Men climb
three flights of steel
to the rig,
and silently,
the kind of silence
that comes from too many years
of hard jobs.

The daylight up here
doesn’t quit,
just hangs on
like a drunk who won’t leave,
bleaches the land
until it’s nothing
but flat bone and wind.

The wind -
ever an assailant -
slaps them around
while the drill below
thins away
the thick far northern crust.

Off in the distance
a polar bear watches,
one predator
with its eye 
on another.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Shift, River And South and Flights. Latest books, Bittersweet, Subject Matters and Between Two Fires are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Rush, Writer’s Block and Trampoline.

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My sister stopped answering questions three weeks before she died. She could hear me and the hospice nurse said her cognition was fine. Questions had just become beside the point.

“Are you comfortable?” hung in the air like cigarette smoke.

“Do you want water?” got a look that said she was well past wanting.

The day before, I asked if she remembered the summer we found the dead horse in the ravine behind our house. We were seven and nine. The smell reached us first—rancid, heavy, and thick. We stood there for an hour, maybe more, hands over our noses, watching flies write scripture on its flank.

“We didn’t tell Mom,” I said.

She smiled. Her eyes looked at a point six inches to my left. The nurse said it was normal. The dying see things at angles.

“We went back every day for a week,” I said.

Her hand moved on the blanket. Her breathing changed, deep then shallow again.

By the eighth day, we didn’t need to cover our noses. The horse had collapsed into itself. Eventually, the flies thinned out. The bones showed through hide, then pushed through dirt. We stopped going when there was only a dark shape pressed into the ground where the horse used to be. There was nothing left to watch. I think we were practicing.

My sister stopped answering questions three weeks ago. She’d figured something out. I hadn’t yet.

I sit here, watching her breathe at angles. The nurse brings me water. Outside, someone is mowing a lawn. The sound rises and falls and surrounds me.

Tomorrow, there will be no horse.

Mari Harrison loves language the way she loves coffee: obsessively and at all hours. After years crafting speculative fiction for the government and occasional poetry (as Mari Nichols-Haining), she left to chase fiction. These days she writes alongside her husband Jesse, also a writer, drawing on a mutual muse and striving to be a less chaotic version of the Fitzgeralds.

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Papa Bois had never been late: not to the deaths of hunters, nor the birth of the billionth Gonatodes vittatus, nor the boat from Trinidad to the land he mistook for another island, Jamaica, Queens. But now, for the first time, as the resident of The Land of the Free, he was late with his taxes.

As Mama D’Leau’s husband, he always arrived early to his own appointments come hell or, more frequently, high water.

So there he was on Lefferts Boulevard, where he believed he had time to walk from Trinciti Roti Shop (where he needed to get his breakfast bake and shark) to the Tax Man near 134th, about twenty-five minutes away.

But this blasted place was so crowded, and his appointment was in forty-five minutes, and the goddamn bake and shark he ordered ten minutes ago still wasn’t ready yet. He waited patiently, ticket in hand, and gazed at the aggravated Dougla lady at the register.

Then a man rushed into the store, into the back kitchen, and exactly twenty-five minutes before his appointment, the man rushed out of the kitchen with the order. But before the man could even call out the ticket number, Papa Bois snatched up the bag and the pepper sauce, stuffed both into his child’s bookbag that he borrowed that weekend, and sped down Lefferts, ran down Liberty Ave. By the time he got there, the lady at the front desk spoke his name, and he was ready.

He smelled like sweat and shark.

When he sat down in the chair across from a pockmarked and balding Guyanese man, W-2 in front of him, the Tax Man sighed and told Papa Bois he didn’t earn enough to even pay taxes.

moko meriken (she/her) is a poet from New York trying to figure her shit out. She can’t resist the black diasporic tug of writing poetry and prose on motherlessness, matrilineage, anticolonialism, sexuality, and gender. She is currently writing a chapbook.

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The icy breath of Llullaillaco volcano rattles her headdress’ bones. Drums punctuate her palanquined ascent and beat away the howls of the long wolves. Their legs bend through the forest like walking trees, heads hunched and maws smiling. They track the procession with yolk-yellow eyes, her only moons on this starless night.

They don’t look real. More like people in another skin. She smiles at them. Forgives them for their hunger and for cowering from the lilting torches.

Her mouth becomes a royal cup, filled with sweet chicha again, again. Coca leaves swim in her gums, speaking for her when her tongue still moves. A promised one must indulge. She watches the priestesses paint the way ahead with bells and red ribbons that glide from tall sticks. How many times will they make this march?

She does not regret. Priestess would have been a sorry life.

A gentle brush of skin, fingers to wrist. Her lover. His voice is full of smoke, like the night his people claimed hers. She need not know what he says. She is Apu’s maiden now.

Her palanquin melts into many hands. A final warmth as she is lifted.

They arrange her inside the ruined apacheta, neatly restacking the frozen stones until she no longer feels Llullaillaco’s breath.

The drums roll down the mountain, as soft and distant as her heart. The cold is the first to claim her. Next, comes the hungry scraping and the rattling of stones.

Monica Lyrehart is a speculative fiction author, writing contest goblin, and “the best mommy ever” according to her tiny army of three.

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Dearest Etna,

Something dormant erupted in me when I saw your smoulder. Edna was shocked when I confessed, she said I’m dumb as a rock, that Sicily was meant to repair the faultlines in our marriage. But love isn’t bound by things as simple as rings, vows or flesh.

I couldn’t contain my feverish passion, I needed to mount you, feel your summit, plant my flag in you. The police didn’t understand the way you made my heart molten, the way I made you tremor.

Never fear love, when I’m free (parole pending), I’m running to you.

Your lover,

Gerald

Eilish Forwells lives in Scotland with her wife and their two dogs. When she’s not writing or working, you’ll likely find her swimming in a loch or hunting down another wee dram of whisky to sample—something which far too often influences her stories.

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If wishes were fishes, I’d wish for your love with one fat goldfish, won by the perfect Ping-Pong ball bounce into a glass bowl, whose inhospitable environment seems to magically repel hollow celluloid spheres, after all, carnivals can’t be giving away fish to every grubby-handed rug rat with a shiny quarter, but for you I’ll crack open my piggybank and wager every coin I collected since I was a kid until I won a fish to wish on, and if wishes were fishes, I’d be more sorry about accidentally crushing your roommate’s blue beta with a miniature sandcastle statue, I never should have tried to clean Alpha’s tank with a belly full of bourbon or used the key I’d covertly copied, I never should have startled your roommate when he came home from working the nightshift, I never should have screamed back when he shouted words like psycho and obsessed and pathetic, I never should have insisted you’d defend me when you didn’t even come home that night; in the harsh light of dawn I saw myself as you must see me, in the funhouse mirror that turns everyone into sideshow freaks, because I was never your maiden, never your queen, never your goddess, rather I was the last resort which didn’t seem so bad with your beer goggles firmly fastened, the faulty choice with longer lasting consequences than a mere hangover, so you regretted choosing me, a poor substitute for the person you really wanted, yet I was always there waiting, wishing, wanting you—only you, and if wishes were fishes and you had a plastic bag containing a gasping guppy, cycling though every molecule of oxygen in its teeny tiny ecosystem, you’d be too smart to waste your wish on someone like me.

(This story first appeared in FlashFlood)

Born under the sun sign of Leo, Serena Jayne is naturally a cat person. Her short fiction has appeared in The Arcanist, Daily Science Fiction, Gamut Magazine, Unnerving Magazine, Vastarien: A Literary Journal, and other publications. serenajayne.com

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Dear John,

When you said you had a tooth fairy thing, I assumed costumes. Wings. Maybe a small satin pouch. I did not anticipate pliers.

Roleplay requires trust. It does not require commitment to dental realism, but I gave you both.

You promised to give them back weeks ago. I cannot keep eating soup. My co-workers are starting to ask questions.

Also, the money you left won’t even cover replacements. Do you think I’m some cheap, easily swayed woman?

I think we both know this has gone too far.

Please leave my teeth under my pillow tonight.

Even the molars.

Hayley Phoenix-Winterburn writes from Kawartha Lakes, Ontario. Usually she writes poetry, but cannot resist a side quest into weird fiction. When she isn’t writing, you can find her practicing witchcraft (mostly vibes). Chaos is her favourite collaborator.

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Vet tech hours suck, but at least the pay is shit. The busted old intercom sputters to life.

“Doc...says...wait...it’s...rabbit...”

I roll my eyes. Thanks Doc, but I can handle this one on my own. Maybe I’ll actually get out of here on time for a change.

Pretty big carrier for a rabbit. I look inside but it’s all darkness. I unlatch the door, reach in. The raccoon lashes out from the darkness, foam-flecked jaws sinking into my hand. I fall backwards. It jumps out after me, mouth frothing.

I hear the radio crackle again.

“Caution...rabbit animal...”

I hate this job.

Gordon Eggener currently lives in New York City. His writings have been rejected by some of the world’s premier literary magazines.

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Dr. Hammenburg wanted her to have an exotic look, like a femme fatale in an arthouse film but with the physique of a nightclub stripper. Not easy to find, but he managed. Peering into her placid face, he eagerly imagined the eyes awake, the lips smiling at him. But there was still work to do—the top of the skull was open and the brain pan sat empty.

It was a tough choice. He read the specifications on the lab jars many times: teacher, CEO, physicist, SAHM, surgeon, police officer, prostitute. He finally picked surgeon. They’d have stimulating conversations and she could assist in future experiments.

The early months were bliss. The memory therapy worked flawlessly, her hair grew back quickly, and the sex was awesome. For some odd reason she spoke with an accent and told people she was from Latvia, but he happened to know the body was from Buffalo.

Their first argument was nothing, really—she overcooked a roast and when he commented she threw it out the window. The homeless man who cruised East Tenth scooped it up and ran. The following week when Hammenburg mentioned that the pasta was undercooked she dumped it on his head. And then the laundry began to pile up.

He returned from work one day and she was on the couch, reading.

“This place is a mess,” she said. “You should hire a cleaning service.”

Soon afterward she found him reading the specs of the SAHM brain.

“What’s a SAHM?”

“Stay-at-home-mom,” he said. “A person with many talents.”

“Hmm.”

Three months later Dr. Hammenburg’s colleagues were surprised at his early retirement. He stayed home now, was an excellent cook, kept an impeccable home, and hosted fabulous parties. And the sex was awesome.

Debra Tillar is an artist, a writer, and a traveler--not always in that order. She enjoys creating art from natural and found objects, she writes every day, and she continues to eagerly explore all seven continents. Debra grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and although she’s been living on the seacoast of New Hampshire for forty years she still considers herself a New Yorker.

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I have this great idea for a movie. It starts out as a crime caper where religious artifacts like the Veil of St. Veronica or the Shroud of Turin are being stolen by an international ring of thieves. Only they are employed by a mad scientist who takes the DNA from the blood and sweat stains to clone Jesus Christ. Big Pharma gets wind of it and acquires the rights, not for some super drug, but to market the clones wholesale as Backyard Jesuses.

You, too, can have your own Backyard Jesus! Imagine the fun at family barbecues as he turns water into wine. Think of the neighborhood fish fries; all you need are five loaves and two fishes to get started.

Soon everybody wants one. Who wouldn’t? However, problems arise. At the family barbecues, he invites the homeless, and later he uses the living room for AA meetings. The backyard patio turns into a free clinic for AIDS patients.

Something has to be done. Enough is enough. Soon on trash day out in the garbage cans are crosses with guess who nailed on them. Only it’s not that easy getting rid of Jesus once he knows you. Three days later you find him back parting the waters in the swimming pool so the undocumented gardener can scoop up the dead leaves at the drain.

Finally, everyone decides sin has just become too complicated. All spontaneity is gone. People everywhere start adulting. They begin to lead sober, decent, regular lives. They even start attending church. It’s really the only place where one can get away from one’s very own Backyard Jesus.

Fade Out.

Ed Sams is a California writer by way of Tennessee. His award-winning prose has appeared in national and international publications in spite of his predilections for the off-beat. The boy likes it weird.

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Iiiiiiiiiit’s yet another gorgeous day in Townsberg, USA!

The sun is shining! The birds are singing! What an absolutely perfect day!

But oh, what’s this?

Oh, no! It’s Timmy and Sally! Sitting at a picnic table, completely consumed with hunger and boredom!

A distant rumble - echoing thunder settling across the horizon. Timmy and Sally’s heads snap to their shaky backyard fence.

CRASH!

An 8-foot-tall, 4-foot-wide glove erupts into the backyard, wooden shrapnel blowing everywhere.

“Oh, yeah!” he proclaims, hopping onto the children’s picnic table. Popping a squat over their plates, he gleefully deposits gooey meat. Timmy takes a bite.

“Wow, this is delicious! Thank you, Hamburger Helper Man!”

The glove appears disturbed.

“Wuh-oh! Sorry Timmy, the Hamburger Helper executives had to let me go for reasons that I cannot discuss due to my NDA - legally, I can no longer associate with that brand name! You can still call me Lefty, though!”

“Aww, maaaan!” Timmy pouts, punching the air and kicking rocks in frustration.

“Tell ya what!” The massive glove winks. “I help out humans, don’t I? You can call me the Human Helper Man!”

“Aww, yeeaaah!” Timmy cheers, punching the air and kicking rocks in celebration.

Sally looks perplexed, her nose and brow fully wrinkled.

“But Lefty! We called you the Hamburger Helper Man because you helped make hamburger meat taste better - it’s not like you’re making human meat taste better?”

The glove’s thick fingers ripple and undulate wildly as he laughs.

“Oh, Sally! I told you I couldn’t discuss that NDA!”

Sy Power is a non-binary writer of speculative fiction. They typically spend their days pretending to answer phones while writing on the clock. They reside in Oklahoma City with their wife, daughter, and three terribly distracting cats – but the Internet has always been their real home.

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When her commute changed, Laura started fainting on the L. Oftentimes, she woke up on the floor between Montrose and Grand. She’d never noticed the smell of sulfur or seen the subway ceiling from that angle. Pocked metal. HELL in all caps.

Once, a busking guitarist hooked their elbow under hers and brought her back to stand. She didn’t make a big deal of it. Checked her hair for gum and brushed ash from her wide-legged pants.

“Are you lost?” he asked.

It wasn’t until later she realized what he meant to say: that heaven’s a long way from here.

(This story first appeared in Retreat West, April 2023)

Salena Casha’s work has appeared in over 180 publications in the last decade. Her most recent work can be found on Flash The Court, Neon & Smoke, and Ivo Review. She survives New England winters on good beer and black coffee. Subscribe to her substack at salenacasha.substack.com.

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I’m on the F train to Brooklyn, smooshed in, standing up, typing on my phone. It’s rush hour so it’s always crowded, but it’s worse today because someone has peed on one of the seats. Just a tidy little puddle of pee. There’s no question about what it is. You can smell it. We’re all trying to leave space around the pee seat. We’re just trying to get home, man. By 14th Street there’s almost no room except for the pee seat and its vicinity and this one lady pushes in, just like a regular business lady in a pencil skirt, she squeezes through the crowd and heads straight for it and before anyone can do or say anything (I’m busy typing) she sits right down. Right in the pee seat. It makes a little moist noise. Some of the pee drips onto the floor.

The whole car goes silent, aghast, like what now? People eye each other nervously. Someone really ought to say something. I keep my eyes on my phone. Don’t look at me, I’m not doing it. I’m documenting it.

Finally this one dude is like, excuse me ma’am. I’m so sorry to tell you this, but I’m afraid there was pee in the seat you just sat in. I’m so sorry.

The lady gives him a pleasant smile. Oh, it’s fine! It’s mine from this morning.

Sasha Brown’s a Stoker-nominated author whose work has been called “Creative! But in a bad way.” He’s in lit mags like Wigleaf and Split Lip, and in genre pubs like Bourbon Penn and Weird Horror. He’s sashabrown on bsky and sashabrownwriter.com online.

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I whispered “rabbit, rabbit, rabbit” the moment I woke, expecting luck, maybe fortune, maybe just a decent parking spot. Instead, the walls shivered. A white rabbit stepped through the drywall like it was fog, ears flicking with irritation.

“You called,” it said. “So listen.”

Behind it, dozens more gathered—black, brown, spectral, shimmering—forming a shifting, murmuring parliament.

“You humans keep invoking us without understanding the contract,” the white one continued. “Luck isn’t free. It’s borrowed.”

I swallowed. “What’s the price?”

The rabbits smiled in perfect, unsettling unison. “Your month,” they said. “We’ll be living it for you.”

Daryl F. Mallett is an American author, editor, publisher and actor known for work across science fiction, fantasy and horror, including a story in Star Wars: Tales from Jabba’s Palace and contributing to the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Birthright” storyline. He also writes history books, poetry and screenplays.

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Agnes paused before a mirror set in a tarnished bronze frame stretching from floor to ceiling. Her breaths were fast and shallow. Not much time. The witch-hunters would soon breach her defensive ward further up the dimly lit corridor.

The mirrored image of the hallway faded into darkness, but her duplicate stared back with trusting eyes.

Good. It suspects nothing.

Agnes slowed her breathing, masking her true thoughts. With her palms flat on the glass, she muttered an incantation and then pushed hard. Her image mimicked the same actions.

The surface yielded like putty. A surge of nausea engulfed her and then Agnes was through, landing on all fours before the twin of her original looking glass.

Not wishing to summon her doppelgänger again, she kept her gaze averted. Should her likeness elude the pursuers, Agnes could use this lookalike to go back.

If not, all she required was another reflection elsewhere. With that in mind, she staggered to her feet and inched up the murky corridor, fingers tracing damp brickwork until it reached a dead-end.

It was the same at the opposite end of the corridor; an even shorter stretch before it too blocked off. She stifled a moan. This realm did not extend beyond what she’d first seen in the mirror!

She needed to return to the real world but sank to the ground, gasping for breath when her reflection did not show.

On breath-misted glass from the other side, someone had scrawled two words.

uoy ʞnɒʜT

(This story first appeared in Crepuscular Magazine, December ‘24)

Paul Lewthwaite lives in Scotland with his wife and a small, all-powerful feline companion. His stories have appeared at Crepuscular, 100-Foot Crow, Dark Moments, Rat Bag Lit and others.

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Nina’s transition from fertile to I-don’t-give-a-fuck was anything but smooth. Her temples throbbed with the relentless roll of war drums in her skull. A dragon’s fire scorched her from within, sweat soaking her nightdress like damp fatigues.

When Nina first came of age, she was conscripted into service. The uniform: a polished smile. The orders: excel, endure, comply. No warnings about the tolls of stress, daily doses of toxins, and disconnection from nature. Years of drills taught her to push past pain, to ignore the body’s calls for rest—a training that forged, then fractured, a soldier.

At the onset of her second campaign—a decade-long battle—progesterone capsules became her comrade-in-arms, a cold therapy hat her combat helmet. Day after day, the frozen Kevlar deflected migraine shrapnel and tempered the uncontrollable fire. Stored at -18ºC in the icebox, the hat kept her battle-ready despite the wounds that went beyond the flesh.

Almost ten years into the war, Nina felt the front lines shift. The dragon’s breath burnt less with each moon. The linen shed the reek of stale nights, and her womb learned to exist without the shackles of the cycles.

Recalibrated, Nina embodied the dragon’s force, stripping off her armour for unapologetic living. Free from pain, pressure to procreate, and duty to be agreeable. She transformed on her own terms, leaving behind the weapons she once wielded at the mercy of her hormones. As she found peace, her frost-kissed helmet remained a relic of a war she never wanted to fight.

Melissa Mussak is a psychologist, herbalist, writer and illustrator whose work weaves the soulful and the visionary. With a background both in the sciences and the arts, she explores the spaces where language and healing meet. Her creative voice is inspired by the wordless pull of nature and the unseen.

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Incredibly, he saw hearts. Metallic, fluorescent silhouettes of red and, oddly, green, glowing in the air in front of him. He stumbled on the shabby carpet of the hotel conference room.

Before him, the tall woman was putting books in her backpack, oblivious.

A deep roaring hum in the interstices of his mind. Walls flocked with velvet wallpaper wavered as his matrix reconfigured, spin of a thousand suns fell from the atoms of her hand.

The pulling in his chest a tractor beam.

Stardust to stardust, ashes to bone. Blood to singing blood.

He let his body turn him in.

(This story first appeared in Flashshot Online, 2009)

Susan Firghil Park is a Pushcart-nominated writer living in the Pacific Northwest blissfully surrounded by forests and birds. A chapbook, Estuary Light, was published by Finishing Line Press. Her writing has appeared Aurora Moon, Rain, Branches Quarterly, and in the recent Bloodlore anthology by White Stag Publishing.

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It is a pleasure to disappear to vanish from your own head to become a body again driven only by the electrical impulses that surf the wires and waves beneath the skin strum the chords tap the keys keep walking eyes wandering thoughts a hazy dream not to worry about the inevitable the return of the mind and the all-seeing I the thoughts that lash you to the mast tie you to the worries the bank account the zeroes in your debts the way she looks at you now or doesn’t the invisible conversations you’re sure they’re having at work all the ways you are going to die even being tied to a rock as an eagle gnaws through your liver would be better than this would take the worries away and give you something else but that’s the problem with the Apocalypse it’s all worry worst case scenario bitch and moan and then it never comes but once it does you will realize how much time you wasted worrying about the wrong things.

Chris Carrel writes speculative fiction and other odd things from somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. He has been published at Literally Stories and Dark Winter Lit, among others, with work forthcoming at The Fabulist. He posts at ccarrel.bsky.social and stares agog at this janky dystopia at thechriscarrel.com.

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Riggs tells me to get into the old refrigerator, but I don’t think I’ll fit. There’s something already in there, something in a dirty bag stained brown and seeping. Plus, it stinks worse than the time those two squirrels got caught in the cellar and couldn’t get out. Then all the flies, so many the cellar stairs were black and alive, and we found nothing but squirrel bones, clutching each other like they were hugging when they died.

They say things at school about Riggs, that he’s the reason Nelly Glick’s beagle Cooper was dredged out of Mercy Lake. Dumb dog went over the falls, that’s all. Riggs is my friend. I know he trusts me cause he shows me stuff. Like his fridge. There was a frog in there once, rubbery and dry. Another time, a cat, its eyes grey and bulging.

Riggs tells me to take the bag out of the fridge. It leaves a sludgy puddle behind. I don’t want to touch it, so I wipe it out with some torn tarp and my foot.

Inside it’s pitch black. The stink’s stolen all the oxygen. Riggs is sure I can get out. I’m smarter than a dumb frog or cat or pair of squirrels, aren’t I? I want to make him proud. But the door won’t budge, and I listen for Riggs but don’t hear anything but my own tinny breath as I pound on the door and grasp in the dark for something I can trust.

Karen Mitani lives in Brooklyn with her daughter, looking up for birds and down for words.

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Thoth, the ancient ibis-headed god of wisdom and knowledge, was begging on the corner.

I handed the old man a few bucks and asked him how things came to this. He shrugged, adjusting a beautifully written cardboard sign.

“There are times when men seek wisdom from sources other than wisdom.” He nodded his long beak at a spot down the street; Athena was there, muttering to herself as she sorted through a shopping cart of meager possessions, owl perched watchfully on one shoulder. “Just now, we are not in high demand.”

“But don’t feel too badly for us, little one.” Thoth now wore the face of a baboon; he grinned at me, showing broken yellow teeth. “You will all learn wisdom, even if you learn it too late. I am also the god who judges the dead.”

Jennifer Monsen works as a music therapist by day. By night she is an aspiring writer with a bent towards the strange and the fantastic. Her first love is storytelling in all its forms; her second love is pizza. Find her at https://jentellingstories.blogspot.com.

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