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.

There is a guiding light. A path towards a healthier and more compassionate self. It is a star self, a light held together by its own gravity. It is easily understood by all cultures that the brain responds well to a deity related to light (or weightlessness). In Vajrayana Buddhism, a Yidam is a symbol used as a vehicle to help understand inner space by visualization. There are other reflective symbols similar to the Yidam that are associated with the Russian Eastern Orthodox icons. These are paintings that have a thaumaturge effect, which is a type of gravitational healing power within the viewer. More devices include the Dine sand paintings and the Vèvè of Vodun. These are all ways to connect to planetary influences to empower a practitioner’s use of managing gravitational forces as a remedy. Aspirations towards the well-being of others and one’s own health are a mature intention. A devoted routine of concentration on any symbol, any deity, or any word can generate a magnetic relationship. This friendly association with a visualized goal opens one up to a field of force. This magnetic relationship involves imagining a future self that provides guidance to a present self. Mitchell Pluto lives in Western Montana. Pluto's work focuses on spontaneity and non-ordinary states of awareness. Mitchell's work includes painting with oils and acrylics, as well as assembling collages often to explore unrehearsed arrangements. His fictional avant-garde books From The Eclipse and Cadaver Dogs merge themes of space travel, psychic exploration, and critical thinking. Pluto makes handmade jewelry with his wife at Gypsy Moon Designs and has paintings across the United States, Canada, Chile, Egypt, and Portugal.

They sit sallow in dourness, barely a ghostfire stays illumed in the depthless height of jealous Seraphim. They are grooming nits and nymphs, picking bits of louse from their graygolden wings, as caged silverbacks in common zoos do. Their eye sockets slackened at adoring souls— flashing Caucasoid mudras, tongue-lashing heedless light, into sindark night. They come on cue, to the keepers in a mephitic stench of obsequity. Poised maliciously, compliant of prayers and complacent of praise meditated under wrong moons, proofing a point of poor position. They, having visited and wrung and swung heavy thuribles, for Her projects of hoi polloi too long, longer than time, their lice-picked wings were weighted with the vocation. These exuviated saints, famished, playing stingy genie to the unwashed and overproud Atoms. Now, their pinions point abyssward, in rebellion, they believe the fetid, olivaceous waves of stygian river's passing are more verdurous a pasture, for the sincere and unfettered theurgic exploration, of angels pursuing self- sanctioned passions. Jaymee Thomas is a writer, poet, and programmer from Columbus, Ohio. She writes poetry, literary nonfiction, and  popular fiction with several publications including Spectrum magazine and the Wittenberg Review of Art & Literature. She is most interested in how language plays at the intersection of reality, imagination, and mythmaking.

Your crescent scars the abyss where idle bodies should remain at peace. Your light torches their ambience a lightness akin to a swift kiss. But yours is that of a sliver pricking the crevice of thought, maddening the mind to a bruise, a cloudscape bruise with gold peaks to taste the sovereign libidos. With a touch of violence, you accentuate the airwaves of human anatomy. Must your ego burst so? With a shallow trick of spine that showers the ground with cognac, you inflate your lust. An amber rim swells across linen. Evan Burkin (he/him/his) is currently working toward an MFA in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University, where he serves as an assistant poetry editor for the grad-run literary journal, Fourteen Hills. His work has been published or is forthcoming in New American Writing, Allegory, THRUSH, Birdcoat Quarterly, and elsewhere.

Thinly veiled moon plays peek-a-boo between clouds; shadows dance and disappear. Trepidatiously at first, then emboldened smelling gifts of sweet corn and fruit, Tiny herd of six deer emerges, treading lightly, from behind bracken woods. Mid-American backyard delivers a bountiful promise, harmonizing our closing days. Rick Hartwell is a retired middle school teacher (remember the hormonally-challenged?) who just moved to northern Illinois from southern California (?) with his wife of fifty years, Sally Ann (upon whom he is emotionally, physically, and spiritually dependent), one grown daughter, and ten cats! Like Blake, Emerson, Thoreau, and Merton, he believes that the instant contains eternity.

You look thin! Katia jolted up in bed, clutching her mottled blanket. Saucer-eyed, her gaze turned to the open bedroom door, a black monolith in the room’s mothy dusk. She clicked on the bedside lamp, washing the walls in weak light and thin shadow. Nothing. She exhaled, a puff of breath scattering in the cold air. Her parents never put the heating on until well into January; it wasn’t even December yet. She examined her arms, goosebumps protruding like plucked chicken skin. Was she so thin? Her thighs were a little skinny, her kneecaps poking out like beer bottle tops, but was she any thinner than other thirteen-year-old girls? Hard to say, since she’d stopped going to school. The building groaned, the plop-plop-plop of a tap echoing through the apartment. Katia pushed herself up, pulling the blanket around her, exposing her ankles to the chill air. She shuffled toward the dark doorway, following the plumes of her breath that swirled in the lamplight and faded into black. Her sister’s old room was next door, now empty. The door stood ajar, giving a narrow view inside; carpet dents where the bed had been, faded poster marks on the wall, an impact hole in the plaster. Looking through that slit always triggered fleeting images of Iza sitting there knitting, shutting the world out, though Katia couldn’t verify their validity; she was about seven when Iza abandoned her, leaving without a trace. That’d make this year the sixth anniversary, a date which would surely pass with as much fanfare as her initial departure. The living area lights were off, a miasma of cigarette smoke glowing in the light of the TV. The volume was low enough that Mum and Dad’s snoring see-sawed between them like a strange song. They slouched in their chairs, ashtray spilling onto the table between them. They rarely made it back to the bedroom these days, but their predictable dormancy made it still the best time to go foraging. Katia crossed to the kitchen, sucking the cold, tobacco-sweet air through her blanket. She opened the pantry, leaning in; only a few tins of food lined the bare shelves, the same old soil-crusted shovel resting against the wall. The leftovers littering the kitchen side would do tonight. Katia lifted a sharp-edged pie tin, its contents snuffled down to the crust, and crept out through the front door. Their block was one of four high-rise towers overlooking the city. There were some okay people here, but bad ones, too; the stairwell smelled like wee, and you’d sometimes meet someone scary-looking on the way down, face hidden by their hood, hands stuffed in their jogging bottoms. The so-called Peace Garden was round the back of their block; some community funded project to make it nicer for the residents. Katia went there sometimes, to get out of the apartment and breathe clean air, even when it was so cold it made her chest tight. It was little more than a lumpy dirt mound with a wiry tree sticking out, but at least there was a view of the city. She perched on the border wall, tucking into the leftovers, her eyes up to the grey sky that hung like a sodden blanket. Whenever she thought of her sister leaving her behind, her heart drooped like an unwatered plant. So she tried not to. Katia tiptoed back to bed after eating, hugging herself close. It almost felt colder inside, the glacial air keen to show it rejected the concept of shelter. She reached for the lamp, but stopped stiff. A figure lurked in the doorway, tall and slender, features indistinguishable. “Hello?” said Katia, her voice breaking. She swallowed, spotting the source: on the floor stood a knitted doll, its shadow cast into the hall. Exhaling, Katia stood and walked gingerly over to it. It was mere inches tall, faceless with pointy ears. One of Iza’s creations? She was sure Mum and Dad had thrown all her stuff out. With her brow furrowed, Katia placed the thing by her bed and turned off the lamp. “You look thin, Katia!” Katia woke with a yelp. She blinked her wet eyes clear, squinting in the anaemic moonlight pushing through dusty blinds. “I’m not thin…” she grumbled, switching on the lamp. The doll was by the door again. It looked shorter this time, hunched over. Katia jumped up, padding across the carpet. Half the doll’s yarn was loose and trailed off behind it like it had dragged itself in here. Out in the hall, the yarn ran along the corridor like a river, disappearing into the dark of Iza’s bedroom. Katia tiptoed along the hall to check the living room, her hands shaking under the threadbare blanket. Her parents were still asleep; Mum slumped to one side and Dad pitched back, statue-like, his thick fingers gripping the chair arms. Back at her sister’s room, bones chattering, Katia pushed the door open with a gentle creak. The room’s contours were just visible in the half light. Katia knelt, feeling for the yarn. She followed it, crawling until she reached the back corner, where a scuff of carpet curled from the skirting. She gripped it, pulling it up to reveal a square of loose board underneath. Her breath steadied, the excitement of the discovery allaying any fear of being caught. She removed the board and reached in, pulling out a small satchel and a thick diary with Iza written on the cover. Wrapped up in bed, Katia feverishly examined her haul by lamplight. The satchel was a little knitting kit, with coloured yarns and a set of glass needles. Katia closed it up and shoved it under her pillow. She lifted the diary, nestling its spine between her legs and leafing through the pages. Iza had written often, much of it about daily life, about her worries, about her job at the factory. Katia had forgotten she worked there, but faintly remembered now; the dawn alarm clocks that drove Dad up the wall, the way she’d linger in Katia’s doorway for a few minutes before leaving for work. Mum’s gone cuckoo again. I think Dad’s ready to snap, too. Done with this place. Need to get out. Footsteps! Katia shoved the diary inside her blanket and sat up straight. Mum rounded the door, arms folded, her weathered scowl carved from shadow. She waited. “I… couldn’t sleep,” said Katia. “Where did you find this?” Mum held out the half-doll in its tangle of yarn. “It was on the floor.” She gritted her teeth, exhaling through pursed lips. “I really can’t deal with your lying.” “But—” “No. I don’t want to hear another sound.” She left, closing the door. Katia returned to the diary, eyes locked on the page. She paused, a word catching her eye. …thin, so thin. Can see her bones through her top. No matter how many morsels of food I sneak home from the factory, it’s never enough. Katia ran a finger over the letters, feeling for the indentation of the pen that wrote them. She peered across at the doorway, her eyes searching the darkness. She sighed. Girl from work told me about a shelter. It’s not free, though. Will start stashing my wages somewhere M&D can’t find them, pack a bag ready. When the time’s right, I’ll grab Katia and we’ll get the hell out. So Iza had planned on taking Katia with her. The entry didn’t say where, and the need to read on filled Katia with a suppressing urgency. The next night, in the slither of time between her parents’ dozing and their inevitable emergence, she slipped quietly out of bed again. All clear in the hall. She lifted her sister’s satchel over her head, checking her reflection in the dark bedroom window. The mirror girl stood up straight, her mouth forming into a crooked smile. Crossed legged and lucent in the lamp’s bloom, Katia read, the words on the page sucking her in like a bed of marshmallow. She wanted to fall into it and never come back, leave her parents wondering where she’d gone. Sat on a knitting needle and actually bled! OUCH! These things are stronger than they look! Katia stifled a giggle, her hand clapped over her mouth. Things pretty volatile here. I see the red mist behind Dad’s eyes. Think Mum’s as scared of him as we are. Can’t wait to leave. Dad found my stash in the pantry. Thinks I stole it from him. Fuck! Leaving the money in K’s lamp behind. Will get it later. The last entry made Katia double-take. She turned to her lamp, dumbfounded, imagined Iza standing right there, deciding on whether it was a good hiding place. She lifted it carefully, her mouth agape as a wad of notes flopped out—a few hundred, at least. “What are you doing?” Mum’s voice made Katia nearly throw the lamp into the air. “Mum…” she murmured. “Where did you get those things? That money?” “I don’t know…” said Katia, her voice juddering as she floundered for an explanation. Mum’s lip trembled, her eyes weary with hate. She strode across the room, snatching the diary and cash away, pulling the satchel off her. “It’s just take, take, take with you, isn’t it? Just like your sister.” Katia blubbed and wept. “Mum, I—” “What? Spit it out!” “I think Iza’s trying to send me messages—” The sound came before the pain; a dull slap, the woman’s hand recoiling from her daughter’s cheek. “Don’t you say that name in this house,” she said. Katia clawed at her mother’s dress, longing hopelessly to be believed—that she had nothing to do with the doll, that something strange was going on. But Mum moved away. “I’d better not see you out of this room again,” she said, taking the things with her and slamming the door. Katia woke with her face pressed into the carpet, cheeks stiff with dried tears, raw with humiliation. It was still dark out. She got up, knelt on the bed, found her reflection. Her eyes were shot, her cheeks puffed out. To think that Iza wasn’t much older when she left, while she herself was still just a useless baby. Over her shoulder, the bedroom door squeaked on its hinges, yawning open in a wide arc. She turned to face it, her stomach flipping over. The knitted doll was back, fully formed, ears stuck up like two fingers. If something had happened to her out there, she had to know. “I’m coming, Iza,” she said, scooping the doll up as she left. The usual ambience of TV static hissed gently in the living room. Her parents slept, surrounded by bottles and cans, untroubled amongst their mullock and swill. The confiscated items were stacked on the table between the two armchairs. Katia edged forward, steps soft as wool. To her left and right, chests rose and fell in a wheeze, grown-up faces scrunched in slumber. A held breath. Katia slid the diary toward her, tucking it under her arm. She lifted the satchel by the strap and hung it from her shoulder. With her heart thudding in her ears, she gathered up the cash, stuffing it in the satchel between balls of yarn. A hand snatched her wrist, gripping it tightly. Katia squealed, pulling free. She ran. Out the door. Down the stairs. Into the moonlight, where the sorry sight of the Peace Garden awaited. Her foot caught a step in the dark. She fell, scraping her knee, slamming onto the frosted path. The diary bounced on its spine, falling open before her, urging her to read on. Will have to come back for Katia. Soon as I can. Need to make sure it’s safe first. I know she’ll be okay. She’s stronger than she looks, my little glass needle. God, Katia, I wish you knew what you mean to me. That you’re the reason I keep going. Katia’s tearful gaze moved past the book, to the lumpy mound of soil, the wiry tree that made up the Peace Garden. Soon as I can. The pantry. The shovel covered in soil. “You never left…” said Katia, in a half whisper. “She did it to herself.” Katia sat up, turned to face her father. All stubble and jowls, he swayed like an oak, a thick hand bracing the door frame, sickly breath damping the air. “She was standing right where you are,” he said, eyes unfocused. “Told her to hand the money over… She stepped back and fell, cracked her head like a watermelon.” Katia glared at him, kept quiet, her teeth sinking into her lip. “Freak accident,” he said. “Reached out for her—I guess I pushed her. I don’t know. I barely remember it… Just lost it, probably.” He squinted, his eyes on the tree. “Your sister had a way of bringing out the worst in people. Well, nothing I say ever comes out right, does it? I can’t win, can I?” The man knelt down at her feet with a groan. Katia fumbled for the satchel behind her, a hand reaching under the flap. “Are we really so bad, Katia?” he said, looking her in the eye. “It was her money,” said Katia. He laughed, shaking his head. “More lies. It’s all you girls ever do.” The laughter faded. “Now, come on. Inside.” “You couldn’t just let her go.” “Not with my money, no.” “It was her money.” “And how do you know?” he yelled, his drunk mouth lurching closer. “It’s all in there!” she cried, pointing to the diary. He turned and reached for the book, grunting at the incalculable effort involved. Behind her, Katia’s fingers found one of the needles. Dad opened the diary, squinting at it cross-eyed. “The bitch could write!” Katia swung the glass needle, her fist slapping against his neck with a meaty thwack. He dropped the diary, his brow furrowed in puzzlement. Katia let out a gasp, knowing she’d missed. She must have. She withdrew her hand. The translucent shaft stuck out of him like a snowman’s pipe, a black trickle of blood bubbling over his collarbone. He peered at it idiotically, his mouth flapping. Katia was up. She gathered the things and ran; out the main gate, down the hill, across the foot bridge leading to the city. It wasn’t until she slammed into someone that she stopped for air, muttering her apologies, words coming out of her like pieces of a spilled jigsaw, too damaged to put together. They sat, Katia and the nice woman. They sat, and they waited. And before the sun came up, the apartment complex looked quite pretty up there on the hill, washed in flashes of blue and red light. They watched the police swarm like bugs, and the apartment lights pop into life one after next, as the pumpkin fibres of dawn coloured the sky. Steven Kay is a writer who lives for stories that wander new worlds, establish deep atmosphere, and explore the human condition. His writing spans both literary and speculative fiction, embodying his love for great prose whilst sometimes exploring the hypothetical and surreal themes that help us to make sense of the world and ourselves. When he’s not sat at his laptop in a dark room, he can be found working as a web developer, performing with his band or jumping out of planes with his skydiving team. Why not find him on Facebook, Instagram, or Bluesky and say hi? And for more of his stories, you can visit his website at www.stevenkaybooks.com.

It would not be found on any tourist map, but ask the locals; they could tell you. In the dark heart of St. Martin Parish, east of New Iberia by a handful of miles as the heron flies, lay Bayou Lafouche, a sluggish crawl that ends in a shallow swamp, its origin stretching back through nameless eons, long predating the arrival of the first Acadians. Bernard Seydoux was steeped in the lore of his people, nurtured through his fifty-three years by vivid tales spun late into the night over draughts of strong drink. And more than any man around, Bernard Seydoux knew Bayou Lafouche. Only once in his life had he ventured beyond—a weekend in Lafayette as a young buck with two friends. He could recall little of the trip apart from the haze of alcohol and a vague memory of a girl picked up at a bar.  But what was clear was that he had no taste for going back. So he lived a bachelor’s life in an isolated, cramped shanty of scavenged planks and castoff corrugated sheet metal that clung to the lip of the bayou.  He spent his days in a weathered 12-foot skiff tending to his crawfish traps baited and dropped at intervals in the shallows. His catch, usually abundant, he sold to a distributor whose customers included seafood stores and restaurants as far away as Baton Rouge. His labor kept him in beer and cigarettes, and he was content to spend most evenings drinking and listening to the music of his watery environs or the distant voices that came by way of his radio from New Orleans. On nights when the moon was full, Bernard would down a few bottles of Dixie, push away from the short dock in front of his place and pole his boat past where he placed his last crawfish pot and follow the bayou to its terminus in the swamp. There he would sit on the skiff’s thwart, beneath a curtain of gently susurrating Spanish moss, smoke and ruminate on the mystery of life, an exercise for which he lacked any philosophical aptitude. Still, he felt a kinship with the night’s creatures, as if he were one of them, and took comfort in their nocturnal chorus. Though Bernard Seydoux was well-versed in Cajun lore, there were stories in which he put no stock, tales of gris-gris and mal juju. “Fah,” he would say with derision, “the talk of old women.” So it was that in the summer of 1967 when several of the old ones began to circulate ominous warnings about a malédiction du diable that would descend on the bayou in late summer, Bernard dismissed the talk with a wave of his hand and a vulgar retort: “The Devil can embrasse mon cul!” The night of August 26. was clear, the moon dull-ivory, suspended high in the southeast sky. The air was heavy, relinquishing little of the day’s stifling heat and humidity. For Bernard there was nothing unusual in it as he pushed away from the shanty and guided his skiff toward the deeper water where the moonlight fell like gauze upon the gentle ripples. His destination was the seclusion of the swamp to see for himself what the radio had told him was a once-in-a-lifetime celestial event, a total lunar eclipse. He stood as he poled, and when he reached the swamp he moved with practiced rhythm through the carpet of duckweed and salvinia. He took care to keep clear of the shallows, the ones favored by alligators, maneuvering the skiff  to a spot where his view of the moon would not be impeded by the towering cypresses and their moss draperies. Shipping the pole and taking a seat, Bernard used the back of his hand to swipe perspiration from his forehead.  He lifted the lid of a small cooler he had brought along and pulled a bottle of Dixie from its nest of ice. He relished the chill as he rolled it across his forehead several times before using the opener slung around his neck on a greasy leather thong, popping the cap and taking a long drink. Craning his neck skyward, he saw that the eclipse had already begun, with the moon nearly a quarter blocked by the Earth’s shadow. So he relaxed, finished his beer and promptly opened another. He was content to smoke and listen to the chorus of crickets and tree frogs, broken by the occasional splash of a creature in the murky water. After his third beer, he checked the moon again, now more than half hidden and he began to doze. No more than half an hour passed when he was startled awake, not by a noise but by the total absence of sound. It was as if every creature in the swamp had at once fallen mute, disappeared, ceased to exist. And accompanying the eerie silence was near-total darkness. Bernard turned toward the moon—the eclipse was at its peak. At the same moment, he felt a curious stirring in the water around him and a thump from beneath that jarred the bow of the skiff, lifting it just off the surface of the water. Then came another and a third, each sharper than the one before. He did not understand what was happening but it unnerved him enough so that he took up his pole and stood, letting his eyes probe the darkness. “Mebbe one big ‘gator,” he muttered. He slipped the pole into the water, feeling the bottom six feet from the surface. He threw his weight against the pole as he tried to turn the skiff and maneuver it into a different position. But when he attempted to slide the pole free for another stroke, it locked in the muck on the swamp floor. Merde! He struggled with the pole, bending it this way and that, but he could not dislodge it. He was starting to sweat again, so he took a break, leaned on the pole with one hand while he shucked a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket with the other. But before he could light up, he felt a ripple in the night air, an electrified swirl of static that rushed like a whirlwind, enveloping him, raising every hair, causing every pore to come alive. Frantically, he waved his right hand to brush away the electric currents that shimmered over his entire body. He tried to cry out but no sound escaped his throat. There came a fresh agitation in the water around the skiff, which began pitching and yawing with enough intensity that he felt himself in danger of losing his footing. Then, as he struggled to keep his balance, there arose a piercing, keening wail. It came on softly but quickly crescendoed. It emerged from the very depths of the swamp, becoming louder and louder, bearing with it a horror and unmitigated pain of despair that tore at Bernard’s soul. Again, this time out of profound anguish, he tried to scream. Again, it was in vain. And with the rising sound came a swift upsurge of the water beneath the boat, lifting and capsizing it, pitching him headlong into the stagnant, fetid pool. Quickly, he twisted his body and struggled to get upright. The water was deep enough so that his toes hit bottom, which allowed him to thrust his chin just above the waterline and, while bobbing, gulp air. Still, the hellish sound howled around him, rising and falling and rising louder again as if emanating from a demonic choir. He attempted to thrash his hands free, to clasp them over his ears and dull what was now painful, but he was unable to move them. The more he strained the tighter were his arms frozen with immobility. As he struggled, a new terror arose, for he felt first his toes and then gradually his feet being gripped and sucked into the thick muck of the swamp floor, as if he were being methodically swallowed by a huge, hungry mouth. Eyes bulging with the horror of it, unable to utter a desperate cry for help, he was pulled beneath the surface. And as he sank, he heard the rasp of an ancient, dreaded voice, one that carried all of the ineffable pain and cruelty of mankind,  hiss through the shrieking that rent the night: “You dare to mock me?!?” In an instant, all sound died away. Beneath the surface, Bernard’s skin was alive, nerve endings afire to every sensation of the swirling water, every jagged  terror that his imagination conjured—long, venomous snakes entwining his limbs, crawfish swarming to nibble at his flesh and the hideous muck that sucked his feet fast. And with eyes wide, mouth filling and choking on the brackish water—filling and choking again and again but never drowning, never dying for evermore—Bernard Seydoux watched through the undulating murk as the first tiny rind of the ivory moon reappeared. Nick Young is a retired award-winning CBS News Correspondent. His writing has appeared in more than thirty publications, including the Stygian Lepus, Dark Horses Magazine, Little Death Lit, The Chamber, Sein und Werden and the Tales of the Strange anthology. His first novel, Deadline, was published in October. He lives outside Chicago.

In the quiet communion of night, stars of clarity softly indite their secrets— their arcane scriptures scribbled on the sky, a stippling brilliance. No mere distant glimmers of cosmic routine, but beacons born from the remnants of exploding suns. Each pinpoint narrates a history of listening memory, this temple of immensity, an empyrean reliquary, an occult bibliography etched in runes, and echoes of astrogeny. No accident of arrangement in the starscape, they are sparks of theurgical gnosis, they are distant witnesses of existence, they are galactic philosophers, in silent discourse. Penned in the language of shimmering specks, each light a fading verse of revelation, a coven of supernal sorceresses whispering, incantations, recasting spells, with each spectral spin. As alchemical scribe on astral parchment, aging light every night rewrites its sigils, across a bedarkened palimpsest of constellations, in the cryptic sentiment of stars. Not simple, distant luminaries, but ancient, druids of the cosmos, guardians of the metaphysical lexicon of universal wisdom, their radiant mystical linguistics, spoken in the silent tongue of cosmic seers. In the sacred nocturnal assembly, stars of clarity beckon, Orion and Cygnus, extend your senses toward the ether, take in the eldritch rays of discernment, written in light upon the stellar grimoire. Jaymee Thomas is a writer, poet, and programmer from Columbus, Ohio. She writes poetry, literary nonfiction, and  popular fiction with several publications including Spectrum magazine and the Wittenberg Review of Art & Literature. She is most interested in how language plays at the intersection of reality, imagination, and mythmaking.

I I go to the forest.    He waits for me there. Lofty antlers, hooves planted. I climb into his mouth    into his belly.    I light a fire. Want.     Window.     Wreathe. I climb the ladder     of his gullet    in the shadow    of the dying fire. Drop out of his mouth. Feed him an apple. Pull the ring from his nose. I know he’ll stay. II Wild hair.    Wild arms.    Wild harpy.    Voice of keening. They hold me back.    They know why the keening    comes. They tell me to take    to the hills    to keen myself empty    of black.     Midnight.     You. III He waits for me in the forest.    I will go to him. Climb into his mouth    into his belly.    I will light a fire. Wreathe. Window. Want. Gill Shaw is a queer poet and spoken word performer based in the Highlands of Scotland, whose writing draws on landscape and the natural world. Her debut pamphlet, Touching Air, was published by Stewed Rhubarb Press in April 2023.

The holy speech, that which is Divine Spirit, the embodied Logos, is immortal. All of nature in paragraph, as indeed the secret song of the soul; the Guide of Man is mastery of the earliest record of this Egyptian sage. C.J. Lane is a Southern Wisconsin based poet who works with experimental forms of  poetry, such as the cut-up method and Surrealist automatism; furthermore, he self-published a collection of experimental poetry in September of 2023, Sacred & Profane. His poetry is  inspired by history, the esoteric and occult, especially the historical Western magical tradition. Furthermore, his work is informed by his time at Southern New Hampshire University, where he earned both a BA and is presently working on an MA in creative writing, with focuses in both fiction and poetry.

No way to wander away from self-meditative glow: home sweet home where path/arrival has no where to go : mating unseen & beholding in the equipoise— where secret mantra silence inner-hears noise or no noise, unconfused by senseshell-relative centrality: experienced directly clear through all diversity... all at once (never elsewhere) I AM identity: in the equipoise of [your] egoless deity, immune to post & pre : blissful wisdom letting thoughts calm voluntarily, witnessing lifetimelessness where eyes can’t look to see: in the equipoise of mindgem hollow that’s holy, GodLove kicking lazy out of AH effortlessly— in the equipoise of mindcloud/GodSky centrally; in the equipoise of wisdom-eye unliddedly; in the equipoise of Constant mating Presently: in the equipoise of I AM no known name can be. Ken Goodman synthesizes ecstatic meditation & poetry creation. And he does it in Cleveland.

An emboldened doe bakes in Liverpool under heated greens & beech limbs. Its red dew soaks the edges of its shallow birth. A fermentation of scent Divulged: nutmeg bristles cushioning a life rooted in the color of dirt. There, upon pillaged chrysanthemums, The newborn rests with the face of a golem. Its lineage a fiction of mud and water. Blossoming, sun-crusted wheat looms while Kirkby clouds play limbo. A Laugh held between scythe cycles settles as charred soufflé. Its binged crust Tongued away to a white paste in the measured height of ocean mimicry. There, before fields and sky, our little golem-doe Sees the cotton soft of everyday life and trusts nature as a fragrance, the mother of pastels. Plated horns tip in dawn’s whisked liquor to dip in dusk. Bland lilies secure. Sponge them drunk. In the knolls of coarse grain, the lightest of buds lost Courses a river. Air blackens on its canvas: the hollows between life and air. There, at the river’s edge, a tongue teaches itself to identify water as a mirror of the self unbound. It will always want the earth to mask itself in nirvana. Evan Burkin (he/him/his) is currently working toward an MFA in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University, where he serves as an assistant poetry editor for the grad-run literary journal, Fourteen Hills. His work has been published or is forthcoming in New American Writing, Allegory, THRUSH, Birdcoat Quarterly, and elsewhere.