In the Empty Rooms

by Amanda Haimoto Rudd in Issue Ten, August 2023

The house breathes around me, curls in to cradle me, but will not let me go. Mother told me it was for my own protection, though from what or whom she never said. She's gone now. And the house cannot tell me. But how can I be safe when the danger is not out there, but here with me, trapped as surely between walls of red brick and thick glass as I?

A monster roams these halls.

I can hear it rumbling up and down the corridors as I sip my tea at the small table in the kitchen. The delicate china teacup rattles only slightly as I place it on its saucer. Heavy footsteps pound on... Continue →

Herbal Semifreddo for the New Queen

by Lindsey Duncan in Issue Ten, August 2023

Ingredients:

4 measures cream
1 hand sugar
3 fireswan egg yolks (can substitute 7 common hen’s egg yolks)
2 snips lavender
2 snips aurora root
2 snips fairybell flowers
3 drops fenimyre extract (sorcery purified)
3 sprinkles salt

Directions:

Begin in the morning. Prepare and line pan with baking cloth. It must be wholly smooth: any bubble or crease will imprint upon the semifreddo. Everything must be perfect for the new queen.

Using a firm hand, whisk the cream into high peaks. Reserve in ice storage... Continue →

A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Apocalypse Go Down

by A.D. Sui in Issue Ten, August 2023

January yearned for a beautiful end.

Passing a small convenience shop, he slowed his hurried steps. What was once the storefront now glittered with faint light. Sunset pinks, oranges, and blues danced along a cascading waterfall that flowed no place known. The light erased and cleansed the cityscape. It brought on the glitches that destroyed everything they touched—buildings, cars, people. Now, the light had engulfed Ms. Kim’s shop. It was a shame, really. Less so if Ms. Kim wasn’t inside when it happened. Alas, it wasn’t the first shop to be glitched out of existence by the light... Continue →

Touch of Ruin

by Timothy Johnson in Issue Nine, June 2023

Antoni kneels on the cracked pavement and waves his hand over a seam. A weed sprouts from the desiccated earth beneath, spreading its jagged limbs in praise to him, its creator. He brushes its leaves, allows its bristles to graze and nuzzle between his fingers, the mounds of his knuckles. He hears the high frequency at which it chitters its pleasure to be alive because, even here, it is grateful for the chance.

And then he tears it up, root and all.

The truth is he has only ever been able to create weeds.

“Would you like me to dispose of that for you, sir?” Enoch... Continue →

To Call My Own

by Jessica Cho in Issue Nine, June 2023

I was nineteen when the first holes appeared, just on the cusp between thinking I knew everything and realising I knew nothing. Walking home from work with Mellie, we turned onto Chestnut Street and found our path blocked by a crowd of people.

“Sinkholes,” a woman was saying. “Like the ones in Guatemala.”

“Nah.” This from a man with a small child at his side, gripping his hand tightly. “Burrows. We used to see this kinda thing when I worked out west. Them critters’ll burrow the ground right out from under you.”

“It’s the damn city, that’s what,” said an older man.... Continue →

Rejoice at the Coming of the Mower Man

by Mike Morgan in Issue Nine, June 2023

Layla Scholtz heard the truck on her way home from school, squinting at it through grime-caked goggles as it emerged from a cloud of dust in the center of town. She was sure she recognized its colors but wanted to see the logo on its side to be certain. Visitors to Verdigre, Nebraska, were so rare, what else could it be?

The dust wasn’t just dirt kicked up from 4th Avenue by the vehicle’s tires. It was a persistent miasma of particles held aloft by the winds blowing in from the dead fields. Her school talked a lot lately about the Dust Bowl from the 1930s. More than a century and a... Continue →

Angelfall

by André Geleynse in Issue Nine, June 2023

The angel falls in flames. I watch its descent through the smoked glass slits in my sun shield. Even then the brightness is too much, and I have to turn away or go blind. I take cover with the rest and hope this time the casualties will be minimal.

When it hits, it is like the end of the world all over again. Clouds of choking ash and smoke. Boulders raining like hail through the roiling miasma. Trees flung like spears. I take shallow breaths through my mask, crouched behind the flimsy protection of a bomb shelter, until the tempest passes.

After, we take a headcount of the... Continue →

A Deep and Breathing Forest

by Anne Marie Lutz in Issue Nine, June 2023

After I retired I wrapped up my affairs as best I could and headed back to the section of woodland in the mountains that had caused me so much trouble years before.

I’m not going to say it “haunted” me — I wasn’t the kind of person to let a snafu like that ruin my life. But I thought about it often, how it had confounded all our efforts, how the old woman had guarded access to that forested patch with cunning and ferocity. Her opponents were young, smart, money-hungry. Developers, investors, politicians, people with expensive degrees and technology at their disposal. The modern... Continue →

A Bloodless Mistletoe Graveyard

by KT Wagner in Issue Nine, June 2023

While Lorelai’s guests wait on dinner, a grim reaper automaton emerges from the clockworks above the fireplace. With staccato movements, it smites the bell three times with a scythe.

No one pays attention. Lorelai frowns. She spent all year planning the décor, the food and entertainment, hoping to give herself and the others a memorable reprieve. No one had expected the decline to advance so fast.

Shadows from the candle-lit chandelier flicker across the slumped figures gathered around the mahogany banquet table. None look at each other.

The tolling foretells an... Continue →

To Kneel at the Altar of Your Bones

by Valo Wing in Issue Eight, March 2023

She slices open a vein, and out pours star-matter. Liquid and glittering, the iridescent mess drips from her arm into my cupped palms. And, for a moment, there is only this: breathing in duet (forte, agitato), her brow a slash of determination worthy of sainthood (she’s my religion, yes), and, too, the dumbass acolyte who made a promise they’re no longer sure they can keep (me).

Quicksilver catches in the open window’s breeze, splattering over my double-breasted suit.

“Oh, for fuck’s—”

“Focus, Caro,” Lyr chides. “I haven’t wasted years of my life... Continue →