My Sparkle Alone Can't Cull Your Demons

by Eric Farrell in Issue Two, January 2022

Ainsley Miller flips the vanity mirror open in her pristine, bulbous vehicle. She’s been parked out front of a nondescript apartment in a rundown Westside neighborhood, trying to psych herself up for what’s to come. A thin mist coats her windshield, each raindrop a sphere of flaring purple sunset in the distance.

It’s just a job, she tells herself, staring out at the world, the tension so thick it buzzes throughout the entire dusty suburban beach town.

Two cops are waiting outside of the arched entrance leading into the apartment complex. They’re waiting on her, the... Continue →

Lovey

by Christi Nogle in Issue Two, January 2022

Harmony wouldn't have trusted herself to maneuver her Lectra-Van up to the camp toilet without autopilot, but it was as though the van saw the toilet and, realizing that the driver was stopping for the night, wiggled in on its own. The hatch dropped and unsealed the sphincter gasket, and just like that, they were connected to the camp’s plumbing.

The patio cover went out on its own if it sensed rain or heat or snow, not that she’d been anywhere with snow. The van’s solar panels were said to work in colder climates, but she didn't trust they would.

Harmony stayed where it was... Continue →

Carolina

by Michael Haynes in Issue Two, January 2022

Randy Joe Eastman popped a few aspirin in his mouth and swallowed them with a mouthful of last night's coffee. Two in the afternoon and he still wasn't dressed for the day. But, hell, that'd been most of the last twenty-nine years, driving from city to city, playing a night or two at whatever club or bar or honkytonk would pay him enough to keep him going. There'd been those two years—nineteen and a half months, actually—back before grunge broke out of Seattle when an actual label had carried him and he'd been on something vaguely other than his own. Those days were so far gone that he... Continue →

The Spot

by A. T. Sayre in Issue One, November 2021

You were never sure if the first time you noticed the spot was in a dream or not. It could have been a dream.

It was early one morning, an hour or two before dawn. You had long since kicked the sheets down to the bottom of the bed in the muggy night, only to feel chilled now in the cooler morning. You rolled onto your back and absently rubbed your palm against the soft hairs on your stomach, staring lazily down at your hand by your waist. On your wrist just below the first knuckle of your thumb was a faint white glow, no more than a centimeter around with soft edges.

You... Continue →

The Shell Game

by Dawn Vogel in Issue One, November 2021

Severina planned to wear her replica Top Diva tiara for her performance at the Galactic Gala, but my augmented vision indicated we'd already diverged from that. The diva, whom her team often referred to as the Princess, was wearing the real deal as we prepped her wardrobe in a locker room that was generally devoted to an entire team of athletes. The large open space had been transformed with bright lighting, a makeup chair, and a rolling wardrobe with Severina's dresses, plus the collection of custom portable cases for her jewelry, makeup, and other sundries. The facility staff for the... Continue →

The Cavalry

by João F. Silva in Issue One, November 2021

“The admiral wants you in room L17F5,” Lau tells me. “They say it’s urgent.”

As if the buzzer wasn’t enough of a reminder, I give her a quick nod and finish putting on my scrubs in shades of medical blue and military green before grabbing the most important item in my arsenal—the trusty brown rope I’ve been using since I started this.

Lau buries her face in the tablet in front of her. I’m the only one in my team with a leg on both sides of the frontline, but the four of them are still treated like superstars—because of me.

A few years ago, I would have been modest... Continue →

Phosphor’s Circle

by Annika Barranti Klein in Issue One, November 2021

First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, May/June 2021

They only gave me the job because I’d been in the school play. I was the narrator in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, which my school put on for the same reason they’d done The Sound of Music the year before and Cheaper By The Dozen the year before that—high schools are full of kids who want to be in the musical, and those plays are about families with a LOT of children. Jacob has twelve kids, which is entirely too many, and the eleventh kid is... Continue →

Leaving Earth

by Gabrielle Johansen in Issue One, November 2021

She was only two when the now defunct U.S. government launched Skylab. Now she was pushing seventy-four, just below the waitlist cutoff to be on one of the last Mother Board Transports leaving Earth. A global consortium of corporations had decided no one above the age of seventy-five would be allowed to board. That would be it. Sayonara, Terra.

A few choices if she was left behind. Slow painful death by radiation poisoning or a quick company-sanctioned suicide, delivered via obscenely cheerful, virulently pink pills.

Jeannie knew what she wanted, and she was afraid of having... Continue →