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He was a bit rough around the edges, but he’d do. You were bored of one-night stands, of being ghosted, of being told how [ insert ] clever [ insert ] pretty [ insert ] funny [ insert ] one-in-a-million you were. And then being dropped as quickly as the clothes he couldn’t wait to rip off your body.  At least this one turned up on time. He always paid. He always chose decent venues for their dates. He didn’t suggest going back to his place the first time they met. Or the third. Or the fifth. By date number six, you wondered if the two of you would become just good friends. Or maybe he noticed you squinting, scrutinising, checking out his footwear. You once ran away from a man who assumed moccasins were stylish. And that guy – wearing grey leather uppers – you let him buy you a drink but kept picturing him in that shop, making a definitive choice to buy those shoes. The latest in this yawning line of potential Mr Rights might not bear any resemblance to the guys you usually go for, but his trainers couldn’t be faulted. And you made it to Date Number Six before you kissed.  Am I ugly as sin ? you messaged your friend before you left. Maybe he’s a virgin , your friend replied, with a trail of laughing emojis. You didn’t feel any signs of stubble when, finally, your lips touched his. Your tongues circled, and he pressed your body so close, you wanted him to swallow you up whole. Jesus, this was worth waiting for, you thought, and let the kiss continue for as long as it could. You didn’t usually let your guard down in public places, but manners could go take a hike.  Text me when you get home , he whispered. Alone and on the tube, you remembered your first kiss, aged thirteen, that tangle of open mouths proof you were a woman. It was autumn and you turned crimson when he ignored you at school the next day. You’d never lose control again. Pleasure coursed through your body as you swiped past all those losers. You were glad you paused before you swiped past him.  He worked in the city (they all did). He was looking for something serious (that’s what they all said). I’m that diamond who’s forever  was his tagline and he had a trusting smile.  My grandparents came from Bangladesh , he told you, laughing when you said you liked his tan. My father came from Tottenham, but he died when I was 4 . As tragedy fluttered over cocktail hour, you liked his trainers even more.  You dressed carefully for date number seven. You clasped your grandmother’s pearl necklace at the back. You thought of her, outwardly upright with a wink in her smile.  You took his hand when he arrived at the subway through the rain. You turned towards him, stood face to face. Not wanting any more, you asked him, very softly, if he’d like to dance.  Lizzie Eldridge is a writer, teacher and human rights activist based in Glasgow. Author of two novels – Duende (Amazon 2014) and Vandalism (Merlin Publishers 2015) - Vandalism was nominated for a National Book Prize in Malta (where she lived for 12 years) and selected as one of the Best Books 2017 by Waterstones Glasgow. Her flash, CNF, poetry and short stories have appeared in book anthologies and journals such as Epoch, Northern Gravy, Literary Revelations, Unapologetic and Ellipsis Zine.

I feel your fingers work my hair like a jar of butterflies. You’re laying sideways on my pillow and you worry I  won’t feel you. Just your fingers. With my begging head  pressed against the pulse of your breast you trace letters  on my back for me to guess. Slow letters in a carnal code.   You say, now do me. I do. I worry you won’t remember me  either, after the skin has settled and the sun comes up and a blackberry-stained porcelain bowl rejoices in the kitchen  sink. You say, let’s not get up . But you will. And the picture  will swirl and the places will change. Eventually, after a  life  I’ll be the only one left who remembers. And I will. As  an  early  translation of a lost manuscript that I quote in my sleep  when  the feeling goes out of my body and my eyes smile politely  and my side of the bed forgets everything but your fingers. Tim Moder is a poet from northern Wisconsin. His poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, Cutthroat, South Florida Poetry Journal, One Art, and others. He is the author of the chapbooks All True Heavens (Alien Buddha) and American Parade Routes (Seven Kitchens). He is a member of The Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. His poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Puchcart Prize. Find him at timmoder.com

Tried and true fashions never seem to be in not on catwalks or clothed mannequins  a juice cleanse and diet pill racket spamming your inbox and cluttering your mind keeping their eyes on your obvious faults  imploring you to snap “before and after”  pictures so you can linger on results  we hire therapists and life coaches  for stress management  finding the obvious irony in feeling small and having to see a shrink  I thought to myself…              “I enjoy laying on the couch at home,       so why not lay upon a strangers                                      fragmenting words from a mind so clutteres                                            It's usually just devoid of motivation                                                   or resting in the gutter”  Mutter these fragments in bold italic shards soft spoken, feeling hard to say  got a sadness circa 1990-something  never confronted “I feel about this tall, doc  and I just can't seem to keep this weight off” He recommends a dietician  and some cardiovascular hogwash but I am speaking of the weight upon my shoulders and the burdens I bear picking my poisons like ripened fruit then binging until my shirt starts to swell, Hey, fruit is healthy, right? “A bowl of Apple Jacks a day keeps my therapist paid.”   ...I think this to myself and I smirk. Everything he says feels sugar coated processed is this food for thought  an overweight man feeling lesser than  paying someone else’s mortgage  with my deep down agony  “Ope, that’s all time we have for this session we’ll revisit this next week until then just do those exercises for your grief watch what you eat, and take a handful of these” I’m left wishing my body could be  half as small as these appointments  make me feel oh, the irony in feeling small and seeing a shrink Nicholas Grooms is a proud father, poet, author and musician hailing from Garden City, Kansas. He has contributed to periodicals such as Midsummer Dream House, Verse Libre Quarterly and Southwest Review, but is best known for his songwriting work with the Kansas City Chiefs. He currently resides in Austin, TX.

Reincarnation There is,  in a small city in Michigan,  an old man sitting in an old chair in his living room.  He is pleased with his bowel movements lately.  The kids are here, packing up his things,  because he is going into an assisted-care facility tomorrow,  but at least for now, he thinks,  everyone is here.  There is,  in that same city,  an old woman alone.  She does not have bowel movements.  She believes, with certainty, that everyone in her life has let her down.  She believes, with even greater certainty, in reincarnation,  and that once, many long lives ago,  she was a queen. We Don’t Always Choose Who We Love Come on  Come on  start a fight, then lock yourself in the bathroom with the scissors and tell me you will make the floor run red. I was adopted, she said. My birth mother never loved me.  When she met me, she wanted argue about the date I was born on because she couldn’t remember but she couldn’t stand to be wrong. Come on Come on  I’m begging you now come out of the bathroom, you know I would never do this to you. Why isn’t that enough? The Passing of the Night I want to sleep with you, yes, I do. I want to lie there in the quiet silence, lie against the warmth of your body and feel, like a quiet and graceful tide, the rise and fall of your sleeping breath. The birds that sing just before the dawn do not sing to hasten the coming of the sun. They do not cheer the fire and the coming heat. They lament the passing of the stars, and their softer, kinder light. Copperhead Hey there Copperhead.  Is it true your mother’s dead?  She says to say she loves you, and even if you don’t think it’s true,  it’s the only thing she wants to do. Copperhead, Copperhead. Did you know your mother’s dead?  She wants to hear you say you love her,  even if it isn’t true.  She told me to speak to you, it’s the only thing she wants to do. It is Hard to do Right by Everyone She said, she said, she said to me I don’t know what I want but I don’t want this and it isn’t his fault he’s a good guy you know a real good guy but I can’t stand it I can’t stand it  anymore and I just want it to be over without going through the  ending of it and I told her that I don’t know what to do here,  do now, but I want to be the guy, the next guy, the last guy to taste her mouth, but it doesn’t feel right. I don’t know if I can do this, Isn’t there a Patron Saint or an Eagles song, sung for bad people like us? I am unsure, you know, because I am not a saint.

Me: Aren’t you  supposed to be  writing? Me : How can  I write  when you keep  pinging  me???  Me :  So it’s MY fault?  Me: It’s  ALWAYS your fault. Me : You think I don’t know  you weren’t writing  before I texted? Really?  You know I know  you better than that.  I saw you refreshing  your Submittable queue  for like the 1,000th time today.  Right before you scrolled through  every pair of sale boots  on Anthropologie  Also how many times can you  microwave the same  cup of tea?  It’s a  little sad. Just saying… Me : OUCH Anyway… tea totally a writer thing. Like being an  introvert  or crippling self-doubt… Or cats.  Me : Begging you not to  Google kittens  for adoption.  You’re SO allergic to cats. Make your eyes  swell so much  you almost can't see  the bags under them.    Me: SMH. Nice. Really nice.  Anyway tortured eyes  totally a writer thing. The darker  the circles the  deeper the prose.   Me: Then  you must  have a  Pulitzer. Me : ME-fuckin-OW  Me : You’re right. That was mean. Sorry…  Me: Whatever. Me: Seriously. Don’t you think  you should at least  try writing something today? How about some morning pages!  ☺  Me: It’s 3:45 in the afternoon… genius. Me: Genius, you don’t say…   Me: Whatever Me: So… less shoe scrolling  more keyboard  clicking Me: Sigh… I know. You’re right… Me: But?  I hear a but coming.  ? Me: But… Me: But?   Me : But it’s an extra 40 percent off already reduced prices…  Me: Really?   They still have those  lace-up  chocolate suede ones?  The ones with  the chunky heel?  I bet they are  off-the-charts soft  would go with  just about everything… Me : I know! Right?   Me: STOP.  Don’t pull me  into this. You’re the one  who told me  it’s my job  to make sure  you write today. You made  me promise. Me: Sorry? Me: You called it… and I quote… “a sacred duty.” Me: Can we  PLEASE  forget that  I thought that  let alone said it? Me: K NP  Forgotten.  Me: Thanks. Me: So? Me: So? Me: So…  Remember  the whole thing  about how the  place is quiet today.  How you finished  your other work.  You’ve done  everything else. I mean you even  alphabetized your sweaters.  Me: I think my new  “A for Argyle” system  is inspired. Me: Move over Marie Kondo… Me : Rude. Me : fine. Me: FINE. Me: So, the writing? Me: TBTH…  I can’t think of a single  thing that seems  worth saying. There… you made me say it. Happy? Me: A little bit… Not really… No. ☹ Me: I want to do this. It’s just…  Me: I get it. Me: [Sigh.] Me: It’ll come  to you. Me : You think? Me: Sure… Me: Really? Me : [shrug] Me: That’s like  one of the  nicest things  you’ve ever  said to me. Me: ☺  Don’t get too  used to it Me: Believe me I won’t. I’m familiar with  your work. Me: So…  Me: So? Me: So…  THE WRITING  Me: Can we get the boots first? Me: Is there free shipping?  Me: …   *** Beth Kanter’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in a range of publications including McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Emerge Literary Journal, Identity Theory,  and Cease, Cows . Beth is a Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fiction nominee. She won a UCLA James Kirkwood Literary Prize for her novel-in-progress, " Paved With Gold ."  When not writing, she leads creative nonfiction workshops. You can read more of her work at bethkanter.com  or follow her @beekaekae  on Instagram.

It was almost a joke when you asked me. I’d been splashing water on my face in the bathroom off the grand ballroom’s hallway, inching up my sleeve cuffs to press cold, wet fingers to my wrists, wiping blindly at my temples so I wouldn’t have to lift my gaze above the sink. It was in this state that you’d come up behind me and said something about tampons. “I—sorry?” When I turned, you had my face, like a mirror, like a nightmare. I didn’t scream, but it was close. “Holy shit,” you said. “Who are you?” “Samson,” I said, prickly. The curls I’d fought to have edging below my hairline had plastered themselves to my damp neck. I stuck out a hand like an idiot. You didn’t take it. “Samson, the—?” Star of tonight’s gala, sure, yes; satellite of the star, at least. I shrugged. You tipped your head like you’d get a better view from a twenty-degree angle. “Hm.” “Okay,” I said, because I was tired and the party was terrible and this may as well have been happening. “Do you… know someone here?” “I work for the hotel,” you said. “We should switch places.” I laughed. You didn’t. I laughed again, more nervously. You smiled. This was the first hint I had that you were nothing like me. “Why?” I asked, like an asshole. “Why not?” you answered, like a crazy person. Which wasn’t a generous assessment on my part, but I wasn’t feeling at my best that night, and you were suggesting defrauding hundreds of guests at my expense. You put a hand at my elbow; I jumped. “Seriously,” you said. “We could get away with it. Don’t you want to try?” “We don’t look that  much alike,” I told you, because— “Okay, you’re a boy,” you said, dismissive, “but come on, Sam; do you mind if I call you Sam? Samson’s a bit biblical… but look at us!” You dragged me to the mirror. Nobody else was using the bathroom, so there was no one else to gawk at us: a shaggy-haired boy and a short-haired girl, me in oval-shaped glasses, yours more rounded. You were maybe half an inch taller. I straightened my spine, averting my gaze. You grinned at me. “I’d hardly have to cut my hair.” You pinched a lock under your ear, then tapped your glasses. “What’s your prescription?” I didn’t know the number offhand. We swapped frames, bracing to wince, and found our eyes to be as identical as our faces. “Carmen,” I said, off your nametag, “what you’re proposing is identity theft.” You shrugged. “Can’t steal what’s freely given,” you said. Some people would call that socialist propaganda. I didn’t want to voice that. “I mean, it’s not like I’m saying permanently  or anything.” So we got down to logistics. How the washroom attendant would swap herself out for the socialite. Not that I’d  have to—just, you riding along, making an appearance. Living the life you’d seen from afar. It didn’t sound so crazy when you said it. I let you make a lot of plans. I didn’t have scissors, but I gave you my room number and when I opened the door to your knock you’d found a pair, so I followed you in and cupped your scalp to trim your curls. It was an unprecedented intimacy with a stranger. I didn’t… touch people, not a lot. I didn’t touch girls a lot. Your hair was very soft. I tried to be gentle. The scrape of the scissor blades set my skin on edge; you didn’t notice, or say anything if you did. “You’re sure your dad won’t catch us?” you asked, and my hand jerked. “Hey!” “Sorry.” I squinted at your hair, cheeks hot. “It, um, it looks fine.” “Okay. So your dad?” My father was busy. My father was the sort of man who never really looked at anyone except for what he could make of them, and he could never manage to make anything of me. “No,” I said. “Drop your voice around him. That’s all.” You looked at me for a minute. I focused on protecting your ears from the scissor’s snips. “Why are you doing this?” you asked, finally. “I can’t suddenly have longer hair,” I said, but you put a hand on my wrist to stop me, so I had to look at you. Your eyes were bright, I thought. Lively. Nobody would believe you were me. “Sam?” “It was your idea. Call it a social experiment.” I brushed loose hair off your shoulder. “What about you?” Again, that flash of a grin. You’d have to learn to keep that under wraps. “This kind of opportunity! How could I turn it down?” “Oh, shit. You’re some scam artist.” The scissors were warm in my hand; I lifted them so they caught the light and your eye. “I think this is kind of a big commitment to ripping my father off.” “How often do you meet your doppelgänger?” With this weird earnestness. Like you were really excited to meet yourself as a boy, and not faintly sick. “Hey, you don’t think your dad was a sperm donor?” “Definitely not,” I said, and didn’t volunteer what he thought of unmarried pregnancy. “Maybe he has a secret twin.” “Maybe we  were twins. Separated at birth.” Maybe some force of nature just had a sick sense of humor. I stepped back and looked at you, which was nauseating. “How do I look?” you asked, deadpan. Like me. I shrugged. “You’ll pass.” # You did pass, beautifully. Handsomely. Not that I—But on you my features could almost seem pretty. Anyway, nobody noticed a thing. You glowed, telling me afterward, gloating about shaking hands and brushing shoulders with the high and mighty unsuspecting. I had never, in my whole life, been so excited about attending a dinner. Or maybe about anything. I shouldn’t have been surprised when you asked, “Could we do it again?” So we did it again. Smuggled you along, hid one of us in a closet, trotted you out for another public appearance. And then, when your palms didn’t sweat during and nobody puked afterwards, for another. “This is great,” you said, grinning, glorious, and I had to agree. It was kind of inevitable that we’d try our fantastic new trick in other ways. Could you get away with being me at dinners? at school? at breakfast? “Your mom’s nice,” you told me, and I shook my head. “ Your  mom.” This wasn’t the first time we’d slipped out of character; I didn’t mind reminding you. “Okay, whatever. Our mom’s nice.” You flopped back on my bed. Our bed. Your bed, half the time—on those nights, I slept on a pile of blankets we’d put together in the walk-in. It was fun, like camping, if family camping trips had ever been fun. We took turns. What if someone had come in to wake us? “Did she say anything to you?” I asked. You bit your lip the way I always did when I didn’t want to answer. You were getting really good at me. “Oh.” Mom was—had been—the last hurdle we thought we might stumble over. Like, at least, my mom would… Our mom. I focused on my breathing. “I think she’s glad we’re eating,” you said, and my eyes slid to the plate you’d brought me. “Later,” I said, and even though you knew my face, you weren’t looking. # You were me more often now. My friends liked you, you reported, which was weird because I didn’t know I had any. After that, school was your domain. You brought home textbooks with page numbers circled so I could keep up. Had to be on top of things when I went back, right? We joined clubs: chess, at first; and then drama, which made sense with all the acting practice you were putting in; then band, where you revealed we had a gift for flute. “I can’t play the flute,” I insisted. “Well, we do now.” You held it out to me. That’s a girly instrument. Kids will talk. I could just picture your face if I said that. Instead, I tried, “I don’t know how,” so you ended up teaching me. Trying to. I was never very good, I kept making this horrible screeching with the thing until you snatched it away from me. So music was yours, too. # I got used to hearing how you were acing my life; I got used to free time: I caught up on my TBR pile. I tried people-watching until we realized if I was noticed it would blow our cover. I discovered my bedroom had 413 ceiling tiles and 6 of them were cracked. “That’s great, Sam,” you said when I told you this. “Hey, weird question: Could you stay, y’know, back this afternoon? I invited Terry and Sahar over.” Girls? I tried, halfheartedly, to convince you it made sense for me to be the host. But they were your friends, and they’d notice if we were different than we’d been all day. You made good points. I spent the evening trying not to eavesdrop. You’d tell me about it eventually. # You were me more than I was. In the closet, spread out among the linens and throws, I closed my eyes and waited for you in stale air. “Hey,” you said, drawing the door open, “check this out.” You’d pierced your ears. A little stud sparkling at me from each lobe. Which meant you’d pierced our ears. You acted like you didn’t get why I didn’t love that. “Come on, Sam,” you said, “it’s cute. It looks cute on us, it really does. And you can always let it close later if you hate it.” I let you talk me into it; we watched Parent Trap and took notes, and then you brought us an apple, a lighter, and a pin. I bit my tongue bloody, but no one downstairs heard anything. The mirror caught the flash of silver any way I turned my head. # “We need a haircut,” I told you when I saw your curls brushed your shoulders now. Mine too, I guess. You ran a hand through the ends of it. “Do we?” I didn’t really know how to counter that. Eventually, I said, “Is it my turn tomorrow?” “No, I have flute after school,” you said, but you looked sorry about it. “Don’t worry,” I said, “I’ll take next shift.” “Thursday is play rehearsal. And Friday the chess tournament starts.” Oh. Huh. Inhaling took effort. “Has Dad said anything about the hair?” “Dad doesn’t look at me,” you said. “Us,” I said. # I thought it was obvious that I’d do the play one night and you’d do the other. Apparently I hadn’t cleared that with you. “Sam,” you said, “you don’t even know our lines.” Yes, I did. I’d studied everything you were doing for us. I wasn’t an idiot. I knew the lines and the cues, and I would be great up there, or at least not terrible. I didn’t say this—something invisible was sitting on my stomach, pressing me flat. You were angrier than I had ever seen you, angrier than I had ever seen myself. The brightness in your eyes was cold. “I can’t believe you’re trying to steal this from me. I’ve been practicing—” “ We’ve  been practicing—” “No!” You were whisper-shouting now, because even hidden in the walk-in we didn’t want anyone overhearing. “No, we haven’t! I’ve gone to every session, I’ve been with the other actors, and you think dancing with clothes hangers is going to substitute for real human interaction!” I saw red. “No one asked you to do any of this,” I said, which felt reasonable. “You invited yourself, remember? I’m doing the play. It’s my life.” I slept in the bed that night. At two am, I woke up because you were standing next to me. The crack of light from under the door cast your shadow across my chest. “I’m sorry,” you said. “Of course you can do the play. Can I do opening night?” “Fine,” I said, and rolled over. As I fell back asleep, the closet door closed quietly. # I shouldn’t have gone to watch your play. We’d agreed a long time ago we could never be in the same place at once, outside our bedroom. But I needed to see. I was careful: I put on our most oversized hoodie, wore sunglasses indoors like a creep, and stayed way back at the end of the auditorium the whole time. You were great. That was—whatever, I’d passed the script back and forth with you, I had some idea you knew what you were doing. If it was just that it wouldn’t have meant anything. After, though. After the curtain fall and the bows and the applause. The cast spilling out from backstage to get hugs and cheers—and our parents were there, with flowers, Mom calling for her Sam. My  parents, actually. My parents. Your friends. Everyone loved us, but no one was looking at the weirdo in the hoodie. There wasn’t any air left in the room. I went home. “That was amazing,” you said as soon as you got back, bouncing on my bed, beaming. “God, you should have seen it. We totally killed.” “You,” I said. The mattress was jouncing me with your excitement. “You did. Not me.” “Well, it’s your turn tomorrow.” Your smile didn’t waver. When had I ever smiled like that? “C’mon, we’re celebrating!” I said, “I think you should leave.” The words took a moment to reach you through your halo of bliss. Then you said, “What?” “Go home,” I said, chest tight. “I’m sick of the game. You’re taking my whole life.” Your cheeks flushed. “As if you wanted it,” you said. “Like I haven’t noticed our massive closet doesn’t have anything in short sleeves. Mom’s really glad we’re doing so well.” Nausea churned. I couldn’t draw breath. “Get out of my fucking house,” I said. “I’m done, Carmen.” “Sam,” you said, and I guess I’ll never know if you meant it as a plea or a correction, because that’s when I slapped you. “Ow! What the fuck!” “Get out!” I said, voice rising into hysteria, cracking on the pitch. “God, didn’t anyone even notice you disappeared? Is that it? You wanted to try being someone who mattered?” “Picked pretty badly then, didn’t I,” you said, breathing hard and fast, “right, ’cause guess what, Sam, no one—” I had never hurt anyone but myself in my life. But you had been me for months, and I was on top of you, and my hands fit around your throat—you clawed at me, but I got my knees onto your arms to put a stop to that; you opened your mouth like you planned to scream, but I don’t think you had enough air left. “Leave me alone,” I said, pressing as hard as I could, “stop it, stop it…” “Sam,” you wheezed. “It’s Samson,” I said. “Sam’s someone you made up.” Your eyelids fluttered. You were so pretty—how did nobody notice you weren’t me? Your face was growing darker. You mouthed something I didn’t catch. I don’t know what I did after that. It gets blurry. I hope I was careful cleaning up. I wasn’t really thinking at my best. Could have used an extra pair of hands, a partner in crime. Or just a washroom attendant. But I couldn’t dwell on all that. I had to get plenty of sleep that night; after all, I was going back onstage tomorrow. Ayin Ships (any pronouns) has received a BA and MA from Brooklyn College in English and Secondary Education, respectively, and currently works within the NYC public school system. As a trans and queer writer, Ayin enjoys genre-bending, gender-bending fiction. They have never met their doppelgänger.

One downward sweeping stroke, barely kissed by two concave, backwards curls. Not quite a letter, a character unrecognizable, even to me.  Not my name and nowhere close to my initial. Yet it seems to be my signature just the same.  A pattern, a shape, a symbol that, defying definition, is written with compulsion, without choice or understanding. Simply to be repeated throughout my life.  By two shaking, pudgy fists that pull gnarled sticks through wet sand and cloying mud. By adolescent hands that scrawl on toilet walls and bus shelters, illicit cider dulling their sharpness, but instinct rising just the same. Scored with a compass, dragged through tender, flinching skin; later overwritten with vivid, violet ink.   Doodled on lecture notes and the margins of essays, on messages taken and messages lost. Traced on the backs of menus, receipts, bus tickets. Sketched inside books, some borrowed, some mine.  And always, it seems both familiar and distant, comforting and unsettling.  Question and answer. With no explanation, no recognition and no resolution, this symbol, my symbol, stands alone.  Each day on the early train, armed with a blunted pencil, I repeat the marks time and time again.  As the other passengers avoid my eye, repelled by my vacant intensity.  Until she arrives.  Her. The girl with autumn-burnished hair. That smells of bonfires and pungent leaves. Who sits close to me; waiting, watching. Undeterred. Who reaches out and without speaking stills my hand. Who rolls up her sleeve and lays her forearm next to mine.  Whose patterned skin is the mirror that tells me finally I am home.  Rachel Canwell is a writer and teacher living in Cumbria. Her debut flash collection ‘Oh I do like to be’ was published by Alien Buddha in July 2022 and her Novella in Flash ‘Magpie Moon’ by Kith Books in November 2023. She is currently working on her first novel.

We went on a family ski trip to Australia once. It’s was strange skiing through gum trees in the rain. The terrain flat the snow thin the queues long. But the strangest thing of all was the roadkill - from Canberra to Cooma through sweeping farmland kangaroos sculpture the highway. Roo after roo - a Mad Max cull. Once we started to climb towards Jindabyne up through the national park, rounder more solid marsupials appeared. It took me a few kilometres to work out what these neon-tagged creatures were. I could barely bring myself to tell the kids they were wombats. Dark hairy motionless barrels. My son was free-skiing at the Australian Junior Nationals. He won two gold medals that day. The ski company rep made him refuse his second first prize set of skis on the podium to the second placegetter. The kid’s eyes popped out of his head as he swapped his goggles and poles. Travelling back through the wombat dead, my son said he’d felt happier winning a hundred bucks in a local comp the weekend before. Sweat turned to tears. The Lucky Country  is home to a lot of odd decisions. Take the bloke who invented y-fronts with a special scrotum pouch. Separate your balls from your legs, the ad claims. An internal kangaroo pouch in your duds for your crown jewels. Keep em cool. Keep em safe. You’d need big nutz to carry that off, I suspect, much like flipping upside down on skis or taking a prize off a fourteen year old. I found out later the spraypainted letters on the dead marsupials meant Animal Rescue volunteers had checked their pouches for babies. They weren’t best-before codes, at all. My son gave up competitive skiing the following season. Queenstown, New Zealand based writer, Jane Bloomfield, is the author of the Lily Max children’s novels. Her poetry and CNF are published and forthcoming in Tarot, Turbine |Kapohau, Does It Have Pockets, a fine line  - NZ Poetry Society, MEMEZINE, The Spinoff, Sunday Magazine and more. Find her at Jane Bloomfield: truth is stranger than fiction - janebloomfield.blogspot.com

Under a dayglow sun, you crawl along Witham Way, windows down, glad of the roadworks that slow the traffic as you imagine the Capri gleaming diamond white in the queue of regular Fords. The faux-leather seat burns your still-slim thighs as you flip down the sun visor to check yourself out in the vanity mirror, your shutter shades neon-pink and fringe Sun In-streaked and stiff with spray. You push in the tape you mixed the night before for Steve who rests his hand on your lap, fingering the hem of your denim mini, and you turn up the volume as if pop will transform the poverty-paved street with the promise of summer. Of being Sweet Sixteen. And that’s when you see her. On the corner, outside the newsagents. The shine of bomber jacket and Docs. Baby-blonde hair feathering her otherwise shaven head. You hide behind the plastic slats of your glasses. But she hears Madonna blaring from a cut and shut. And when she gives you the finger, all you will remember is her smile.  Kerry Byrne lives and writes in the Cambridgeshire Fens, UK, with a backdrop of sky-filled water and an endless horizon. Her writing has been published by Ellipsis Zine, Lucy Writers, Pidgeonholes, streetcake magazine and Bandit Fiction, among others. In 2022, Kerry received an MLitt in Creative Writing with Distinction from Glasgow University. She is currently working on a collection of short fiction and poetry inspired by the Fens.

The window shut as the door creaked open, silencing the feral fogs barking in the woods. I turned around.  “How do I look?” It was my first time wearing my grandmother’s dress – a unique piece she made herself out of fifteen thousand little spoons. After all, tonight was supposed to be an extraordinary ball.  “Turn around,” the cat ordered, adjusting two of the spoons. “Alright, let’s go.” I followed the cat, descending the moss-draped spiral staircase, always keeping my eyes on her ears, which helped with the dizziness. “And I don’t have to do anything else?” I asked upon our arrival in the basement. “Only what I told you to do,” replied the cat, who was using one of my spoons to fiddle with the keyhole in the door. “Come on now,” the cat urged, “and don’t get the dress dirty.” I cautiously followed her through the exit and out into the foresty fog that barked harshly. “Cat, where are you?” “Hold on to my tail, I’ll guide you to the lake.”  Holding the tail with one hand and the dress with the other, I moved through the fog until it gradually cleared. The bright lights of the professor’s castle already greeted us in the distance. “Get in the boat,” the cat said, and I was startled when I realized that it wasn’t the cat’s tail I was holding in my hand but a twiggy branch.  “Let’s move,” said the cat or the branch as I carefully climbed over the skulls on the bank, into the boat and started rowing. “Be careful not to wake them,” warned the branch that rode on the cat alongside my boat, but it was too late. I had already hit two of the skulls. “Quack!”  “Please excuse me,” I said, “but I didn’t see you in all that fog.” After a little more than a little while and three damaged skullducks later, the castle sat enthroned on the cliff before us. The fog lifted and the professor’s horse helped me out of the boat.  “The cat and the branch must stay outside.”  I bid farewell to the cat and the branch and mounted the horse. We galloped along the cliff until the horse leapt through a hole half the size of us. Ever faster we raced through the tunnel, which was covered in green velvet on all sides and lit only by a few candles held in the claws of bats. At the end of the tunnel, we came to an abrupt halt. “Please dismount, I cannot proceed any further.” When I went to say thank you, the horse had already vanished into the tunnel. “Good evening, young lady,” a beak protruding from the rock peeped at me. “If you could be so kind as to pull.” So I pulled, carefully at first, then more forcefully until I had broken the stone bird out of the wall. Then I climbed through. The light from the chandelier dazzled my eyes, the melodies of the nightingales rang in my ears and so it was only after a short period of orientation that I realised I was already in the ballroom. There they all sat at the lavishly laid tables towards the walls of the room: thrushes, finches, blackbirds, and all sorts of beautiful birds whose names I did not yet know. A lone couple, green at the neck and otherwise rather inconspicuous, danced intimately in the centre.  I took a step into the hall. The clinking of the spoons on my dress caused a great stir among the birds. A silvery voice demanded silence. “Please come closer,” called the old heron at the head of the table. Hesitant, I waded through the sea of feathers, that the panic had torn from the birds, until I stood in front of him. “Dear Professor,” I started, bowing my head humbly like the pheasants sitting to his left, “I sincerely apologise for the damage I caused your ducks in the course of writing.” “Ashes to ashes, ducks to ducks,” replied the learned heron, flicking his beak at the valets.  “It's about time you arrived. Now we can commence.” The tallest of the valets ascended and circled the chandelier two or three times – the light was too bright to see it clearly – before alighting and letting off a roar. “Caw, caw, cawstard!” With those words, golden gates swung open on all sides of the room and in came small woodcocks, always in groups of eight, bearing stone bowls on their backs, peenting under the weight with every step. “Dessert is served,” proclaimed the heron and a brief silence was followed by the fluttering and waving and shaking of thousands of wings – a deafening noise. They all descended upon me, tearing and tugging and pulling, until only one spoon remained on my dress. Now, I could complete the task the cat had given me. I adjusted my dress – or what was left of it – and started climbing the neck of a large swan, who was preoccupied with his custard. Always keeping my eyes on his ears, which helped with the dizziness. Having reached his head, I lowered myself down his beak, waiting for his next bite. Then I leapt inside.  The interior of the beak was covered in white velvet. There was a bed in the centre with eggs on top. How would I open them? I tossed one against the wall, but the velvet prevented it from breaking. I carefully removed the last spoon from my dress and tapped the egg that I had just thrown. Its shell immediately cracked, and the cat emerged. “Well done,” she said, politely for once, and added in her usual rude manner, “Now the others.” Swiftly, I tapped all the other eggs on the bed – there must have been about a hundred – and out of each came a different cat. Then, my cat took the floor. “Dear sisters, let's eat.” And with that, they disappeared out of the swan’s beak into the ballroom. Felix Anker, born and raised and based in Germany, used to be a linguist, now collects stories at a hotel's reception. Humour, Science-Fiction, and other weird stuff in German and English lit mags (A Thin Slice of Anxiety, State of Matter, Don't Submit!, Maudlin House, Johnny, UND). Twitter: @bananentupper  Instagram: @schundundsyntax

Elaine knew that her keys were trying to tell her something when she dropped them on the floor in front of her bed. They landed in such a way that the deadbolt key with the green topper formed a perfect 90- degree angle with the silver dumpster key, and the Betty Boop key to the front gate fell beside a turquoise ring she’d lost months ago. The possibilities of coincidence or serendipity didn’t even cross her mind. Since her mother’s death, she’d sensed that the entire order of the universe was inches from her comprehension. Elaine knew that all she needed was a cipher, and she believed that once she found that cipher she could use it to guide her decisions and align them with the master plan. Elaine’s mother wasn’t lucky enough to find a cipher in her lifetime. Elaine had watched her fumble for decades, and ultimately arrive at the end of her life in confusion and deep regret. Elaine pitied her mother for dying before she could understand her place in the universe, and resented her for not even trying to help Elaine understand hers. She picked the keys up off the floor, squeezed them between her palms, and asked: “Where should I hang the O’Keefe print?” Then she threw them at the wall. And when the keys landed behind the ottoman, she crawled hungrily across her studio apartment to assess.  The green key and Betty Boop pointed towards the kitchenette, while the dumpster key was tangled with a souvenir bottle opener from Clearwater Beach. Elaine inferred that the keys had a hierarchy, that Green and Betty competed for dominance and Dumpster stayed out of the way unless its voice was needed to balance the vote. On the question of where to hang Sky Above Clouds IV , the keys seemed to agree that it belonged in the breakfast nook.    Elaine did as she was instructed. And every morning thereafter, as she blinked awake and the pale, orange horizon on the other side of the room came into focus, she felt an immense tranquility knowing she’d never face indecision again.  *** The following weekend, Elaine went to a bar, ordered vodka and cranberry juice, and dropped the keys on the floor. She told herself she’d go home with the first man who picked them up for her. But when her suitor reared himself, handing the keys to her with a yellow, threatening grin, she noticed that Green and Betty’s teeth were caught on each other, and they were nearly crossed to form an “X.” Elaine took that as a warning, an instruction to skip this man and look for another.  Relieved, she squeezed the keys between her palms to thank them, and 20 minutes later she dropped them again.  This time, the man who retrieved them was handsome and aloof in the ways that Elaine had been hoping for. She charmed him, brought him home, and after many consultations with the keys over the course of the next week, made him her boyfriend. *** Before long, Elaine was using the keys to make decisions at her job. She worked in data entry at a local importer of grocery products from Poland, Romania, and a few other Eastern European countries. Invoices from suppliers and distributors arrived in various formats, and Elaine’s task was to ensure that every total that entered the accounting system was accurate down to the decimal. It was work that didn’t actually require her to make any decisions. In fact, if she was making decisions, it meant that she was probably cooking the books.  That was never her intention, but sometimes the order of the numbers in the totals unsettled her. When threes preceded fours on either side of a decimal point, or when sixes appeared more than once in a single line, she’d become paralyzed, unable to enter them into the spreadsheet. Elaine developed a particular motion of fondling the keys to probe them for an answer, which was much more discreet than her previous method of throwing them at surfaces and assessing how they landed. When she encountered a number that felt wrong, she’d pick the keys up from her lap, close her eyes, and dangle them just above her fingertips. She’d rotate them once, very slowly, and count the number of times she felt a key graze her middle finger. Then she’d repeat, rotating in the other direction. She’d add the first result to all numbers on the left of the decimal point, and the second to all numbers on the right. Usually, this produced a total that put Elaine at ease. If it didn’t, she’d subtract from whichever side of the decimal point was still giving her trouble. Elaine maintained this system through her remaining eight months at the company. No one ever detected the errors, but her boss recorded a significant dip in profit. He attributed it to inflation among his European suppliers, and offset the loss by laying off several administrative staff, including Elaine.  *** Papers arrived in the mail regarding Elaine’s mother’s will. Elaine learned she was inheriting a small house in Santa Fe. Her mother’s second husband had inherited it from his brother and left it in his own will when he passed, five years before his widow. Elaine’s mother lacked the ambition to make something out of the house, so it had been sitting, empty and neglected, ever since.  Elaine went to the cemetery and dropped the keys on her mother’s grave marker. They landed in such a way that they were equidistant from each other, making a nearly symmetrical star shape. Elaine stood over them for a few minutes, squinting intensely in an attempt to deepen her connection to them. Her goal was not to communicate with her mother’s spirit but to ask the keys questions that only her mother would know the answer to. She believed that with her mother’s death, those answers now lived with the universal force that the keys transmitted to her. Elaine’s method of eliciting a yes or no answer from the keys involved slapping them against the back of her hand. If any of the keys swung up and grazed her wrist, or briefly slipped between her fingers, she’d read that as a “yes.” If the keys only made contact with the back of her hand, the answer was “no.” She asked: “Did mother spend a significant amount of time in the house?” No. “Did her husband spend a significant amount of time in the house?” Yes. “Does his energy remain on the premises?” No. “Will visiting the house bring me good fortune?” Yes. “Will selling the house bring me good fortune?” No. “Am I meant to live in the house?” Yes. *** Elaine had a downright transcendent experience at the Dido concert. At times she felt she had astrally projected herself far away from the crowd to some sort of spiritual observation tower beyond time. And even though all of Elaine’s favorite Dido songs were about great romantic love, she arrived back at her apartment overwhelmed with the urge to break up with her boyfriend. She realized he’d never made her feel like Dido’s performance had that night. She stepped over the boxes he’d helped her pack and slumped onto the mattress he’d promised to help her load into a U-Haul later that week. He couldn’t make the drive with her because he had to finish up a gig, but he said he would join her in Santa Fe as soon as he’d completed the job and collected his pay. He’d been displaying a lot of excitement for this next chapter of their relationship. Elaine believed her boyfriend was good on his word, but she was suspicious of his reasons for following through at all. She had constructed a prediction for their future in which he joined her in her house only to have a place to stay while he infiltrated the local artist colony, chasing women who were more beautiful and more creative than she was, ultimately abandoning her.  But Elaine knew better than to dwell on unknowns. She asked the keys. “Does my lover truly care for me?” Yes. “Will he love me forever?” No. That was all the certainty Elaine felt she needed. She asked one more question: “Do I have to act immediately?” No. Elaine interpreted this to mean that she could wait to cut things off until her mattress was in the U-Haul. *** Elaine’s landlord sent her a text that read: “you can leave the keys in the mailbox.”  She considered her options. Maybe the keys had guided her as far as they could. Elaine was confident that every detail of her life was now exactly as it should be. She trusted the keys enough to believe that they wouldn’t abandon her in a time of need, but maybe she no longer needed them. Besides, she’d be picking up a whole new set of keys upon her arrival in Santa Fe.  Elaine stepped out onto the sidewalk and stood in front of the mailbox, pressing the keys to her lips. She figured she should let them weigh in. “Is there more than this?” Yes . She nearly sprained her ankle in a frantic sprint to the hardware store before it closed. She made copies of each key and kept the originals for herself.     The house in Santa Fe had a brass key to the front door, two silver keys to the back gate and sliding glass door, a rounder silver key to the basement, and a tiny square key to the shed. Elaine bought them each a unique topper and added them to the keychain with Green, Betty, Dumpster, and the Clearwater Beach bottle opener. Then she sat on the patio for hours, watching the sun push a large succulent’s shadows along the stucco of her new home, gently massaging all of the keys between her palms. *** The keys told Elaine to paint the living room a pale green and hang the O’Keefe print behind the couch. They told her to put up a wooden fence and gate, for which she needed another key of course, but she anticipated this would only elevate their power. When a home inspector mentioned that the basement could be converted into a separate rental unit, the keys coached Elaine through the renovation. They helped her pick out appliances, tiles, and lighting fixtures. They even decided on the amount that she charged for rent.  She used the keys to make trivial decisions, walking around the grocery store slapping them against her hand to make sure she purchased the right brand of chickpeas, the right width of parchment paper, the right fat content of yogurt. They advised her on big decisions, too. When a book she’d read left her with an intense compulsion to travel to India, the keys suggested she open a new credit card to pay for the trip. When she had a tenant whose lifestyle she disapproved of, the keys instructed her to evict him. When her doctor diagnosed her with aggressive cancer, the keys confirmed that going through treatment wasn’t worth the hassle she suspected it would be, and she’d be better off letting the disease determine her fate. As she lay on her deathbed, morphine coursing through her veins while her consciousness slipped away, Elaine was satisfied. There was nothing she could have done differently because none of it was up to her. And when the keys finally slipped out of her limp fingers and onto the floor, Elaine’s eyes had already rolled too far back to see how they landed. Olivia is based in Chicago.

The boxed baby was just over nine inches long. Pink-skinned. Pert. In the sunlight streaming through the high cedar branches, the woman could see the baby’s ringlet of hair, flaxen, and its irises ringed with indigo. It waved its little arms at her. It coo-ed. “My goodness,” she exclaimed, wiggling her fingers in the baby’s plump face. “And what have we here?”  The baby babbled. The baby clacked. The baby disarticulated its bones into a flesh puddle and slithered to the side of the box, folding like a paper accordion fan to reach the edge of the box and flow over it like oily soup.  “That’s a trick, sure enough,” said the woman in delight. “Follow me.”  She left the box with its sodden, mildew-speckled blanket still inside, and pushed her door open to enter the cottage, the puddle-baby gurgling and burbling behind. It slid and glided, wet and wide, right up to her heels as if it meant to wrap itself around them, but the woman skipped lightly whenever the baby seemed on the verge of taking hold and in this way avoided being seized in the baby’s liquified limbs.  The puddle-baby raised itself off the cottage floor and slapped two parts of its puddle together. The bones inside clacked against one another. An altogether unpleasant sound that demanded attention, but the woman only laughed and said, “Oh, be quiet, you little monster.”  The baby lowered its gelatinous self back to the floor and hurried after. A rocking chair stood before an open hearth, and into this, the woman lowered herself, the puddle-baby quivering at her feet.  “Well, come on, then,” she said, lifting her skirt to expose her bare legs. The puddle-baby drew near and slid over her foot. It wrapped its jelly-self around her pale ankle and began to climb her calf, up over her knee and under her skirt where it got tangled in the bunches of fabric there and could go no further. The woman laughed again as the puddle-baby punched at the fabric, trying to get free.  She began to rock. She rocked and sang a tune gentle and dark as she helped free the glutinous baby from her skirts. From under the fabric, the clicking and clacking of bones kept time to the lullaby.  Elizabeth Rosen is a native New Orleanian, and a transplant to small-town Pennsylvania. She misses gulf oysters and etouffee, but has become appreciative of snow and colorful scarves. Color-wise, she’s an autumn. Music-wise, she’s an MTV-baby. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in journals such as North American Review, Atticus Review, New Flash Fiction Review, Pithead Chapel, Ascent, and others. Learn more at  www.thewritelifeliz.com .