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Our denial and patience have reached their limit. We must do something about the ghosts. Postings on them have gone through the roof. It’s a nationwide thing, like anxious, depressed kids. In many cases, they first manifested to children, and were written off as symptoms of anxiety and depression. More drugs were prescribed. But they turned out to be deficient at ghost blocking. Who knew that so many were dying with unresolved issues serious enough to keep them hanging around? Some are pathetic, like the ones still stewing over a prom snub. More often it’s about money. A cousin who felt cheated out of an inheritance makes the rounds scooping up loose change into a coffee can. The jangle can be more annoying than scary at 3 a.m.   Much as you try, some of their behaviors are hard to ignore. Maybe they lick the bacon, or scratch all the boxes on your lotto tickets, or spook the dog, having gotten good at vacuum-cleaner sounds. If you know who it is, you can leave a bribe on their grave. Ghosts get hungry, right? Who wouldn’t enjoy chicken nuggets and a smoothie after time underground? Or perhaps all they want is an apology. Sorry my success highlighted your failures. I never asked to be Mom’s favorite. Not all hauntings are so obvious though. That’s when we dust off the Ouija board and place nervous fingers on the planchette. “What have we got so far?” “MYFFWRL CWYLLA DRNDL.” “Is that Welsh?” “No, this spectral asshole is just screwin’ with us.” In the movies a plucky, marginal team from the local college hauls in equipment to measure temperature drops and identify garbled noises on the baby monitor. An actual ghost profiler smiles at such hocus pocus. “Your revenant is a classic case of fury over a rejected insurance claim, aggravated by a bad experience at keno.” A spirit genealogist, on the other hand, will want to sample the ectoplasm on that bacon and cross-reference it with DNA databases. Proprietary algorithms allow translation between genetic and apparitional markers. A ghost that can be dealt with by name and life history is a ghost at a disadvantage. Child phantoms are usually harmless. Not understanding that they have passed on, they simply search for playmates. Sidney M, however, who fell down and broke his crown pogoing, tried to  lure unsuspecting tykes into the horse pond. A high grudge quotient explains much recent activity. Social critics may point to heaped injustice to account for all the street ghosts that can be hard to distinguish from the homeless and transient. “Move along,” we want to say, “and don’t blame us that life seemed such a swindle.” Wraiths and panhandlers alike give the willies. The ones that really creep us out just stand staring on the lawn or at the curb. Of course they’ve vanished by the time the cops arrive. Yeah, we’ve carved a share of domestic comfort out of an uncomfortable world. So sue us. You can’t bargain with these things en masse the way you can with a pigheaded trade union. Ghosts are free agents, and it’s up to you to figure out their weird, aggrieved ghost logic one haunting at a time. And don’t fool yourself: you can’t round them up and dump them down a volcano crater, or somehow designate a salt flat or bayou an approved ghost landfill. If worse comes to worst, we may have to reconcile ourselves to living with these phantom squatters for the foreseeable future. The prize goes to those who can adapt. In the natural ebb and flow of things, many of them may eventually grow bored with this realm and drift toward the light. Sick as we are of being their psychic baggage handlers, maybe we can dig down and wish them some peace, however much we might prefer a moth’s fate for them. James Fowler has published a volume of short stories, Field Trip (Cornerpost Press, 2022). His short fiction has appeared in such journals as Caesura, Jokes Review, Aji Magazine, Gambling the Aisle, DASH , Southern Review, Elder Mountain , and Cave Region Review .

i want a word for that  barefooted breathing when god  sprouts out of the ground next to me  in a color that only exists  in may, a verb for the choreography  of flesh into blossom that says my name  in past tense as if i existed differently yesterday. maybe god is looking at me the same way i am jealous of moths trapped between window panes, i  in too many worlds to belong to any of them.  some days i still hear my mother calling me home out of eden. i think, in some future,  i will teach my children the songs we learn from trees, how to love the earth like a body. i will teach them that what is green is holy, and what is holy  lets things stay untold. the garden breathes  gently, opening its mouth to receive  the awaiting baptism: they are hearing, seeing  their faces in the poplars. Rowan Tate is a Romanian creative and curator of beauty. She reads nonfiction nature books, the backs of shampoo bottles, and sometimes minds.

The first photo pings Luka’s phone at 11:27 am, while he’s scrolling through Zillow listings of houses in Sun City that he can afford but will never buy. The text drops in at the top of his phone in a preview banner, the number is a 720 area code—one of two codes from his hometown, Denver. Someone from back in the day? He thumbs over to the message. It’s a photo without any text. 1. A stretch of beach, water foaming in gentle rills against smooth sand. An apricot- colored sunset sets two people walking in the water as silhouettes. Entering the frame from the right is a woman, cutoff jeans, bikini top, and flip-flops, blurred as she moves in the low light. She’d mid-laugh, her eye crinkled and teeth flashing. Shit. I think that’s Costa Rica. Three years ago, he’d almost moved there. After college, his International Finance professor who’d left academia to run a tiny nonprofit in Limón, recruited Luka to be their Director of Microlending. At the time, Luka couldn’t afford to visit, but after they talked logistics over a soundtrack of howler monkeys and crashing waves, his professor would pan the camera to show Luka the surf and giant green palms. On his own, Luka imbibed every photo he could find of the shorelines. He researched the hiking trails, parasailing, boating, and surfing. He scrolled through listings for houses a tenth of the size of a Vegas house. He mapped a life there, dreamt of a woman, just like the one in the photo, whose perfect day included leaving work while it was still light, grabbing the best rondón from a place only locals knew, and surfing until the sun set. In the end, he dismantled the Costa Rica life in the amount of time it took for him to read the number of zeroes on the offer letter from Le Grande Casino. Now, the memory of that almost-life surfaces. He tilts the phone so that the horizontal picture fills the frame. All the elements that attest to candidness of the shot—low light, graininess, and blurs—do not detract from the raw beauty of the image with its saturated striations of the sky and the fresh-faced openness of the woman’s visage. That could have been me. She could’ve been my girlfriend, teasing me to not take her picture. Clearly, it’s a wrong number, but the kismet of it, that a photo from his once-dreamed life would appear, causes a sense of dislocation so profound that he doesn’t delete it or say, “Sorry, wrong number.” He looks out his window to the wasteland of a dirt lot that is his daily view. He takes a photo. It’s 80% hazy sky and 20% washed-out yellow ground framed by the dark metal of his windows. It’s blown-out hot looking, but he’s freezing in the office and he wishes the photo captured that desert experience of extremes: searing heat and icebox air-conditioning. He sends the picture to the number. A new photo pops back. 2. A close-up of the waves, escrolls of white foam against speckled sand. Okay, unknown number, yes, you’ve got me beat on locale. He wants to hit the comedy of that contrast, so he texts back a close-up from his view: a pen cup half-filled with an assortment of cheap, chewed pens and one neon highlighter. He doesn’t hear anything for days. He fills his time searching through his old bookmarked Costa Rica sites. He browses the nonprofit’s website, reading and re-reading the little stories about the Bribri women-led business that benefited from the microloans. He sends a tentative email to his old prof asking after the nonprofit, then immediately agonizes over the wording—he didn’t want to give the prof false hope about his availability. Or, is it giving himself false hope? His first few months at Le Grande Casino, Luka had been agog at the amount of money moving through the place; he felt chosen and privileged, like he’d been deemed worthy to enter the echelons of a royal family or a drug empire. Yet, it wasn’t as if he handled bricks of cash and went to bed smelling of money. He moved digital numbers across columns on a screen and those zeroes smelled of stale sweat cooled by over-conditioned air. He sits at his desk, browsing houses in Costa Rica he could afford with one Vegas paycheck. His phone chimes. 3. Midafternoon at an outdoor market. Shoppers are blurred in movement, as if the photo is taken with a long exposure, and shopkeepers are in focus as they lean against stalls. The woman from the first photo is left of the frame. In a short-sleeve, denim blouse and a flowing skirt, she’s moving with the flow of shoppers. She stands out because she seems aware of the camera, her face turned away and an open-palmed hand rising to reset the handle of her canvas satchel on her shoulder. Luka imagines they’re at the market together, she’s tired from work, and he’s made one joke too many. She’s speed-walking back to their bungalow to prep some food so she can finally eat, ease all the hangry and forgive him, resting her head on his shoulder as they watch TV. He wants to see the next part of the story. But, he’s not sure about the lexicon and grammar of this weird, visual conversation. Do I need to send something in a comparable setting? Is the idea to highlight how sad America is? He sends a photo of the sterile, fluorescent-lit expanse of the produce section of Albertsons at 11:37 pm on a Sunday, the only person in the photos an overly-tanned woman in her sixties with disproportionately large breasts assessing the lemons. Three days later, when he hasn’t heard back, he wonders if the idea is to highlight how sad his life is, not America specifically. He sends a photo of his frozen Hungry-Man Smothered Salisbury Steak dinner on his beige Formica counter. 4. The woman, in profile. She’s a crescent moon in the dimness of the photo. She’s also at a meal, a fork held aloft with a spear of a long green vegetable—asparagus or maybe green bean—yet her mouth is in the shape of speaking, not eating. There’s a hint of glass and metal. Maybe she’s inside a house. The photo is taken from a low angle and a distance. Like an alley or side yard. Luka wishes he hadn’t seen this one. It’s the first time she doesn’t seem in on it, like she’s not participating in the narrative. So…was she part of any of the photos? Luka shuts off his phone and throws out his dinner. He lies in bed and can’t believe how angry he is at past Luka who chose this generic, safe life that has reduced him to this voyeur by proxy. He thought the person with the pictures had been somebody sharing their life, opening a window onto a view they knew Luka would appreciate, but now he feels like some dirty street-kid pressing his face against the glass of the store, watching regular customers buy all the candy he can only dream about. He punches his pillow and struggles to sleep. He drafts and then redrafts strongly worded texts renouncing this unusual riposte, but then argues himself into taking the offensive with a long list of interrogatives: Who are you? Why did you contact me? Who is that woman? He sleeps only after he resolves to block the number in the morning, without prelude or conversation. He wakes up to 27 new photos. They’re almost all of a boxy concrete house painted minty green. Every conceivable angle of the house is photographed. Interspersed with clear shots of the building are strange close-ups. 11. Weathered, warped sill of wood that creates a gap at the bottom of a closed window. 15. A dangling red shingle. 20. Chain link fence bisecting green grass and a little garden of weeds. 22. The insides of the street trash bin. Centered in the frame is a plastic bag spilling over with tissues, but positioned in a way that the words Playtex Super Absorbent Tampons on the box are readable through the thin plastic. 23. A tree root cracking the sidewalk. 27. The golden orb of a door handle. Each photo is bright and colorful; Luka can’t parse if the beauty of Costa Rica is so potent it shines through even in the grimiest of details, or if the photographer is consciously framing each shot to be impactful. Why this house? Is this his house? Or...is this the woman’s house? Is he stalking her? Can you take something like this to the police? Would LVPD consider a…situation…from Costa Rica? Luka texts his friend Mitch: Who’s that PI your mom used for the divorces? Mitch: Spanner? Guy’s a wank but he’ll destroy whoever you need him to. The contact file from Mitch lists the guy as Spanno-the-Whammo. Spanner is mystery-novel gumshoe come to life. Round, balding, and unfriendly, he immediately eases Luka’s anxiety. Finally, an adult is here to help. He doesn’t bat an eye as Luka explains the situation, simply takes notes with a worn-down betting pencil in a steno pad. He directs Luka to email each photo, but also flips through them, zooming in on details. Luka leans in to try and see what caught his interest, but Spanner doesn’t even pretend to accommodate Luka, keeping the phone close to his own face. He swipes up to access the EXIF data, but grunts, “’Course, it’s scrubbed.” He hands the phone back, then flips to a new page in his notebook for a series of questions about Luka’s history, current employment, and social network. At every answer, Spanner holds eye contact for a few beats, as if he’s not buying any of it and wants to give a chance for a truer answer. In some cases, Luka does splutter out more than he intended to say. “I’m worried about the woman.” Spanner grunts. He inhales hard and cautions, “We don’t know that’s her house in the pictures.” Luka knows that logically, but it doesn’t feel like the truth. “Still, I think we should figure out how to get in touch with her.” “Well,” Spanner leverages himself to standing, “this ain’t much to work with. But, I’ll see what I can do. Anything else comes in—send it to me pronto.” Anxious for either the mystery number or Spanner, Luka has a hard time putting his phone down, which complicates his workout routine at the gym. Pumping iron is only ramping up his heart rate when what he really needs to do is slow it down. The moment he takes out his phone to stop his playlist, it pings with an incoming text. 28. The woman’s face. Her mouth a wide O, the whites of her teeth slivers inside the darkness. Her eyes, blown wide and her arms up—one reaching towards the camera, one moving up to protect her face. It’s pure terror. “Holy shit,” Luka yells. He drops the 30 lb. weight onto the padded floor. 29. She’s against carpet. Her face out of frame, just the curve of her jaw and ear and the arch of her neck. Her dark hair fans out across the floor. A dark liquid, thick and dark as chocolate sauce, a penumbra around her head. Without thinking, Luka turns to the woman sitting up on the bench press and shows her the picture, “Is that blood?” He regrets it as soon as she jumps up with a “what the fuck?” “Sorry!” he yells as she moves away and collapses on the bench she just left. His hands shake so badly, he can’t get his workout gloves off. He yanks them with his teeth and manages to forward to Spanner with the question, “Is that what I think it is?” Spanno-the-Whammo: Shit. That’s not bueno. At home, Luka paces from room to room of the house. His big, empty, pointless house. Spanno-the-Whammo: My guy got to the EXIF data. These photos were taken months ago. My guy in CR says it connects to a cold case in Cahuita. An American expat with her throat slashed. This happened months ago. Nothing you could have done to save her, ok? Luka: GREAT. So he documents a murder and is still walking around free?????? Spanno-the-Whammo: I’ve got a lead, but it’s complicated. Call me. Luka can’t breathe. Why did I answer that first text? Okay, so maybe I wasn’t happy, per se, but this life. It’s good. I choose this life. I choose safe and normal. I can get a girlfriend who is happy and carefree. And you know what? She’ll be here with me and she’ll be normal and alive. The phone vibrates in his hand and Luka punches the green button. Spanner’s greeting is just a big sigh. “Listen, kid, this is big. This is a break in a bunch of other cold cases. That expat in CR wasn’t the first. This guy’s left a trail of dead people all across Europe. So now CIA and Interpol are involved.” “Okay, great! Glad to help out and all but why is he texting me?” “We don’t know. This guy’s smart. Kills in different ways, no clear link between victims—took a while to build a profile on him. It’s those pictures, though, something there.” Spanner’s tone is gentle, avuncular and the care he takes in speaking alarms Luka. “What do you mean? What do you mean: the photos of victims or to victims?” The text chime pings in his ear. He pulls the phone away to look, Spanner’s voice fading to mumbles. 1. The foreground, a wide stretch of jaundiced dirt. In the background, a cube of metals and windows. An office building. For a millisecond Luka’s impressed with the artistry of the image, the highly saturated blue contrasting against the pale-yellow dirt and that low angle positioning the building as a shimmering icon in some futuristic corporate dreamscape. But a millisecond after: That’s my office building. From outside, across the dirt lot. 2. A picture of Luka at Albertsons. His hair flopping over in his eyes as he fills a plastic bag with apples. In the background, a busty, tanned woman holds a lemon close to her face to smell it. Spanner’s voice, wafting up from the phone, “Luka! Kid, come on, let me explain.” 3. A close-up of a big black trash bin from the street. An empty Hungry-Man Smothered Salisbury Steak dinner on top of plastic heaps. Luka puts the phone back to his ear, and interrupts Spanner, “It’s too late. He’s here.” “Shit,” Spanner’s shouting is a rumble of rocks, “Luka! Stay calm, you hear me? Don’t open the door for nobody! I got Vegas PD on their way.” His phone pings again. Ping. Again. Ping. Spanner is a stream of inane encouragement, a series of hang in theres and we’re coming punctuated by huffed breaths, as if Spanner is trying to talk and run at the same time. Ping. “He’s sending me my own story but from the outside looking in, you know?” Ping. “No, I don’t know, kid, what’re you—” Ping. “If you don’t stop him, Spanner, he’s going to use my story to lure someone else in. My weird, sad life packaged together as bait for someone else.” “Kid, what’re you saying?” Ping. “Just that they’ll see the pictures and the pictures don’t show how it felt, you know?” “I mean, I guess—but, kid you’re getting ahead of yourself. We’re close!” Ping. Luka pulls the phone away without hanging up. He knows what the next photos are without looking. He knows Costa Rica would have been the better life. He knows that if he could do it again, he would choose the complicated life, the scuffed, charmed, make-less-money life traveling to volcanoes, taking pictures of macaws, learning to speak another language so earnestly his clients forgive his bad accent, and counting bigger things than zeroes. And he knows that he won’t get the chance. Luka looks up to squares of black that show nothing of the outside that is burnt air and flatness as his phone pings with pictures of his house, every security weak point beautifully lit and perfectly composed. Reneé Bibby (she/her) is a writer based in Tucson, Arizona. She teaches at The Writers Studio and reads for Brink. Her work has appeared in PRISM International, Luna Station Quarterly, Taco Bell Quarterly, The Worcester Review, and Wildness. Her stories have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions. Reneé coordinates a yearly Rejection Competition for writers—all writers welcome! More at reneebibby.com.

Tira plucked the sethel flower off the stem and sucked the starlight from it. It hinted at sweetness, teasing like the moon on this cloudy evening. “Get out of there, foreigner!” One of the old human women from the village shook her cane at Tira. “Go on, get!” Tira hunched her shoulders. She had her gloves, hood, and scarf on, but the constellations on her skin twinkled through the fabric anyway. The old woman must have spotted her glow from the road and traipsed down to the sewage drain just to chase her off. The sweetness faded on Tira’s tongue, and she tore a few sethel weeds and stuffed them in her pocket. “It’s not your field. It’s no one’s. You can’t tell me what to do.” “Just like those weeds.” The old woman traipsed towards her, shaking her cane. “We don’t want you here.” “Why not?” Tira straightened, the nectar stuttering in her veins. A sliver of exposed skin at her wrist flickered, the points of light there fading, and her stomach rumbled. She needed more sethel flowers. “Because I’m fey?” “Now don’t turn this around on me,” the woman said. “I don’t see shimmer. The problem is you’re a thief. I’ll call my two boys on you, see if I don’t.” “You don’t know anything about me.” “I know you’re a leech!” The woman swung her cane. “Tapez,” Tira whispered. The constellation wrapping her torso—Tapez, the Winged Warrioress—flared crisp and bright through her clothes in the darkness of the late evening. The cane clanged against her skin, and the woman cried out. She dropped the cane and held her hand as if she’d hit a steel wall. “You can’t hurt me,” Tira said. She took off galloping down the road before her tears called her bluff. Tira’s mother brushed out her daughter’s hair, humming after a simple meal of potatoes and herbs. They camped outside of town in the shelter of a little copse of trees away from the road. “How can I make them listen, Mama?” Tira chewed on her nails. “Is there anything I can do?” Her mother gathered strands of hair and plaited them around Tira’s head, pinning them with age-freckled hands. It seemed only months ago that her mother had had clear eyes and a smooth voice. Time played cruel, though, with humans, and ‘months’ to Tira meant ‘years’ to everyone else. “You can’t make someone hear when they muffle their own ears, dearest.” Tira played with the stems she had grabbed before the old woman had chased her off. She’d already drunk the rest of the sethel nectar, or condensed starlight, and still her skin flickered like tremulous candles in the too-warm light of day. Activating her constellations took so much energy. Tapez’s wings around her waist lay folded and dun. Iliadri’s Eye on her right wrist, the symbol of sharp sight, blinked as if sleepy. “Anyone can take sethel on the side of the road. No human wants them; they’re weeds. Why do they care if I do it?” She tore one of her nails and it bled. “I didn’t ask to be like this.” “Now, listen here, young star-fey.” Her mother gripped Tira’s shoulders, and her eyes flashed with protective anger that reminded Tira of starlight. “You sprung up with a shimmer, with nary a drop of fey in your bloodline. Some people see that and get afraid. They see something they didn’t plant as a weed, as something to be dug up. But others—like me, dear heart—see it as a gift.” She pressed a kiss to the top of Tira’s head. Tira laid the sethel stems by her bedroll and wrapped her arms around her mother. “I’m so lucky to have you for a mama. I want to be like you and see the best in people.” “Why, what a co-inky-dink. I want to be like you.” She tickled Tira under the arms, gentler than she had in the past, with shaking fingers. Tira shrieked and they dissolved in mock fights and laughter, until her mother left to sell herbs in the village and Tira fell asleep under the shade of the trees. The next night, Tira wandered the roadsides, searching for sethel. She kept to the edge of the ditch, away from the view of the road. Her stomach rumbled. She could use Iliadri’s Eye to cause the starlight in the sethel weeds to glow but activating another constellation so soon would drain her to the brink of exhaustion. Within half an hour, two figures sauntered through the field towards her, carrying a pitchfork and a shovel. Tira dashed up the ravine towards a wooded area, but her breath shortened in her lungs, and the glow of her skin sputtered, and her pursuers had no such difficulty. “Fey-leech,” one of them called close behind, with a thin voice like a reed in the wind. A young man. “Our grandma said you’d be here.” The other raced to cut her off in front. She slowed, shot a glance behind. The first stabbed his pitchfork into the ground. “You have five seconds to get out of here.” “I’m hoping it don’t, Vasr,” said the boy in front, the one with a shovel. His chin seemed to have thought about growing a beard but had hesitated and stopped halfway. “I’ve heard they bleed purple, and I want to see.” Tira bolted to the side. Half-beard boy chucked his shovel at her. It sliced into her calves, knocking her to the ground. She cried out. “No, no!” She didn’t have enough energy to activate Tapez yet! She tried to stand, but Vasr kicked her in the side and pinned her to the ground with his knee in her chest. “The knife, try the knife,” Half-beard said. Pain along her arm, a deep cut. Warm stickiness, like nectar, leaving her body. Her skin flickered. So tired. Exhaustion had dogged her before this, and now...what was the point? Why fight against such loathing when it flared so constantly? “Yes! It worked!” Vasr’s thin voice, high and shrill. “Aww. It’s just red.” How would her mother see these two? Would she find any “gifts” hidden in the muck of their hatred? Her mother could do that—see things where others didn’t. Reveal them… A desperate idea shimmered in her head, and the backdrop of pain blurred out. “Iliadri,” she said. The Eye flared on her shoulder. “What’s that? What’s she doing?” Tira opened her eyes. She’d always used Iliadri to find sethel before, but now, with it directed at the two boys, it illuminated something else. Something on their skin. Iliadri’s Eye peeled back their humanity, revealing a single star shimmering inside each of them. Wonder overcame her pain. Did stars hide inside all humans, waiting to shine, waiting to be found? I’ve seen starlight in Mama’s eyes, before. Once exposed, the stars spread like weeds in a wild field, and the two boys’ skin shimmered, lit up with hundreds of little points of light. “Ahh! Ahh! Make it stop!” She slumped, her energy drained, everything she had spent. Vasr screamed and ran. Half-beard stared at his hands. Fey hands. “Now you can... see how we bleed,” she said. Half-beard lifted his head, and then reached out for the shovel. He traipsed over to her, anger, fear, and loathing connecting in his eyes like a constellation of war. Dear Tapez, she thought. I had to go and taunt him. She didn’t have the strength. Her eyes closed without her consent, and darkness dragged her under. When she woke, the shovel lay at her feet. Emmie Christie’s work includes practical subjects, like feminism and mental health, and speculative subjects, like unicorns and affordable healthcare. Her novel A Caged and Restless Magic debuted March 2024. She has been published in Daily Science Fiction, Infinite Worlds Magazine, and Flash Fiction Online, among others. Find her at www.emmiechristie.com.

From where you crouch, the city is a swarm of lights. You hear the horn of the final ferry and know it carries the day’s last tourists. And the handful of locals who work in the city, they’re unlocking their front doors right about now, settling in for supper. The island feels like itself again. Except for the dark rot you smell. It drifts up at you, across the swamp and through the trees, riding the harbor mist. The stink of them makes you sick with anger. A simmering rage. To come here. Bring their filth. The audacity to think they’d fit in. Belong. You squeeze your hands into fists, relax, do it again. Since you first Awakened two days ago, you’ve gotten better at sniffing them out, tracking them. It’s easier at night, when the tourists have gone back to their hotels across the bay and the pizza ovens are cool and the lobster roll carts are locked away in the garage behind the inn. At night, with the cacophonous dream of summer sleeping, there are no distractions. Just the buzz of insects. The wash of the tide. The suck of the earth on your bare feet. You push your face out and upward, pulled by the moon, and breathe deep. Again. And there it is. A tendril of sickly decay snaking up from somewhere below. To the east. You move along the edge of the ancient battery, all crumbling concrete and fading graffiti. Silently you pause, lift your face again. There it is. You mark cardinal south by the Headlight on the mainland and begin climbing down the backside of the battery. Then it’s sixteen quick paces, a turn to the east, and you’re gliding toward the far side of the island. Near the lighthouse you stop. There hasn’t been a keeper for many years, you know, but sometimes the private security guard from The Shorecrest parks his cart there to catch a nap. He’s not there now, nowhere you can see, so you hasten to the lighthouse and quickly ascend, pulling yourself up the thirty-two damp iron rungs. You know it’s close. The stink of it fills your nose, bullies up into your sinuses. Then you catch the fresh edge of it, no more than a hundred yards from you, and you’re down the side of the lighthouse, scrambling across the boulders above the tide pools. You see him through the window. The disgusting thing sits on a couch that once belonged to Mark Frewer. Mr. Frewer, who always let you sneak a piece of taffy from the bin when your mother wasn’t looking. A kind man. A good man. And now this thing sits on his couch, watching his television, sucking his microwave dinner into its sickening mouth. Its face is a caricature. Its flesh an offense. You feel the rage in you fire up, begin to hum like a diesel generator. Staring at this repulsive approximation of the good man you knew, you are filled with holy fire. You find a window in the kitchen. Let yourself in. “Luther!” the thing says, seeing you approach. Your name is a blasphemy on its lips. Repugnant. You push the knife into it there, its revolting mouth. It begins to make noises and thrash. They all betray themselves like this in the end, and you feel vindication. The fire burns clean and white now. You twist the knife, pull it out, push it back. The thing’s repellent hands swipe at you, slap like paddles. You push the knife into what looks like a neck. Once. Three times. A volley of blood parades onto the television. Or what would be blood. Were it human. You pull the thing onto the floor and open it with the knife. The reek of it is nearly overwhelming. You don’t know where they come from, but it must be a vile and wretched place, a cesspool of abomination. But you learn more each time. And as long as they keep coming, keep encroaching, keep replacing, you’ll be ready. You’ve learned so much already since Awakening. They don’t know who they’re dealing with. What you’re willing to do. To protect your island. In the flickering light of the television, you begin to take the thing apart. You’re awakened by the chug of a helicopter. Even down here, in the dank belly of the battery, you feel the pressure shift as the thing goes overhead. You carefully creep to the mouth of the cement throat where you’ve slept. Peek around the corner. The woods are still. You slink across the wet concrete, peer out the other side. The reeds betray nothing. Moments later, you crawl on your belly across the battery’s roof, look out toward the cold Atlantic. The helicopter sits idling in the meadow across from the lighthouse. Near it, the island’s only liveried cruiser flashes blue streaks across its wall. The sun still hides below the sea, but the sky blooms apricot across the horizon. Muffled voices, crackling and alien, shoot up at you from behind. You scramble across the battery once more, settling down on its western edge, looking across town to where the ferry steams closer from the terminal at Old Port, its deck a fireworks display of pulsing blue and whetted shatters of red. They’ve found the thing at Mr. Frewer’s, you know. And from the crowd you can make out gathering near the inn, they’ve likely found the creature that took Andrew Nielson’s place in the apartment over the bike shop. The horror that came from away and replaced your mother. In your very home. How dare they. You watch the ferry draw nearer. You hear the chop of another helicopter and see it now over the water, racing to pass the ship. You thought you’d have more time, but you don’t need it. Let them come. This is your island. Your family’s. For generations. So let them come. They don’t know who they’re dealing with. You’re Awake now. Jacob Strunk has been short-listed for both a Student Academy Award and the Pushcart Prize in fiction, as well as the Glimmer Train short story award and a New Rivers Press book prize. His genre-bending fiction has appeared in print for over twenty years, most recently in Coffin Bell, The Writing Disorder, and his 2023 collection Screaming in Tongues. He earned his MFA in creative writing from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program and teaches film and media in Los Angeles, where he lives with a few framed movie posters and the ghost of his cat, Stephen.

Looking back, I should’ve been an astronaut: brave, weightless yet still attached to the ground, the balance that would answer all the Earth lessons I’m learning. Above all else, astronauts reached the sky’s kindest soul, did more than look at the Moon. They didn’t do it on their own, but no one else crossed the distance. They have the joy of being surrounded by expanding nothingness while being able to kiss their fingers to their palms and see the Earth fit into a small hole. They can hold Everything. I don’t have many things to hold and it still all spills between my fingers like shattered space rocks, dying comets that travel the distance between shaky hands and dirt graves. I wonder if it’s too late, I wonder if it’d be irresponsible to try and hold “I should be an astronaut.” I wonder if the Moon is waiting Wallace Truesdale II (he/him) is a writer based out of the U.S. East Coast. He has a BA in journalism and media studies from Rutgers School of Communication and Information. He was a finalist for his poem "The Seed of Talent" in Press 53's 2023 Prime Number Magazine Award for Poetry. When not writing, he's reading, playing games, and ruining his teeth with sweets.

The god reaches down with sinewy arms like tender vines they curl around the bite-sized human He knits a garment out of honey and lavender His sugary song coaxes the human into a slumber The human clenches then unfurls its palms as it dreams Poison ivy burgeons over the mossy earth Scorpions slit the human’s lips, scuttling out to seek their prey The creatures in the forest attempt to flee Darting from side to side through the labyrinthian terrain And the god laughs And the god laughs Amanda C is a poet and singer-songwriter from Hong Kong. She writes about love, sadness, and mental health, and has self-published five poetry collections. Amanda is currently studying for her MA in English Literary Studies. She can be found on Instagram @skinandthoughts

I work long into the night making the birds, sewing the slender feathers with fine thread, knitting the tiny hearts, the miniature lungs. When one is finished, I take it to the cliff and hold it in my palm until it wakes up, blinking the glossy black pebbles of its eyes. It will shiver and rise onto uncertain legs, but once the blue fills its brain, it will open its wings and fly. These days, many of them are broken. My hands are no longer steady when I tie off the ends, and sometimes the birds’ hearts beat irregularly, or not at all. Some of my birds flounder when they try to soar. Not remembering how to fold their wings when they raise them and open them wide when they bring them down, they topple to their deaths. Once I made a bird who could only fly in circles. Around and around it flew, unable to stop, unable to land, until it died of exhaustion and thirst. Some never wake up at all, but the saddest are the ones who awaken but cannot remember who they are in the world. The people in town scorn me as a do-nothing. They shoot my birds without caring, roast them, dress them with herbs, make gravies from their sweet bodies, suck on their precious bones, as if they exist for no other reason. They stalk my birds with dogs and guns. They force the tender bodies into cages. Still, I rise in the cool dark and listen for the voice that tells me: thrush, quail, kite, leghorn, or yellow-rumped warbler. Down, bristle, filoplume. Talons or webs. Beak and bill. What else can I do? I didn’t ask to be the maker of birds, any more than the birds asked to be created to fly and perish. I doubt they are ever grateful. They soon forget the smell of my skin. They shake off the gravity that bound them to me, for a moment. Jill Jepson is the author of Writing as a Sacred Path and Women’s Concerns: Twelve Women Entrepreneurs of the 18th and 19th Centuries, and the editor of No Walls of Stone: An Anthology of Literature by Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Writers. Her work has appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, A Woman’s Path: Women’s Best Spiritual Travel Writing, Gordon Square Review, and other literary journals.

It is difficult to pinpoint when my insomnia started. I remember fitful sleep, filled with agitated dreams of clanking noises and foul odors. I remember long darkness slowly giving way to cumbersome dormancy, only to be bothered by some clamoring outside my bedroom. Then, sleep evaded me completely, and I trudged through each day with tired bones and a head full of cobwebs. Without the catharsis of dreams to soothe my weary mind, I began to turn my attention to those goings-on in the city after dark. There was the queer murmuring of night creatures rummaging through trash. There was the discordance of horns, sirens, and roaring engines from frustrated vehicles locked in passage. Many voices echoed in the streets, searching for excitement under the midnight shadows. My roommate was one of these searchers. Almost in spite of my sleeplessness, he seemed to have developed the opposite condition. Deep into the night, I heard his key scrape in the lock. Stumbling, heavy footsteps blundered to his bed, where he disappeared into a noiseless sleep. Then came the stench of urban liveliness: stagnant rainwater and putrid mud, human sweat, and the dense, earthen smell of stale beer. Beneath these odors was some intoxicating pheromone, like the restless atmosphere right before a lightning strike. I laid awake all night, musing about his late-night excursions. Visions of riotous parties came to me, a phantasmagoria of darkened revelries filled with roguish dilettantes and sinister fiends. What else but a night of earthly pleasure could make him sleep so soundlessly? What else could gather that sour reek he wore like a perfume? Sleepless nights turned to sleepless weeks, and still nothing could deter my roommate from his routine. My occupation was exhausting in those days, doubly so without the proper rest to grapple with its challenges. Worse, I was incapable of working without ruminating on my somnolent roommate. The bosses had several discussions with me about my performance, for which I was genuinely apologetic, before they finally put me on a temporary leave. Free from the debilitating side-effects of my job, I expected to get some sleep. Just as I drifted off, there was my roommate. Crashing through the door. Jangling his keys. Bringing with him that enticing miasma, which promised a hallucinatory night beyond my wildest imagination. No, I didn’t need rest. My solution hid in the dark corners of my roommate’s regular haunts. I confronted my roommate. It was noon, possibly the only hour where I could catch him awake. He was pouring some brown gruel into a bowl, half asleep at the kitchen table, when I pulled up the chair next to him and placed a steaming cup of coffee by his hand. His eyes flashed. He brought the cup to his lips, gulping the liquid down in one swig. He shivered, a slight frown forming as he realized his surroundings. He ate a spoonful of gruel. “How’ve you been?” They were my first words to him in months. In fact, it was our first time face-to-face since my insomnia. I found myself puzzling over his features, grasping at attributes like searching for familiarity in a long-lost friend. Had his nose always been so stubby? His ears always so flared? And his eyes! Hadn’t they been blue instead of iridescent green? He grumbled a reply, gruel dripping onto his chin. I sat for a while, trying to recount our first meeting, searching my mind’s eye for an image of my roommate. Finally, I relented, noting this as an effect of my sleep-deprived mind. “What’s that? More coffee?” I dipped into the kitchen to pour us both another cup. He drank and ate. Ate and drank. Gradually, strength replaced feebleness. He sat upright, scarfing down that abhorrent brown mush, finishing with a belch and a final swig of coffee. “Hopefully you haven’t been working late.” Directness had always been difficult between my roommate and I, with discussion impossible over the preceding months due to his weariness and my insomnia. But something nagged at me. That delightful pheromone beneath the rancid stench. The promise of a night filled with earthly wonders. I pressed him. “Must be exhausting.” At this, my roommate let slip a sly smile. “Oh no, not working. Why? Am I behind on rent?” “No, no. You’re just out so often, and so tired during the day–” “Oh.” The remark fell out of his mouth and a daze came over him, as if suddenly enraptured by a powerful daydream. “Well, I would hate to intrude, but is there a bar you usually go to? Or club?” His delight sealed itself behind pinched lips. His eyes betrayed a reluctance to share, but beneath that reluctance was fear. Fear of spilling a secret. “It’s alright if it’s some kind of exclusive event. Some friends are interested in going out. We were looking for a few other destinations to add to our pub crawl.” I tried to smile through the lie. I didn’t have any friends. Not then. “Right,” he said, “It’s exclusive.” And with that, he noticed his gruel was gone. He thanked me for the coffee, deposited dishes in the sink, and tumbled back into bed. Another fitful night passed. More stomping from my roommate in the hours after midnight. More of that smell, now enticing and sweet, like a voluptuous flower. Still, that unearthly pheromone lay outside of my identification, nagging and scratching at the base of my skull. I craved that deep chasm my roommate fell into every night. If he wouldn’t give me the roaring release of ecstasy that I needed to rest properly, then I would take it for myself. Finally, I decided to follow him. His leaving wasn’t half as noisy as his arriving. Some days, he seemed to disappear in the afternoon and reappear after midnight. Waiting in our common area for him to embark would give up my aim too easily, and I wouldn’t risk another stagnant conversation. One day, as the sun was setting, I heard the quiet hush of our door on its hinges. I burst from my bed and waited for some sign that my roommate had left, then carefully opened the door. Peeking into the hallway, I saw him disappear down a stairwell. Elation. Exuberance. These things pulled at my heart and set it pounding in my chest. Without waiting, I grabbed my keys and coat and jumped into my pursuit. I followed him down the hallway and into a dank stairwell. Footsteps echoed below, and the door rattled shut. I rushed down the stairwell and arrived at the exit, where a sliver of window offered a view of the surrounding street. The atmosphere was ripe with fading daylight. Neon signs hung low over the sidewalk, advertising numerous goods and services. The buildings were decrepit things, buzzing with the beginning whispers of nightlife. Everywhere, people jostled back and forth, exchanging one greasy bar for the next, preparing for a sumptuous evening. Amidst it all, like a spider scurrying over its web, went my roommate. He crawled across patrons and scrambled through crowds, stopping briefly to greet acquaintances here and there. Occasionally, he would meet one or two passersby and become absorbed in furtive conversation. The whole of the street moved around them, a rushing river of bodies reshaping its path, only for those halted individuals to rejoin the stream after sharing their brief secret. Through all of this, I slunk after my roommate. I hid in door frames hung at jaunty, haphazard angles. I dipped into shops filled with miscellaneous antiquities and squinted through dirty windows, across crowds, watching him. Not once could I hear his conversations or understand the details of his engagements. When the sun had finally set and the first stars twinkled in the sky, my roommate entered a restaurant, and the animated diners greeted him as an old friend. From my place at a cafe across the street, I smelled the sharp, tangy odor of meats cured in countless spices. It was then that I realized a peculiarity of these acquaintances. Each was some strange hybrid of the other. Two had the same upturned nose. Three had the same pointed lips. Their bodies were a patchwork of repeated appendages and shared features, so their group gave the impression of a distant family. But as I observed, my head grew heavy with sleep. I was almost delighted, almost rushed back to my apartment to capitalize on this newfound somnolence. But my mission, and my curiosity, ushered me on, so I ordered a coffee to counteract my exhaustion. My roommate and his friends stayed at the restaurant for some time. They ate steaming meat with thick sauces rich with vegetables, their delectable smell wafting across the street and calling me like some siren’s song to join them. While this odor was curious, it was not the alluring pheromone that set me on my quest. They drank pitchers and pitchers of beer, each emptied glass immediately filled again by a drunken friend. One hour before the peak of night, the cheerful group settled their bill and departed the restaurant. As they went, they gathered other individuals I recognized from earlier. Each new arrival bore some twinned aspect from the last, and revelation struck me. It was the memory of my roommate and our hopeless conversation. Those weird features, somehow subtly different from the man I’d first met. Did they match the features of someone here? I began to follow them more closely, scrutinizing their appearances, but their path turned from busy streets to darkened alleys, making my pursuit even more difficult. My roommate and his compatriots got ahead of me, so I followed the sound of them fraternizing through the labyrinthine side streets. The alley dumped me onto another major thoroughfare, although this street was foreign to me. Strange, jagged characters were scrawled across the signs of buildings, calling out their purpose to anyone who could make sense of the twisted letters. Dozens of bizarre smells accompanied this unfamiliar street, and a smile twitched on my lips. Among these odors was that pheromone I recognized from my roommate’s many late night entries. That bewitching aroma must be emanating from a restaurant, as it was the delicious scent of roasting meat. Somewhere along this street was their final stop, which offered a meal so exquisite it would cure my nagging obsession and give me rest. Dazed from this assault on my senses, I quickly checked the street for my roommate and his party, worried that I had let them slip from my attention. The sidewalk activity was dwindling, with most residents entering their final club of the night. Just as I was about to give up hope, I spied my roommate ducking into another alley. I sighed, exasperated. I was dead tired. I thought of calling a cab to navigate these winding streets and take me home. Then, I heard the music. A delightful woodwind melody floated out of the alley and down the street, capturing my ears and forcing my attention. This music dashed away the ruins that surrounded me and replaced them with a vibrant landscape. It was the sound of a lonely forest overlooking an immense body of water, with the sun perched low in the sky, preparing for its descent. As I stepped closer, I heard more instruments to accompany that light melody. The soft pull of strings. The gentle beat of a drum. Rocks, underbrush, and creatures populated my dream forest with wonderful vividness. I arrived at the mouth of the alley. This ruined brick canyon, hewn from defunct buildings, led to an establishment. A neon sign flickered above the entrance, but the lettering was unintelligible. My roommate and his friends cavorted down the alley, ignoring garbage heaps and broken bottles. They met a man at the front door who recognized them immediately and bid them enter. When the door opened, music soared from within. With it came the laughter of guests inside. That music drew me closer. I stuck tight to the walls, avoiding detection by the club’s lone sentry, and approached a battered window. Patrons filled the club, dancing and conversing in a spirited frenzy. Among them all, I noticed those repeated features. Could this be some outlandish family reunion? But that wouldn’t explain the imperceptible change in my roommate’s features. I shifted at the window, struggling to peer closer. There was a wide, open floor where countless bodies swayed together in time with the delicate music. On stage, a band practiced their art. It was curious, but I could not deny the power their music had over me. Once again, it conjured the image of a lush forest, but now I heard voices between the trees. Whispers, like the rustling of leaves, dashed back and forth between trunks and drew me into the woods. Whispers turned to conversation, which became the forceful chanting of many voices. And the music changed. A deep bass line struck the room, rousing me from my vision of the forest. It vibrated beneath my skin like a subdermal itch. Everywhere, all over me, my flesh crawled, yearning to be free. From my place in the window, I watched this effect taking hold over the occupants. They shook and rattled on the floor, faces tuned to rapturous anticipation. My heart pounded as my body pulsed with the music. Breathless, I wrenched my eyes away from the window and fell to the ground. My curiosity was satisfied. I wanted to be home in bed. I would leave and sleep soundlessly, like my expedition had never happened at all. A heavy hand fell onto my shoulder. I froze. It was the establishment’s guard. His skin fluttered, reverberating with each beat of the drum inside, which grew heavier and heavier as each stroke fell. Staring at the man and his quivering flesh, a whimper lodged itself in my throat. The guard lifted his hand off my shoulder, smiling. Turning it over, he presented his hand to me. The music, the powerful wiles of that sound, compelled me to take his hand. He lifted me off the ground and led me into the building. The entire building thrummed with raucous music. Percussion. Bass. Rhythm. Noises throbbed together, resounding inside my body, building to some climax that threatened to tear open my flesh. The listeners were not concerned. They danced, jumbling their bodies together, each movement matched to a dozen competing cadences. The music erupted. My skin, so eager to be free of the flesh it protected, slipped off my body and congealed on the floor in a steaming puddle. The others shed their skin too, leaving behind rippling muscle and white bone. Their jaws opened, cackling, with no smile to note their apparent euphoria. A familiar smell filled the room, the one that had sparked my curiosity before. That enticing pheromone was the smell of melting flesh. I stumbled backwards, away from the quagmire of skin on the dance floor, and screamed. My lungs flexed, my throat rippled, pushing out that deep howl. But as the music continued to build, my lungs, heart, and bowels all fell from my shuddering skeletal frame with a heap of other organs. I watched my lungs twitch on the ground with the final gasp of my scream, and then they fell still. Without ears to hear, sounds thrummed heavily inside my mind. The listeners’ cries of elation ceased, replaced by the clattering of bones and squish of mutilated flesh beneath our feet. And there was the music, building, building, building. Muscles untwined themselves from my bones and dropped to the floor, leaving only my eyes dangling loose in their sockets and my mind boiling with madness inside its skull. I fell to my knees, arms outstretched, wishing for a mouth with which to plead. Wishing for lungs with which to scream. The dancers watched me, skulls tuned to a look of sympathy. Our bones shattered, dissipating into dust that floated in rugged patterns throughout the room. Just as I thought my sapience would slip away forever, and I would join these dancers as so many motes of lifeless flesh, the music tore whatever threadbare cosmic tapestry was keeping this reality in place, and I began to dream. There was no forest or ocean. There was only a togetherness like I have never known. Intimate details of strange lives drifted in and out of my purview, and I felt widening eyes grow to absorb the minutiae of my own life. Hopes, dreams, fears, and pleasures swirled together in a grand kaleidoscope until I could no longer remember which memories belonged to me. Accompanying this fantasy was the strange rhythm that turned me to dust. It was there where I found rest. I awoke in my own bed with the sun low on the horizon. Night approached, and my first thoughts yearned for music. Then, I remembered my roommate, the journey, and our horrible dismemberment. I rushed to a mirror and screamed. My body was no longer wholly my own. It was a delicate miscellany of interwoven flesh that I now shared with some unknown member of that secret club. Strange memories burned just outside of my mind’s eye, teasing me with the visions of someone else’s life. For several nights, I didn’t leave my bedroom. I slept deeply, and each night brought new friends to my luscious dreamscape. Among them was my roommate, who greeted me as a forgotten friend. He mentored me, teaching me to travel between minds along the byways of our shared experience. When I was strong enough, I joined their midnight wanderings. Now, sleep comes like a host of silent spirits, whisking me away to black dreamscapes of swirling fabric sewn from a hundred secret desires. Together, we dream of a grand forest. In our forest, we are building a divine palace where all will be welcome. Someday, we will bring it into reality. Jonathan Mitchell lives in Columbus, Ohio and enjoys reading and writing weird stories.

I raise my infant son and daughter, onto the barrier. We look out on a sea of chrome, southbound only, flickering into the distance. For miles forwards and backwards, engines ticking, are cars jammed for generations. The air thickens, heavy with tar and blackberry and leather. Yellow light spills across the slip road. Golden sunshine, all-encompassing and pure. Heat. Like moving through wax, a million souls walk the motorway. I hold a hand against the glare as the asphalt shimmers, black ink pooling, turning silver grey. Then the shift comes, transition, disorientation. Forwards, backwards, you can never be sure. It could be purgation, or forced attrition, but you're with me again. This one was a turning point. Another memory, stirred, from the last time. To hold you, to kiss you in the pagoda. I know it's an intersection, and I can't decide. The wrong words come and I grasp the edges, time shifts and I'm back in the lanes. Another jump, another time. The sun shrinks, then expands, glaring, targeted like a nuclear strike. I'm staring up from the sands, to where the angel hovers, sweeping down with clawed hands as the crowd roars. I snap back to the sticky heat and petrol fumes, the lines of marching ants. Nothing moves on the northbound side. I have tried to cross the barrier, but the membrane is impassable. It's not a bad existence. I have my family, between these white lines. And if I am fortunate, when time leaps like a salmon, shifts and convalesces, I am with you again, one way or another. Hailing from Croydon, Andrew Kolarik spent ten years writing post-punk lyrics for live performance in London and Cardiff. He has written poetry, short fiction, and film criticism appearing or forthcoming in publications including Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Film  International, Down in the Dirt, Carillon, Pulp Metal Magazine, Supernatural Tales, Eunoia Review, Horla, Black Poppy Review, Spectral Realms, and Yellow Mama. Outside of his  writing, Andrew is a musician and student of Vietnamese Tai Chi. He lives in Cambridge.

The traditions recycled and passed down on an earth that forever stood still. An essence diluted to the dusty remains of some forgotten desert in the Nile Valley. A blueprint of life and the fear to push back against it. But in the heart of Ancient Greece, life existed not for tradition but for progress. Amphoras spawned from Minoan hands, the eight-legged symmetry of being. The Athenian mourners united in grief; the fertile soil of despair and decay. The mortal form, granted eternal, yet not to sit as a token before the gods, but to push a body to the edge of Olympus, and boldly ask for more. It was never art for art's sake nor perfection preserved in a bronze mould. For every pillar or mound of red clay spoke forth through the years with an instruction. To take the essence entwined with life itself and weave the boundaries beyond the horizon. To honour a fondness for what stood before by daring to want to be better. Benjamin Parker is a poet based in North Wales with works published in publications such as The Uncoiled, The Purposeful Mayonnaise, and Nawr Mag. Benjamin graduated with First-Class Honours in English Literature and Creative Writing at the Open University and is now studying an MA in English Literature.

Ingram slogged through the downpour to watch the execution of the hex. His calloused fingers were wrapped around the tight straps of his wife's wicker basket, filled to the brim with tomatoes and onions and mullets for tonight's dinner. The mud sucked at the leather of his boots as he pushed through the crowd that had gathered in front of the town square's ramshackle scaffold. Ingram stood in a pool of water that reflected the leaden clouds from which poured unending strings of rain. Somewhere behind the cloudscape existed a sun he had not seen for days. "Bring forth the hex," the headsman bellowed. Two guardsmen carried onto the platform a naked man whose every bone pushed against the skin in rebellion against the little food he had been given since his capture. He was tied at the ankles and the wrists and gagged with a dirty cloth, and he wriggled like a worm in a child's hand when the guardsmen pushed his head against the chopping block. It was the fifth execution of the month; Ingram had seen every one, as had every other villager, because to miss an execution was suspicious at the least. The headsman's voice rippled over the crowd. "Bear witness, for here kneels a man guilty of hexcraft. One who can twist and warp shadows to his will. He is an abomination unto nature and a corrupted soul. Let his death warn all those who are tempted to walk the path of the cursed craft." The headsman turned to the man and gripped with both hands the haft of his ax. "By the laws of the realm, your life is hereby forfeit." As the headsman raised the ax above his head and readied himself to bring it down, the platform plunged into darkness. The little light that served as a reminder of the gray morn was pushed away in a wide circle around the hex, covering the guardsmen and headsman in oily darkness. The crowd gasped at the vile display of the hex's powers. Those closest to the platform pushed back against the others so the shadows wouldn't touch them. But the headsman was undeterred. His ax cleaved the air and bit through the flesh of the hex's neck. Light returned to the platform as suddenly as it had disappeared. The hex's head lolled from the chopping block and came to a standstill on the final plank of the platform facing the crowd. The head's gagged mouth was contorted in an unheard scream, its eyes set in a final stare that Ingram struggled to look away from. For an eternal moment, there was nothing but those two wet globs, loose from the cooling flesh that surrounded them and growing in size until they towered over Ingram. Then the world returned. Ingram found himself on his knees deep in the mud, with two men trying to get him up by the armpits. He grunted and stood. "What happened?" one of the men asked as he handed Ingram a few potatoes that had fallen out of his wicker basket. "My wife," Ingram said, unsettled and confused by what had just happened but unwilling to tell either man the truth. "I'm sorry," one said. "Take good care of her," said the other. Ingram nodded and, with a reluctance that worried him, looked at the platform. Empty but for a youngling who was scrubbing the blood and the impure off the wood. Together with the crowd, Ingram plodded home through the stink. Rain clattered on the tuff and trap, sluiced down drains and overhangs, and created rivers and lakes from streets and doorways. When he was certain there was no one else around to watch him, he stood near a window that glowed with the warmth of a fire and looked down. Against the light stretched his shadow, acting in perfect accordance with the movements of his body. Thank the lords, he thought, and he proceeded with a relief that stretched from finger to toe. Once home, Ingram put down the basket and stripped off everything but his undergarments. The floor was cold to his bare feet as he hurried upstairs and laid some blocks of wood and kindling inside the fireplace of their bedroom. Soon, a fire burned and flicked tendrils of light on the pale face of his wife in their bed. She stirred. Ingram moved to her side. "How are you?" he asked and she moved her hand from underneath the many blankets for him to hold it, but he dare not touch her. Something had changed. More than he could see it, Ingram sensed that she was riddled with rot. It rode through her body on the waves of her blood and clung to her organs like barnacles on a ship. Why he had this sensation, he did not understand, but he knew it was true. She had one or two more days of life left. He swallowed. "They killed another hex today," he said quietly. "Good," she said with her eyes still closed. Back downstairs, Ingram lit a fire in the kitchen and plumped the wicker basket onto the table. He took a peeling knife and grabbed a potato from the basket to make dinner. Nothing was wrong with him, he told himself. It had been too much lately, with his wife on her deathbed and today's happenings in the town square. He was shaken, that was all. He tried not to think of the hex's eyes as he peeled the potato. It had a patch of white mold on its side. His hands trembled as he carved it off. On the other side, too, there was a patch of mold. Ingram realized there was little on the potato that wasn't mold, and with sudden anger he threw it against the wall. There had been no mold on any of the potatoes he had bought this morning, he was certain of it. He looked at the basket and grabbed another. This time, he felt it. From his hand into the tuber crept something invisible that caused it to rot. "No," Ingram said and he dug for a plump tomato. "No, no, no," he said as the tomato withered and grew patches of white and green that spread and spread until it covered all the tomato's flesh. Ingram dropped it to the floor, where it splattered open. He must be dreaming. He was still in the hex's mind. Soon, he'd be back in the town square standing between everyone else. Nothing would have happened. He paced the kitchen, waiting, his knuckles white where he gripped the knife, unwilling to accept that he had inherited something of the hex. The heaping pile of rotten produce on the table had already begun to stink. Ingram paced the kitchen flailing his limbs. He grabbed a chair and threw it down the room. He opened a drawer then slammed it shut. The cutlery inside rattled. He opened it again and left it open. He swept his arm over the table and dozens of potatoes and tomatoes fell onto the floor. Corruption had crept into his body. The hex had cursed him with his final breath and Ingram wished him alive so he could kill him again, by his own hands this time. He looked at those trembling hands, the two meatbags that caused everything he held to rot. With sudden resolve, he hurried to the fireplace and plunged a hand to its wrist into the fire. When the pain became unbearable, he pulled his hand out and squashed several tomatoes as he rolled onto the floor in agony, suppressing his yelps and grunts so as not to wake his wife. The air smelled sulfurous and putrid. "Maybe now. Maybe this time," Ingram said and he stood and placed his burnt hand flatly on a mullet he hadn't yet touched. He closed his eyes and steadied himself as the throbbing pain made the world spin. When he opened his eyes, the fish had seemingly died another death. Its flesh had withered and become discolored. Ingram flung it away and wailed. He fell to his knees, nauseated by the pain, and considered the kitchen's sharpest knife, how it could end his sorrows and release him from this tainted body. "Ingram, what's the matter?" came the sweet voice of his wife. She stood on the staircase, her emaciated figure a fragile shadow against the wall. Ingram quickly stood and walked to a bucket filled with water, into which he sank his hand. The sensation nearly had him faint. "Burnt my hand, that's all," he said. Her eyes swept over the thrown chair, the open drawer, and the foods scattered around the floor. "I can help with dinner," she said and she shuffled deeper into the light. "Stay there," Ingram said and, as she stopped in the middle of the kitchen, swaying slightly with fatigue, he saw not his wife but the disease that inhabited her, a swirling blackness that pooled around her chest but had spread outward to her stomach and limbs too. He felt compelled to wrap his arms around his wife, not out of love or lust, but because the corruption wanted him to. "You're too weak. Sleep," he said as he kept his eyes locked on his blistered and swollen hand in the bucket of water. "You're in pain," she said. "Leave," Ingram barked. He would resist the corruption's orders for as long as he could, so as not to do unto his wife what was happening to him. When he looked back up, she had returned upstairs, having made no noise, her body a drifting feather approaching the ground. Ingram took his hand out of the bucket, righted the chair he had thrown, and sat down on it. When she goes, so shall I, he thought, and with the admission of his coming death, he gave himself permission to examine the corruption. It required no concentration or willpower. Instead, all it needed was a mere act of release, as if he'd been holding his breath ever since the execution and could finally let go. A thunderclap rippled across the heavens. Ingram held his burnt hand by the wrist and, for a moment, the pain faded. The corruption sheathed his hand in shadows and absorbed the pain. I am not your enemy, it said. I am of nature, inevitable and undeniable. I turn the wounded deer into its carcass, the forgotten tool into rust and crumble, and the fallen leaf into the soil that feeds the trees. Ingram was taken aback by the ease of communication with it. Perhaps there was another way out. "You have no place in me," he whispered, his eyes trained on the window for passerby who would surely spread rumors if they saw him talking to himself. Rumors that would swiftly see his head pressed against the chopping block. "I beg you. You'll be the death of me." Ingram's hand twitched as the corruption around it wobbled and squeezed in a strange mimicry of laughter. How human to believe death is no part of you, it said. Of all the life that comes and goes, only humans are foolish enough to believe in their own immortality. "This isn't natural," Ingram said. "Hands don't ruin what they touch." Your latent powers have come uncovered. That is all that has changed, it said. Ingram shook his hand in anger. "How do I eat? How do I live?" Death requires death. The chicken outside. Kill it. Ingram frowned at the suggestion. He was a carpenter and bred no chickens. Still, he stood and looked through the window. In the pale light of the clouded morn a chicken clucked and shook its feathers under the rain. "How did you know?" Ingram asked, but the corruption had retreated and offered only silence. The pain in his hand had returned, albeit less intensely. Ingram opened the front door and walked slowly to the chicken, which did not flee but only looked at him, head cocked, as if already aware of its fate. There was no one around. Where had it come from? With his good hand, Ingram grabbed the animal by the neck and rushed back inside. He had feared the animal would die the moment he'd touch it, but it didn't. He held the animal on the kitchen table and realized he had a degree of control over the corruption. It hadn't spilled out of his hand and it wouldn't unless he told it to. Still, his control was limited and, as he waited, the corruption grew impatient and pressed against him, eager for its release. Letting go was as easy as an exhale. The corruption flowed into the chicken, which shuddered before it turned quiet. Ingram felt an intense pleasure, and he struggled not to smile. Ingram walked upstairs with a steaming plate of roasted chicken and boiled potatoes. After he had killed the chicken, the corruption's hunger had been briefly satiated and he had been able to touch other foods without them rotting in his hands. His wife lay in their bed covered by blankets, asleep, as he knew she would be, for he could sense the brittle life she still possessed wherever he was in their house. He placed her meal on the bedside table, picked up the overflowing bucket from underneath a hole in their roof, and opened a window to throw out all the water. The rain clattered on the shingles of the village and in the distance, over fields of sodden grass, lightning struck across the clouds. "I don't want to do this," Ingram said even though he knew he wouldn't be able to resist. He held out his burnt hand to let the rain taste it. A dog barked at the thunder. "It's not the right way to go," he said. The corruption's only response was its relentless desire for the dying woman a few feet away. Ingram closed the window and turned. "I'll bring you chickens and rabbits and sheep and cows," he said as he shuffled to the bed. "I'll hunt deer, I'll kill wolves. Don't make me do this." He was next to the bed and pulled away the blankets. She was awake and looked at him. "Who are you talking to?" she asked. "I'm sorry," Ingram whispered and he gently cupped her cheeks with his hands. He closed his eyes as the corruption flowed into her and waited for her flesh to turn cold. It would take only a moment to extinguish the little life she had left. Perhaps it is a mercy, Ingram thought as he stroked his thumbs across her face. Immeasurable pain was building in his chest and stomach. He had loved how she sang during the sunlit days laundering his linens, how she cooked meals that smelled so much better than the one he had made for her today, how she made no demands of him but that he kiss her in the morn. A life without her still seemed forever away. "Why are you crying?" she asked. Ingram didn't open his eyes because it could not have been his wife who had spoken. It was his imaginings, produced by his intense desire to live in a world she still lived in too. And yet her cheeks were warm. He had even felt them moving when she'd spoken. Despite his fears of what he was about to see, he opened his eyes. There she lay unglazed with her hands on his. A glow had returned to her face, and Ingram realized that the corruption had not taken her but had instead aimed its tendrils at the rot inside his wife. "Ingram, why are you crying?" she asked again. "Because I think you're getting better," he said. He reached for the plate of food and slowly fed her. The following days were a fragile but blissful return to normality, with the doctor proclaiming her sudden recovery a miracle as he bandaged Ingram's hand, and the many visiting villagers saying how much they had prayed for her. Ingram thanked them and did not speak to anyone about what had really caused his wife to heal. The corruption was his constant companion, and every time it twitched he left his house under the cover of the night to steal an animal he hoped no one would miss. He took great care not to draw any suspicions and did not visit others who were ill who he now knew he could heal. Instead, he attended every execution and turned away when the ax came down to look upon the crowd and see who stood there transfixed. Thomas De Moor is a Belgian writer who specializes in dark and twisted short stories. He writes about good people with dangerous powers, strange characters in broken worlds, and whatever else is required to give the reader something unique to read. He publishes his fiction for free in a newsletter called “Like Antennas to Heaven,” which can be found here: https://likeantennastoheaven.substack.com.