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I, too, have been in the underworld like Odysseus, and shall be there often yet … -   Friedrich Nietzsche Tripping into court Morality cringes silently, bells on the tips of his toes exaltedly clang his life’s work, as leotard and tassels splash gangly to Wagner tones. High beams and grey hooded revelers, Lohengrin toasted from marble mugs, filigree nectars beneficently gulped, it was deemed our accused was a prophet, allowing the death of Gods, come to absorb us in non-existence. Wise men in purple robes suggest a lusty flogging, reflecting that violence, commenced with the comedy of pain. Clenched brittle teeth crack, synapses shatter and snap, the gavel gashes hard, again and again, against the tear-stained judge’s stand. Pried from this seat of Turin Justice, the jingler of Christian conscience curses through rigor, foam, and spit, condemning his condemner for striking the poor dumb beast below him. Craig Kirchner has written poetry all his life, is now retired, and thinks of poetry as hobo art. He loves storytelling and the aesthetics of the paper and pen. The parallel, horizontal, blue lines on white legal, staring left to right, knowing that the ink, when it meets the resistance of the page will feel extroverted, set free, at liberty to jump the two skinny, vertical red lines to get past the margin. He was nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, and has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels. After a writing hiatus he was recently published in Poetry Quarterly, Decadent Review, New World Writing, Skinny, Neologism, Wild Violet, Last Stanza, Unbroken, The Globe Review, Your Impossible Voice, Fairfield Scribes, Quail Bell, Cape Magazine, Edge of Humanity,  Ink in Thirds, Journal of Expressive Writing, Lit Shark,  and has work forthcoming in Chiron Review, Flora Fiction, and Valiant Scribe.

Dank thurible of oil and pine; A congregation draped in dust: paddles, oars, and mouldy sails; surfboards, lawn chairs, bits and bobs. Rakes in the rafters. Rats on the roof. A crack in the floor to the dungeon’s door. A splash away from the boiling lake. Frank William Finney is a Massachusetts poet and retired lecturer who taught literature in Thailand from 1995 to 2020.  He is a joint winner of the Letter Review Prize in Poetry ( May-June 2023). His poems have appeared in numerous journals including Asylum Floor, Blue Bottle Journal, Penumbra, and Unsettling Reads.  His chapbook The Folding of the Wings (FLP Books) was published in 2022.

We are a speck of dust on the Universe’s shelf. Everyone is dead or dying and if they aren’t, then they’re simply unaware. These are the things my father recites to me as I lie in bed. He pulls the quilt up to my shoulders. The bed creaks beneath the weight of him. He sits beside me. I see only his back, which is dressed in a thinning, powder blue button-down. His shoulders are present beneath the fabric: aged skin and spots spurred by the blaze of the sun. When he gets up, the bed creaks again. He walks into the closet behind him, opening the shutter doors, hanging onto the tiniest doorknob with a somewhat feminine delicacy. It’s like he’s checking for something. He doesn’t tell me what. He sighs and pulls on the string seemingly floating in the air beside him. Click. The closet is dark. He returns to me. He kisses my forehead and shuts off the lamp just beside me. The room is black. He stands before me, resembling something strange. Everything is the negative of what it once was before, like nuclear shadows burned into the membrane of my eyes. “Goodnight,” he says. In Youngstown, all the buildings are brick. Smoke permeates the air from the steel mills. It’s hard to breathe. No one smiles. No one speaks. If I’m walking to school and pass a neighbor, I don’t wave. I don’t even turn my head in their direction, too certain that a pair of judgmental eyes will immediately greet me. I walk on the paved road on my way home and count the gaping cracks beneath my shoes. Trees spill out on either side of me, roped in by telephone lines. They look sick. I wonder if they are, if the decay that comes during the fall for them is permanent and not temporary like so many people believe. Maybe just these trees, though. Maybe father is right, and everything here is dead, dying, or simply unaware that it is. When I get to our front door, I stop. Beside our simple, brick house is a new house. It’s dandelion yellow, composed of plastic siding with white-trimmed windows. There are flowerbeds, a white picket fence, and a woman. She’s standing across from me on the other side of the fence, wearing a navy Kitty Foyle dress and her eyes — she points. I follow her familiar finger to a trail of dirt that runs from her house to mine. It lines our dead flowerbeds and stops just at the side of the house where my bedroom is. Quickly, I go inside our house. I lock the door behind me. In the living room, I draw the curtains. I write a note to my father. I leave it in the living room on the coffee table for him to find when he comes home from work. At 6 PM, he calls for me after shutting the front door. I crawl out from beneath my bed and meet him in the living room. He’s holding my note, staring at it strangely. “What is this?” he asks. I can’t speak, and the confusion on his face intensifies. He places the note down onto the coffee table and walks over to draw the curtains. It’s dim outside. The sun has begun to set. Across the yard, there is no yellow house. I blink. My father makes an amused sound. He walks into our kitchen and begins making supper. Stunted, I slowly lower onto my knees and reach for my note. To my surprise, there are no words, only lead scratches. Sleep reluctantly finds me that night. My father gives me a handful of antihistamines. He does this when I become restless. There was a time, shortly after my mother’s death, where I’d walk up and down the hallway that separates our rooms. I used to terrify him. He said I used to speak as I walked and when the walking stopped, it soon was replaced with crawling. As I dream, I think I am walking again. I must be. The walls that surround me feel like phantoms, a simple push, and I’d fall right through them. I can hear my bare feet, hear the house creak and whine with each step I take. A door opens. The grass is cold beneath me. I shiver and then stall. Across the yard, the yellow house has returned, glowing from within. She is standing in the large, living room window. My body feels like a funhouse, disconnected from the true world. Fear lies somewhere inside me. It scatters like a roach beneath light, and in its place — nothing. Somehow, I find myself standing before the front door of the yellow house. I’m in pain, but not responding, and then the door opens. Bright, hypnotic colors encase me. A record is playing in the living room. Some man is singing in a low and melancholic voice. The record skips. I step inside. Behind me, the door closes, and when I turn around, she’s there. “Hello,” she says. Eyes stare back at me, lifeless. Large. Large like a doll’s. “You look just like her,” I say. My voice is an echo. She smiles at me. Then, I blink, and she’s gone. Dishes clink together in the kitchen off to my left. I feel my heart in my chest. I feel my pulse slip out into the very tips of my fingers. There is an innate fear inside me, comparable to witnessing something foreign. It reminds of the time I’d awoken in my father’s bedroom after sleepwalking. The act of displacement shook me to my core. I wasn’t sure of the time or the day, or how I’d even gotten to where I was. I feel that now, only, there’s a new element. Like a lamb born with two heads peering back at me, there she was — this woman that looked like my mother, but didn’t. Her head pokes out from the frame of the kitchen door, appearing disconnected from her body. “Hungry?” she asks. I shake my head. Her head pokes out a bit further, to the point I question the possibility. “Sure, you are,” she says. “Come here.” I do, not because I want to, but because I’m afraid to say no. In the kitchen, she sets the table. Salmon pink dishes are lined out with polished silver. I take a fork from the table when she isn’t looking. “Are you lonely?” she asks. Her back is facing me. She’s stirring sweet ingredients together in a bowl with a wooden spoon. On the stove, I can see that one of the dials is set to 350 degrees. “Life can be lonely,” she continues. “Especially in Youngstown.” “I’ve lived here my whole life.” She grabs a pan from a cabinet near her knees. I watch her line it with a pie crust that’d been lying on the counter beside her. She claps the flour from her hands, “All your life?” “Yes.” Carefully, she begins to pour out the filling from the bowl into the pan – crushed cherries and sugar. I continue to watch, but then my eyes click to the door in front of me. Around the doorknob, paint has chipped away. In tiny, neat print, is the word, “Arrive.” “Do you have a basement?” I ask. She is covering the pie filling with strips of dough when she stops. She turns back around and for some reason, I’m afraid to see her move. “I do have a basement,” she says. “But you don’t.” I swallow. My skin itches. Her head tilts to the side, and I wonder if she can see how fast my heart is beating. She turns around. She finishes making the pie and then places it into the oven. “What does your daddy say?” she asks. “Everyone is dead or dying and if they aren’t, then they’re simply unaware?” My stomach turns to ice. I can’t move. Glued to my chair, I watch her slowly straighten her back. She stands this way for minutes. I watch the clock on the stove slowly tick — still frozen, still sweating, and contemplating how fast I can run and if she can run faster. “Do you think things really die, though?” she asks. When I open my eyes, I’m in my bed. My reflection stares back at me within the vanity centered along the wall. I’m panting. I’d dreamt it. It was a dream. It was a dream. It was a dream. Suddenly, something crawls across the floor of my bedroom. I hear the sound of knees smudging against wood and look to find the shape of a woman hurrying out into the hall on all fours. I scream. Light floods my bedroom as my father stands in the doorway where I once saw the woman. He’s staring at me with parted lips, looking pale and disheveled. I throw the quilt from my body and dart out into our living room. Through the window, there is no yellow house. I blink. My father asks me if I’m alright. He wraps me into a hug, cradling my skull in his hand. “You’re okay,” he breathes. He leads me back to bed, gives me three antihistamines, and eventually, I sleep. I awake just an hour later. I hear the clock on the kitchen wall as a car outside lazily putters by. The headlights possess the interior of our house, painting the walls a bright yellow. When the light disperses, I step out into the living room. Her house is sitting across from me through the window. The lights are off. Beneath the glow of the moon, the house looks fake. If I were to reach out through the window, a part of me believes I’d be able to hold it in my hand. And there, inside its warm catalog walls, would be the woman that looks like my mother. I don’t know how long I stay in the living room. Time seems to move through me, like grief, abundant and yet, invisible. That night, I dream of her – not the woman, but my mother. When I awake, I’m lying on the floor of the living room. My father joins me in an hour or so. By then, I am dressed and showered, so he doesn’t question where I slept last night. He cooks us breakfast and makes us tea. The house is not there, and I don’t think about it as much as I think about my mother. After supper time, I stand in the hallway outside the bathroom, watching my father brush his teeth. I feel different. He tucks me into bed and refuses to give me more antihistamines, saying he’d read the bottle’s hallucinatory side effects. When he says this, I cry, confessing I think he’s right. I tell him about the woman and the house, about the trail that I once saw connecting our home to hers. He looks at me with sympathy and kisses my head. “If you still can’t sleep tonight, come get me.” I nod, and he stands in the door frame of my room. Behind him, the house is dark and yet, bright. It’s as if all the color in the world has returned. I wonder when exactly it left, if it went when my mother did or if, somehow, my father’s been able to control this all along. He shuts off the light. I close my eyes. Beside me, something clatters on the floor. I get up. I turn on the light. In my closet is the fork I’d taken from the yellow house. It’s lying next to the note I’d written days ago. “Daddy, I’m under the bed. Call the police. Please. Something across the street is pretending to be mom.” I lift my head to the back of the closet. There, just a foot above me, is a doorknob. Beneath it, in tiny, neat print, is the word, “Depart.” Marble Black currently works as a Technical Writer/editor with a BA in English, and has fourteen years of writing experience. She’s been writing all her life and has been known to somehow relate everything/anything to Sylvia Plath or Richard Siken while at parties. When she’s not writing, however, she’s usually in bed. Sometimes, she goes for walks in downtown Tulsa, plans trips she’ll never take, and eats uncooked pasta. She thinks indulgence is important. She thinks happiness is key.

His dark, penetrating eyes are gazing right at you, inviting you to connect, to be your true self, conscious and present. And at the same time they’re reaching into someplace far beyond you that only he can see. The deep well of compassion resting at the bottom of his eyes means he’s grieving all the suffering and blindness, the dense matter weighing down the world, he wishes he could just make disappear. But the warmth radiating from his pupils is saying, “Come with me on a journey of transformation. The peace you create inside yourself can ripple out into the whole world.” Ralph Dranow works as an editor and writing coach. His poems and articles have been widely published. He lives in Oakland, California with his family. His website is https://www.ralphdranow.net.

she boiled rocks, you know on the stove to get rid of the spirits. an image of an elderly helen of troy one that did not disappear with menelaus one that left algeria was banned from france met a husband in germany moved to new orleans and gave up prostitution. hometowns 1787 miles from each other closer to each other than i am to home and we all know what blonde used to mean. perhaps there is some kinship between mediterranean women. Abbie Hart (she/they) is a 19-year-old poet from Houston, TX currently living in Worcester, MA. She has been published over 30 times, and is the editor in chief for the Literary Forest Poetry Magazine. In her spare time, she learns useless skills, daydreams about pottery, and does her best to be a nice warm soup. Her first chapbook, head is a home, was released by Bottlecap Press in August 2023. Her website is abbiemhart.wordpress.com.

David Bowie came to me in a great big dream. I’d just finished talking with Salvador Dali, he’d been teaching me how to make a million by signing empty sheets of paper. He’d left all his stuff hanging around. I said “Mr. Bowie, sorry ‘bout the mess” He said “Hey brother, call me Dave” He threw his guitar into the air spinning, spinning it shattered into a hundred stars. “Look isn’t that beautiful?” he said. I had to agree. I hadn’t seen anything as beautiful since I’d seen a Sorolla burning in the middle of Madrid. We stayed a while, watching the falling stars floating to the ground like butterfly wings, until he caught one in his open white hand and passed it to me, smiling from his eyes. “Art is nothing more than this” he said. Marc lives in Spain, and when he’s not teaching English, he likes drinking tea and thinking about the shadows.

Ripples in the canals are the only warning you get. They’re also the last thing most people see. When feeding starts, you’d better hope you’re not near the water. Those who are always get eaten first. Today, you’re lucky. You’re doing inventory in the cellar of Il Ghiottone when you hear the first screams: distant to begin with, but rising like the tide with each passing second. You drop the bottle of dolcetto you’re counting and it smashes, spilling its deep purple blood all over the stone floor. You don’t stop to clean it; you’re already halfway up the ladder. By the time you emerge into the restaurant, all the staff and customers have fled. The room is littered with half-empty bowls of pasta, some on the tables, others splattered over the walls, the windows and carpets. The front door swings on its hinges and you catch a glimpse of the stampede outside. The lower city is in turmoil. And rightly so: there isn’t a soul alive who doesn’t know what’s coming. You have two options: risk joining the herd and make for higher ground, or stay here and pray to the Gods that it doesn't find you. Neither choice guarantees safety; it learned how to break down doors years ago. Outside, the screams tell you the feeding has begun. The crowd surges towards the safety of the upper city, away from the coast. Not everyone will make it. Will you be one of the lucky ones? Time’s running out. Make your choice. Cellar or stampede?  Cellar or stampede? You swallow your panic and sprint for the door. Outside, you’re swept along by the horde, fully at its mercy. You move as one and yet, you know everyone only cares about their own safety. A young man’s elbow slams into your ribs as he barges past. A second later, there’s a splash. Then, a slithering mass descends on the crowd and the man is plucked into the air like a weed. He screams, dangling helplessly as the tentacle wraps around him. There’s a grim sucking sound, a twist, and a crunch of bone. His scream cuts off and he’s dragged away, a lifeless doll. You can’t see over the tide of bodies, but you know he’s been pulled into the canal. You press onwards, praying you won’t be next. The path slopes upwards and you reach a stone bridge. Through a gap in the throng, a lone gondolier stands on his vessel, brandishing an electrified oar. He teeters on the stern of the gondola, his access to the bank blocked by the fleeing masses. “Make way!” he bellows, to no avail. “Let me up!” But the crowd is its own beast. Driven by fear, it won’t make room for him. More screams crescendo as a thin tentacle rises out of the water, looming over the gondolier. He makes a swipe at it with his oar and a crackle of electricity sends it slithering back into the depths. For a heartbeat, the waters are mirror-still. Then, a monstrous tentacle, ten feet wide with suckers the size of your head, bursts from the canal. The gondolier has no chance. With a deafening crash, the tentacle flops down, splitting the vessel in two and crushing its driver into pulp. A wave of stagnant water sprays over you as the tentacle curls around the gondolier’s corpse. His mangled body is unrecognisable as it slips beneath the surface, leaving only bubbles in its wake. As you reach the far side of the bridge, more tentacles sprout from the canal, snatching helpless victims from the shore with newfound fervour. There’s a crack of stone behind you and the bridge collapses, ripped apart by the creature as though it were built from paper. Their escape route cut off, the crowd on the other side start to backtrack, but the tentacles are too quick for them. Dozens of broken bodies are pulled into the canal and you look away when the waters start to turn red. Up ahead, you spot the gate to the upper city; to salvation. But something’s wrong. The crowd has stopped moving. “They’ve shut the gate!” someone shrieks up ahead. “The bastards have shut the gate!” No. That can’t be right. They wouldn’t. You spot an upturned crate to your left. Fight your way over to it and step up to take a look. You see two things: firstly, the gates are indeed shut which means the upper city has deserted you. It used to be that those fast enough to reach the safety of the citadel would be spared the kraken’s wrath. It seems the rules have changed. Secondly, behind you, a tentacle the size of a cathedral rises up out of the lower city, ripping entire neighbourhoods apart in its wake. Looks like it’s grown since its last feed. How many lives will it take to satiate it this time? When will it stop? The tentacle swithers. In its shadow, you and a thousand others hold your breath. Then, it descends. Fear floods your body in cold rivers. Your last thought? You should have stayed in the cellar. S.T. Gillard is a queer, autistic writer of speculative and literary fiction from Scotland. He completed his MA in Creative Writing at Edinburgh Napier University in 2023 with distinction. His greatest ambition is to move to the mountains one day to write full-time alongside an army of dogs. You can find him on Instagram @stgillard_writer.

The witch like me—the witch always sees— The four elements in harmony North South East West Skeleton fisherman Purges the depths. Disemboweled home. A childhood tome. Above the hearth— An ammo box. The gust of wind, the chill, the knock. Aim it at me: Flintlock rifle, Heart-shaped bore. Lesbian frontman On the pier— Mutter Earth. Beneath the rim of her cap Two moons obscured like The slimy corpses in The burning canal. Rose Jeanou is a lesbian writer and high school teacher based in Providence, Rhode Island. Her fiction and poetry has been featured in HAD, Wrong Publishing, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and many more journals and anthologies. Read her work at rosejeanwrites.com or follow her @rosejeanou on Instagram and Substack.

The parchment will eventually go thin / you’ll brush it gently and yet it’ll tear / there’s no cure for the impending age / forget any chance of staying fair. The text will creak from that binding / bring you back to what you know best / a childhood Bed, the Ocean, the Dog / and disappear yet again to the flurry of pages you don’t bother to flip / each little line, something forgotten / but these things are not precious unless we say it's so. When will you die? / does this stack hold the answer / or is it all a lie? Lauren Elise Fisher (she/hers) is a writer and stage manager based out of Bridgeport, CT and holds a B.A. in Theatre Studies from the University of Connecticut. She has been published in the United States, India, and the United Kingdom; these publications include New Voices Magazine, CultureCult’s Spring Offensive anthology, Canyon Voices, Afterpast Review, Naked Cat Lit, Swim Press, Local Gems Press’ Connecticut Poetry Review 2023, and Quabbin Quills Our Wild Winds anthology. Keep up with Lauren on Instagram, Twitter, & BlueSky: @AllFishSwim.

I drive west from White Sulphur Springs in my black and bruised 2005 Silverado model 2500 4x4 Heavy Duty up 7% grades hauls easily 20,000 pounds with a trailer 62 miles per hour now in late autumn rain episodic drizzle intermittent deluge tight squeaks as rubber wipers struggle whack | whack | whack against sheets of water on the front windshield I64 traffic sporadic diesel 18-wheeler tires fling plumes of spray splash my truck | This Appalachian rain forest! | This ocean of wet! | and coupés flit like deranged gnits on slick asphalt driving faster than their lights risk hydroplaning sun and blue sky are visible only from aircraft flying high above the roof of dark clouds sprawl here to Ohio from whence they come pinned to our mountains by leafless trees half-way down set a dense mist upon the ground limit visibility to 50 yards immerse us in gray and damp Out of all that fades something beneath emerges into focus as a magnet gathers iron filings in field force lines a Faraday moment of driving brusque gravel throat of the Grabber 10 ply tires inflated to 80psi hard on the road thud and rattle of the chassis on bumps and Interstate concrete pavement separation shum of the AC fan defogging the inside windshield mild strain on my right ankle near the accelerator pedal covering the brake my hands at 4 and 8 motor oil scented warmth my eyes canvass the dash gauge lights cab and exterior mirrors my pleasure sporadically interrupted by unfelt rushes of adrenaline as defensively I adjust the truck’s motion account for the inventory of vehicles moving around me Now I can’t think mechanical stresses from the truck’s forward tumult yank at reason rip rationality away from the rusted steel all that is false and dross drips off is lost in the highway scene time as in a dream stops Images of prophesy flood the cab I am with Ralph Waldo in his farm home by the bridge he tugs apart a Chrysanthemum pulls off pink ray and red disc florets stigma anther ovary style and filament passes the denuded flower bulb to me I gaze into it is the name of the flower there no sound no word no motion I feel nothing see nothing smell not perfume of the plant or its moist earth yet I know without knowing before massy hard atoms congeal in their swirling relativity create space and time presence has always been there Ralph Waldo is wrong it has no name Ron Tobey grew up in north New Hampshire, USA, and attended the University of New Hampshire, Durham. He farms in West Virginia. He writes fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. As an imagist poet, he expresses experiences and moods in concrete descriptions in haiku, lyrical poetry storytelling, audio poetry, and in filmic interpretation. Ron has published widely in poetry journals. He was a finalist in Cleaver Magazine 40th Anniversary Flash Fiction Contest. Ron is active on X @Turin54024117

I breathe the cursed air haunted fog with spectral halos white horse waves roll at my feet tossing dead souls as a sacrifice I tried to warn them but they ignored my light and let the salty darkness obscure their vision Skeletal driftwood splintered and sharp pierces the heart of human apparitions Hope and safety fade into the gray arms of false security disappearing into the sea foam clouds Shape shifting selkies reborn from the lost cry tears to the ocean and return to its arms But the burning flames of time in broken lanterns and weathered beacons cannot reply to broken desperation Nothing remains but blurry memories like old photos curled and ragged Cathy Joyce Lee can be found forest bathing at night and paddling on the river by day in Upstate New York. Cathy earned a Master's Degree in Public Administration. This led to her profession of writing health and wellness articles and offering professional development training programs to preschool teachers. Cathy is a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators and has been published in Passager. It is the writer's hope that her poems will paint a picture in the mind of the reader that may be beautiful pastels or charcoaled darkness, both of which reflect life.

Upon his departure from his horrible, sinful life, he was not greeted by fire and brimstone. There was not light, there was not the Devil. He was eternally separated from information, not even a wisp of frequency of light or sound penetrating the dense walls that he thought must surround him for millions of miles. That is, when he could ever think. He could feel. God, he could feel. God, how he could comprehend the millions of tons of atmosphere that landed upon him unforgivingly. He was tasked with carrying the weight of his sins on his back, and he succeeded against his will. When he was alive, he thought he was the strongest man in the world, and he proved himself by withstanding second after second of monumental compression. He was nothing but a miserable soul pressed into singularity by the void itself. There may not have been fire, but there was a heat that surpassed all the known incinerating forces of the sun itself.  Wet, wrathful heat. If he had skin, it was skin no more, but scalding slime clinging reluctantly to his bones. The vents below spewed their rage from recesses even deeper in the earth than the black swallow the soul was bound to. He knew not the passing of the time. He wondered if it had been weeks, seconds, or eons since he last murdered, raped, looted, since he first swore rebellion against his good God in Heaven and boarded the Hangman and embarked on his life of depravity on the seven seas. The pirate had set his course for fire and brimstone, as he thirsted for it. No amount of gold or innocent blood could glorify him more than conquering the world from the floor of Hell to the ceiling of Heaven and everything in between, adorning himself with the robes of a defeated Devil and the crown of an extinct God. He was proud to hang by the neck ‘til dead, having proved himself ready for his next odyssey. God would not give this sea-devil the satisfaction. Jacob Smith is a freshman at UNT and a horror enthusiast. His favorite works of horror include the movies Pulse (2005), Evil Dead Rise (2023), and Skinamarink (2022), the video game series Five Nights at Freddy’s, as well as the online ARG The Hypnagogic Archive. Aside from horror, he enjoys his time as a frontman for his rock band Dinosaur Data Book and loves to cook when he can. He hopes you enjoy his first dig at writing horror fiction.