs. Often while Granny Blue was entranced, I would peek at the beautiful and foreign cursive writing in her grimoire.

Granny Blue’s songs always sent me to sleep, regardless of the hour. The notes issued from between her crinkled lips were enough to make the steam from her pot dance and my eyelids turn leaden. I would awaken always on the following morning in a cot set up for me in the attic. Odd rhymes lingered in my mind as I drifted through no-man’s land between sleep and waking:

Slumber sweet Belladonna,

The world’s not going to end for me or you,

Sleep well Belladonna,

For tonight another’s death is due.

I did wake up once, which must have been a mistake because it was still night. I clambered on the old toy chest so I could see out of the window. From outside came the sound of metal crunching against flint. I peered out on tiptoes and saw my grandmother digging in the flowerbeds. The moonlight cast a shadow from her hunched form and beside her was a rolled-up carpet. I asked her about it the following morning.

“I was planting a magic carpet tree,” she told me with a cackle.

I accepted this at the time without question. I hoped the tree would grow quickly so I could go on adventures like in One Thousand and One Nights.

Granny Blue’s mesmerism stopped working on me by the time I bore a child and worried about her influence on my little girl. More than that, I worried about the growing darkness inside myself. I was a young mother whose boyfriend hadn’t stuck around. Despite the years flying by, Granny Blue clawed against her grave. I watched my grandmother crumble along with the garden she had built. I glimpsed beyond her magic, but not beyond the awe her wild garden inspired in me.

The exotic flowers faded for me on the night a fat policeman came to Granny Blue’s door and asked to speak to her. Alone. My daughter was asleep in the cot upstairs. Dad, frail himself by then, shook his head with disapproval before disappearing outside for a cigarette.

“What’s this about?” I asked Dad, following him into the tepid night.

“I’m sorry you had to see it—"

“What? She helps people find justice. What’s she done wrong?” I asked defensively, still unwilling to see the odd seeds planted to spawn trouble.

If he was surprised, he didn’t let it show. Dad’s grey eyes, once insipid blue, affixed their gaze on me. “You still don’t see what’s going on here, do you? Never mind. It won’t last.” He would say no more and walked away to enjoy his hit of nicotine alone.

A prickle crawled down my backbone. My gaze lifted to the odd tombstones nestled in the long grass. They were anonymous, and it was strange because I always assumed they were the markers of many deceased pets, perhaps thirteen in total, but I could only recall her having an ancient black cat called Wilfred. He was a mercurial feline with thick black fur who slept above the oven’s extractor and had a penchant for torturing fallen fledglings.

My skin was tight from being in the sun all day, watching over my daughter and making sure she didn’t touch any of the garden’s poisonous plants. I was exhausted by the time the policeman left. Despite this, I stayed up. Earphones plugged into my phone kept music thumping into my brain, the volume turned low so I could hear what was going on. At ten, I heard Dad go to the spare room. His snoring made the walls vibrate soon after.

I kept vigil.

Tires crunched gravel as they crept along Granny Blue’s driveway, and I tiptoed to the attic window to see the policeman’s car return after midnight. A thrill ran through me, my darkness delighted. The fat policeman lumbered from the car in flannel pyjamas, as if he was sleepwalking. He shuffled to the porch, and I could see the shadow of Granny Blue cast from the door across the gravel. She must have been waiting for him. A few notes of her high-pitched song wormed past my earphones and into my ear canal. I turned up the volume of my music, steadying myself against the initial sweet insult, which threatened to anaesthetise me.

I waited.

The policeman departed again. In one meaty hand, he clutched an extravagant bouquet of deadly flowers. From it peeked the red trumpets of burgmansia, steeples of iridescent-blue larkspurs and frothy hemlock flowers used to soften the pallet like a florist might use baby’s breath. In his other hand was an unmarked bottle of what looked like wine; I had seen such bottles in a rack in Granny Blue’s glasshouse. The hand-blown green bottles were unlabelled unlike everything else in there. These bottles stood like a regiment of soldiers awaiting orders on an unreachable shelf. I was forbidden to even look at them.

The car door slammed. I edged away from the window as tires retreated along the driveway. I made my way around my sleeping daughter, avoiding the creaking floorboards as I went.

I came upon Granny Blue in the hall as my sock met the last step.

“Everything all right?” I asked. Despite my adulthood, I dared not fling accusations or be anything less than respectful to her.

“Problems that needed solving.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“As wise women throughout history have done, I help others by using my knowledge of botany. It has its price.”

I frowned, unsure I wanted to disappear down that rabbit hole. Like Dad, maybe it was better to ignore the poison garden, the shoes, the black cat, the cauldron and the grimoire. Not to mention the songs that anaesthetised people. I didn’t want to think about the somnambulant policeman in the dead of night, or Granny Blue’s forays into moonlight gardening. I dared not contemplate the tombstones of pets never seen.

“Go to sleep Belladonna,” said Granny Blue. “You’re not like the others. Soon you’ll inherit all of this. Your dark delights will be sated.”

Her vow roused fear and excitement in me. What Granny Blue offered was the greatest gift for which an adopted albino orphan could hope. Power. The power to mete out justice, the kind I could never find before being adopted. I went up to my room and gazed out of the window at the small gravestones almost hidden by grass. Unlike the others, I would not fail Granny Blue.

Darcy L. Wood

Darcy L. Wood's short fiction recently featured in the Thirteen Podcast and After Dinner Conversation, while non-fiction has appeared in The Daily Drunk. In 2019, Darcy was long-listed for a flash fiction Competition held by Shoreline of Infinity. Darcy lives with a Swedish boyfriend and their menagerie in Oxfordshire.

The Call from Delia Shea

I tugged open the sliding glass door at sunset and stood in the doorway listening to the crash of waves on the jagged rocks down below. It would have been sweet to put a chair out on the narrow deck. But the Bauers had warned me some of the planks and the railing were pretty iffy. The rotting deck needed work (so did the rest of the caretaker’s cottage)but I wasn’t complaining. Winter was coming, and at least this year I had a place to live.

I inhaled the scents of cedars and salt water. Thought about rolling out my worn yoga mat and doing a quick practice. Then my phone rang and caller ID showed: Delia Shea.

I sighed, shoved the door closed, and sank down at the kitchen table. My finger hovered. Accept? Decline? Delia and I had been besties back in the day, but it had slowly gone sour.

“Yeah?”

“Kate? Girlfriend? What are you doing tonight?” Delia talked like I’d seen her just yesterday, her loud voice rattling the battered smartphone. “I need you to spring me from this joint. Right now. These people are trying to kill me.”

 Some things never changed, certainly not Delia blowing things out of proportion. “Delia, where are you these days?”

“In hell, girl. This is serious. I broke my ankle, they couldn’t do a thing at the urgent care, they sent me to the hospital, and now I’m in this rehab place. Some rehab! The nurses are taking more drugs than the patients.”

“Slow down.” This was a pretty wild story, even for Delia. “Listen, Delia, I’m out on the peninsula, housesitting a fancy estate for the winter. Can you maybe call an Uber to take you home?”

“Oh, honey! I left my wallet and phone at the urgent care and have to get over there to pick them up. Just come get me. We’ll go back to my place. You can stay for the weekend. It’ll be just like old times.”

Old times? Yeah, those were the days. Thirty years ago, Delia would have been calling from some yacht club after storming off her boyfriend’s boat. In those days, her paintings were in all the top galleries. At one point I think she’d been married to some Microsoft millionaire. I’d taught martial arts and run a women’s rights nonprofit.

But Delia had long since faded from the art scene. And I’d left town. My social security wouldn’t come close to paying for a place in Seattle these days. If the Bauers hadn’t hired me to babysit their fancy getaway, I’d have faced another winter in Tod’s cabin in Oregon, scrounging for firewood, shivering under a slimy camp shower, and shopping at the local food bank.

Delia, who had no financial worries, was rattling off the address of the place she wanted out of.

“But don’t you need a doctor to sign you out?” I asked. That formality could mean shifting the whole crazy enterprise until morning. Or forgetting about it entirely. Anyway, I’d be off the hook.

“Ha!” Delia screeched. “I’ll take care of that. You just get your sweet little ass over here.”

Kate to the rescue, yet again. I grabbed a jean jacket and limped out to my old Toyota Camry, hoping no cops would notice the busted headlamp and the dubious brakes. I found a station playing Americana and traveled back in time with Tom Petty and Prince.

Delia’s rehab was a squat, two-story building flanked by spindly rhododendrons. In the dark relobby, a halo of cold light marked the reception desk.

“I’m here to visit Delia Shea.”

Two healthcare aides, eating fast food meals, exchanged glances. The older one, a woman, lifted a French fry and pointed down a dim hallway. “Last room on the right.”

“Thanks.” The low-ceilinged corridor stank of overcooked vegetables, urine, and worse. Through the half-closed door to Delia’s room, I saw an old woman hunched in a wheelchair. Delia must have a roommate. “I’m sorry. I’m looking for Delia Shea—”

“Girlfriend!” The woman in the wheelchair straightened up. She raised a claw-like hand in greeting.

I swallowed a gasp. The woman was Delia. Her stiff hair was an improbable shade of red. Her puffy face, white as lard. How many years had it been since I’d seen Delia?

 “Let’s go,” she said. She shoveled a dozen orange pill bottles from her bedside table into a green plastic tote.

 “I can’t just wheel you out of here, Delia. You need a doctor to sign—"

“Yes, you can,” she said. “Say we’re going to get some fresh air. Then grab one of those crappy walkers they keep in the lobby. We’ll leave the wheelchair, take the walker, and go!”

Delia wheeled herself to the door. Then I pushed her down the hall and into the lobby, listening as she loudly described the horrors of the rehab. Glancing over my shoulder, I spotted the doctor, a young man in a white coat, peering into Delia’s now-empty room.

“Is that the doctor?” I asked the woman at the front desk.

“Doctor comes in tomorrow morning at 8.” She grabbed another handful of fries.

“But...” I pointed down the hall to where he’d been. Of course, the hall was now empty.

“Kate! Let’s go, girl!” Delia was headed out the automatic doors to the parking lot. I followed her into the misty evening, got her into the car, and then slipped back in to swipe a walker. Just as Delia had said, a fleet of them stood in a corner of the lobby. The woman at reception ignored me as I picked out a new-ish one and trundled it out. We drove off, leaving the sagging wheelchair on the sidewalk.

“Head for my place,” Delia squawked as I pulled onto the main road. “We need a couple of Martinis. And I have Absolut, girlfriend.”

Delia’s lakefront house was on a winding boulevard lined with tall cedars. I’d been there—what, 15 years ago? —for a party. That was just before her husband—Dustin? Devon? —croaked on a Galapagos cruise. I remembered feeling utterly out of place with my long hair, batik jacket, and thrift shop sandals, listening as Delia pointed out Bill Gates’ compound on the other side of the lake. I’d left early.

 Now the massive house was dark, save for dramatic lighting at the entrance. I helped Delia up the curved walkway. Forget the Martinis; it would be great just to collapse in one of her guest bedrooms.

In front of the tall double doors, Delia let out a hoot. “Of course, I don’t have my keys. But not to worry. There’s a spare under the third paver,” she pointed. I fell to my knees on the gravel path and dug the key out of the dirt. I handed it to Delia, who turned the lock and hobbled inside. She patted the wall, fumbled with a security system code, then flipped a switch. Light flooded the room.

“What the fuck?” she screamed. “What the holy fuck?”

The house was empty. The walls, once filled with Delia’s paintings, were bare.

“Call the police,” she howled. “I’ve been robbed!”

I let my breath out in a hiss. Despite Delia’s words, this was no crime scene. The rooms were empty but immaculate. In the kitchen a ceramic bowl filled with fresh fruit gleamed beneath under-cabinet lighting. “Delia, did you put your house up for sale?”

At the foot of her driveway, I’d seen a blue-and-white For Sale sign from the most exclusive realty company in town. I’d assumed the sign was for the house next door. But now I wasn’t sure. Could Delia have moved, put her house up for sale, and forgotten?

“He ripped me off,” Delia muttered. “I’m calling my attorney. Gimme your phone.”

“Who ripped you off?” It was nearly midnight. Nobody was calling an attorney.

“Jason, that’s who. That little snake. I’ll sue him witless.”

“And who’s Jason?”

Delia’s voice subsided. “My stepson. He wants me to sign papers saying he’s my conservator. Not a chance in hell.”

A stack of glossy business cards from a realtor sat on the hallway table. I slipped one into my pocket, thinking This is so not going to end well. And there was no way we were going to sleep here. We might be arrested as trespassers, since Delia had no ID with her. Even now, a neighbor in this security-conscious enclave who’d seen the lights go on could be calling the cops.

“We’ll go to my place,” I sighed. We used the bathroom, turned off the lights, and fled.

I got us onto the highway headed north. Just past Lynnwood, Delia spoke my name. “Kate?”

“What?”

“Thank you,” she said. Her voice had melted into a child’s mumbling. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. I love you, girlfriend.”

It cost me nothing, so I replied, “I love you too, Delia.”

Halfway to the Bauers’ place I stopped for gas. A young fellow who’d pulled up behind us in a blue sports car walked over and asked if I needed help with the pump.

“Your friend OK?” He gestured to Delia, slumped against the window, her hair a rumpled mop.

“She’s just tired. Thanks for the help.” I fumbled the hose back onto the fuel dispenser, and we left.

It was past 1 a.m. when we reached the Bauers’. As I helped Delia into the cottage a car came up the gravel drive. Were the Bauers here for the weekend? Headlights shone in my face. I squinted.

“Who’s that?” Delia asked.

“No idea.”

The car stopped and the headlights went off. It was a blue sports car, a lot like the one at the gas station. Sure enough, the young man who’d helped with the pump got out of the car. Had I left something behind? My debit card? How stupid of me.

“Oh, shit,” Delia gasped.

“It’s just the man from the gas station,” I said, and then remembered that Delia hadn’t seen him. As he came closer, I realized he also looked like the young doctor I’d glimpsed at the rehab.

Delia clutched at my arm. “It’s Jason!” she screamed.

The man raised one arm. A gunshot, and Delia pitched forward. Then the man came striding toward me.

I tried to slam the door against him, but Delia and the walker blocked it. I backed into the cottage, thanking the gods that the Bauer’s crappy contractor had never put a light switch in the front hallway. In the dark, I could hide. Or find a way out.

I ran into the kitchen, yanked open the sliding glass door to the deck, and stopped. I remembered the Bauers’ warnings about the deck. But what if the man thought I was out there? He’d run right past me and step out there himself.

Footsteps in the front hallway. This was my only chance. I backed away from the open door, squatted down between the refrigerator and the stove, and waited.

His steps went into the bedroom. Then they came toward the kitchen. I ground my teeth as he passed my hiding place and stepped, one sneaker, then the other, out onto the narrow deck. A splintered board groaned under his weight.

Fall!

I stared at his silhouette against the purple sky. He turned his head left, and then right, and then left again, clearly puzzled not to find me out there.

If he comes back inside, he’ll kill me.

When he put his free hand on the cedar railing and leaned out over the edge, peering into the darkness, my heart rose to my throat. Before he could realize there was nothing out there but rocks and water, I moved silently into the open doorway. Calling on muscle memory, summoning every ounce of strength in my body, I aimed a front kick square to his back.

It connected.

He fell forward, the railing gave with a crack, and he vanished. A ghastly howl of fear broke off when he hit the jagged rocks below. His gun clattered. Then, silence.

I backed into the kitchen, grasped the counter, and hyperventilated. Then I fumbled my phone from my jacket and tapped 9-1-1. “There’s a shooting. At the Bauers’ house. Up on Ten Pines Road.”

I waited for them in the hallway, kneeling beside the lifeless heap that had been my friend Delia Shea.

The next few days were a blur of phone calls and interviews. The Bauers arrived from California. The insurance people came out. I kept my story simple: I’d picked up my friend in Seattle, we’d come out here for the weekend, and a strange man had followed us. He’d shot her, then gone out to the deck looking for me. He’d fallen to his death when the railing collapsed.

When the sheriff’s deputy told me the assailant was Jason Bonifaccio, the son of Delia’s late husband, I expressed my utter astonishment. Of course, they believed me. They think old people are too dumb to lie.

I was out of trouble, but I was also out of a home. The consensus was that a frail, 70-year-old woman wasn’t the right fit for the caretaker job. Surely, she’d be better off...somewhere else. So, I packed up my stuff—there isn’t much left now, really—and put it in the old Toyota. Driving in daylight, the broken headlamp didn’t matter. I figured I could make it to Tod’s cabin in Oregon just in time to settle in for another miserable winter. The kiss-off money the Bauers had given me might even cover patching the cabin roof and installing a rudimentary shower.

Two days later I turned off a winding forest road into the familiar clearing. Late afternoon light filtering through the giant firs showed a pile of charred logs and boards that had once been my home. I climbed out of the car and walked around the ruins, scuffing at the ashes with my hiking boots. Dusk fell, and the woods took on a stony, ominous silence. It was time to find food. And shelter.

I drove back into Eugene, picked up a burger, and parked the car on a deserted side street. I climbed in back and settled in for the night, cracking the window just a bit so my breathing wouldn’t fog the glass and tip off the cops, if the ones down here even gave a shit. I pulled out the pretty bottle of Absolut I’d pinched from the Bauer’s liquor cabinet and splashed some of it into the dregs of my Coke from dinner.

Farewell, Delia Shea. What a life you lived! And what a life I’m living.

K.G. Anderson is a journalist and technology writer in the Pacific Northwest. Her short stories appear in magazines and anthologies including Welcome to Dystopia, Factor Four Magazine, and More Alternative Truths. Visit her online at writerway.com/fiction.

Scavenger Hunt

Halloween: Her bare feet looked vulnerable as she maneuvered through the treacherous forest; every step entangled them in spider webs and thorny weeds, and with each carefully placed foot, blood oozed from the earth and settled between her toes. The dilapidated feed sack she clutched, the word Organs painted across the front, smelled of mold and some other indistinguishable odor, perhaps rotting meat. Inside was the only item she’d thus far collected—a decaying rat—and a list: two human skulls, a wolf’s tooth, bat’s eggs and more. Just how would she locate all these items? At this rate she’d never complete the hunt by the cutoff at midnight. But with so much riding on her success, she couldn’t fail.

Through an opening in the trees, like a parted curtain, the sweltering sun mercilessly beat down on her, and transfixed by a field of flickering, scowling jack-o-lanterns, she used the sleeve of her threadbare dress, which hung loosely, like a death shroud, to blot sweat from her forehead before she scurried through the woods, hardly knowing if she were woman or animal as she proceeded on all fours, alongside wolves and rabbits. When had the scavenger hunt started? She no longer knew and had only a vague memory of having once been called Nancy. Without that bit of knowledge, her life might have started on this day, in this forest.

Panting, with no concept of direction, she pushed on, searching in vain for a cool waterfall or freshwater creek amongst thick brush abundant with spiders and furry rodents that scampered across her feet. When a sheet of undulating black swooped down on her, she shielded her face with her arms, but not before a particularly vicious bat sank its fangs into her neck, leaving her to whimper as a trickle of warm fluid ran down her back. The caldron disappeared as she sought shelter under a large maple, their high-pitched screeches echoing in the wind.

In the distance, an old building caused her heart to pound with hope. Maybe someone there would at least give her a drink of water and bandage her neck. A human voice, and then music, rose from a small chapel that came into view and reminded her of tiny churches from years ago, on isolated country roads. She and her older sister, dressed in flowered hats and dresses, had once marched into their familiar hometown church every Sunday. This one tilted to the left and looked as if it might topple as she crept up to a cloudy window and peered inside. A gasp caught in her throat.  

Decaying corpses sat upright and filled rows and rows of pews. All wore tattered clothes covered in dirt, as if they’d just been dug up. At the pulpit, an elderly minister warmly recited scriptures: Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.

Behind him, a hooded man played “Amazing Grace” on an old-fashioned pipe organ, and when one of the corpses turned to stare straight at Nancy, two milky orbits sat where his eyes had once been. Garbled language fell from the empty space under his nose holes.

Nancy ducked and pressed her hand against her mouth to muffle a scream. No way would she go inside there for help. On all fours, she crawled far from the hellish congregation, toward a hunchbacked grave digger inside a wrought-iron gate.

His heavily calloused hands were covered in fresh sores from too many years of digging, but a row of skulls had been lined up next to him. He cast aside one shovelful of dirt after another and then began tossing the skulls into the hole he had dug.

“Excuse me. I need skulls for the scavenger hunt.”

Stiff as a robot, he didn’t speak or even look at her, so she helped herself by dropping two into her sack, and then raced away. When she looked back, he was mindlessly tossing more skulls into the hole.

Whose skulls were they anyway? Maybe homeless people? Or perhaps unclaimed cadavers whose bodies had been donated to science? Better to not know.

Under a Weeping Willow she sat to collect her thoughts and to give her blistered feet a break. Now another vague memory floated up, that of a judge telling her that she’d suffer harsh penalties if she failed to collect all of the items on her list. Or had she dreamt it? The sensation of needing to complete the task was strong, though she couldn’t say with certainty why. As she scrutinized the area, a sign at the end of a trail caught her attention. Animal Parts, painted on a piece of wood, with an arrow pointing toward a warehouse in the distance.  

With renewed hope, and a strange feeling of familiarity, she took quick strides toward the massive metal building, which looked like the industrial tractor supply shops back in the Midwest. But how would she know that? Had she once lived there? Animal sounds, squeals and shrieking, escaped from it, and the heavy air now had a foul, overpowering odor.   

A lone man in a blue uniform was flushing a steady stream of bloody fluids into a floor drain with a power hose when Nancy approached him.

“Excuse me, Sir.”

When he turned, the nametag sewn onto his uniform read Ed Sprague. Nancy’s mouth fell open. Now she remembered. Her dad had died years ago in a train accident, hadn’t he? She looked into the man’s face. “Dad?”

“Yes, daughter.”

“What is this place?”

“Salvation.”

“Salvation?”

“This is kind of a holding ground, an underworld where you coexist with nature.”

“But you’re dead. You were killed a decade ago.”

“Death is in the eye of the beholder. Look around, and you’ll soon see your sister and Grandma Lula.”

More memories slammed into her as she recalled how she had found her big sister, Alicia, lying in a pool of blood after a vicious home invasion five years earlier. Alicia had thrown a party in Nancy’s honor every Christmas that she had returned home from college for the holidays. And during every childhood illness, Alicia had stayed by her side, nursing her back to health. Nancy forced back the memories. “I’m afraid, Dad.”

“Don’t be. It’s not so bad. Tour the facility. I have to get back to work.” Before she could form her thoughts into words, he disappeared around a corner.

On unsteady legs, Nancy followed the signs to Animal Parts, hoping to find a wolf’s tooth and bat eggs somewhere far from the tortured cries in the distance.

Toward the rear of the building, a room filled with bins had a scarecrow and mummy display set up near the cash register in honor of Halloween. The front bin held pig’s snouts and ears. Cow tongues and dog teeth filled another bin. More animal sounds came from stacked cages in the back. Nancy was gazing toward them when someone walked up behind her.

She spun around and came face-to-face with Alicia, still bearing the black hole on her forehead where the bullet had lodged. No longer able to suppress the memories, Nancy slid into a nearby metal chair. “Alicia? My God! I never thought I’d see you again.”

“Hi, Sis.” Alicia’s flat voice held no emotion.

“How did you and dad end up here?”

“We couldn’t risk going to that other place. This was a safe choice.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Just stay here with us, Sis.”

“I can’t. It’s filled with animal suffering and foul odors. I have to make it to the other side.”

As if she understood, Alicia motioned to the rear of the store. “But first, Grandma Lula wants to see you.”  

Nancy’s body went numb with dread. She had to be dreaming, but however hard she tried, she couldn’t remember the day before she’d been plunged into this nightmare. What if her dad and Alicia and Grandma Lulu weren’t real people at all, but only facsimiles designed to lure her into this dark entity?  

Alicia took her hand and led her to the back, past more bins filled with bat wings and rabbits’ feet. Nancy showed Alicia some of the remaining items on the list, and Alicia stopped at a rickety shelf against the wall. There, Nancy found bat eggs, which she tossed into her sack, along with bat wings and a rabbit’s foot. Large glass jars filled with various concoctions and organs covered one whole side of the wall, and she turned away, sickened. At the back, Grandma Lula slumped in a lounge chair, holding a plate filled with roaches and a dead mouse. She showed no sign of recognizing her granddaughter.

Nancy pressed her hands to her mouth and exchanged glances with Alicia. “Grandma?”

Alicia pursed her lips. “She has good days and bad days.”

Nancy moved away from a hyena wailing over her dead baby. “Alicia, I’ve got to get out of here. This place isn’t right. I only have until midnight to complete the scavenger hunt. I have a chance to make it to the other side. Come with me.”

Alicia shook her head. “I can’t, Sis. I just can’t.”

Nancy searched her sister’s eyes for any clue of the secrets she held. She made one last plea. “But now that we’re finally together, I don’t want to lose you and dad again, not here, in this place. Think of all the fun we’ve had. We used to watch movies all weekend and do each other’s hair and makeup.”  Nancy squeezed her sister’s hand. “We could start all over on the other side.”

 “Sorry, but dad and I can’t leave. Go. Find your way.”

More alone than she’d ever felt, Nancy fled back into the forest in search of the remaining items on her list. Soon darkness would set in, and then how would she find her way? When she heard rushing water behind her, she followed the sound down a dirt path. A kaleidoscopic light, multi-colored and flashing, lit up an aquamarine creek ahead. As Nancy leaned down and gulped from it, tiny piglets, small enough to fit into her palm, paddled back and forth. She had the sensation of being one of them as she tossed two into the sack.

She soon found herself back outside the ghostly church. She looked inside once more, and this time, she wailed. Her dad and Alicia sat in a nearby pew, pasty white and headless, their clothing and her dad’s nametag their only identifiers. A spider scampered down her dad’s arm.

Nancy slid to the ground, still clutching the moldy feed sack, now saturated in blood. With trembling hands, she opened it and looked inside. Her dad’s and Alicia’s severed heads stared up at her, looking as if they been decapitated with a hacksaw.

She flung the sack aside and crawled to her feet. As she raced away, the minister’s words echoed in her ears.

The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.

She hobbled on her bloodied feet and stumbled straight onto a funeral under a towering pine. Nancy struggled to piece together elusive memories of the slaughterhouse, its sounds and smells.

***

With no concept of how she had gotten there, Nancy lay inside an old-fashioned pine box and stared up at the ceiling where a mosaic of Jesus, in a welcoming gesture, held open his arms. She couldn’t move or even close her eyes. The minister leaned over her.

“Sorry, Sister, but you didn’t make it. You were given a task, a scavenger hunt with ten items, and you didn’t return with any.”  He placed his hand over hers. “You were to return with your father’s and sister’s souls, so they could inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. Sorry, but you’ll have to be processed.”

“But how do you find one’s soul?”

Before he could respond, Nancy’s coffin moved, as if on a conveyor belt, through the woods where the flickering jack-o-lanterns lit up the forest. Screeching and screams assailed her eardrums as she approached the earlier warehouse sign, Animal Parts. Once again, the putrid stench filled her nostrils. She moved past her dad and Alicia standing near the animal bins.

“Dad! Alicia! Help me.”

And then the coffin slid through a tarpaper flap to the other side where it landed with a thud. A large sign read Sprague’s Slaughter House.

Sprague’s Slaughter House? Gripped by a hazy memory, it all came together—how she’d run the family business after her dad had been killed. Nancy Sprague. She was Nancy Sprague.

A man with a goat’s head shouted, “Trick or Treat,” and handed her a ticket he’d yanked from a machine, similar to the ones at the bakery. “Your wait time written on the slip was a single word. Eternity.

She now found herself in a long line of farm animals—cattle, pigs, coyotes, and wolves—all waiting their turns. In the distance, she recognized the familiar squeal of the pulley that yanked each animal’s feet off the platform, leaving its head to dangle near the floor. Then, the unspeakable would happen. She’d witnessed it a thousand times. Was this her punishment for running the family business, heartlessly killing whatever appeared, or had she committed some graver sin that had been erased from her memory?

She opened her mouth to scream, but produced instead the shrill neigh of a terrified horse. Had she ever been a woman, or had she lived her entire existence inside this house of torture? She eyed the entrance, determined to stay with her dad and Alicia, but a large sign read, No Exit. The goat-headed man stood in the back, holding an axe.

The execution line up ahead went on for as far as she could see. All manner of animals hung upside down from hooks, awaiting processing. Hours later, she took her turn at the blood-splattered platform near the faceless hangman. He clutched a machete and shouted, “Next.” A second faceless man yanked on the rope around her neck, and her hooves scratched against the concrete steps as she stumbled to the stage with metal pulleys attached to her rear legs.

Out of nowhere, the kindly minister appeared, clutching a Bible.

“By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”

Her dad stood at the rear, just on the other side of the tarpaper flap, clutching the industrial hose to clean up her mess afterwards. Was she being sacrificed so that he and Alicia would be spared?

Nancy blinked her milky brown eyes. So this was hell. Once the hangman had delivered her fate, would she find herself right back at the end of the line, forced to do it all over again? Is this what they meant by Eternity?   

Kelly Piner

Kelly Piner is a Clinical Psychologist who in her free time, tends to feral cats and searches for Bigfoot in nearby forests. Her writing is inspired by Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone and Night Gallery. Ms. Piner’s short stories have appeared in Litro Magazine, Scarlet Leaf Review, The Chamber Magazine, Drunken Pen Writing, Storgy Magazine, The Literary Hatchet, Weirdbook, Written Tales and others. Her stories have also appeared in multiple anthologies.