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You tend to wrap sun rays around your throat, death by strangulation of morning promises. You tend to fill your cup with clouds, or sugar your coffee with drops of rain, you are always consuming, devouring the dust you collect in the air every afternoon, hoping the earth’s excrements are like batteries for your body. Doesn’t the sun provide vitamin D? Doesn’t rain cleanse, so they say? Isn’t O2 the harbinger of life, or something of the sort? Why must each breath pass in and out the body? Like the tick-tock of a clock, you are bound to the rhythm. Here you are, ingesting the flood, waiting to be at one with the universe. It’s the only thing that will outlive you. It’s the only thing that will outlive the end of time. And you? Time is an accessory you wear on your skin if you live long enough, and the only proof of its existence is death. For Sloan Porter, the art of poetry has been an all-consuming journey since a young age. As a writer and interdisciplinary artist, she’s most interested in exploring a darker side, the questions that linger at night, and the passions that drive us. Her work first appeared in The Sirens Call, The Writing Disorder, and others. Find her on Instagram @sloan.porter.poetry

The two holy men traveled by day, each of them on their own mule, riding slowly through the grass, until they came to the cabin in the valley. It was not marked on any maps. The older priest, Father Janos, had been given care of the small gathering of villages in the north mountains. He intended to stay among the villagers through the winter and tend to their needs. His younger protégé, Gabor, had only done church-work in the city and never been to the mountains. “You’ll never meet the people’s needs if you don’t travel the land,” Father Janos told him. “The people in the mountains are poor, but they have lives and burdens of their own. Sometimes a single visit can give them a taste of hope.” Father Janos had invited Gabor to accompany him. Long days and nights of travel wear on the minds of the best of men. Conversation between the two friends over the campfires brought their minds closer together. Gabor watched the older man throughout the day as they rode. He saw the aches and pains that accompanied old age, but he also heard no complaints from the grey priest. Father Janos, in turn, took moments from time to time on the path to talk about his life of devotion. He wanted to give his younger friend a glimpse at lessons which couldn’t be learned in the bustling rush of the city. Plus, Father Janos expected he would be retiring in the next year or so and, when he did, he hoped Gabor might take over his parishes for him. This was the sure and certain way to broaden Gabor’s vision for the world. When they finally reached the cabin, the afternoon sun was low in the sky. Slanting rays caused splaying shadows to crawl across the grasses. The distant peaks of the mountains in the north turned purple in the twilight. The older priest was about to pronounce the time to make camp when his younger partner motioned with his finger at a curling of smoke from behind the next ridge. They crested the grassy dune and, through a strange wavering in the twilight air, the small cabin came into view. The yard around the cabin was muddy and squalid and a general air of neglect hung over the sodden scene. Father Janos felt an eerie nudge enter his mind, but he pushed the thought away. It was late and they were both tired and in need of rest. He dismounted and handed the bridle to Gabor. The young man brought the mules to the water trough, and Father Janos walked toward the cabin. His suspicion sharpened. There was no sense of life in the place. There was no friendly scrambling of chickens or other farm animals. As he walked across the yard, an unsettled sense of darkness entered his mind. His eyes were on the ground when he heard the cabin’s door creak. He looked up.  A figure stood in the darkness of the cabin’s interior. Father Janos shielded his eyes from the slanting sunlight. Later he would say the deep scar on the man’s face seemed carved deep enough to touch his skull. The gash was crusted and partly healed by a scab of dark red blood. The rest of the man’s facial skin looked mottled, as though he were fighting off some kind of infection brewing below the surface. Father Janos wished they had not stopped. “Who are you?” the scarred man said. “Travelers, sir. Bound for the mountain villages. Could we stay the night?” The man stood in the doorway without moving. A low whine came off of the darkening lowlands as a wind storm circled slowly on the horizon. Then the man stepped back and shoved the door open with his boot. Father Janos hesitated. The cabin’s interior was black. The hairs on his neck stood as he heard the wind whine through the slats in the walls. It was an ill sound and he wished to be gone from here. He was about to turn back toward the mules, when his young partner arrived from the water trough. The scarred man disappeared into the gloom of the cabin. Father Janos followed after him slowly. As he stepped across the threshold of the hut the wind of the outside died and a dead stillness filled his ears. The atmosphere in the cabin was close and hot. The cabin had no windows, only four rough walls. Father Janos waited for his eyes to adjust, and then his heart skipped in his chest. There was another figure in the cabin. A young woman stood against the back wall where a stove puffed oily smoke against the low ceiling. The smell in the cabin was unrelenting, the acid tang of strong, wet manure. “Stand in from the door,” the scarred man said from a corner in the back where he stood.  Father Janos strained to see him, but the scarred man kept his face turned away from the light. The pocket of darkness in which he stood seemed to conceal him like black soil. The priest was about to step in from the doorway, but as he did, the young woman slid between him and the dark corner where the scarred man was. She had a blank look of fear on her face. She chanced a quick glance in scarred man’s direction. His back was still turned. She threw back her head, exposing her white neck, and drew her fingers across her throat as though she was cutting it. Her eyes were white and seemed half-crazed. Then she turned and disappeared back to the corner of the hut. Father Janos quickly shoved his hand backward to stop Gabor from coming in any further. He took a step back and he chanced a quick look back at his young companion. Gabor’s eyes widened in sudden understanding. “Thank you anyway,” Father Janos said loudly. “We’ll try make the foothills by dawn.” Without waiting for a response, he stepped out into the now complete twilight of the scrabbled yard and stepped quickly toward the water trough, pushing his young partner before him. His skin crawled with gooseflesh. He felt at any moment he might feel the clap of the scarred man’s hand on his shoulder. He breathed a sigh of relief when they reached the trough. They untied the mules, who needed no prodding. They did not like this place. Their ears were flat against their heads and their eyes rolled back. No sooner had the men turned with their mules did they hear the crunch of the scarred man’s boot. Father Janos turned to face him. The scar was no longer visible in the darkness of the yard. Instead, there was a black void where his face should have been. Even through the wind the priests could smell him. It was the scent of a charnel house. Mold and dead meat. And below that something deeper and wet. Something imbedded within the thing’s skin, encasing whatever it was in the shell of a man. Father Janos knew now it was not human. The smell from it caused a voice to sound in the priest’s head. Come closer. Come in here with us. Father Janos actively fought against the voice in his head. “Stay with us,” the voice coming from the black void of the scarred man’s face was low but it strangely carried in the stiff wind. It was as though there were two voices in it. One low and one high, like a whining child’s. The voice was difficult to resist. Father Janos took a deep breath and reached into his robe to pull out the cross from below his shirt. The metal on the cross caught the last vestiges of twilight; the light played across the ground and flints of brightness danced between them. The scarred thing stepped back from the dancing beams of light. “No, we’ll continue on,” Father Janos said. A moment passed. He felt the nervous nuzzling of his mule’s nose against his hand. Then, without giving the being time to move, he swung onto his mule and turned out of the yard. The two men rode their mules up to the crest of the hill before Father Janos looked back. By then the darkness in the sky had obliterated any shapes from the low valley and all he saw behind them was a bowl of darkness among the grasses. They rode quickly across the first few hills and did not slow until several miles had been crossed and a cold rain was falling around them. Gabor was the first to speak. “What was it?” Gabor said as he pulled up next to Father Janos. “A lidérc,” Father Janos said as he glanced back into the darkness. “Awful to leave the woman with it. It will be cruel to her for warning us.” They rode through the night. Occasionally they thought they heard a sound behind them, but nothing disturbed them in the dark. The mules plodded forward nervously and needed no prodding to keep up their speed. All around them the dark prairie breathed out the smell of night. They finally arrived at the village. Though it was still a few hours before dawn, the innkeeper roused himself and found them a room. They both slept fitfully and repeatedly Father Janos stood to check the dark hallway of the inn. He sensed the thing. It was coming. In the morning Father Janos awoke and saw Gabor was already up. The older priest dressed quickly and found his young ward in the kitchen of the inn preparing breakfast. It was at that moment a young boy from the village came into the kitchen with a hurried step. He told them a woman had been found bleeding on the outskirts of the village. The boy said she begged to see the holy men. Father Janos hastened into his cloak and came out. The boy brought them down to the village church where a number of the townspeople had gathered. The young woman was sitting on the floor between the pews. Her hair was so plastered with mud Father Janos hardly recognized her as the one from the cabin who saved them last night. A woman from the village coaxed her to drink some tea. Once she had caught her breath she unfolded her story. She was originally from a village in the south. Her father was a farmer and she worked with him in the fields. One day two years ago she was tending the rows when the lidérc came upon her in the field. She was unable to resist it. She followed it into the woods. She awoke later in the thing’s cabin. She was pregnant. It kept her tied to the bed through the weeks as her womb grew. The night she gave birth the creature hovered over her and quickly took the child. Twice the cabin was visited by other travelers. Each time the lidérc coaxed them to stay the night and then murdered them as they slept. She didn’t know what it did with the bodies, but it always disappeared the next day for many hours and, upon returning, its clothes were dark with the travelers’ blood. The thing had indeed treated her harshly after the priests left. It tied her to the cabin wall and whipped her. It was about to continue when the wind outside blew something against the cabin door and the lidérc went out to examine it. She was able to untie her hands and slip out the door before it returned. She fled toward the village on foot through the night, following the slow curves of the stream. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I may have led him here. I couldn’t conceal my steps.” Father Janos smiled and shook his head. “Thank God you are here,” he said. When she finished her story, he sent Gabor around the village to bring the townspeople into the church. There were not more than fifteen of them, three poor farming families. They huddled against one another between the pews as the sun drifted between the clouds and looming shadows deepened across the sanctuary. “It will likely come after sundown,” Father Janos said to the people. “What is it?” one of the men said. Father Janos glanced at Gabor before answering. His young friend sat in the front pew with a barely concealed look of fear. “I’ve read about them, but never seen one before,” he said. “Priests across the border talked about them being found in the higher mountains to the south. It contains within it a pool of darkness from below the mountains. The skin of its man-shape is what allows it to move around.” “What does it want?” a woman said. She pulled her children closer to her. “It hears our blood,” Father Janos said.  “To the creature the blood is a drumbeat in our veins. They plant gardens of blood where they dwell below. And this one has a taste for it now.  It is coming.” The townspeople’s eyes were wide in fear. A small girl hid behind her mother’s skirt. “We have a chance,” Father Janos said. “It can’t ingest something which is consecrated. This is why it never eats the children. It only feeds on those old enough to have felt the turn of the earth.” Father Janos stepped forward and looked at the small huddled group before him. “To defeat it we must all work. Will you help me?” The men looked at one another. Silent nods passed among them. A stout man stood forward from the rest and looked Father Janos in the eyes. “What must we do?” he said. The dark creature streamed through the night. It paused from time to time to sniff the ground. Each time it did, the bright smell of the woman was stronger. It was as though her scent was a beam of red, flowing through the plains, twisting from hill to hill, growing richer all the time. It had been awhile since the creature had last fed and there was a powerful hunger growing within it. It had taken great effort to keep the woman but not to consume her. Somewhere in the creature’s travels it had learned that if it maintained the shape of a man and had a woman living with it then travelers were more willing to stay for the night. This supplied the creature for many months with occasional visitors, but the priests had been the first travelers in a long while. As its hunger grew the skin it was wrapped in became thinner, threatening to allow the black pool within to spill out. Below the mountains the blackness could be contained by the layers of rock. Above ground it needed the human skin to remain strong if it wanted to breed and pass itself on. By the time the creature saw the town ahead, its lower jaw hung open and black saliva flowed out. Now the woman’s scent mingled together with other shades of crimson. It sensed the other villagers. It smelled men and women. Different ages. Different lives. It felt a turn of hunger in its belly. The thing saw the lines of color all flowing together into the small church at the center of the village. It slowed its walk. The meeting with the priest in the cabin had made it cautious. The priest was different. He knew something of the earth and something of the soul the creature had not yet known. It approached the door of the church. The beating of hearts inside the building was strong in its ears. The creature held out his hand and pushed the door open. Light from the sanctuary flowed out into the night. The thing stepped through the door. The townspeople were all seated in the pews. Their backs were turned to the door. All eyes were on the front of the sanctuary where the older priest stood with his younger ward next to him. The two holy men were behind a low table, empty but for a single bowl. The older priest held in his hands an open volume of scripture. He met the thing’s eyes and for a moment they stared at each other. Then the priest looked down at the assembled crowd. He said, “The Lord be with you.” “And also with you,” the assembly murmured together. The thing sensed a faint trembling in the air. For a moment it hesitated. Then the priest took a knife from under his cloak and laid the blade against the skin of his forearm. As he said the next words he slowly cut across his wrist. Blood flowed down his hand and began to drip into the bowl. “Lift up your hearts,” the older man said. “We lift them up,” the crowd responded. The creature’s senses were inflamed by the scent and sight of the blood. The blazing light from the crimson drops completely absorbed its senses. “Take this, all of you, and eat it,” the priest said. “This is my body which is given up for you.” The priest handed the knife to the younger priest. Then Father Janos began to remove his clothes. He folded each piece carefully and laid them to the right and left of the bloody bowl. As his skin was uncovered a howling hunger built up in the stomach of the creature. “Take this, all of you, and drink from it,” the priest spoke, with a shiver in his voice as the night air touched his skin. “This is the cup of my blood.” The priest removed his last item of clothing. He lifted his knee and carefully knelt onto the table. He fastened his eyes on the creature once more. The priest then took the knife into his hand again. “Do this in memory of me,” he said, and he cut his throat. Blood sprayed into the air. The priest’s body fell to the side and the fountain of blood shot onto the back of the sanctuary and splattered the wooden crucifix. The sight and smell of the blood filled the eyes of the thing. With a single movement it crossed the space between itself and the priest’s body and fell upon the bloody table with open jaws. In the last moment before the creature sank its teeth into the throat of the priest, the older man’s eyes turned and he looked at his young ward and gave him a knowing nod. It was the last thing Father Janos did before the monster bit into and severed his head. In the next moment a high-pitched shriek filled the church. The skin of the creature began to sizzle. A horrible smell of rot filled the air and was immediately replaced by the scent of burned hair. The people in the pews crouched down. The younger priest stepped back and picked up a bucket of holy water and threw the water across the jerking body of the creature. Streams of water mixed with blood poured off the table and flowed toward the pews. Outside of the church, forest creatures fled back into the woods as a burst of lightning from within the building flashed out through the stained-glass windows, turning the dark night outside into kaleidoscopes of color. The young priest stepped forward to the table where the creature was writhing on the dead body of the older man. Gabor took the book into his hands and droplets of blood from the mangled body of the older priest splattered his face as he read, “Drink ye all of it; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.” With each word spoken the creature’s cries of pain rose until the piercing note seemed to shake the walls of the church.  Mingled in its voice was the crowded sound of many harmonies of other voices within its skin. The voices rose and fell in a ghastly chorus. The townspeople crossed themselves and frantically poured out of the entrance of the building. Gabor was the last one out. He motioned to the men. They stepped forward and nailed boards across the door. Inside, the anguished cries of the creature began to weaken. The townspeople knelt on the ground outside. As the shriek from within died away the young priest continued to read from the book. Soon everyone else joined in: “Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name… Dawn rose over the village. It was a Sunday in spring. What happened in the church months ago had changed the ground under the wooden structure of the building. The earth and stones were black as though burned and scarred. The pool of darkness which had been contained by the lidérc’s skin had long ago seeped back into the earth, but its mark remained. Slowly the people from the town rose from their beds. The men tended to the chores. Women prepared a morning meal. A few children ran through the streets. Then, as mid-morning drew near, the townspeople filed out of their homes and slowly congregated at the front door of the church. Father Gabor opened the door and welcomed them. One by one the families entered the sanctuary. Friendly conversation flowed between the townspeople and the priest. After everyone was inside, the young man stood outside for a moment, soaking in the morning sun. Then he turned and looked up at the sign above the front entrance. The sign read, “The Church of Father Janos.” The young priest smiled, turned, and entered the church. Zary Fekete… …grew up in Hungary …has a novelette (In the Beginning) out from ELJ Publications and a debut novella being published in early 2024 with DarkWinter Lit Press. …enjoys books, podcasts, and many, many, many films. Twitter and Instagram: @ZaryFekete

It was the cold that dragged Abigail down first. People thought you wore cold like a blanket, wrapped around your shoulders and chilling the outermost layers of your skin. But cold was something you carried deep within, in the hollow spaces of your bones where the marrow is made. It hides there and chills you from the inside out, until you can’t think because the fluid in your brain is filled with sharp little chunks of ice. Until you can’t speak, because your tongue has swollen up in your mouth, flopping thick and useless in between your teeth. Cold wants to eat in a way that heat does not. Heat leaves you as a pile of ash, but cold wants to hold on to your quiet form, surrounding itself with you till the very end. Abigail had seen what the cold could do when the fire went out and the matches were gone and there was nothing to gnaw on but the bits of leather from your brother’s shoes. Abigail knew the cold as well as the moles on her small hands. In the autumn she could sense it, hiding just over the horizon, slinking its way through the shadows to get closer to her. Abigail took a step forward, her feet leaving post holes in the snow. A crow called out, perched on a nearby branch and watching her with one beaded eye. It tilted its head and shrieked and flew off, even though she wanted to beg it to stay. Please, she thought. She couldn’t say it out loud, her voice was as thin as an insect’s husk, an opaque shell that was a mere suggestion of what was once there. But the crow was out of sight already, and she was alone in the woods again. But not truly alone, she knew. The cold was all around her, purring into her ear and pulling at the edges of her thin coat. Abigail took another step, and then another. She was hungry, yes, and tired, oh yes, but it was the cold that pulled her so heavily to the earth. It was the cold that would be her downfall. It had eaten her brother last winter and then taken their mother last week, and now it had a taste for sweet pink flesh, so warm from hot blood running just below the surface. Come, Abigail, come, called her brother’s voice from somewhere behind her. He laughed, the sound of icicles bumping into one another on a dancing branch. An owl called out and the sound reverberated off the frozen crust. Who-comes-for-you who-comes-for-YOU? it asked. Abigail knew the answer, but the owl didn’t care and turned its head away. Abigail hurried forward as best she could through the drifts. Her brother was only full of mischief, but if he was near, so was their mother. Abigail didn’t want to meet her under this canopy of trees, the branches like bony fingers stretched out in death. Didn’t want to see Mother’s pale form, more life inside her after death than she’d had in the weeks before, dashing towards Abigail on all fours with her mouth agape and her eyes rolling about in her head. Her brother giggled again and the sound bounced off the trees around her. He was hiding, but she could picture him without any trouble. The cold had mostly preserved her brother’s form just as he was when Abigail loved him best, although it was tinged with blue frost all over now and he had a darker look to his eye that Abigail didn’t remember being there before. But, his smile was the same and his delicate eyelashes too, and he still had that laugh that he carried in his mouth each day when he was warm and young. But her mother, oh god her mother, the cold had ruined her. Abigail couldn’t sense anything of the gentle woman inside her now. Her brother had passed in bed, his frail body still a little warmed by the dying embers of the fire, but her mother had been caught outside, in the midst of a blizzard. The wind had pulled the heat from her body and drank it, and she had stuck to the ground when she died, forcing Abigail to leave the body where it lay until the warming days of Spring could come. It had only been a day or so before Abigail had seen her again, peeking in the windows and scratching at the door. The few times Abigail had seen her in the woods since she’d moved in a slack way. The cold had wormed its way inside and wore Mother like a hand-me-down dress, loose at the waist and too long about the ankle, bits of it dragging through the mud and snow behind. Come, come, Abigail, rang out her brother’s voice. She could hear him approaching behind her, light footsteps in the snow muffled by the falling world around them. Mother waits, but she won’t wait forever. Abigail staggered forward. Somewhere up ahead was the road, potholed and iced but still sometimes traveled by a carriage. In her path, a figure appeared from around the wide trunk of a sweeping old oak. The figure stepped out and fell over and then stood up again, then stumbled on toward Abigail, crawling twice as much as it walked. Come, come, Abigail, it called, slurring the words together. The cold was inside Mother’s mouth and she was having trouble with the quickest bits. Abigail fell to her knees and put her hands over her ears. The voice was all wrong. There was no melody to it. It was low and grated like the ice floes on the lake, the blocks rubbing against one another, the harsh sound echoing through the valley and up to their little house after the first freeze. Its jaw mashed up and down and it cocked its head at her. A little string of drool fell out one side and froze before it hit the ground, the ice disappearing into the bank. It dropped to all fours and scrambled forward with its head down. One eye was on Abigail, an eye all black with just a hint of white around the edge. Abigail turned and ran as fast as she could through the deep snow and through her own exhaustion. Her brother leaned against a tree and he tsk-tsked as she passed. Her mother called out to her with a crow’s shriek. As Abigail pushed on, she could hear the two of them moving behind her, the crunch-crunch of uneven footsteps loud even when accompanied by the roaring wind. The house was too far, and in time, she would freeze or starve in there anyway. She turned down the hill instead. The trees parted and showed her the edge of the lake, dark black water just visible between two chunks of gray ice, a little hole she kept clear where Abigail could fetch cooled pails of water. She ran for it, then hesitated. Come, come, Abigail…it’s not so bad, hollered her brother, and his voice cracked and rang out like a gunshot off the trees. Come, come, Abigail, her mother tried to say. Isnosobah, she slurred. Abigail paused at the edge of the lake and turned. Her mother was reaching for her, black stubby fingers spread and ready to entwine themselves in her hair and wrap around her throat. She saw her brother behind, arms folded and nodding his head, and now she could see the dark look in his eye had slipped down to his smile, the cheeks pulled too wide and his yellowed teeth exposed. Abigail turned back to the lake and slid down the bank into the darkness. She shuddered, her whole body so tight it was painful, the air in her lungs compressed and frozen there. The lake slipped up over her head and chilled her ears as it rushed in. Her brother cried and her mother screamed, but their voices sounded too far away to be important now. Abigail breathed out with a whoof, the bubbles stroking her cheeks as they rose. The frigid water raced up her nostrils and filled her mouth, tasting like mud and the algae that grew in the shallows, her teeth aching with the sudden chill. Abigail sank down and hoped she’d never rise up to the surface again. The cold crept inside, and Abigail welcomed it. Anne Woods is a new author with upcoming pieces in Max Blood’s Mausoleum as well as narrated through Creepy Podcast. When not writing, she can be found tending to her plants and drinking strong coffee.

Life is tenuous, beautiful and brittle, yet never cowers in the presence of death. It lives within chaos and substance; the harrowing and the harmony. Life will not bend to material needs, parading in the graceful unknown. For once death returns with his shifting right hand, life will amuse his persistence, making years and sweet memories from the seconds in play. 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.

Christened by the black pulp of a young vine berry, I hold my home in the creek bed’s westward bend Where the Polaroid flash of fireflies has bleached the air. Can you picture frozen dandelions forever Smirking? Staring at a single birch tree’s many eyes In a belt of birch trees, I witness a jury convene and Understand the earth as witness. Its simple, teeth- owned life knows the white bone of a body belongs To it. I find judgment in the weight of clothes and The synthetic separation from the cold damp earth And then consider what it means to be a canine of The earth. To work against flesh for a return to dust. 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.

Part I: Their ship wasn't meant for oars, but they brought them above deck anyway. They tied the sails down, securing them with ropes to the yard above. Nautes fumbled with the ropes, the knot he was supposed to be tying became clumsy. The older men, those who had made this journey before, didn't comment. In another part of the ocean, they would have shoved his shoulder with wide smiles and teased him for his inexperience. Here, they were solemn and focused. Their movements were tinged with a hurriedness instilled by fear. They floated past a large rock, the landmark, just as they finished tying off the sails and preparing the oars. The captain yelled for them to put the wax in their ears. Around them, the wind died. Nautes stuck the wax, warm from his pocket, into his ears. Shoving it in so far, he was half worried he wouldn't be able to get it out completely. Still, he'd rather not be compelled to throw himself overboard. The captain, with his own honey-colored wax, checked the entire crew’s ears before they began rowing. Nautes had been allowed to simply watch during his first time passing Anthemusa. The closer they got to the island, the calmer the water got. The only current was initiated by their boat pushing itself through the sea. Nautes made his way to the side of the ship. The Sirens' song hadn't even begun, but he already felt the need to approach the island. He gripped the wooden railing as the island came into focus. A plateau in the middle of the sea. The tall, steely cliffs were so high they dominated his understanding of the island. Though rumor had it that above the cliffs was a meadow. In that meadow was a pile of corpses with flesh still hanging off their bones. The island might have been beautiful if not for that horrific image. His Egyptian mother, when hearing of the risks, had invoked the ba-bird. Part of the soul with the human’s head on the body of a hawk. He hadn't understood the connection until his mother had made him promise to do whatever it took to avoid becoming a Siren. Perhaps thinking that the Sirens were corrupted ba-birds who couldn't travel between the realms of the living and the dead, his mother worried they inflicted that on other bau, souls. His mother had misunderstood the Sirens, probably, but she had rightfully assumed they would bring death. Transform him into his own ba-bird. He had taken her talismans, the ankh and wedjat made of blue stone. She had tried to give him more. Except when his father had noticed the talismans were ones primarily placed on dead bodies, he'd stopped her by saying their son was not yet dead. It had been a sobering night, but the next morning his mother had been calmer. Perhaps his father had told her of Odysseus’ crew, who had put wax in their ears to block out the Sirens' devastating song. He must have told her that sailors regularly used this method to protect themselves. Perhaps a tried routine to cheat death had assured her. He still wore the talismans. Before leaving, Nautes had prayed for safety with his father to the goddess Demeter, who had punished the Sirens. As they got closer to the island, an unavoidable risk due to the rocky waters, Nautes began believing that the talismans and prayers had worked. There was no sign of the Sirens. No shadows crossed the boat, no song filtered through the haze of the wax, no one threw themselves overboard. They were so close to the island, Nautes could have swum to the cliffs in minutes. The crew held their breaths, even as they exerted themselves to row faster. The men kept their heads down. Nautes looked up. Standing on the cliff's edge was a girl with large wings sprouting from her back. A Siren. Her wings, golden at first glance, appeared to be rotting. Shining plumage gave way to sparse patches of withered, gray feathers. The wings’ anatomy was nearly hand-like, a poor copy of a hawk’s wing. He touched his talismans. This far below, he could only make out the vague impression of her face, her expression more than her features. She tracked them. Rocking with the boat, he sensed a deep melancholy emanating from her. An apathy that stung and pierced the soul. Where passion and ambition should have been, a hole sucked everything else from his heart. For a second, he feared the wax did not work. That her song was pulling his soul from him, lapping away at it like the tides that had disappeared from the island. His panic dissipated when he registered the sight of her mouth. Her closed mouth. She was not singing. She was not even trying. Alone on the cliff face, she stood silently. It was said that the Sirens’ knowledge – details of the battles no one lived to recount, letters of texts lost to time, desires the kings and heroes never expressed – granted them great power. But as she watched him, silent and impassive, he could not help feeling they were ungenerous to the Sirens. She had not been freed by prophetic knowledge. Her cold eyes, watching the latest but not the last boat to pass her island, seemed far away. Trapped out of time. Held purposeless in this moment, knowing her power had dissolved. Sailors rowed by her island with wax in their ears, and she watched them with a closed mouth. Nautes thought of his mother and father. Of his ambitions and future. He could sail to wherever he wanted, he could forge himself a purpose. Despite the song that made men throw themselves into the sea, he felt sympathy for the Siren. As she rustled her decaying wings, he wondered if she knew how trapped she was. He thought she did. Part II: Peisinoe sat on her pile. Her remaining sisters found it revolting, thought it disfigured a lovely meadow. But the corpses energized her. In a world of constant disrespect, only this pile of their victims brought her a sense of power. Magic around the pile of corpses kept the air clean and flowery. Peisinoe didn't know how it had happened, only that when she'd begun pulling the sailors from the water, their corpses never smelled. They rotted and decomposed without the help of maggots or vultures. Their bones naturally shone like polished ivory. Peisinoe took it as a sign. The corpses were her divinely ordained compensation. When she didn't have the satisfaction of watching boats and bodies crash upon their cliffs, she had her pile. It hadn't always been like this. Before the monotony, before the dead sailors, they had accompanied the goddess of springtime. The lovely, young Persephone who had woven them crowns of leaves and picked flowers to fill their pockets. They'd sat together by crystalline streams, dipping their toes into the sweet water. They'd danced with beautiful nymphs, who laughed like birds. Ligeia and Leucosia had been bright then, following the footsteps of their mother, the Muse of Dance. Thelxinoe had written happy stories, full of beautiful sister-maidens like themselves. Raidne and Aglanoe had learned to braid hair under Persephone's enthusiastic instruction. Then. She remembered it with bitterness, though Thelxinoe insisted it hadn't felt that way at the time. Her levelheaded sister described the warm breeze against their faces, the wind in their golden feathers. Flying above the rolling meadows they'd danced through and the streams they'd bathed in. Peisinoe remembered the wings forming from the bones in her back, growing unnaturally until they pushed through the once beautiful skin, and the sound as they cracked into place. Raidne, still so impossibly young as to have not bled yet, clawing at the ground and screaming as her body tore itself apart. Demeter had given them their golden wings to find her daughter, their beloved friend. They'd searched, flying across the world twice over. They'd searched, but they'd failed. Then Persephone revealed herself to be underground, enjoying her new power as Queen of the Underworld. Demeter had lashed out. Banished them. Raidne, too forgiving, never spoke against Demeter. She was delusional. She forgot no one loved them. Tracing the half-dissolved cartilage of a corpse's nose, Peisinoe considered its beauty. The exposed bone, white despite the grime on the skin centimeters away, was more precious than a pearl. The withering flesh that had once been strong thighs, the callouses that had fallen from hands, the hair that was stringy and thin no matter how well it had been cared for in life. Death restored everyone to their simplest form. Her sisters thought they didn’t understand, but even their own once golden wings now dropped patchy feathers from graying flesh. When the world came crashing down, they – like all people – had looked for simplicity. They sang men into the sea and relished the power. Stopping the sailors who could go anywhere and mingle with whoever; Peisinoe knew the retribution fed her sisters too. Their voices, so beautiful and full of promise, had created a reliable outcome. For a while, it had kept them healthy, stalled the decay. Peisinoe had started collecting corpses after the contest against the Muses. Hera, a cruel goddess in shining satin, had whisked them from their island. At the base of Olympus, they were thrust into a competition against their mothers. Though, for all the welcome they'd received, none could have guessed the relations. Afterwards, Raidne had asked if Calliope was really her mother. This was the first time Peisinoe had seen her mother since her transformation. Melpomene, the Muse of Tragedy, had her sword on her hip and tragedy mask in her hand. Staring at her face, Peisinoe had seen layers of twisted grief and dread beyond the passive expression. Hope had surfaced in the moment before she realized those feelings weren't directed towards the Sirens, nor were they feelings at all. Melpomene held her mask because she didn’t need it, her purpose had melded into her being. Peisinoe's rotting wings twitched uncomfortably whenever she recalled this. The Sirens had sung to the Muses. All their pain regarding their abandonment and isolation poured into a melody unlike anything the Greeks had ever heard. The song had carried a depression throughout the land until their old mistress had returned with springtime. Even Hera had wept quietly behind her hands. The Muses had been unimpressed, and when they sang, the Sirens understood why. The Muses plucked melodies from Achelous’ river, from the breezes graced by Hermes, from the flowers bloomed by Persephone. It had been beautiful. Until it wasn't. The Muses were so proud. They had strummed their lyres with sticky superiority. Their coy smiles were so small they had easily slid into their masks of concentration. They were better, and they knew it. Suddenly, the perfection became ugly; beauty drowned in their egregious pride and disregard. When Hera had declared the Muses the winners, they had the audacity to act surprised. Humble in their graceful thanks and generous in their bashful bows. The act would have been perfect too, if obnoxious, had their eyes not flashed in cruel triumph every time they had looked at their daughters. From that day on, Peisinoe considered herself the daughter of that evil and ugly musicality. The rage remained, but the mystery disappeared. She understood why the Muses had abandoned them. They couldn't live up to their mothers' legacy, and if they did, that would be even worse. Their pride wouldn't allow for either option. The Sirens returned to their island with a new understanding, and a new resentment. Their songs were meant to kill. Then things went wrong. It had started with Orpheus, who drowned them out like the Muses had. Must be a family trait, Peisinoe had remarked bitterly. She’d regretted the comment when Raidne had asked how he was family. Thelxinoe had had to tell her that he was Calliope's son, Raidne's half-brother. Then there was Odysseus, who truly brought their world down. The cunning man had been the first to defeat them without magic, and worst, he had made sure he wouldn’t be the last. Their wings had started to rot as soon as he was out of range. Ligeia and Leucosia had plunged into the sea hours later. Aglanoe had left soon after. The corpse pile had gotten too big, she'd claimed. She’d flown across the sea, out of sight, patchy wings barely able to support her. She was going to ask for a place in the household of their Muse mothers. As another daughter of Melpomene, Muse of Tragedy, Peisinoe doubted that had gone well. Once, Peisinoe had preached that the sisters could only rely on each other. Their mistress had abandoned them, her mother had betrayed them. Their own mothers had fought and refused to support them. They could only rely on each other, as sisters who had never been anything but committed. Now, Peisinoe knew even that was a falsehood. She couldn't blame her sisters. Despite all the knowledge their shrieking song promised, the Sirens had never listened to themselves. It was either plunge into the sea, or sit on a pile of corpses making crowns of bone. Part III: Raidne stood on one of the island's many cliffs. By now, the callouses on her feet prevented her from bleeding on the sharp rocks, but the old bloodstains were still visible. She used to leave crimson footprints in their grassy meadow. Maybe she understood why Peisinoe had started collecting corpses; spilling blood had sustained them for a while. Her eyes, sharper since her childhood, tracked the ship. It made fast progress through the glass water. The boat moved rhythmically, pulling itself forward then rocking back as the sailors brought their oars around. The crew kept their heads down. Even with wax and oars, they wouldn't acknowledge her. Except one young man, on the bow, who stared up at her. His eyes sparkled, a deep brown that matched the hull’s wood. Around his neck, amulets glinted in the sun. The symbols carved from blue stone were unfamiliar, given to him by a loving hand. She swayed. Her body couldn’t decide if she wanted to dive after the young man or hide from him. His people understood the magic that stopped boats. Understood their song that brought men to the edge. They had prepared for every peril they could offer, and would rule the world because of it. Why sing to them when they had wax in their ears? Her sisters would no longer humiliate themselves. Raidne had no energy left to try. Should she plunge into the sea, following her sisters? Perhaps that was the only thing left for their song to accomplish. When Demeter had lost her daughter, the fear in her eyes had come from the ground. Her golden dress of stalky fibers had whipped around her as she screamed. The earth had shaken and turned itself over. Crops had died, crushed under tidal waves of soil or withered in drained fields. Even King Hades must have felt his kingdom shake from Demeter's rage. When Raidne lost her sisters, she felt the same earthly fury. The seas had battered their island for the first and last time. The clouds had coalesced into an impenetrable darkness. Beyond time and space, they were one with Demeter in their loss. Daughters lost mothers. Mothers lost daughters. Sisters lost sisters. Her sisters were lost yesterday, and years ago, and months from now. Ligeia and Leucosia plummet into the sea instead of dancing in springtime. Aglanoe flies away to live with her unaffected mother. Peisinoe is being consumed by her rage on a pile of bones. Raidne herself, is lost to time that swallows her now and then and later. Only Thelxinoe spent time with her anymore, even though Raidne’s distant mind couldn't have been much comfort. As a Daughter of Tragedy, perhaps Thelxinoe was better equipped to deal with their lives. Raidne was too consumed. Her mind, her eyes. Every ship she saw, she couldn't tell if it was one she had seen, was seeing, or would see. She tried to ground herself as Thelxinoe advised. Feel the rocks beneath her feet, the sun on her aching wings, the air in her lungs. The ship passed below. Through the haze, through the eerie tug of something that pushed her away and drew her near, she returned to the young man. His expression was strange to her. His eyebrows were furrowed; he wasn't angry. His parted mouth wasn't curled up in fear. Was that awe? Was that the compassion Peisinoe criticized her for? She watched him watch her. The Siren and the sailor. Enemies. Passive observers. When the sun set on her island today, yesterday, tomorrow, she would describe his dark hair and sun-varnished skin. Thelxinoe would write it down in a book Raidne would never be present enough to read. As she rested her head on her pallet, Thelxinoe would recite her descriptions while she fell asleep. Peisinoe would come into their cave, stinking of flowers. Yesterday, maybe tomorrow or today, Raidne didn't know what she would remember. Perhaps she'd see the sailor again. Isabella Frederick is an emerging writer from Seattle, Washington. She has been writing stories for her family from a young age and has always wanted to be an author. She is currently studying creative writing at Seattle University. She loves writing sci-fi and fantasy, especially when she can use those genres to explore issues in the real world.

Everyone is called here once in their life. Some die on the journey; rarely will a person die before the feeling consumes them: the wicked, and their deaths are a message to the world, a threat, for It is a stern God. Their deaths are Its warning to avoid evil — you will never recognize the voice of God in the life beyond if you don’t first hear it in this life. For thousands of years our scholars have debated the nature of the Cube — whether it is a manifestation or merely an instrument of the Divine. Of course, the argument is pointless, for It is in either case holy, and the fact that the matter still stands unresolved after so long shows its unimportance. We learn nothing from their hollow reasoning. In fact, all we know of the Cube we know because of questioners — the occasional heretic who, denying God altogether, dares to examine the Cube — to treat It as an object, devoid of all significance. The Cube stands waist high. Even as we rediscover science and our abilities increase, not the slightest imperfection in Its dimensions has ever been detected. Nor in Its surface — five millennia ago the Cube fell out of the sky to this rocky ground, yet after five thousand years of wind, storm, and sun the Cube is still smoother than any glass, reflecting no light, Its five visible black faces unmarred by any streak or smudge. It is immovable; the ground cannot be dug from beneath it. But only questioners would need to subject the Cube to test and observation. For the rest of the world, history alone provides any proof necessary to bolster faith. It is said that before the Cube fell, the wicked abounded over the world, thousands of millions. But the Cube brought with It war, murder, plague, and starvation. In only a few years, not one in ten thousand remained; science and technology had been swept away; and the world was pure. We had been made pure. Scholars argue, too, whether in that time God acted through mankind or if man only reacted to God’s presence. This is of somewhat greater import, for it speaks to free will, and hence, ultimately, the very nature of God. But it is again a subject of interest only to seekers after the obscure; for most of us it matters not how God compelled our ancestors to cleanse the world, merely that It did so. Some say as many as a million people walk the world now, but we hear of not more than a single crime each year. The consequences are too terrible — punishment, swift or lingering, at the hands of man or directly from the God, still means just one thing: that It will not heed you in the life beyond. So the God controls us all, and we submit to Its rule and consider it an honor to do so. Is not a life of fear better than an eternity of suffering? It is this very question I have found myself asking in the three weeks since I heeded the Cube’s call. To every person — sometimes sooner, sometimes later in life — there comes a dream, or a series of dreams. Upon waking, the need to journey to the Cube is overwhelming. I left my wife to care for our baby son alone. Her father lay on his death-bed; by now he must be dead, but I could not stay behind. I know he understood my absence — as does my wife — for this is a part of everyone’s life. Still, I had to wonder why the call had to come now. I wondered why I had been called now, and I wondered why I had heeded the call without even taking time to say goodbye to my family. We make every sacrifice God asks of us, and we make them all gladly. But do we make them willingly, if the alternative is too terrible to bear? Fear coerces our obedience — and can we be serving Its will truly if we do so for selfish concerns? After a lifetime of rejecting questions, so many stirred my mind in the course of my journey. I know it is wrong, even though I meant no challenge to God. I hoped only that when I stood before the Cube I would hear in Its voice answers that would strengthen my faith and hold me closer to God. And so when I stood on the plain yesterday morning, it was with the hope that on my return home my heart would be lighter, that my family would receive a man renewed in faith and free of doubt. My turn came; I approached the Cube and I waited to hear the voice of God. I waited for a long time, until the day gave way to nightfall, and until day reclaimed the world once more. And I am still waiting. James C. Bassett’s fiction has appeared in such markets as Splonk, Coffin Bell, Amazing Stories, and the World Fantasy Award–winning anthology Leviathan 3. He co-edited the anthologies Zombiesque (with Stephen L. Antczak and Martin H. Greenberg) and Clockwork Fables (with Stephen L. Antczak). He also is an award-winning stone and wood sculptor. www.jamescbassett.com

i.  Templum Having spilled spells over wine-slick lips, the skies divide. The augur marks the passing of each avian pilgrim. From their cries and their avenue, he draws portentous omens. ii. Chiromancy Tracing lines, caressing each fold of skin: swellings, valleys and plains. Their mechanical arrangement render predictive enlightenment. Destiny lies in the palm of the hand. iii. Arcana Seventy-eight cards combined, divided, arranged. The interpretations are endless: initiatory, magical, Cabalistic. The clairvoyant defines, reveals affirmation, provides synthesis. Between Meaning and Chance: Finding significance in the tarot, We gain an insight into ourselves. Lee Clark Zumpe, an entertainment editor and movie reviewer with Tampa Bay Newspapers, earned his degree in English at the University of South Florida. His poetry and short stories have appeared various publications, such as Tiferet, Zillah, Weird Tales, Modern Drunkard Magazine, and Main Street Rag. Lee lives in Florida with his wife and daughter.

I buried the truth near here, near this bench. In the park, yes; I panicked. I know how I must look: a woman unmoored, wild haired, knuckles bleaching. Parents push their prams in a polite arc around me. It came into my hands through dubious channels. A crate delivered in secret to my home address, not my office at the university. I laughed to see it swathed in bubble wrap. The Brazen Head, legendary augur of Magnus, Bacon, Bungay, forged in a smoky workshop by alchemists seven centuries ago; now coddled from knocks and scrapes. I unwrapped that arrogant face, with its aquiline nose, hooded eyes, chin tilted in challenge. Skin dull, green-tinged brass. Alchemical marks starred its throat. Not a sculpture but a vessel, a mechanism to extract knowledge from hell; a brazen tongue to whisper the secrets of demons. I spoke the words to wake it. The heavy eyelids scraped open and I gazed into their voids. “Loqueris?” I asked, my heart pounding. Will you speak? The metal jaw shifted, groaned, and a voice grated from the ancient deep: “Verum ego loquor.” I speak the truth. “Quaero.” Ask. My question – the question – bristled at my lips. It had been coiled in my brain for so long, gorging on my fear. All my research and investigation, all the details I had prized from tight lips and locked archives, the savings I had dribbled into hand after hand to bring the brazen head into my possession, the question prickling under my skin, it had all been to bring this moment into being. I asked my question. There was a moment of silence. The eyelids once more sealed the empty eyes and the mouth yawned wide. The brazen head screamed, a terrible, sheering, tearing sound, a blank, relentless, metallic shriek. I clawed at my ears. I thought the noise would shake me apart, shatter my skull. “Prohibere! Prohibere!” I cried, but the scream devoured my words. I staggered and fell, half ran, half crawled for the door of my apartment and collapsed through it into the stairwell, slamming it behind me. There I sat, shivering, the scream inside muffled to a siren whine, until my neighbour found me. “Are you all right, Professor?” “It’s this noise! Terrible, terrible!” I babbled and he frowned. “What noise, Professor? What can you hear?” I believed then that this torment I had released was mine alone; that I alone was cursed with the truth. And I thought I could be rid of it. That night, aching brain bandaged with scarves, hat, earplugs, headphones. I heaved the shuddering head off the table and into a bag, slung it across my back, and carried it here. It shrieked as I stoppered its brass mouth with dirt, blank eyes rolling madly under the ground. As I worked, sweet silence flooded over me, until I threw down my trowel, fell to my knees, and wept. If I hadn’t been so sick with sound, so beaten down by that voice from hell, I would have chosen better; picked a spot further from the playground. At first, walking past one afternoon, I noticed only a low pulse from the tarmac, a static quality in the air. Then over the weeks that followed I watched as one child, then another, fell ill. Nausea, dizziness, headaches, nosebleeds… A mystery to everyone but me, who had planted the truth under their feet, its silent scream scratching their soft skulls. Last night, I stretched myself out on the cool grass under the street lights and failing stars. I pressed myself to the earth and I felt it, a shining tremor, the Brazen Head howling under the ground. An endless scream. I resolved to come back tonight, to dig up the metal horror and drive it out to some wild place where no human goes, and entomb it there, even if the journey with that ceaseless noise drove me out of my mind. But this morning I found only a hole and a pile of earth beside it. I don’t know what to do. I got my answer, and now the truth is loose in the world. Sarah Jackson's work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Translunar Travelers Lounge, and Electric Spec. She is editor of Inner Worlds magazine. Her website is https://sarah-i-jackson.ghost.io and you can find her on Mastodon as sarahijackson@wandering.shop

Once there was a farm called Green Shoots, tucked away far from downtown on a scrubby little plot of land. Neighbors swore the soil glowed yellow and blue in the dark. But last week, on the morning when my life began to change, a red sun was shining bright as I dug in the dirt for moldy clumps of carrots and radishes. Green Shoots had for years been barely making it in that edgy neighborhood of Philadelphia, crisscrossed by elevated highways and strip malls. And things were about to get worse. Did the managers flunk Capitalism 101? They expected to make it by growing and selling hydroponic vegetables, small trees, and seasonal flowers. Something had to give, with unfortunate consequences for me. I circled the pen, trying to avoid all the dirty-faced kids dressed in khaki overalls. Prowling on the other side of the fence, those little sadists grabbed at the spiky hair on my back, their stubby fingers twisting and turning like a nest of worms. Jesus H. Christ. Didn’t they have anything better to do? One of them said, “Here’s a treat for you, Marshmallow.” Blond hair, crooked teeth, four feet tall. He held out a sticky slab of puffed rice. I grabbed it, swallowed. “Grumph!” I said. Snowball, the rescue cat, had died of natural causes, slinking off and expiring quietly beneath the branches of a lemon tree. That was two years ago. I’d hung on. How did she get so lucky? Green Shoots was a slow-rolling crack-up, one scandal after another. Racial and gender discrimination. Defensive whining from the board and their management stooges. Tensions with environmental activists who agitated to have the former EPA remediation site tested for lead and asbestos one more time. It was a long-running passion play, performed daily in a dusty patch of city real estate. I’m a pig. I’d always evaded the spotlight and avoided politics of any kind—workplace gossip and backbiting, strikes, campaigns, elections and protests, anti-capitalist grandstanding, all the human drama. I’d been a Green Shoots minor attraction in my tiny pen, a bit player, a Horatio on a muddy stage. Then I became the main character. Hours after I snapped up that gooey treat, I opened my eyes in the dark. My head was lying in a syrupy puddle of the muck that had shot out of my stomach. Alex Desmond, the head farmer, was looking down at me. Their platinum hair was wrapped in a blue bandanna, and a thick gold ring dangled from their nose. They leaned over to examine the mess. “Oh my God!” Desmond cried. What was going on? Then, even as my insides rebelled, I remembered: the evening before, I’d seen a laptop shimmering in the silvery gloam. Behind the cash register, a shadowy figure tapped on the keyboard. I turned away, acting out nonchalance like a ham actor in a regional theater, but the figure’s gaze burned through me and a sinking feeling told me it was too late. I couldn’t unsee what I’d seen. Something was going on—I wasn’t sure what—but it couldn’t be good. Desmond and I had hardly communicated until they found me fighting for my life, my intestines on fire. As I began to black out, I thought I was a goner. Just before the curtain came down on this pathetic scene, I heard Desmond say, “Okay. All right my big pig.” When I opened my eyes, I was hanging in a sling suspended from a ceiling, a foot above an aluminum examining table, in a room flooded with fluorescent light. I sniffed, wriggling my snout. An antiseptic smell tickled my nostrils and made my curly-cue tail vibrate like a tuning fork. “He’s lucky you brought him here,” an unfamiliar voice said. “At the university, we know how to take care of a large animal. Marshmallow’s a little drugged up, but he’ll come around.” Desmond stood by the table, wearing the clothes they had on when I’d passed out. “I got a call from the vet yesterday at 10 pm,” they said. “He told me Marshmallow wasn’t getting better. I rushed over in the truck and brought him here.” Desmond was talking to a short stocky man wearing blue scrubs. Thick hairy forearms extended from his short sleeves, like slabs of beef in a smokehouse. I thought of him as Dr. Meat-On-His-Bones. “When he stabilizes and all the tests check out, he can go home,” said Dr. Meat-On-His-Bones. I slipped back into a medicated sleep. When I woke up, I saw the legs of Desmond’s jeans through the grill of my crate. “Grumph!” I said. “It comes to $2500,” another unfamiliar voice said. “For the test, the stomach procedure, and the two overnights.” “Can you bill it to the farm for now?” Desmond asked. “The staff is launching a Go Fund Me campaign and we hope to have all the money by the end of the month.” It sounded like a scheme. A scheme folded within a scam, wrapped up in a murky plot. I had the feeling I fit into it somehow, and I was getting fed up. On the drive back to Green Shoots, my crate strapped down in the back of a rattletrap truck, Desmond chattered on their cell phone in a loud voice. Through an open window I could hear phrases: “Our chance . . . the public face of repression . . . a platform, a cause . . . bring them down for good . . .” As the words floated by, I dozed off and woke to another day at Green Shoots. I got up to nose around in the dirt. I chewed. I ruminated. Desmond walked over, opened the gate to the pen, and raised their phone. I looked into the camera lens, pie-eyed. “Years of neglect and deteriorating conditions led to his near-death experience,” Desmond intoned. “But your generosity—amazingly, hundreds of dollars raised so far, and more pouring in every day—has saved Marshmallow and ensured his future safety and health. It’s also provided funds for the unionization drive. A strong union means a strong Green Shoots.” Desmond stopped recording, put the phone in their jeans—the same jeans they’d worn at the hospital—and said, “It’s all coming together in ways we couldn’t have imagined, Marshmallow.” Desmond smiled. I bit on a sweet-tasting carrot. The afternoon sun slipped below the houses across the street, leaving in its wake a warm orange glow. Hours later, I slept. I woke to the sound of clattering metal. The sun was up, an inflamed wound in the middle of the sky. Workmen shouted as they toted fencing and barbed wire around the farm like single-minded ants. Harsh sounds came from every direction. Desmond walked in circles, arms lifted, voice rising above the clamor.  “You can’t close us down. It’s bullshit!” The next afternoon, I sat in a small square of grass and dirt in the backyard of Desmond’s row house. Desmond held up a phone and watched me on the screen. They turned the phone around for a moment so I could see—superimposed on my image was a page of text. Desmond took a breath, looked at the screen, then read like a voice-over actor: This past month, Green Shoots was victimized by a counterfeit check scam that brought the operation to the brink of collapse. At the same time, a staff-driven fund drive has already generated hundreds of dollars. Some think management devised the scam to break the unionization effort, using insiders to stage the fraud. Desmond held a piece of paper up to the phone. There’s strong evidence that this former employee was at the center of the scam. Desmond stopped reading. “Grumph!” I said. Desmond brought their arms down, one hand enclosing the phone and the piece of paper dangling from the other. Their outfit hadn’t changed in a week. Come on, Desmond, you can do this! Buck up. You’re a person. I’m a pig. If I’m sick of being jerked around, you must really be sick of it. Desmond shrugged their shoulders, tossed the paper to the ground, and walked up the steps to the back door. I nudged the paper with my snout. A blurry black-and-white photo showed a shadowy figure standing behind the Green Shoots check-out counter on a moonlit evening. I raised my head, turned to the door. That’s when it hit me. For the first time in my life, despite the befuddlement I’d felt since I was a piglet shivering on an acre of land in a post-industrial hellscape, I knew I could take control. Set a direction even if I—a pig—can’t make sense of all the craziness. I waddled to the steps and climbed up with my front legs. I knocked with my snout, making a muffled sound. I waited in the silence. Then I raised a foot and tapped. The sound was sharper, and I kept tapping until Desmond appeared in the doorway. “What is it, pig?” Desmond said, looking down. Words would have made it so much easier. But at least I had a plan. I walked back to the square of grass and dirt and sat on my haunches, just the way I did when Desmond had filmed me a few minutes earlier. “Grumph!” I said. “Okay?” Desmond said. I blinked, then walked over and nosed Desmond’s pocket. Desmond pulled out the phone. “Okay?” Desmond said. Clearly my plan was going to take time. That was yesterday. This morning, a long shadow stretching across the backyard, Desmond brings out a bowl of freshly washed carrots, turnips, and parsley and sets it down on the grass. I gobble up a mouthful and assume the filming pose, sitting with my haunches on the ground and a wide-open expression on my face. I nod in a way I hope offers encouragement. Then I trace a circle in the air with my snout. Desmond raises their hands, palms up. “Keep going?” Circling. Desmond takes out the phone and types for a few minutes. “How’s this?” Desmond says, then switches into the voice-over mode. A management stooge attempted to kill you with a poisoned treat that he put in the hands of an unsuspecting child who fed it to you. The stooge, glimpsed in the moonlight, was worried you’d discover his embezzlement scheme. Isn’t that right, comrade? I nod, then make the circling motion. The story seemed credible enough. “Grumph!” I add for emphasis. We appreciate your ongoing support for the Marshmallow Fund Drive. Green Shoots is no more, but oppression grinds on. The fight for justice continues. “Welcome to life in the pigsty,” Desmond says, bowing theatrically. That’s it! Life in the Pigsty. A smile curls up the side of my furry cheeks. Woodpeckers rat-tat-tatting in the branches overhead, Desmond films me walking resolutely around the patch of grass. It’ll take time, but it’s going to come together. A YouTube show. TikTok videos. Life in the Pigsty. A public persona bigger than ever. 15,000 pig-loving followers and more every day. I see it happening. I keep walking, acting like I’m in control. I am in control. “You can do this,” Desmond says. I can be so much more. A woke guru, a postmodern Trotskyite, a hipster bro who walks on four legs, whatever. I’m not just a barnyard pig. Mario Moussa is a writer living in Philadelphia. His stories have appeared in Write City, Flash Fiction Magazine, Loud Coffee Press, and Litbreak.

I imagine the planets signing our name. I circle ideas with grease pencil and x others out. My best friend warns of a smear campaign. I formally request a wooden spoon. I get drunk on cheap champagne. Time collects its signatures. Soon, the distance runners will return. The neo-groovy youth of Shady High will rediscover the Yardbirds. I watch the Bunsen Burner’s flame dance and change color. This is little consolation for missing the solar flare. There are ways of going about things. For instance, banging a gong. The song starts again. I tie a piece of dental floss to a brown mouse with a broken tail. I swear the mouse to secrecy before I set it loose. Glen Armstrong (he/him) holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters. His poems have appeared in Conduit, Poetry Northwest, and Another Chicago Magazine.

My back breaks, a few vertebrae from the bottom. Arms go knuckles fuse legs snap my blood is now sap. Limbs expand up and out leaves sprout from my fingertips dewy hilltop grass tickles my bark. Groggy. Aching. Head clearing of death. I am awake and cold. I stretch toward the full moon. The roots let me see more clearly than I did while alive. Zachary Dein Reisch writes speculative fiction in Boston, Massachusetts. His work has appeared in AntipodeanSF, CommuterLit, and several publications on Medium.