After Angels

by Richard Ford Burley in Issue Twelve, December 2023

The first thing that happens is the birds stop singing.

It’s more subtle out in oldciv, in places where the sawtooth ruins scrape the sky with spires of concrete and steel. There just aren’t that many birds out here. It’s been fifty years since the city was abandoned, but nature’s still wary about moving back in. That’s the way it is with angelfall.

Crouching in the lee of a low concrete wall, Callis closes her eyes. She’s not so much listening as feeling—paying attention to something in the oldest parts of her brain, an ancient, adrenaline-fueled pattern-recognition engine... Continue →

A Proper Witch

by Elisabeth Kauffman in Issue Twelve, December 2023

Gen took a break from digging and wiped sweat-pasted black hair from her brow, smearing graveyard dirt onto her clammy, pale skin. She could just hear those bitchy witches from the Instagram coven she’d tried to join.

“Maybe if you were a proper witch you would have been able to get that spell to work.”

“Actually, if she was a proper witch she shouldn’t have had to look up a spell on the internet.”

“A proper witch would know how to…”

Just like Grandma Mac. Ugh.

Her hands trembled, though whether from exertion or anxiety, she... Continue →

You Came for Goodbye

by Rajeev Prasad in Issue Eleven, October 2023

Lightning flashes in the grainy dusk and your silhouette freezes, oddly contorted, on Nora's motel door. You glance back at the serpentine formation of tiny drones creating a ladder of low-pressure pockets, drawing moisture from faraway mountain ranges. Pretty soon the tempest will release the rain, every last drop.

You rattle Nora's door more violently, like you own the wind itself. No answer. All too familiar to find yourself chasing her again, but you won't let one toxic year corrupt twenty-three good ones.

The neighbor's door, room twelve, creaks open. A bearded man with... Continue →

The Last Day of Autumn

by T. R. Siebert in Issue Eleven, October 2023

On the last day of autumn, I wake to the cries of the cranes above and know it’s time to see the beast. I dress in thick wool and the heavy boots from the back of my closet, careful not to wake Hugo, who’s still snoring on his side of the bed. My trusty woven basket is quickly packed with small sour apples from the garden, dark brown bread and some of the smoked ham I promised Hugo for breakfast. He’ll understand once he wakes and finds me gone. He’ll hear the cranes and know not to expect me back for supper.

He might not be as understanding about me taking the last piece of the... Continue →

The Drowning Bones

by A. R. Frederiksen in Issue Eleven, October 2023

I began to grow my gills one week after my first menstruation, right on time.

My father was horrified, but my mother flexed her own gills nestled behind her curtain of curls so like my own, and he went as silent as the nighttime sea.

“Par for the course,” she told him, not bothering to hide it from me like she never bothered to hide anything from me. “This is a child of mine. You knew that when you stepped into my fjord. When you bathed in my song long ago. You’ve always known.”

My father mumbled something unintelligible into his beard and headed into his workshop to... Continue →

The Back of the Hand to Everything

by James Parenti in Issue Eleven, October 2023

Inside the house is dark because the windows are all covered with plywood. Me and my sister Deb helped Dad put the boards up in the morning to protect the glass from breaking in the storm. Hurricane Daniel. Like me, but everybody calls it Daniel, nobody calls it Danny. The air is always damp and heavy here but on hurricane days especially you can feel it, thick and electric, sticking to your hair and clothes. Even the mosquitoes are weighed down by it.

I’m not big enough to use tools so Deb and me helped Dad hold the boards in place. He used the drill gun and the hammer, swinging... Continue →

For the Price of One Nightmare

by Natalie Kikić in Issue Eleven, October 2023

It came in through the keyhole.

Adrijan hadn’t plugged it up before going to bed despite the guesthouse host’s warning. Leave the key inside or stuff it with paper, the host had told him in the same voice he’d used to say no overnight guests and no smoking inside. There’s a mora who’s been stalking these shores at night. Feeding on men’s dreams, turning them into nightmares. They can turn into flies, you know, fly right in. The host demonstrated, weaving his arm through the air in sharp, jagged motions.

But Adrijan didn’t care; every day had felt like a... Continue →

Things Brought Home

by Lynne Sargent in Issue Ten, August 2023

When I was younger than I am now, I was a traveler: a woman with short calves and bones too close to the soles of my feet. In my country, we all are, for a time. We are sent out with joy in our adolescence, and our parents hope we return with respect, calluses, and perhaps a child of our own, or someone to make one with. Perhaps one in ten does not return. Much to my parents’ dismay, I am one of these.

The rules are thus: you must go until not a single person knows your name, and you may only return once you have obtained one of their songs, one of their meals, and one of their... Continue →

The House of Mourning

by Dana Vickerson in Issue Ten, August 2023

Lena’s still in the baby doll dress and Doc Martens she wore to Andrew’s house on the night she died. The floors in the House of Mourning are wet and sticky, like the rotting residue in some long-forgotten building, sucking at her boots as she walks the endless halls. There is only one door, but there are many mirrors. Some she can see into, some she can’t, though this is no fault of the mirrors. Most are cloaked in a darkness so deep Lena feels as though she could lean into it and be swallowed whole.

The mirrors hold the lives of everyone Lena has ever known. H er second-grade... Continue →

Monster of the Month Club

by Marissa Lingen in Issue Ten, August 2023

I always liked those boxes full of tiny jars of jam. Great present. And Advent calendars with chocolate, yes please. But when the shadow monster coalesced in my backyard, I didn't think of any of that. Why would I? I'd taken my dog Sancho out to pee before bed, and a rustling in the leaves resolved itself into a form of darkness. I only had time to disperse it with swipes of the rake, not contemplate gift subscriptions.

Sancho and I went inside, ate peanut butter cookies, and snuggled each other in a panic. And I thought nothing more of it, except, jeez, that was... Continue →