Underwater Mortgages

by Roderick Leeuwenhart in Issue Six, September 2022

Yente Visscher froze on the crowded Zürich street, arrested by the sight of the distant Alps. Five years on and they still did that to her, some undefinable Dutch strand of her DNA making her powerless in their presence.

“Vorsicht,” a passerby shot at her, bumping into Yente with enough force to spill iced coffee from her cup.

“Oh! Entschuldigung.”

She immediately felt stupid for apologizing to the brute and submerged back into the stream of commuters braving the morning heat. With her company blazer and cactus-leather attaché case, she blended... Continue →

Swimming Lessons

by Liam Hogan in Issue Six, September 2022

She came to me on the high tide of a spring storm. I was embarrassed that my uncle's cottage, quivering in the bared teeth of the gale, was not as tidy as perhaps it could have been, nor as homely. And I had nothing to share except half of yesterday's loaf and the better part of a bottle of cheap wine, drunk from a pair of mismatched tankards.

She seemed content enough, sitting before the roaring fire that every so often twirled and fluttered in time to a low moan from the stout chimney, out of the rain that drummed in waves on the slate roof. I'd asked her if she wanted to take off... Continue →

Daughter of the Great Whales

by Anna Madden in Issue Six, September 2022

The night before the dead boat arrived, I couldn’t sleep. Seal was sharing my nest, built inside a great whale’s lower vertebra, decorated with treasures of fine carapace and a collection of shark’s eyes, turrets, angel wings, even tulip shells. I took the smallest and wove them into my blue-black hair.

As I braided, Seal nestled close, her fingers running lightly across my tracer bracelet. “Will you leave with them on their boat that doesn’t breathe?”

“No,” I said. “This is my place.” Did my voice falter, just then?

Seal’s expression wavered, lit in the surrounding... Continue →

You Hope, Through Shivers and Sweat

by Elou Carroll in Issue Five, July 2022

Come, come, say his hands as he leads you through the foyer, nothing to light his way but a dusting of blinking ghost lamps. His coat, a long affair with too many pockets, pirouettes about his legs as he twists and turns. Come and see what I have just for you.

And here in the dark with shining eyes and his grin reflected in your spectacles, you believe him. You’ve read about him: a connoisseur of oddities, a collector of dreams and nightmares, only one show in each city he visits. The premiere event, they call it. They say he travels with so many glass... Continue →

We, Downtown

by D.K. Lawhorn in Issue Five, July 2022

Conquest rides into our neighborhood on the supple leather seat of a block-long limousine that his driver parks next to a mostly dead jalopy. The seams of his finely tailored suit are close to bursting, his massive frame fighting hard to break free of its cloth restraints. The cigar resting in the corner of his mouth never grows any shorter or longer, but remains an eternal, slobber-covered nub. In his hand he clutches the deed to the factory that has been boarded up for longer than any of us downtowners have been alive. He promises us jobs through pearly white teeth and a millionaire’s... Continue →

Vinyl Wisdom

by P.A. Cornell in Issue Five, July 2022

First published in A Punk Rock Future, October 2019.

Whenever I’d ask John how old he was, he’d tell me he was “born in ’75, same year as the Sex Pistols.” Not that this answered my question since I wasn’t sure what year it was and the old-timers didn’t seem interested in stuff like that. All I knew is he was old. Old as fuck, probably. And I guessed I was somewhere in my twenties, though I couldn’t be sure since John was my only family and he didn’t know when I’d been born.

Whatever age he was, it hadn’t slowed him down. He... Continue →

The Book Club at the End of the World

by Elizabeth Zuckerman in Issue Five, July 2022

“What was it like to come back?” you ask at book club, almost three months since regular meetings started. You’re not quite sure if you’re ready to talk about this; you are sure that if you don’t, you’ll explode. Still, it’s very personal, or at least it was for you: coming out of the weightless, thoughtless lack of self to a withered meadow full of red poppies and crumbled stones, how old your hands looked and how young they felt, turning your head and seeing your husband asleep in the dead grass next to you. He’s younger than you this time; girls in their twenties side-eye the... Continue →

Constructed

by Brandon Crilly in Issue Five, July 2022

Spotting a seven-foot-tall construct in an open-air market should have been easy.

Kenli scurried between stone workshops and rattling wind towers, hoping not to draw the attention of his fellow crafters. Most hadn’t risen yet, even on the morning of Reconnection, but lights shone through the occasional curtain. If anyone noticed him out in his bedclothes and sandals, he’d find out how little patience they had left.

Especially since they had been right all along: finding that intact construct had been too lucky. It had wandered off twice already, thankfully without damaging... Continue →

The Calligrapher's Granddaughter

by Stewart C Baker in Issue Four, May 2022

Rain again, pouring from the dull, dark sky and into the shogun's capital. A hot, relentless rain that fills the summer air with shouts as people hurry about their business.

It smells, Hatsuharu thinks, like sweat and desperation. He is sitting beneath the awning of his small shop in the city's southern quarter, watching as the downpour churns the street until all the world is rain and mud.

He puts one hand beneath the folds of his robe to scratch idly at his stomach, wondering if he ought to put the thought to paper with one of his special brushes. Better not—business has... Continue →

Resistant

by Rebecca Angelo in Issue Four, May 2022

“My name is Clark, and I am a recovering criminal,” I say to my support officer, whom I report to every quarter here on the station near Proxima Centauri. My job in communications at the terraforming office is supposed to make me regret ever dealing in the black market back on Gaia-canth. It's not having that effect.

My subordinate, Dyann, arrives early to offer their report. I think they actually enjoy their life out here in the middle of nowhere. They’re so passionate about everything—prisoner rights, human rights, rehabilitation—it's close to infuriating. I'm just here to do my... Continue →