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A lot of things, you found, were a lot like murdering someone. You tried very hard for a long time to avoid murdering anyone but then you slipped and murdered someone. Having murdered your first person you discovered that it wasn’t as bad as you expected. You got over it quickly; life went on, it didn’t really affect you in any way. You worried for a while what everyone else would think but gradually you realized that no one cared all that much; as time passed you weren’t even sure that anyone noticed you murdered someone. But this morning you woke and all at once the compound walnut leaves fell in the frost and the sunshine and now you find that murdering someone is not at all like murdering someone—it’s not a thing like murdering someone, at all. Matthew King used to teach philosophy at York University in Toronto, Canada; he now lives in what Al Purdy called "the country north of Belleville", where he tries to grow things, counts birds, takes pictures of flowers with bugs on them, and walks a rope bridge between the neighbouring mountaintops of philosophy and poetry. His photos and links to his published poems can be found at birdsandbeesandblooms.com.

Mercy The only thing I remember from last night’s dream is the word mercy, spoken by a spectral figure. Was it my soul, crying out because it had been a hellish week of floods and fury and dithering idiots spouting lies, and in the petty annoyances of my small life, that included ants swarming in my kitchen cabinets? I scattered diatomaceous earth till it looked like a bakery explosion, swabbed vinegar until it smelled like an aging salad, to no avail and so I put aside my eco-spirit and dragged out the killing traps. I allow daddy longlegs to live peacefully in corners but I can’t abide the sci fi vibe of the little black bugs who I imagine might be nesting in the walls and floors, seething, ready to take over some night I’m dreaming another mercy dream. Allergic to the stinging sort, I do not try to rescue or dispatch the sonorous wasp that flings itself at one window then another like a vaudeville routine, not noticing the open door for a good long time. When she finally does and exits, I puff out a sigh of relief until, moments later, she’s back at it – smack, frantic buzz, repeat, for several days, until I find her on the floor, no autopsy needed. None Of It Lasted We dodged the drought, the cyclone, the taxmen, even the hoarding impulse but we couldn’t stay lean and limber, go without sleep, remember everything. Now creaky and layered in dun spots, creased and folded, slooped and drooping with crinkled knees and fleeting night vision, we are old, old I say, no longer with a chuckle. It could be any day, any loose minute in a drab weekend. Let the roof cave in, the grey paint curl from the porch, let the rotted steps crumble to dust and the mold reign supreme. We’re inside the last chapter and there’s no surprise ending, no rescue. Mercedes Lawry’s most recent book is Vestiges from Kelsay Books. She’s published three chapbooks and poems in journals such as Nimrod and Alaska Quarterly Review. Her book Small Measures is forthcoming from ELJ Editions, Ltd. in 2024. She’s also published short fiction and stories and poems for children.

I’m at my first court-mandated anger management meeting when a woman with frosted pink lipstick bleeding into her smoker’s lines leans in against me at the coffee table. “Honey, I can hear your heart beating.” She smells like that raspberry body spray my mom loads up on. I ended up here because I’d been on my phone, fighting with my mom, listening to her tell me to kick Billy to the curb once and for all, while I pushed my cart with one hand down the frozen foods aisle. I’d yelled back she needed to mind her own damned business, and why was she always there for her stupid church friends and not for me? When I’d looked up, a man was standing in front of the DiGiornos and Tombstones, listening, and he looked just like Billy, all squinty-eyed and half-cocked.  So I'd lobbed one of those family sized Stouffer’s lasagnas at him, and the next thing I knew, cops had me pushed up against the pizza doors. Now, I imagine drawing a box with each breath in, hold, breath out, hold. It’s a trick my probation officer taught me, and it’s surprisingly effective in stopping me from doing stupid shit. Doesn’t seem to help me much with Billy or my mom, but I figure family takes a little longer for the feelies to kick in because they’re so much more work. The woman shrugs and walks away. I keep drawing the imaginary box. These meetings are in the Black Oak Baptist basement where Billy and I were married, with those cheap folding chairs that pinch my hips and hurt my back. The man leading tonight’s meeting keeps shoving his hands in and out of his pockets and rocking on his feet. He’s going on about how his wife simply packed up their kids and most of the kitchen utensils while he was at work one day. He starts crying when he tells us he came home to a dark house, surrounded by holes in the walls he could throw coffee cups through. The next day he broke down in his boss’s office, where his boss told him to man up and get back to work. The man then laughs like he’s embarrassed to tell us this next part, and he rams his hands back into his pockets. “That’s when I punched him,” he says. “Wife found out about it and doubled down on the divorce proceedings. I was forced to come here, just like all of you.” “Boo!” I yell from my seat. “Where’s the happy ending of how you got your family back? That’s what I’m here for.” “Now she speaks,” someone a few rows in front of me says. It’s the frosted pink lipstick lady. I grab my purse and tear off up the stairs. I force myself to go back the next week. I have no choice if I don’t want to end up in county for thirty days. Lipstick lady greets me at the door, like she already knows how this plays out. Turns out her name is Nadine. Same as my mom’s name. Nadine calls these meetings “joy recovery.” Says in the span of a week, she lost her job, her husband told her he was leaving her for her cousin, and her house burned down. Says she was rightfully mad at the world but that was no way to live. Says she’s been coming to weekly meetings for a decade, and now she makes lemonade out of lemons. I’m almost convinced she really believes it. I tell her she reminds me of my mom, all crow’s feet and chicken skin and the same habit of going down stairs sideways like a crab, one tentative foot at a time. I immediately apologize, that I’m working hard on not saying stupid shit or throwing punches anymore, but it takes time for the desire to turn to belief to turn to action and so on. She smiles like she knows exactly what I’m saying. Today, she smells like that honeysuckle cologne the Avon lady used to sell, and there are undercurrents of cucumbers pulled from the garden and yeasty dough doubling on the countertop. And that right there is my mom, all of it, and I mean it a complement. Nadine takes my hands in hers. Her skin is thin and cool, and she has a little mole between her thumb and index finger that I keep touching the edges of. She doesn’t say a word. Just patiently waits. And there’s something about her that warms me, how she doesn’t pull away as my finger dances around the mole on her hand, how she doesn’t tick off a list of everything that’s wrong in my life. So I start in the middle: Sometimes I get so mad I punch the walls, and one time there wasn’t a wall, only glass, but I’m not that stupid to punch glass, so I punched a man who looked like Billy, and my fist slamming into him stunned me, how much it hurt, how time stopped and everything was quiet and still, and there was my mom again, and it’s just the two of us again, and we’re sitting in the backyard eating ice cream sandwiches again, and she’s whispering, Ruthie, can you hear it? Listen hard, Ruthie. It’s you. And I did hear it. For a split second, I really did. L Mari Harris’s stories have been chosen for the Wigleaf Top 50 and Best Microfiction. She lives in the Ozarks. Follow her @LMariHarris and read more of her work at lmariharris.wordpress.com

My father took a picture of me with Santa Claus so he could remind me over and over again who was to blame when I didn’t get what I wanted for Christmas. The beer budget didn't allow for film developing for months, but the next year his contribution to holiday decorations was that picture in a dust-dulled frame that once had his wedding picture in it. He put it on the mantle since it was heavy enough to hold up a perennially unused stocking, and after a few empty Christmas mornings of dad answering my disappointment by shrugging towards the mantle, I was cursing whenever someone mentioned the Holiday Spirit, scowling at carolers, rolling my eyes at K-Mart Christmas displays. And blaming a lot on that smiling, bearded asshole with me in that picture. Then—6th grade—Jimmy and the kids at lunch laughed at me for not knowing it was my parents. Santa Claus was supposed to be my parents, which was now just my dad, a person who existed like a door ajar since mom—in his words—wanted to have things handed to her. I immediately started buying as many toys and candies as I could with whatever allowance he remembered to give me, secretly stowing presents wrapped in pages of the Pennysaver. Christmas Eve I snuck it all into a festive pile under the tree, and in the morning smelled dad's 90-proof robe before he staggered into the living room. I waited for my apology. For him to recognize my disappointment was his responsibility. Instead he pieced together the whole scheme, slowly bubbled into laughter, and said, I did it. I did it. You ever see your mother again you tell her I did it. He walked to that picture on the mantle and pressed his finger to my younger face, causing the stocking to fall to the floor. See? See? I taught you a lesson, he said, and then wobbled back to bed, leaving me to unwrap what I had done for myself. Timothy C Goodwin-Actor, writer, photographer (@)timothycgoodwin(.com)

I sat in the hospital waiting room in my full regalia — blue sequins chafing my thighs while the cut tee I was wearing made me a bit too cold. I tapped the rubber boots to keep time with the commercial jingling overhead. It was something to keep my attention while I waited for the doctors to make sure the kid was feeling ok. “Welcome back to Channel 5 News!” said the television. “Now, let’s turn over to Sam Nelson with the weather!” I tapped my foot faster to block out the sound of my voice on the screen. Looked at my boots on the linoleum so I wouldn’t have to see my face. A friend of mine from my college basketball days had taken his kid to a wrestling match of mine one weekend. It was a side gig — something to make me feel young. The studio didn’t like the bruises that would show up on my neck in the morning show, but all I got were a few slaps on the wrist. And the flips I could do, the performance of it all. Just made me feel better than being able to read a teleprompter and knowing what the readouts were from a weather observatory a couple miles away even if I was a heel in the wrestling ring. Few months later and come to find out the kid has cancer. The friend of mine calls me and wants a favor. I humbly oblige. And here I am. This friend of mine, Kent, steps out of some revolving doors. “He’s ready now, Weather Man.” My name is Greg. The kid is hooked up to a series of tubes and pumps all flashing and draining and coming in and out of his body. He’s breathing heavy in his gown, the skin like paper and barely making a dent in the bed. A window lets in some light through the blinds. Even the light is sterile as it's filtered through. The boy’s name is Victor Dun. I step into the room behind Kent. The kid’s eyes light up without Kent even having to introduce me. I flash some muscles, snarling in between some basic bodybuilder poses. “Want me to make it rain the pain?” I ask. “Yeah!” Victor says. He hocks up a lung afterwards. A frown forming with each breath leaving his body. My smile drops but Kent glares at me to keep egging the kid on. “Ahhh, what the hell do you know,” I say with the limp of a wrist. “You probably can’t even beat me in an arm-wrestling match.” “Oh yeah! Set up the table, dad!” Kent obliges, pushing a bouquet of flowers off the table. I grab a chair to sit down opposite the kid. Heart monitor beeping. My foot tapping to keep pace with the kid’s life. It takes Victor a few minutes to lean over the bed. “Come on!” I say. “You’re just giving me time to warm up!” Kent positions himself over the table, acting as an official for the match. I grip Victor’s hand. Holding it like a feather. The veins turning blue up to his naked, bald head. “Ready?” asks Kent. His kid nods. Even spits in my face. I wipe off the spit. Kent slams on the table with a fist. The match begins. I try to put on a show. Straining my neck and letting myself lower my arm ever so. And the kid is trying too. He’s really giving it his all. The heart monitor beeping faster. His dad smiling ear to ear. After five minutes of the charade, Victor Dun is victorious. I let him be — lower my fist to the laminated wood. Heave out and even sweating from the attempt to restrain myself. “Goddamn…you beat me.” Victor looks at his hand in my hand. Slinks ever so back into the bed. A frown forms on his face. “I guess I did,” he said. “What’s wrong?” asks Kent. And Victor Dun, in a moment of existential doubt, responds with, “I don’t know. I just thought he’d be stronger. But you’re weak.” I slink back into the chair. Now no better than a machine. J.B. Kalf is currently slipping on ice. Has been published within Beaver Magazine (poetry), #Ranger (art), BULL (flash fiction), and elsewhere. Palm frond fanatic and prefers limes to lemons. Can be found at Twitter or Tumblr @enchilada89.

There has been much written about the new MLB rules this season. I read daily reports on how fast games are (2:38), how stolen bases have increased (1.32/game), and how scoring is up (4.3/game). Because game speed is the reason that fans are not coming to the ball parks. We are conditioned to speed. If the car in front of us doesn’t move at the exact time the light turns green, we grumble. We don’t have the time to wait in line any more so we order online, just drive up, and our groceries are placed in our trunks for us. Walmart knows that if their website load times are too slow, they lose millions. A one second load time increase costs Amazon $1.6 billion a year. So, yeah. Speed is the name of the new game. For 162 (or hopefully more) games each year, baseball is a constant in my life. I watch games on television and listen while I’m in the car or in the garage. TSN is bookmarked on my laptop and phone. I read Baseball Digest and memorize game facts. From the day I first discovered baseball in 1977 when the game came to Toronto and I walked to school with pockets full of baseball cards, I have not been concerned with the length of games. Well, perhaps on those April days at the old Exhibition Stadium when the wind and the rain blew in horizontally off Lake Ontario I may have muttered something about it to some of my fellow sufferers. While watching at home, I read books, putter around, fold laundry, and discuss the game events with whoever is with me. It’s the background for over half my life each year. In 1990 when I was still not sure what life had planned for me, I was working in a warehouse, picking, packing, and shipping books, a job I had done since intermediate school, both as a summer job and as full-time employment. I showed up every day, but many others had attendance problems. So, the foreman hatched a plan to encourage people to come to work every day. Each day you did, you got to fill in whether you thought the Toronto Blue Jays would win or lose that day on a large chart in the office back in the receiving area. First one to get a certain number correct would win tickets to an upcoming game. Before the Easter weekend, I put in my picks and when I returned on Monday, I had reached the magic number. (Don’t ever mention THE Magic Number to my kids.) I was given two tickets to the June 29 game against the Oakland A’s with Dave Stewart on the mound for the visitors. My best friend, Jim, was my plus one. It was the least I could do seeing as he was the source of all my Maple Leaf tickets.  We took our seats in the 500 section, first row third base line, just past the base. I don’t remember much about the first part of the game. We ate, chatted, got caught up, and laughed, while the game unfolded below. In the 7th inning, I distinctly remember noting to Jim that the Jays hadn’t had a hit yet, a fact that we should have noticed earlier if we had been paying more attention. But that’s the way it goes with baseball sometimes. Bottom of the 8th, still no hits. You could feel the buzz beginning around the SkyDome. Were we really going to see this happen? Top of nine comes and goes. I don’t even remember who was coming up to bat for the Jays. Doesn’t really matter. What I do remember was the almost 50 000 Toronto fans standing and cheering the opposing pitcher as he recorded each of the last three outs. Pretty much everyone except Jim, who sat there with arms crossed, scowl on his face. “I can’t believe you’re cheering for the opposing team,” he said. When the last out was recorded and Stewart was mobbed by his teammates, the Toronto fans continued to cheer and applaud. Dave Stewart and baseball fans were the winners that night. Each game since, I have hoped that I would witness another one. Alas, I have not. The game took 2:27 to play. Deryck N. Robertson lives and creates in Peterborough/Nogojiwanong, Ontario, where he is an elementary educator. Work has appeared with The Minison Project, Orchard Lea Press, Loft Books, and forthcoming  with Vital Minutiae Quarterly. His first chapbook, All We Remember, was realeased by Alien Buddha Press in 2021. He is the EIC of Paddler Press and has a couple of songs on Spotify. When not writing, he can usually be found drinking maple roast coffee around a campfire or in the stern of his canoe in Algonquin Park. You can find him online @Canoe_Ideas, @PaddlerPress, and deryck.ca.

It took one misclick. As a checker and rechecker I let the impulse to recheck go just once. And in one fell swoop, I airdropped my pussy to everyone in this airport. I’m still not really sure how that’s possible. The airdrop radius is only, like, 30 feet. You have to select every device that pops up by hand. My phone wasn’t even unlocked. But by some act of cosmic interloping, everyone in this airport is staring up my snatch. Nearby an old woman in a white turtleneck lets out a gasp of revulsion, nearly dropping her phone to the geometric carpet, bedazzled wallet case and all. With shaking hands she thrusts the phone into her daughter’s hand. A low whistle. “I can’t explain why,” the daughter says softly, “but I get the distinct impression that whoever did this, whoever’s snoot this is, she’s probably got a rough relationship with her mother. Don’t you think, Ma?” The old woman leans over to get another look and nods slowly. “Well… Yes, I suppose I see it too, now. Odd what all you can tell about a person, just by a thing like that.” I rush past, head lowered, and run directly into the broad back of a large tree of a man in a denim jacket. “WOAH,” he barks, and I start to apologize before noticing his attention isn’t on me at all, but rather on his phone. He turns to his fellow tree-size friend. “Look at this shit!” “My god,” his friend says as they shuffle toward the Dunkin’ Donuts line, “that thing is a looker. Doesn’t it look kinda… I don’t know. Like she’s probably a really attentive lover? Like she really cares about whether her partner enjoys it?” “Huh, it really does. I bet she’s a trooper even when her arm gets tired.” They disappear into the sea of waiting customers. I slip into a gaggle of people and push on toward my gate, fully intent on getting on this plane, reputation unmarred. I won’t be the girl who airdropped her pussy to everyone in this airport. I refuse. No one will know. No one can know. No one has to know. As I continue down the endless flecked terrazzo throughway, however, the crowd ahead gets thicker and slower, gumming up the works as they all stare flabbergasted at my pussy on their screens. I split off to the left. I still have half an hour until boarding. I figure that maybe I can weather this storm tucked into a booth at Qdoba. I order a syrupy Coke and some plain tortilla chips and approach a free seat. “Excuse me,” I say meekly to the man taking up all four outlets at the table. I try to hide my face in fear that he might match it to my snatch. “Can I sit here?” “Sorry,” he says gruffly, “I need to put my backpack there.” He slings his bag into the chair. I nod understandingly and start to flee. As I slip around behind him, I catch a glimpse of his tablet screen. “You won’t fucking believe this. Some girl just airdropped me her cooter. Honestly it’s subpar, though. Solid construction, but it looks a bit unhappy. Like she’s a smoker, or she had a really shitty boyfriend in college who fell asleep and didn’t pick her up from the bus station and made her walk 4 miles home in the dark. Maybe on more than one occasion. Overall rating? 4/10.” I take off like a shot out of the Qdoba, coke and chips in hand, weaving fast through the milling crowd now. Everywhere I look I see shocked, horrified, intrigued, curious, and leering faces, shoved close to phones, looking long and hard at my bare snatch on display. It’s too much to bare. I have to get out of here. As I skirt a scandalized church group in matching orange T-shirts, I hear someone call out: “Ma’am! Ma’am, wait!” I look over my shoulder and go cold with fear as I catch sight of a short man in a three-piece suit barreling toward me at overwhelming speed. I try to outpace him, but two women with strollers are stopped ahead, sharing a tablet screen with sympathetic looks on their faces. “Poor thing,” one says, “I bet she’s a middle child.” I can’t get around. “MA’AM!” I’m powerless to move as my pursuer catches up and hits the brakes just before he bowls me over. He reaches out a hand to steady himself against my arm. “Ma’am, excuse me,” he says breathlessly, wiping sweat from his brow, “is this your pussy?” He holds out his phone, showing me the picture. I look away. “No,” I say quickly, “no, it isn’t.” “FUCK!” he cries. “Son of a bitch!” And he does look genuinely devastated, lip outstretched far enough for a bird to land. “What?” I ask reflexively, though I’d rather not hear. “I just know she would love this book I read last month. I’m dying to find her so I can tell her about it. If you find the owner of this pussy, PLEASE give her this. It would mean the world to me.” He presses a blue business card into my hand and takes off, bearing down on a group of bridesmaids now, calling out again: “Ladies! Excuse me, ladies, does this belong to any of you?!” I slip into the flow of traffic once more. I’m getting close to my gate now, I can just barely see it on the horizon. I dip low and charge through families, groups of all affiliations, groggy men and women rolling suitcases. They are all abuzz about my pussy. “Really bad with plants?” “Probably hates Michael Bublé!” “Bad teeth!” “Not a strong swimmer!” I hurtle past these casual observations about my snizz, clawing desperately at air, racing for that beckoning gate sign. Boarding has already begun. I vault over a frail woman who has fainted in the aisle, my cooch still displayed on the phone clutched in her outstretched hand. “Pulse is thready,” says a paramedic crouched over her. I slip seamlessly into the line, and thank Christ, it is moving fast. In a minute’s time I stumble before the gate agent, fiddle quickly on my phone, and show her an image of my boarding pass. She scans it, smiling politely, then freezes. “Just a second…” she says slowly, slipping a phone in a cat-shaped case from her back pocket. She unlocks it, taking ages. I glance around nervously, but no. I can’t run. There’s security all around. She holds her phone close to her face, then looks at me, then back to the phone, then to my name on the boarding pass, back to the phone, then back to me again. “Is…” She laughs nervously. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but… Is this your pussy?” She turns the phone to me. I can’t speak. I just want this to be over. We lock eyes for a long moment. “I’m sorry,” she says softly. “It just reminds me so much of someone I used to know… Ever lived in Flagstaff?” I shake my head and put my phone back in my pocket. “Am I good?” “Yeah,” she says distantly, staring off toward the window as she muses. “Yeah, you can go.” When I get to my seat, I am sweaty, hoarse, and weeping with relief. This nightmare will soon end and I will be soaring overhead, rising up and far away from this awful airport, off to Connecticut, where no one has been airdropped my pussy. Perhaps I’ll cancel my return trip and make myself a life there. I could learn to appreciate a lobster roll. A college-aged boy settles into the middle seat beside me, noisily taking off and stowing his windbreaker. “Hey,” he says. “Hey,” I say. “I’m on my way to see my girlfriend, up in Hadley.” “Cool,” I say. “Yeah,” he says. He pauses a moment. “I’m actually so excited to get there. I have to tell her about what just happened.” He is looking at me expectantly. “What just happened,” I ask. “Some girl airdropped me her pussy. But it was the strangest thing… See, if I didn’t know better, I could swear that girl has a cold dread about her. Like maybe she’s lived her entire life without ever letting her feet leave the ground.” V Garmon Koski is an Atlanta native, housewife, and writer. She is a crocheter, a master of soups, and a menace to society. She has been published in Rejection Letters and others. You can find her on Twitter at @veanimator.

The Politics of Pockets Skirts and dresses should be tight arses and hips for our enjoyment nobody wants layers for exercise these tight fitting tights will make you more efficient for our gaze - show me what you have pockets will just interfere but never fear we will provide other ways for you to carry your important things you have too many things don’t show me what you have let’s make that deeper, wider, bulkier leather handbags that are ideal this desirable luxury one only $2000 for this fine pocket alternative look we created a new industry aren’t you lucky. Double Happy You say you can’t anymore I poke holes in the silence squeeze word grenades through onto the battlefield of the king where among the sheets the vacuum of your mood deadens the explosions leaving only a charred smell as if children ran through here with strings of double happys creating a lot of noise but nothing lasting to show for their investment Plum Jam The war made my father a recycler before recycling was a thing you never knew when things might be scarce gather wire ties and bread bag tags in a little box cut the shampoo bottle open and scrape the insides clean keep everything not eaten make preserves, chutney, jam the jars multiplying in the pantry the plums always sour. They say the effects of traumatic events can be laid down in the genes and passed on to future generations see my little box of tags and wires as I steadfastly eat leftovers cut shampoo bottles open and always have a jar of plum jam on hand do not tell him it is shop bought and sweet A Note From the Author: I am an Aotearoa/New Zealand based award-winning author of picture books, short stories and novels for children and young adults. I also write poetry for children and adults and my adult poetry has appeared in Poetry Aotearoa/New Zealand Yearbook 2022 and 2023 and in Takahe issue 105. I was the 2014 University of Otago College of Education Creative New Zealand Children's Writer in Residence and received the 2023 Michael King Writers Centre Shanghai Writing Residency.

I step on a scale and the numbers rise and rise and rise like my marks in primary, in secondary, in tertiary school. I wrap a measuring tape around and around and around my waist like the borrowed tapis I wore to a dance performance, to an awards ceremony. I look in the mirror and watch my arms and thighs and calves grow fatter and wider and richer like my pile of plaques like my once-starved purse. When I enter a room of faces familiarly strange, they survey me from scalp to sole. They shake their heads and say I’ve fallen short of the scale, of the tape, of the glass, of the gaze. This is the one time I flunked a test. This is the only time a high score has failed me. This is the first time I found that numbers only bind my infinity at the waist. Heather Ann Pulido is an indigenous and bisexual author from Baguio City, Philippines. Her work is in Moss Puppy and Sage Cigarettes. She has been nominated twice for the Best of the Net. She recently joined JAKE as a poetry editor. Her debut poetry chapbook "Coming Home to Myself" (Naked Cat Publishing) was released in September 2023.

after Remedios Varo’s painting Mimesis I have become the focus of my tabby cat, Mimesis. She will ignore flies and mice, but rather than being lazy, she is watchful, always napping or hiding near me, as if she can sense clandestine movement and the appalling trajectory of my life. Much like Mimesis, I’ve never been an active person. I like my favorite chair, this week’s sewing next to me, an occasional cup of linden tea, perhaps with a pinch of rose hips. I do sweep and dust, but only when I can’t coax a girl from the village to do it for a coin. I’m also careful, never walking under ladders or putting shoes on the table. I’ve never dropped my scissors. If necessary, I will knock on wood prophylactically. But last time I did that, Mimesis began her surveillance. A girl I had out to clean set my calfskin pumps on a table to sweep underneath. My heart tripped over itself in its haste. I screamed. They will bring bad luck! Take them off the table! Which she did immediately. Then I knocked on both wooden arms of my chair. Imagine my surprise when they knocked back. Shortly after that event, I noticed that the limbs of furniture seemed sympathetic to my emotions. Mimesis became my mirror reflection, eyeing me always, perhaps afraid to let me out of her sight. This morning, I tried to get out of my chair to put the kettle on and discovered that my legs were wooden, and I could not rise. My hands had become one with the chair. I recognized the fear in Mimesis’ eyes. I urged her to move, no, to run away. But her fur had already begun to seep into the floor’s wood grain. Luanne Castle’s award-winning poetry collections are Rooted and Winged and Doll God. Her chapbooks are Our Wolves and Kin Types, a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award. Luanne’s Pushcart and Best of the Net-nominated poetry and prose have appeared in Copper Nickel, Bending Genres, River Teeth, The Ekphrastic Review, and other journals.

Tamieka tried to muffle her voice. ‘I told you I’m broke…I have to go. I’m at work. Yes. Really.’ She sighed and squeezed her eyes shut. ‘Ok. Later.’ She ended the call and stared at her cracked phone, before slipping it into her ill-fitting work trousers. ‘Are you quite finished?’ Martin sneered as she rejoined the group. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled into her chest. ‘Rule number one. No personal calls during shift.’ Martin, the team leader, was pink and fleshy like a raw sausage. ‘In this job, you’ve got to keep your wits about you.’ Eyes downcast, she nodded. ‘Come on then,’ he said to the induction group. Three men and two women in matching grey polyester uniforms. ‘I’ll show you the alarms set-up in the Grand Hall. Pay attention, alright?’ Six pairs of safety boots squeaked on the gleaming marble floor. They followed Martin through the empty foyer, past the wood-panelled ticket booth and underneath a twenty-foot-high poster for the Treasures of Eastern Java suspended from the ceiling. ‘Sounds like you’ve got trouble.’ The other woman sidled up to her, the elegant amber-skinned Eshe. Tamieka shrugged and chewed her ratty fingernails. ‘Money or men?’ Tamieka rolled her eyes. ‘Both?’ Eshe sucked on her teeth. ‘Keep up!’ Martin yelled. ‘The Grand Exhibition Hall is through here.’ Stepping through the doors, they fell silent. Bright with daylight, the Grand Hall ran one hundred metres long. The tessellated glass ceiling soared above their heads, a patchwork of skylights rippling like a stormy sea. Peanut-coloured tiles lined the walls, dotted with statues and glass cabinets. Even with their rubber soles, every footstep echoed. Open-mouthed, Tamieka drifted through the Hall until one statue made her heart stop. On a podium sat a curvaceous woman with the head of a smirking fox. She stared at the pigeon-grey stone monument, her hand fanned against her chest. ‘Come on, Tamieka,’ Martin said. ‘We haven’t got all day. The doors open in half an hour.’ She pointed at the beguiling fox-faced woman. ‘What is this?’ ‘I don’t know,’ he snapped. ‘Come on. This way.’ ‘It looks so old.’ Her eyes followed a red smear running down its neck and chest, as fine as a brushstroke. A hint of rose oil tickled her nostrils. ‘Of course it is,’ Martin said with a huff. ‘Everything here is priceless. That’s why we have bloody jobs.’ Eshe elbowed her. The rose smell was probably Eshe’s perfume. ‘Come on, dreamy.’ ‘I’ve never been to any place like this before,’ Tamieka said as she dragged herself away from the mysterious statue. ‘We used to come here for school trips," Eshe said. ‘Not my school,’ Tamieka said. ‘They wouldn’t let us in some place like this.’ She glanced back over her shoulder, the vulpine eyes were following her. ‘When I signed up for the security course, I never thought I’d end up somewhere like this,’ Tamieka said. ‘I know.’ Eshe sighed. ‘It’ll be boring as fuck standing next to paintings all day. Who’s going to steal them? At least in a shopping centre, there’ll be some action.’ ‘Keep up,’ Martin called out. ‘He’s such a dick,’ Eshe groaned as they continued down a narrow corridor. ‘Not even thirty minutes gone and I hate him already.’ Tamieka nodded, but her mind was still in the Hall. Tamieka didn’t get assigned to the Grand Hall. Instead, Martin put her in the children’s museum. ‘You’ve got kids, haven’t you?’ Tamieka smiled painfully. ‘Indy-Jade is almost seven. Rio is four.’ ‘Perfect. You’ll know how to handle the little buggers better than the young blokes.’ Tamieka wilted. Rather than guarding the statue, she spent seven hours stopping brats scribbling on the walls. While distracted parents treated the museum like a day care centre. On her break, Tamieka made a special detour to see the sculpture again. This time, a tour group of middle-aged women circled it, all intently listening to a female guide with a brutal arty haircut. ‘…fox spirits are feared and revered in many cultures, particularly Han Chinese and Japanese.’ When the guide led the women over to another glass cabinet, Tamieka stayed behind. This time she scoured the Hall, checking the cornices for cameras, recalling Martin’s instructions on the alarm system. Minutes before closing time, she made an unnecessary circuit of the Gift Shop. ‘A security check,’ she said in an authoritative tone to the shop staff, who shrugged in reply. On the shelf, she found the heavy hardback exhibition book, and after wincing at the price tag, she glanced around. The Gift Shop staff were huddled together by the till, tapping on their phones and organising after-work drinks. No one would notice if she borrowed the book overnight. Home was a blur of dirty dishes, squabbling and snotty noses. But while Tamieka cooked and folded clean clothes, the statue played on her mind. When everything was done, and she’d switched money between accounts like a shell game in order to pay her final notice electricity bill, she sat down to flick through the book. The section on the goddess was short, but enough. She took out her phone and wrote a list. Equipment she needed and phone calls to make. In the stuffy meeting room the next day, Martin droned on about safety incidents and the number of postcards being nicked from the Gift Shop. Tamieka inspected her gnawed nails while the others stared blankly at their shoes. ‘You might have heard about Mo,’ Martin said. ’Poor bloke took a tumble off his motorbike on the weekend. So this means we’re short this week. I’m looking for volunteers for some extra shifts over the next few nights?’ ‘I’ll do it!’ Tamieka blurted, her reply like gunfire. Martin recoiled, then pressed his lips into a colourless line. ‘I don’t usually like females working nights.’ ‘Can you say that?’ Eshe raised an eyebrow and Martin grumbled under his breath. ‘I could really do with the extra cash,’ Tamieka said. ‘Don’t you have kids?’ ‘I’ll sort something out.’ Martin looked at the other three men in the room, all slouched in their plastic chairs with heads lowered. ‘Well,’ he grunted. ‘if there are no other takers.’ ‘Thanks,’ Tamieka said, hiding a smile. Before taking her place in the children’s room, she visited the fox-faced sculpture. This time, when no one was looking, she laid her palm against the cool grey stone. Later on her break, Tamieka sheltered out of sight in a doorway, vape in one hand, phone in the other. ‘I need it for tomorrow night,’ she said, exhaling a fake-strawberry scented cloud. ‘You promised. You owe me.’ The call ended, and she licked her lips, ticking another item off her list. Two nights later, the skirting boards of the Grand Hall glowed with green night lights. Through the glass ceiling, a full moon hung in the sky, waves of white light cast on the marble floor. The statue, her statue, was spot lit by the moon. She checked her phone, almost one o’clock, almost time. She did another casual circuit of the Hall before returning to the podium with a bag in her hand. At the base of the statue in the moonlight, she laid out a bronze bowl, a red rose nicked from the museum gardens, and a curved Damascus steel dagger. She slashed the sharpened blade across her palm. Blood dripped into the bowl as she clenched her fist and muttered a devotional verse. She crushed the red petals and dropped them into the mixture. Rusty-scented blood and sweet rose oil infused the air. With another invocation, she dipped her fingers into the bowl and traced a bloody line down the statue’s neck and across her chest. Then she smeared a similar red stripe on her own skin. Blood. Rose. Moonlight. Three nights in a row. And after the third night, it was done. ‘Let’s make a start.’ Martin clapped at the front of the room. ‘Where’s Tamieka?’ Eshe said with a frown. ‘I thought you were mates?’ Martin said. Eshe shrugged. ‘She quit.’ Eshe sighed. ‘I told her it was going to be boring.’ ‘Got some cushy job in Asia somewhere. On a resort, I think. Thailand. Or maybe Bali. Anyway, she’s gone.’ Eshe grumbled to herself. ‘Some bitches have all the luck.’ Madeleine D'Este is a Melbourne-based writer of dark mysteries. Her supernatural mystery novel The Flower and The Serpent was nominated for the Australian Shadow Award for Best Novel 2019, and her Australian gothic novella Radcliffe was released by Deadset Press in August 2023. Find Madeleine at www.madeleinedeste.com

In the center of Old Town, where the ruins of Quevdo are located, there’s a top that’s been spinning for as long as anyone can remember. The question is this: how are any of us to know whether its movement will continue indefinitely on, or if it simply received such powerful initial force that it will only stop spinning once the last of us has passed? My name is Juan Liber Brön. I am one of thirty-seven inhabitants in the town of New Quevdo. None of us speak the same language, though those who write all use the same script(1). We are not all human, not in the old sense. What that word used to mean (what we gather it to mean from older documents) is not what it means now(2). I’m in pain. All of us are(3). Most are dying. Slowly. Parts and pieces falling off at whatever interval suits them best. Here. There. Most try to keep hold of these tchotchkes as they do. __________________________ 1 The one you, my beautiful reader, are deciphering now. 2 There are drawings in some of the books we’ve found, drawings of old humans: two arms, two legs, a loving symmetry to their structure, one nose, tussles of tangled skin atop their skulls, knotted like string… Some of us resemble these drawings, if you look hard enough, but most don’t. I know for certain that only one has what you would call ‘toes.’ And even then just two. 3 The reason I write to you, dear reader, from the past, is that you are the only audience who exists. No one here understands my meaning, and though I’m considered an optimist amongst my people, even I acknowledge that we will be the last of creatures to crawl on this earth. (We’ve found that after about a week you have enough for a meal.) And though we have no language—the reason for which must now be obvious(4)—the people of New Quevdo do not lack culture. (Even the dying revere tradition.) So, when The Urge is felt, we gather up our fallen bits and cook them together over an open fire (for the broth we use our urine, the only liquid left acidic enough to soften our flesh); and while the meat boils, we thirty-seven gather ‘round the fire to hold ourselves as best we can. We sing and dance in a way no one from past times would recognize; but though most lost the ability to hear long ago, or never had it to begin with, in those moments we all feel(5) warmth. Nothing more. Our pain does not stop. It spins on like the top. But there, sitting around my fellow shards, eating them as I open my one eye cautiously to watch them eat me, I am almost able to bear the fact of my own existence. __________________________ 4 None of us any longer are constructed in a way similar enough to allow for common meaning. And our sensory organs, too, are always shifting. I myself have no nose or tongue. My eye works only sporadically. (I’ve gotten used to keeping it closed.) It is for this that even language in signs would be pointless, since the endless configuration of fingers and appendages on our haphazard torsos has refused every attempt at standardization. 5 I know this: though of course we cannot speak, this I know to be true) L. A. Ballesteros Gentile is a musician, writer, and actor. You can find their work in Progenitor Art and Literary Journal, Pipeline Artists, and Blue Marble Review.