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It was dark and rainy on the highway. Raindrops trickled on the windshield. Ma periodically put the wipers on. The roads were filled with puddles. Ma drove slowly. Her shoulders were tensed, and her eyes never left the road. She did not play music as she usually did when we drove. I was in the back seat, buckled up, with light fever, staring at the little idol of the golden-colored Lord Ganesha Ma had placed near the steering wheel.  **** Ma always prayed to a photo of Lord Ganesha in our living room before leaving the house. She said it helped remove obstacles and tried to make me pray, too.  "Will God bail me out of trouble?" I asked. "Of course," she replied.  I wondered why God never came to my aid when I was having trouble in math, and the rest of my fourth-grade class laughed at me, ridiculing my accent or brown skin. I tried praying to the elephant-faced God. But the math problems continued to swarm inside my head, and my fourth-grade class still called me a brownie. I eventually gave up.  "One day, you will realize the existence of God," Ma said.  I would sulk and retreat to my room, where I played Roblox, thriving in a virtual world with more accepting friends.  **** We were going to a dinner organized at Ma's boss's house. Her name was Jenny. I didn’t want to go. But Pa was traveling, and Ma could not find a babysitter. Besides, Ma couldn't miss this dinner, as it involved an important client deal.  There was a rumble of thunder. Suddenly, the car swirled. It felt like that ride in Disney Land - Alice's tea party where we would sit inside large cups that would go round and round. I heard Ma gasp as she clutched the steering wheel. The car continued to rotate, and Ma tried to press the brake hard. I began to scream. Ma started to chant the mantra I often heard her say.  Om gan ganpathaye namaha.  Then, all of a sudden, our car stopped rotating. The other cars on the highway slammed their brakes and stopped, too. It was a miracle none of them rammed into us. Ma steered the vehicle to the curb. A sudden burning smell wafted into my nostrils. Ma got out, examined the wheels, and returned dripping wet to her driver's seat. "What happened, Ma?"  "The rear tire burst," she began to dial 911.  I heard Ma explain breathlessly how she was stuck on the highway, gave directions to our location, and hung up after being told help would arrive. The sound of pelting rain reverberated into the ghostly silence in the car. We waited for a long time. Ma began to chant the mantra again while I glared at the golden idol. We could have been killed. Then, there was a tap on the window. Ma rolled her window down and was greeted by a kind-faced police officer. "Are you alright?" he flashed his torchlight inside the car.  He happened to be patrolling the highway when he spotted our car. Ma explained the situation and said she'd called 911. He examined our car’s tires and made a few calls.  He turned to us and said, "I have called for a tow truck. It'll take you back home. I'll be behind you in my jeep until the truck arrives."  Ma thanked him, glanced at her watch, and frowned. Then she dialed a number on her phone.  "I hope Jenny will understand," she muttered. The number kept going to voicemail.  I shuffled in my seat, feeling suddenly dizzy. All I wanted was to go home and lie down on my bed. I wondered if Jenny would be angry and whether Ma would lose her job. I cursed the Golden Ganesha for putting Ma and me in trouble. Suddenly, Ma's phone rang. I could hear her apologizing. Then she heaved a sigh of relief.  "Are you serious? He's not coming?"  My head began to pound.  "Thank you, Jenny. Appreciate it."  Ma literally kissed the Golden Ganesha idol. She turned to me and said the client had an accident and decided to reschedule the dinner meeting. I was relieved we were going home.  The policeman's jeep was still behind us. His headlights were on, and it almost felt like having a guardian angel. Then, a truck pulled over in front of us after a few minutes. The driver asked Ma for our address, instructed us to lock our doors, and hurled our car at the back of his truck, saying we'd reach home safely. The policeman waved and continued on his patrol.  It was a bumpy ride. Our car shook and wobbled while the truck navigated through the slush on the roads. My tummy swirled. I felt like throwing up. After thirty minutes, we were home. Ma parked the car on the side street instead of our garage. She paid the truck driver and thanked him. Then she opened the front door, and I plonked myself on the couch.  "We were lucky even to be alive," she said. "It's a miracle that policeman showed up. Apparently, 911 was attending to several accidents on that highway tonight."  The following day, Ma had a mechanic come to replace the tires. I was in the living room watching an episode of Young Sheldon, empathizing with his oddities and inability to fit in. My fever had come down. A photo of Lord Ganesha, the one Ma would pray to every morning, was placed above the television. It was hanging crooked. I continued sitting on the couch and stared at the crooked photo for a long time, replaying last night’s events. I could almost see a slight smile on the elephant God's face. I sighed and reluctantly muttered a thank you. Outside, the sky was clearing up. Soon, there would be sunlight, and the roads would dry from the puddles.  Swetha is an Indian author based in California and an MFA graduate from the University of San Francisco. Her works across genres appear in Atticus Review, Had, Flash Fiction Magazine, Maudlin House, and Oyez Review. ( https://swethaamit.com ). She has received three Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations. Her debut chapbook, Cotton Candy From The Sky, is published by Bottlecap Press.

My grandfather went on a fishing trip in the country around New Paltz. “He caught nine rainbow trout!” There was pride and a vestige of fear in my mother’s voice as she relayed the news from the kitchen telephone. The day after he returned to the city, my grandfather picked me up at school and took me out for a grilled cheese. Once the order was placed, he settled into the booth and sized me up with weary eyes.  “Morris,” he said at length, “I met a visitor at my hotel.”  “What kind of visitor?” I asked. A gust of yellow leaves skittered past the diner window. He leaned in, damp and smoky. “A visitor,” he whispered, “from the beyond.” Late one night, he told me, he was wandering through the hotel looking for ice when he saw an old woman pass through the wall. She had a blue halo around her body, the color of a lake in February. She sat in a rocking chair and began to knit.  My grandfather asked her who she was, and she told him she used to live in the house where the hotel now sat. She could walk through walls — it felt natural to her. Where she lived, there were visitors that she couldn’t comprehend. They were enveloped in exotic colors and passed through dimensions she couldn’t access.  “The beyond has a beyond,” my grandfather told me. “There’s an endless beyond.” The food arrived: a greasy sandwich, sizzling bacon. A chocolate shake appeared too. My grandfather winked at me. Earlier that month, a boy in my class had suffered a brain aneurysm and collapsed right in front of me, knocking over my bottle of Elmer’s Glue. That was when my grandfather started picking me up from school. Every Monday. After we finished eating, we walked down Columbus Avenue. Winter was a breath away. The sun fell low, the Manhattan shadows grew long. “You know what the visitor’s story reminded me of, Morris?” He pointed to a high-rise across the street. “They built that in the 50s. All of those apartments are the same. Each of those narrow windows is a bathroom. In each bathroom, there’s a toilet. Next to each toilet is a litter box with a cat squatting in it. Stacks upon stacks of toilets and cats, toilets and cats, all the way to space.” “Did you really see a visitor?” I asked. “I did. I swear I did.” He lit a cigar. His long, beige trench coat swayed in the wind. It had been his coat since World War II. He had scavenged it in France, I would one day learn.  I leaned into him, inhaling his cigar smoke. He drew the coat around me, wrapping me up like a newborn, and I closed my eyes. I was eight years old. “Do you need to be getting home?” he said. “Maybe your mother won’t be angry if we stay out a little while longer.”

For someone better at small talk it would've been as easy as pie to delight while standing in line at the bakery behind a woman and a little boy—Jack, she called him—and cause them to exclaim, What amazing knowledge you have and thank you so much for sharing!    But, clearing my throat, I began thusly: did they know that dogs once toiled in treadwheels mounted above kitchen fireplaces, the animals limping around and around— Think a hamster , I said to Jack; he had spaniel eyes and muddy knees—to rotate a meat spit on the hearth? Given her gaping mouth, the woman did not know this, nor that if a hog weighed one hundred and fifty pounds, and if early sources regarding cook times were accurate, the dog could be spinning for thirteen solid hours— Nearly as long as we'll be in this queue, ha, ha.  Turnspit dogs had very short legs— Like a wiener dog, I said to give Jack a fun visual—and were, according to Charles Darwin, an example of selective breeding although he didn't know how stumpiness is inherited, that a condition known as chondrodysplasia which causes long bones to stop growing requires only one copy, not two, of a mutated gene to occur— In other words , I whispered to Jack, a mommy could be solely to blame.    And, before turnspit dogs, there actually were wee boys who worked ye olde meat spits, poor boys sweating and straining before roaring fires, waifs in the lowliest job in rich men's households who were—I elbowed Jack to drive history home, so he'd never forget—called spitjacks.   I thought my story ended well, little kids and low-slung dogs living happily ever after once a mechanical spit-turner was invented in the 1840s, but the woman did not: her face sour like the lemon-lime pie I was waiting and waiting for, she stared a stinger then spat nails— We will not swallow any of this. You're weird. Go away. —but, truly, I didn't make up a single word of it nor say anything about Jack being, in my opinion, rather short-legged.   Karen Walker (she/her) is writing in a basement in Ontario, Canada. Her work is in or forthcoming in Misery Tourism, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, The Hooghley Review, Brink, Overheard,  and Bending Genres .

There’s nothing I’m more sick of than the reliable tick of my grandmother’s grandfather clock, standing watch as it does over a living room frozen in time, décor from an age where all ornaments were acquired from trips to the seaside, lavender puffs fading through scents from fresh to nostalgic to simply dusty. If any of the strange wooden carvings that adorn the walls are shifted out of position, the wallpaper behind is so dark and fresh it looks wet; but no one would ever attempt such heresy. Even blowing the dust from the top of the waxed fruit screams desecration. Porcelain boys and girls stare down from behind their umbrellas with unaltering, disapproving faces. Even blowing the dust from the top of the waxed fruit screams desecration. Porcelain boys and girls stare down from behind their umbrellas with unaltering, disapproving faces. If I were to wax sentimental and wonder what the figures had seen through all their years of immobility, they would tell me that the room’s existence has mirrored their own. The lounge chairs not-quite-facing each other; the table for cake and tea – designed to be put away when not in use but never moved; the long, low couch whose decorative cushions are truly that. Low, slow lectures about how things used to be better, and my culpability for the excesses of my generation. The ‘greatest generation’ in their cloak of honour, forgetting that my generation never had two World Wars or a Holocaust. Half of it must be down to repression disguised as respectability. If you let people fuck, generally they’re less stressed, less inclined to fight, I always wanted to retort, but it went without saying that there was less than no point. Even if I had dared to speak, her mind was set. I’ve determined to avoid becoming the same, but I’ll inevitably say some things to my grandkids that I’m not supposed to say. ‘Grandma,’ they’ll whine, hiding behind embarrassed hands, ‘crazy isn’t a word we use. It stigmatises people with mental health issues.’ ‘Is everyone in the future such pussies?’ I’ll ask. Another infraction. None of this makes me sympathise with her, though. Not one smile, not one joke in all those years. Why did my mother send me to stay with her? I always meant to ask, but put it off too long. Now that her mother is gone, it seems too cruel a question to lay on her, distracted as she is by grief. During those visits, my grandmother and I spent so much time in each other’s presence, but I never really knew anything about her beyond what she deemed it proper for me to know. No childhood reminiscences, no inadvertent swear words or the little faux pas that bring us all down to the same level. The house fails to warm me to her now. I wonder if that’s what it was for, this gift I’ve been given: a final attempt at connection, reconciliation. But that would be too human. It seems more likely that it’s a double-edged sword, like the comments she’d let drop from the corner of her mouth. Clean it up, clean it out. Take the time. Before it’s of any worth to you, you have to put the work in. It’s exactly the type of thing she’d do. A reminder that I always had to work to be worthy of being hers. I stand, wondering why I’ve been sitting in the living room, a room I always hated. I walk through the room pretentiously called a parlour and into the kitchen, wooden chairs with floral cushions tied on. The kitchen is full of light. It is the memory of work gladly done, sanctuary from the crushing silence just down the hall. Some people at least watch murder mysteries, or game shows. In this day and age, who calls a TV ‘common’? I’ll make some more tea, I’d say. There was always a need for more tea, the breath that I took as I left the room and headed towards the kettle. Chasing me out of the room was the instruction to let the help do it, but the help were long gone and so was I. It sounds childish but I am determined to win. I am determined because  it is childish, because I know she’d hate it. I stare at the clock on the microwave, knowing it’s never right, never as precise as the grandfather clock. I stare at it now as I used to stare at it then, but now there is no need for me to will it onward. ‘Use the oven, next time. It heats things through better.’ The words echo in my mind unbidden, and I release a sharp breath, trying to spit them out. In my memory, a plate of scones sits untouched on the cake table, a fly buzzing around the pat of butter I’d delicately laid on the side. There is a sound. In response to it I rise, open the front door. The man in the overalls steps into the house, looks around, gives me an are-you-sure kind of look. ‘Everything?’ I indicate the house with a sweep of my arm. ‘Everything,’ I say. ‘All of it. Except the microwave. That’s mine.’ Richard A Shury recently returned to New Zealand after haunting London for many years. His story Chiaroscuro was read at Liars' League, and his flash piece The Dog House made the Bridport Prize shortlist in 2020. His short story, The Vortex, placed second in the Limnisa Short Story Competition 2018, and he has had several short stories published in anthologies. He’s a part-time optimist.

Anyone who’s ever done high school art has painted the full moon dripping a sad candle of yellow wax-light back to a dark flat earth under the instruction of a sad art teacher who’d rather be in a lofty studio making art a big-name gallery exhibits regularly and pays generous coin for. I forget the name of my art teacher at boarding school but I remember his mop of soft brown curls, his droopy moustache hiding a thin upper lip. His thin leather jacket. Thin young legs. Pointy leather shoes. The naughty girls, the ones who snuck out at night on the back of locals’ motorbikes no doubt teased a smile out of him and A+ portfolios with buttons undone and flirty chat. Mr … let’s call him Jones, Mr Jones was a foreigner. What brought him and his wife to the Rangitikei I don’t know. It can’t have been exciting teaching one hundred and fifty girls on the Calico Line where the average age of your corduroy clad peers was five hundred and five. Was he happily married? Who knows. He and his wife might have been LSD dealers or a loved-up folk duo playing the local pubs by dark of night for all I knew about him in four years. Did he have secret fantasies about the pretty girls? Who knows. Did we learn how to draw and paint? Who knows. Maybe more of a mindfulness session to break up the boredom was intended in that long wooden room with its high sash windows and smell of turps, the two beat beat of drum lessons in the adjacent music room. Cymbals clash. Mr Jones ground his teeth when he gave instructions. You can still smile with your mouth shut but nope. Jane spends a lot of time staring out the window. I declared myself crap at art from some lip curl comment way before being tasked with dripping a big oily moon. Beyond the windows were bike sheds where we smoked cigarettes then deodorised our sins with gobs of Colgate and squirts of Anais Anais secreted in our knickers. Beyond the bike sheds the mown grass of the cricket field lay alongside a giant-sized macrocarpa plantation tunnel. On weekends after sport we smoked Menthols and sang along to Meat Loaf  on portable cassette players only the girls whose parents holidayed overseas owned, losing ourselves in air guitar anthems like bats out of hell. Colditz was the fond name we gave our school where they attempted to make us permanent freaks of goodness by reducing all free time to a freedom of nothing. It didn’t work. But we turned out okay. Mr Jones is probably still there, his teeth yellowed, a long grey beard lifting his face into a smile, howling at the full moon. 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

A black cat with piercing yellow eyes leaped out the window of a suburban house, shattering glass in his wake.   "Great entrance, Midnight!" exclaimed a squirrel from a nearby tree.   "Oh, shut up, Nutty," muttered Midnight, rolling his eyes.   "What's going on?" asked a passing raccoon, intrigued by all the commotion.   Midnight recounted what happened.   “As Mr Jenkins and his wife sat down to dinner, I crept up on the dining table. With a swish of my tail, I knocked over the salt shaker and darted away.”   “Oh boy," chuckled the raccoon. "Someone’s getting bad luck tonight.”   Midnight continued.   “While the Jenkins slept, the new puppy began a rumpus of barking without letup.”   "Better watch your step puppy," snickered Nutty to the raccoon.   “Startled awake, Mr Jenkins stumbled out of bed, only to trip over a toy left out on the hall landing. Mrs Jenkins, awoken by the commotion, rushed to see what had happened. I pounced and startled her. She, too, fell down the stairs.”   "Ouch! That's got to hurt!" exclaimed Nutty.   "Never be perpendicular again after a tumble like that," added the raccoon.   “The puppy’s barks turned to whimpers as I approached him.”   Midnight stopped talking and there was a long silence.   "A new puppy! That’s brutal for the ego, Dude," said Nutty, shaking his head in disbelief.    Days later, milk bottles — the tops gnawed open by the cat, poor hungry creature, —littered the porch.   Midnight stared with indifference at the comings and goings of the white -suited humans. They seemed oddly fascinated with the shattered window, snapped photos and dusted it with tiny brushes.   "Well played, Midnight," said Nutty, giving him a sly smile when they met after dark.   " It worked," replied Midnight in a smug tone. “I’ll be top cat here once more.” Mary Anne Mc Enery an Irish and Dutch citizen, retired and living in the Hague. She writes micro and flash fiction stories. She writes to entertain her mind and play around with words!

CW: Violence When the beatings began, I wondered if I should intervene. But we were waiting for our new fridge to be delivered, and that show with the chefs had just come on. We didn't want to miss it. You’d have done the same, I’m sure. Nobody knows where it all started anyway. A dispute over a borrowed lawnmower, we think. I don’t know the details, can’t say who was to blame. Look, don’t get me wrong, this street is great. Soaring property prices. Pleasant neighbours – our sort of people. Amazing school catchments. But one thing I never really liked was the kitchen windows – the way they look directly into the house next door. The Smiths are nice and all, but it’s awkward. I sometimes pull the blinds down, just so we’re not staring into each other’s lives.  The neighbourhood messaging group is a double-edged sword too. It’s great for keeping up with bin collections, that sort of thing, but when someone starts ranting about politics, I tend to mute it. You know how it is. I was cooking a casserole when it all kicked off. Borlotti beans. We go plant-based a few days a week. Good for health, good for the environment. Win-win. Anyway, I saw Jones from two doors down, walking towards Smith’s place. Both families are really lovely, and they used to get on, until this lawnmower thing. Smith and Jones started arguing in the front yard. Jones was furious – eyes wild, face red. There was a bit of a fracas. Smith pushed him over, gave him a kick, and he slunk off home. A few days later, in the garden, I saw Smith shouting at the Jones kids over the fence – really ripping into them. They were bawling, faces all screwed up. Jones came out, grabbed Smith by the collar. Looked like they were about to get properly into it, but I drifted away. They were whipping up a dish with herring and juniper berries on that chef show. It looked incredible. The recipe is online, I'll send you a link. Not long after that, Smith posted a video of himself on the neighbourhood group, down in the basement of his house. He’d done it up really nicely, turned it into an office – during the pandemic, I suspect. Lots of us did the same. I think one of his kids was filming.  Anyway, Smith turned to the camera, smiled with a kind of manic look in his eyes, and then started slamming through the wall with a sledgehammer. Bricks and plaster flying everywhere. Within a few minutes he was through to the other side.  The Joneses’ basement looked nice too. They’d done it out as a sort of laundry or utility room. Smart tiled floor. Recessed spots in the ceiling. Anyway, Smith grabbed a power tool and screwed planks across the door to the Joneses’ basement, from the inside. Barricaded the whole thing, then screamed into the camera: “It’s my basement now!” All a bit over the top.  The message group blew up. You can imagine. I didn’t have the headspace for it. Turned off my phone and went to bed. You’d have done the same, I’m sure. Next day, I saw him beating Jones’ wife. I glanced out the kitchen window, straight into Smith’s place and there he was – fist thumping into her ribs, over and over as she wheezed for breath. Then he punched her face – knuckles splitting lips, blood running over shattered teeth, her cheeks distorted in black-bruised lumps. Word got out on the group chat later. Jones shared photos of his wife’s injuries. He said she’d gone round to ask for the basement back. Didn’t seem like a smart move to me. Thompson from number 35 waded in, but most of us felt it was a private matter between the two families. Best not to get involved.  Last night, from upstairs, I saw Smith and Jones in the yard. Our back bedroom looks out that way. We turned it into a sewing den for Jackie, after our son moved out. Anyway, it looked like Smith had been mowing his lawn. Provocative, I suppose, given that Jones believed it was his lawnmower. They were scrapping again – both bleeding, deep cuts on their faces.  The mower got kicked over in the ruckus. It was lying on its side, still running. Smith managed to wrestle Jones to the ground – held him in a headlock. Both men were screaming, grunting with strain, and Smith was forcing Jones’ face towards the blur of blades – inching closer as the other man struggled for his life. I saw it. I watched the Catherine-wheel explosion of bone and flesh, the lawn-sprinkler spray of blood. I heard the noise it made too – Jones’ terrified roar brought to an abrupt end by the howling strain of the lawnmower motor, the chunky chug of rotors churning through skull and brain. Well, Smith really had gone too far this time. He left me with no choice. I had to take action. What else could I do? I strode across the room, closed the blind, and drafted a strongly-worded comment on the neighbourhood group chat. You’d do the same, I’m sure. Mathew Gostelow (he/him) is the author of two collections of speculative stories; See My Breath Dance Ghostly  (Alien Buddha Press) and Dantalion is a Quiet Place  (DarkWinter Lit, coming 2025). He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Microfiction. @MatGost

for Nour No, don’t take that one!   that sweet sweet sweet  ripe one so delectable that one, all flesh and red and tenderness, I’ve been waiting to sink my teeth into that one since it shared all its luscious promises with me. Take all of them, except that one! that heavenly, bountiful, brimming  with life one, that one that imbues me  with its fullness, its fragrance, its flavor so red red red , warm, full, so wholesome  no other earthly delight could ever compare. Anything, anything but that one! bury me back in the ground with that one and do not do not  pluck it from the earth  without me, let me soak in its layers  let me watch her grow again if only  to inhale her scent one more time. Layla is a Cairo-based writer who enjoys long walks with street cats, late night mint teas, and collecting music boxes. She spends a lot of her time bargaining with life to slow down and failing that, writing about it in her poems and short fiction.

Mark : Pick you up in half an hour.  I better get ready, the new underwear I bought is waiting for me to slither into before the date. I switch off the TV. It’s bullshit anyway. They really ought to do some proper research before they make these shows. Why would anyone think my ideal Saturday night would be freezing my tits off outside a care home? I should sue that bloody Netflix. Defamation. Misrepresentation. Liable. In fact, we should all get together and file a class action.  Beeeeeep Oh, not again. Not tonight. I picture Mark’s disappointed face if I tell him that I have to cancel on him yet again. Will he even think a third date is worth the hassle? How can I have any normal relationship with this job? Beeeeeep   I pick up the phone: Code Blue, 44 Wellan Way.   According to the Google Maps app, it’s twenty minutes away. Well, that doesn’t give me long. So much for the ten-mile radius. I bet someone’s called in sick again. Nice for them. I fire off a text to Mark before I have a chance to change my mind: Really sorry, can’t make it. My job is a bit nuts. Maybe we should call it a day.  The drive is tedious and I’m tired, so I lower the window and turn up the radio, Club Mix. Of course, it is - remind me of the good time I’m not having why don’t you! My phone vibrates in my pocket. Mark. My stomach knots wondering what he’s said.  As I near the street, I turn off the sat nav. I can feel the way from here, drawn as if by the slither of a spider’s web. God, what I wouldn’t give for a 9-5, where my boss wasn’t a total narcissist. I mean, try telling him that you want to book a holiday.  When I pull up at the house, the blue fog is thick. It won’t be long. I’ll never get used to the smell. Imagine fox poo mixed with rotten eggs, and you’re still not there. All the lights are on and glow through the mist like a demon’s eyes. The house throbs with sadness and fear and too many things unsaid.  I look through the window like some sick voyeur. They have made her up a bed in the living room, no hospice for this old girl. Around the bed, two adult daughters clasp onto a papery hand each as if by holding on they can stave off the inevitable. They will start pleading soon, bargaining for just one more day. God, I’d rather be watching Strictly. Before they can tell her it’s okay, that there’s nothing to be scared of, it wells in me like a contraction. Crushing. Cramping. Constricting.  I breathe, in through the nose, out through the mouth. It eases, a brief reprieve.  The daughter with the lollypop head looks at me for a second, venom in her eyes. She knows why I’m hovering by the window. The Boss says it’s not us they despise, it’s themselves and their fragile grasp on this world. But what does he know about humans?  I fall to my knees, my stomach tightening. Then all fours, swallow down the bile. It burns as it moves into its final position. My sinews and nerves stretched and squeezed.  The daughters shroud their mother in love and tell her that she’ll be remembered always. Her life meant something. To them. I roll onto my back and know that all anyone will remember of me is that I’m the harbinger of death. No one will mourn or tell fond stories about me in the pub after the ‘service’.  Then, at last, I scream into the blue cloud of death. The wailing is shrill and singes my throat. But I can’t stop until it’s out. Until the soul inside the house is gone.  Keening, I feel her go.  Once it’s over I’m sick into a bush. My throat is raw, and I won’t be able to eat for a couple of days.  I crawl back into the car, depleted. How can anyone think I’d actually do this because I wanted to? With a shaking hand, I pull out my phone. Mark: Hey it’s just a job, we can make it work 😉. I wish he was right and that heralding death wasn’t threaded into my DNA.  The need to feel something other than grief is like the need for water. God, I want someone to hold my hand when the banshee hovers at my door. What have I got to lose?  I text back: I’m finished now if you’re around? Rough shift. Lucy is a Barnsley-based writer. She teaches and writes and has ridiculous conversations with her naughty dog, Loki.

We drove out to the ocean on a Sunday. A bright, breezy afternoon tainted only with the knowledge that we had to work the next day. We stood at the western edge of the continent. House-sized waves crashed upon our volcanic pedestal with a violence that reminded us of our smallness.  It wouldn’t be a big fall from where we stood, but it would be impossible to return from that roiling pit.  You stood with your back to me, facing the ocean. I, too, took in the ocean for a time until my eyes trained upon you and your profile from behind. I wasn’t unhappy in our relationship, but on that day, I couldn’t help myself from wondering what else the world had to offer.  You looked back at me and smiled. The ocean had brought you to this place of stillness, of equanimity. Yet when I looked out, all I could see was a wide-open expanse without meaning or consequence.  The ocean surged with the rising tide.  You had no way of knowing this, but I sensed we would not be together much longer. I was relieved and, I’m afraid to say, I was not sorry. Eliot S. Ku is a physician who lives in New Mexico with his wife and two children. His writing has appeared in The Raven Review, Maudlin House, Whiskey Tit, Call Me Brackets, Roi Fainéant Press, HAD, Bending Genres, and elsewhere. You can read more at www.eliotsku.com

I was told that I could no longer come into the office, but I still had to work. So my apartment became my office. And because the two were one and the same, I never left. Even for running errands and seeing friends, I ordered everything in. Only the groceries and the takeout came, though. All of my friends moved away. This happened in the span of two years. And at the end, when I was no longer working at home, I decided to get myself back out there and meet new people. I wasn’t picky, so one day I looked up events posted on the local arts magazine’s website and chose the first one that I could go to after work (and was close to somewhat decent takeout). The event that fit the criteria had something to do with reality, which seemed promising. It was hosted in a red brick building in a part of downtown that I had never noticed because there were no restaurants or shops nearby; instead, only buildings of a similar ilk filled the surrounding blocks. Fortunately, a food truck had been hired just for this night. And it was one of my favorite places in town, a fusion of Irish and German cuisine. So, once I had my fair share of fried, vinegary potatoes, I entered the building’s lone gray door – so small, in fact, (when compared to the rest of the building) that its presence seemed like an accident of design.  Inside, there was a single room that was large enough to fit a few hundred people with plenty of space in between them. The floor was concrete, so the voices echoed, creating a din not unlike that of a cafeteria at noon. Everyone was dressed well, informal yet sharp. My business casual barely fit the mood, but it was enough to keep my mind off my appearance. Though doing so was still somewhat of a challenge because the entire room was lined with mirrors and naked lightbulbs, like what you’d see in a backstage dressing room, except there was no stage, or this room was also it.  Either way, by the looks of the place, I wasn’t sure what the purpose of the event was. There were no stalls or bands playing. There were no keynote speakers or Q&As. There was nothing, really, except for the people. (Of course, in a few places off to the side, there were bars stocked full, with counter service.) Many of these people were in groups, but some were standing on their own, looking at their phones. Nearly all of them were wearing backpacks.  To keep things simple, I decided to approach the people closest to the entrance. There were several of them cradling their drinks and scrolling through the web, like figures of wax nearly come to life, studying one last bit of humanity before committing to it. The first person I talked to was a woman wearing a black leather backpack that looked like it had been polished vigorously. I greeted her and introduced myself, and after typing out a message on her phone, she did the same. Then she asked me whom I was representing:  “What’s your brand?” was how she put it.  “My brand?” I replied.  “Yeah; which one are you an ambassador for?”  “Oh,” I said, grinning nervously. “None. Just myself.”  “Even better!” she said, taking off her backpack and unzipping it. She pulled out a baseball cap whose texture reminded me of bear fur and stuck it right on my head. She then snapped a photo of me and typed something on her phone.  “You too,” she commanded. “Post a picture on social media, with the hashtag –—.”  I did as I was told.  “Awesome,” she said. “What’s your email? You’ll get discounts and special offers.”  I gave her my email.  “Cool! Well, it was nice meeting you.”  “You too,” I replied, and then we parted ways. For the next five people I talked to, each interaction was basically the same as this one. After the greeting, I would state that my brand was myself, a revelation that would then trigger my new acquaintance to take off and unzip their backpack, sticking whatever item lay within it on my body with freakish haste. Afterward, they would snap a pic and tell me to do the same. Then, once they said, “It was nice meeting you,” the conversation was over. Having talked to six people in no more than thirty minutes, I was now decked out in the bear-fur baseball cap, a shark tooth necklace, a raccoon eye mask, doggy ear muffs, eagle-talon rings, and a rabbit’s tail pinned right above my ass.  In short, I needed a drink.  I looked around the room and noticed that one of the pop-up bars had a cocktail that was stuffed with leafy vegetables and colorful ice like nothing I’d ever seen before. So I went over to the bar and peered at this cocktail up close, soon startled when something inside the glass moved – something brown and craggy, and shaped, vaguely, like a question mark. After my initial surprise, however, I couldn’t stop staring. There was definitely a spunky garnish in this drink, I thought, just doing its thing.  “What’s it called?” I asked the bartender, pointing downward. “An aquarium,” he replied.  “Is it a vodka drink?” “Huh?” “The liquor,” I clarified. “Is it vodka or tequila or —” “— No, no, no,” interjected a woman who was standing nearby; she was wearing a clear vinyl backpack. “It’s an actual aquarium! Cool, huh?”  I took a moment to process everything; then I tapped the part of the glass where the craggy question mark floated: “What’s that, then?” I asked.  “It’s a seahorse!” the woman said, almost as a cheer. “Want it?”  “. . . What?” I replied. “. . . like, for free?” “Yes! All you have to do is sign up for our subscription. Every month you’ll be sent a box of supplies!” To put things simply, I became the owner of a seahorse that night. And after the woman handed me the portable components necessary to keep the aquarium functioning in transit, as well as my first month’s supplies (all of which she had stored in her clear vinyl backpack), she told me this:  “Its life is precious, so don’t waste time talking to the others. Go home now. Go!” I did as I was told, awkwardly cradling the aquarium and its loose cords and battery pump like a newborn (the eagle-talon rings didn’t help) out of the building.  Back home, I set up the aquarium – which was a little bigger than a mason jar and had a soft, cozy light – on the table next to my bed. Before going to sleep, I peered at the seahorse, whose movements were hard to discern, and asked it straight up: “Are you dead?” Then, within a minute or two, it jolted across the glass, obviously alive. And so I went to sleep. For the rest of the week, I would ask the seahorse the same question every morning and every night: “Are you dead?” And I couldn’t go to the office or off to bed until it zipped across the aquarium. Such a sign, I later learned, could take a while to appear, so I was often late for work or got fewer hours of sleep. Still, for that whole week, the seahorse wasn’t dead. And that made me happy. I was so glad that I didn’t kill it.  On the weekend, I stared at the aquarium for hours, watching the seahorse while eating takeout. It was spring now, so I opened the bedroom windows, giving the seahorse fresh air, even though it didn’t really need fresh air. It just needed salt water and algae and love. In that regard, things were going quite well.  Everything was going quite well, in fact, until 3:47 p.m. on Sunday. That’s when I noticed the seahorse moving in a way that I had never seen before. It was sneezing violently, it seemed, but not from its beak-shaped mouth; instead, tiny, golden masses were tearing open a large slit in the seahorse’s gut. Eventually, a bright haze filled the aquarium.  Fortunately, the seahorse didn’t die. In fact, the opposite was truer than ever: the seahorse had given birth to a dozen baby seahorses. To my surprise, nothing in the manual mentioned birth. And the monthly supplies, it turned out, were only enough for one seahorse. Was it a mistake? I wondered. Could twelve baby seahorses be such a thing?  I watched them all for the rest of the day, and right before I went to sleep, I posed this question thirteen times: “Are you dead?”  None of them were. I asked the same question the following morning, but my conclusion wasn’t the same. One of the babies wasn’t moving, and it was awfully close to the colorful rocks at the bottom; perhaps it was even lying on the bottom. When my boss called me, asking why I was two hours late for work, I told her that I needed two days of sick leave. The baby seahorse still hadn’t moved, which meant that I had to act fast. I won’t go into all of my frenzied thoughts; the bottom line was that I wasn’t cut out for taking care of seahorses, not twelve, possibly thirteen, of them. And there was no way that I’d separate a parent from a child. That was abominable.  So I drove three hours to the ocean and released the seahorses back into the waves that looked like my bedroom, or, simply put, their home. And within a matter of seconds, they all zipped away, into the depths, even the one that I thought was dead.  I was relieved, to say the least, but also sad. And since I knew that I wouldn’t be in the best headspace to drive back home, I booked a hotel room right on the shoreline, ordering room service and watching movies for the rest of the day. At night, there was a reception of some sort, open to all of the guests, and thinking it’d be best to get back out there, I went and danced with strangers, fighting back tears during all of the slow songs.  For the next few weeks, I put the whole episode behind me, focusing entirely on work. However, at the beginning of the following month, I received a package in the mail – a somewhat heavy box, which, upon opening, I realized was the first shipment of seahorse supplies. Quickly I hid the box underneath my bed, crawled into my sheets, and stared at the ceiling. At some point, I drifted off to sleep, but it was a sleep filled with “Are you dead?” reverberating throughout an empty ocean.  For a long time after, I had trouble sleeping. And when the next package came, a month later, I also hid it under my bed. In fact, I repeated this cycle – barely sleeping, hiding the boxes – for three months, until my performance was flagged at work. Thankfully, my boss was understanding, especially since I replaced the word “seahorse” with “grandmother” during my explanation. “You just need to get out more,” my boss concluded, looking out her window. I nodded and later obliged her in the best way I could: I returned to the event in the red brick building, which, I learned, met every month.  Once I was inside, I knew that I needed to steer clear of the woman with the clear vinyl backpack, who had also returned and was hovering around the same pop-up bar, where another aquarium was set up. The truth was, I couldn’t bear updating her or attempting to lie, about the whole ordeal, so I walked in the opposite direction, across the room, getting outfitted and snapshotted once again, until I needed a drink. I adjusted my butterfly-wing shoulder straps and lizard-tail belt and leaned against the bar counter, surveying the room as I sipped on a vodka tonic. The room seemed fuller than last time, with fewer spaces within the crowd, and the voices were starting to drown out my thoughts. I yawned several times. Then I yawned several more times.  “Feeling tired, little kitty cat?” asked a woman wearing a purple backpack; she had approached the bar from some corner that I hadn’t noticed.  I touched the cat ears on my head. “Me?” “Put your forearm here,” the woman said, ignoring my question. When I hesitated, she patted the black tablecloth on the counter. “Here, kitty, kitty.” I did as I was told.  Then, without taking it off, the woman unzipped her backpack just enough to pull a miniature purple blanket, as she later called it, out of a slit on the side. She then laid the blanket over my forearm. Under its surprisingly massive weight, I could barely move. Or, put another way, I was entirely at rest.  “Kitty like that?” the woman asked; by her tone, you’d think that I was actually a cat. “It’s perfect,” I said.  “Great,” she replied, using a neutral voice. “Now, if you download this app, I’ll give you the real thing.” She held out her phone, showing me the screen. Then she pointed to a group of purple boxes off to the side.  After a pause, I pulled out my phone, downloaded the app, and showed her my screen.  “Looks good,” she confirmed.  A few minutes later, she handed me a purple box and told me this:  “Now go get some sleep.” I went home immediately after, stripped into my pajamas, and laid the weighted blanket over my body. It was eight o’clock when I fell asleep, and it was eight o’clock when I woke up. During those twelve hours, I didn’t once hear, “Are you dead?” In fact, I didn’t hear anything at all. And I didn’t see anything, either. It was all a black void.  So I slept like this for the rest of the week – in twelve-hour cycles, basically right after work until I had to go back in. Then, on Friday night, I crawled under the blanket, closed my eyes, and woke up on Monday morning. By then, the dreamy black void had started to shimmer into new colors and shapes, and, thankfully, none of them had anything to do with seahorses.  At work, my boss took note of all the sleep I had been catching up on: “Someone’s been getting out more,” she said, laughing as if she knew my dirty little secret (as if I had one).  “I’ve gone so far out,” I admitted, chuckling, “that I’m pretty much back in.” “And your work is so fresh!” she shouted gleefully. “So inspired!” After a few months, I was feeling rested enough to actually get back out there. So I went to the red brick building again. This time, I sought out the woman with the purple backpack and told her how great the weighted blanket was, erupting into a long, spontaneous monologue about my improved sleep. “Say it again,” she told me when I finished, now pointing her phone’s three lenses right at my face.  I obliged, repeating what had amounted to a five-minute testimony on the blanket.  “Now I’m free!” the woman declared, once I had finished speaking and she had tagged me across the web.  “Free?” I repeated, confused.  She grabbed my hand with her silvery kitten paws. She had cat ears and a cat tail, too. “Let’s get out of here,” she said. “Huh? But what about the boxes?” I asked, nodding to the group of them off to the side. “It doesn’t matter anymore!” Before I knew it, the woman was leading us through the crowd, so I asked her, “What’s your name?” “Katherine,” she answered. “With a ‘K.’”  I told her my name. “It’s nice meeting you,” she said. She was still holding my hand.  Within minutes, we were outside, facing the street. “I’m hungry,” Katherine said. Then, after a pause, she added: “Let’s get something to eat. I’m buying. Today’s a good day.”  “Fish and chips?” I suggested. “Oh! A pub!” she cried out in joy. “Yes, please!” We walked several blocks down the street, close to the river, where the bar district was already boppin’. In particular, the public house was exploding with traditional music.  Katherine and I grabbed a booth in the pub’s dimly lit backroom, away from the stage mobbed with violinists who were piss drunk at 9 p.m. For three hours we talked and drank and ate baskets of fish and chips. Then, at midnight, Katherine invited me back to her place, which was a somewhat longish walk from downtown, but after eating so much fried food, we didn’t mind the exercise.  We held hands the entire way back. In her living room, we talked and listened to records for a while, drinking a few glasses of red wine. Then we went into her bedroom, which was furnished with a purple bed and a purple dresser and a purple desk and a purple nightstand. She told me to lay down, and I did so immediately. “I don’t usually do this on the first date,” she said, removing her top.  “I don’t usually do anything,” I replied with a grin, stripping off my clothes. We went at it for a long time, like two people who had been cooped up since the dawn of man. And we kept at it for weeks. In fact, it was so rough, so raw , that one night, as we lay naked, arm in arm, sweat dripping all over our bodies, I sneezed through a giant slit in my stomach.  Ryan Bender-Murphy received an MFA in poetry from the University of Texas at Austin and currently lives in Seattle, Washington. His fiction has appeared in BRUISER, Hobart, Hominum Journal, Johnny America, and Tiny Molecules. He is also the author of the poetry chapbook First Man on Mars (Phantom Books, 2013). Find him on Instagram at ryan.bender.murphy .