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It’s crushing but slippery, like a birth but better but worse; there are eyes on you, through  you, but you can’t summon any numbers to your mind that make sense. There are too many—for  the daylight—and not enough—for the nightmares.  A brush against the back of your neck, the rise of your hip. It might be a breath, slightly  sour with a metallic glint, and ghostly fingertips that never fully land.  You could fight it. You could turn around and look—but you can’t, can you? You’re not  ready to face this, this monster that refuses to settle into your brain long enough to become a  singular, precise fear. It’s every fear, all the fear, all the cold in your bones and your mother’s  bones and her mother’s bones.  The slick roll of wet, oily shadow across your shoulders brings you out of your mind and  uncomfortably into your body. You fit, but barely; your skin feels smaller, like you’re sharing it  with someone—some thing .  Something else is in there with you. It’s in your finger bones and in your eyes. It smells  like sweat and grease, but a little crisply burnt. You have never smelled this in your life but you  smell it in the back of your throat like it’s coming from inside you. It is, of course.   If it can unravel you by pulling at your edges, it will. You feel the nausea of bile in your  blood, the staccato of your heartbeat, controlled by a thing that has never had one. It was not  alive until it took you, and inch by creeping inch, the parts of you that are you begin to  erode. It devours you, erases you, becomes you.  Breath after breath. Slowly. Slowly. Slower still. You are drowning in air. Your mind is  fading, reduced to the sensation of all the hair on your body standing on end. The powerful  wrongness is eating at your very soul and you know you cannot stop it.  You feel it pull back your lips in a crude, ugly smile. Your teeth are slick, your tongue is  cold. You taste the rank decay this thing carries with it. You can’t scream, not anymore. It’s too  late for that.   It has taken your throat, and it laughs. Kaille Kirkham is a queer American poet living in Tokyo. She is the single mother of a rescue cat and a rude conure. By day, she teaches English literature at a secondary school.

When the velvet greens are washed with rain and dirt,  And the dirt is washed with hands like the surgery of a seed— The child I once hammocked visits me.  In the brief fluttering we have together, I teach her how to throw a softball and never have it thrown back.  To prepare the soil to be cracked open by hoarfrost, anesthesia in the bark.   To love and never understand the heart it came from, to know a child by  The changes instead of the name. To catch the wind and accept where it takes her, The whispers of boys, allowing worries to slip away.  The wolves that teach her how to howl, of having wet consciousness.  Full moons. New moons led by stray light. She inhales sharply, smears goji berries around her lips,  Grabs the world like a biscuit of crab and butter. She exhales, allowing the spreading knife to plump her.  Her limbs unfold despite my greed in keeping her near.   She moves in her chrysalis, becoming a prodigy for the cold.  Her forewings briefly become sticks of calcium stuck in human density, Walking on a borrowed vertebrae.  The round trees stiffen into boxes to capture her taste. A hole in the sky slurps me into the museum–  In this eternity I think I can fly. Nicole F. Kimball is an emerging poet and artist from Salt Lake City, Utah. Her work can be found in Atlanta Review, Mom Egg Review, Lit. 202, and elsewhere. A four-time Best of the Net Nominee, her debut work of fiction is forthcoming in print later this year. Nicole loves to spend time with her husband, and Chihuahua named Tinkerbelle.

Dear Katz, It’s been a month and a half, and I’ve been trying to find a way to tell you how I’m feeling and what I’ve finally decided to do. You know me. You know I can be a little compulsive in my decision making, even with the serious stuff. I know I sometimes jump first and then look. I promise you I’m not gonna do that this time. You’re not going to like what I have to say, but it’s been damn near impossible for me to think about anything besides “the discovery” since they put that girl on the news a year ago.  Did you think we would live to see this? For real though. Harvard, MIT, and Columbia are all opening departments of Parapsychology in the Fall. Imagine that. How many thousands of years have people been swearing that ghosts and spirits and such are real? And for how many centuries have people like me and the people who run Harvard and MIT been laughing at those other people? But now we know. If that girl in that cemetery hadn’t been crazy enough to run toward that thing when she saw it, if she hadn’t been…I don’t know the right word for it… caught up  enough to keep filming the thing, how many more lifetimes would have passed without us knowing for sure that those things are out there? I was reading an article in the Wall Street Journal a few days ago, and how they summed it up is one of the best ways I’ve heard. I know you don’t read the Journal so if you’ll forgive the long quote, it said: Every time I watch the video, a part of me still wants to believe it’s a fake, but if the thing didn’t go away, if the thing is still there to this day,  how can a person not believe it? If Harvard and MIT say the thing is real, that’s good enough for me.  But that’s what scares me. And fascinates me. If ghosts are real, can’t angels and demons also be real? I know. I know. I do still keep up with Scientific American. I know you’re going to point to the same thing my colleagues point to. Quote: “The existence of a heretofore hidden reality, where entities not understood by science are now known to abide, does not guarantee the existence of gods or demons…”   blah blah blah. But Katz, think about it. We believe in science because its tenants are testable, falsifiable. And when we learn new information, we adjust our thinking. For centuries we pushed back against claims of the paranormal because there was no objective, verifiable evidence to support them. Now we have the video of this thing, standing in a graveyard watching a funeral, and it’s not some grainy Bigfoot video. It’s not blurry and out of focus, and half the universities (and damn near every government) on earth has verified that the picture is real, that the damn thing is there! And we have no idea what it’s made of or how it’s even there in the first place. It’s so funny listening to the conspiracy nuts… Yeah, half the people on the fucking planet want to fool somebody’s Uncle. Jesus Christ. And then the religious people going back and forth: is it from God? Is it evil? I get so tired of it sometimes, but at the end of the day, I’m like everybody else; I can’t stop thinking about it.  At this point, you and I are the only people I know who don’t swear they’ve been seeing ghosts all their lives. I still haven’t seen one. Have you seen one yet? Why do you think that is? Is it because we don’t crave attention enough to lie for it? Or because we don’t hop on the bandwagon and co-sign every new trend that pops up? I get so sick of people talking to empty seats on the subway and swearing it’s George Washington or Martin Luther King. Personally, I believe the vast majority of people still don’t see them, no matter how much they lie, and I still think anybody who goes around making a living from talking to them is full of shit. But isn’t it crazy that since the start of the Industrial Revolution, people have complained about how light keeps our brains from truly resting at night, but now most people make sure the lights are on  before they get in the bed and go to sleep? The world has changed so much, and I just can’t get my head around it. The reason I’m writing, like I said, is to let you know I’ve been thinking long and hard about something and I’ve made a decision. You know how those of us who don’t believe in UFOs are the ones who are the most eager to see one? Can you imagine how satisfying it would be to touch an actual skin sample? Or see just the taillight of a flying saucer? To see one scrambled text message from an extraterrestrial intelligence? I guess that’s why  we’re the biggest skeptics. We want it more than most people can imagine. I remember how you laughed when I signed up to join the crew for that billionaire asshole’s Mars colony project. I knew I wouldn’t be picked, but I wanted to go so badly and see what was out there. I think you were able to laugh because you knew I didn’t have a chance. It wasn’t even clear that the guy was serious, and I didn’t even have a master’s degree yet. You knew there wasn’t any real danger I’d wind up sitting in a space capsule headed across the solar system. I suppose I knew it too, but I wanted—I needed— to know. I needed  to know what was out there, and so I signed up. Now this thing…this thing in the graveyard and humanity suddenly finding itself at this crossroads, on the edge of this whole new age of discovery. It won’t leave me alone.  I hope this doesn’t frighten you or creep you out. I just don’t want you to find out from the authorities. Next week, I’ll see my thirtieth birthday. My doctor says a guy like me, if he takes care of himself, can expect to live for 73 years or more. That means I could be hanging around for four more decades, give or take, wondering what’s down that other road. I guess the odds are I will  see a ghost or two in the next forty years. Just because they aren’t showing themselves to me now doesn’t mean they never will. But Katz, I can’t wait forty years to find out what’s out there. I mean, now we know  there’s a whole other plane of existence. And not that I’m qualified to argue with Scientific American, but what if there are gods? What if all the things we were told aren’t real really are? What if, when we die, we just change but don’t end? I wonder if my mom and dad know what my life has been like. I wonder if they’ll know when I’m coming. I wonder if I can find them… Do you remember the time we were in Spain, and you drew a heart on the bathroom mirror while I was in the shower? It was right after things started going sideways with us, and we were trying to get back on track. When you drew that heart on the mirror, something that small and simple, it let me know your heart was still in it, and we could find our way back to being in love like we had been. I never told you, but I almost cried when I saw it. I was so relieved to find out everything wasn’t lost. Well, we did try. We took our teacups, and we tried as hard as we could to dip out that ocean, but, in time, the tide was just too much for us. You can see from this tome I’m sending you, though, that you still are a big part of me. That’s why I wanted to tell you myself what’s ahead for me. I have to go and find out. If I’m wrong, I’ll never know it. But if I’m right…If I’m right Katz, I can’t wait to see what’s on that other side. I can’t imagine how things work over there. Is it a matter of choice where one goes, who one sees? What role does the will play? What role does chance play? I don’t know, but whatever the rules are, I’ll try to make a heart on the mirror for you. If you see one, you’ll know it’s me reaching out. You are not a fearful person, and so I imagine it won’t frighten you if you already know it might be coming. I just know that I’ll want you to know that I’m alright and that I’ll never stop thinking about you no matter where I am or what state I’m in.  The most valuable things I own are my car and the money in my accounts. The car’s not a Lamborghini but it is very nice, and it’ll bring a nice piece of change. I’ve donated most of my clothes and a whole lot of other stuff to the homeless shelter and the thrift store across town. What’s left is mostly books and pictures. I’m sure you’ll get a call, but don’t worry about any of that stuff. I’ll put the account numbers at the end of this page. Don’t be scared, Katz. I’m not scared. I’m almost excited. I’m sorry we couldn’t fix things, but maybe it was for the best all along. Maybe something bigger than us knew this was coming one day. Who would have imagined that the start of the 21st century, the age of the internet and space tourism, would be the time we would finally have definitive proof that ghosts are real? Anything is possible now. And it’s time for me to see it for myself.  I wish you peace and happiness, Katz.  Don’t forget me.  Preston Ford is a teacher and short-story writer. His novel Quarter Moon: A Novel of the American South was published in January. He lives in Maryland.

Lined up like make-believe guests, potted ferns Adorned the entry, their cool shadows dim Switching the parlor—life’s last living room— Where time hesitates and dark furnishings Project inarguable dignity. Bookended by brass casket handles, lids Too heavy to be raised again must sense My presence, those defiant eyes I closed, Who parsed my childish alibis, whose last Wink nicked the priest, who forced death to hold still Till her eyes sent light leaping into mine. Make-up achieved the requisite life-like Illusion, simulating deepest sleep. Anxieties from cancer, agony, Diminishment, decay, helplessness: These were dissolved by death’s majestic wand. No longer glued in sickbed amber, she Exhales departure’s cloudburst, stretches free, Ignores those funeral displays. I feel, Inside pink satin, energy’s astir. Longing embedded in the earth has been Roused, charmed from sleep to welcome her. Except Tomorrow’s pre-dug grave will not confine Zest’s essence—just her perishable corpse. Bright windows fogged. Or was that tears? She’s flown. Native New Yorker and Elgin Award winner, LindaAnn LoSchiavo is a member of the British Fantasy Society, HWA, SFPA, and The Dramatists Guild — and a spooky Scorpio who loves Hallowe'en. Current books:  Messengers of the Macabre: Hallowe’en Poems , Vampire Ventures , Always Haunted: Hallowe’en Poems [Wild Ink, 2024], Apprenticed to the Night [UniVerse Press, 2024], and Felones de Se: Poems about Suicide [Ukiyoto Publishing, 2024].

The Monitor came to me when I was 14 years old. I awoke in my bed. I couldn’t move. My eyelids felt stuck, like the barn doors after a heavy rain had swelled the wood. A weight pressed on my diaphragm.  This paralysis had happened before. The panic encircled my ribcage, crushed my lungs. I heaved my eyes open.  This time was different. A huge black cat sat on my chest. Its circular eyes glowed bright enough to form a halo of red around its head that gradually merged into the humid darkness of my room. Somewhere in that ink, water dripped from the ceiling into a plastic bucket I had placed there yesterday. Plink. Plink. Plink. Panic rammed at the back of my throat. The cat’s fluffy tail swished back and forth in slow motion. Then it began to speak. fear not. i am the monitor. i am here to make a correction. Speaking was not quite what it was doing. Its sexless voice echoed in my skull.  my friend, you have been selected for a task . Its voice had a degraded quality, like a phone with bad signal. I noticed air washing in and out of my lungs, but I had no control over it.  I tried to speak but could only think. Who are you? Apparently, the thought was enough because the cat replied. i am the monitor. this iteration is in danger. we calculate that a correction at this time location will have a high probability of saving many people with minimal interference. To this day, I still wonder whether I was dreaming or not. In the moment, I decided I was in a lucid nightmare. Why not do it yourself? we cannot act directly upon this dimension.  Even though I could not hear the cat’s voice, I felt vibration through its body on my chest. It relaxed me somehow. And you think I can? I’m locked in this room, you know. your father has locked you in this room, but tomorrow at 6:13 seth will unlock the door. exit the room. go to the kitchen and open the window above the sink. I waited, but the thing said nothing else. Just when I felt my jaw unlock and opened my mouth to speak, the cat jumped off my chest with a viscous slowness. The red glow snuffed out. Immediately, the weight suffocating me lifted. I sucked in gulps of air and tumbled off my bed, hands and knees hitting the cold wood—a welcome contrast to the sticky air of the windowless room. I crawled toward the faint string of light outlining my bedroom door, still catching my breath. I grabbed the doorknob and twisted. Locked. I could still see the whites of Dad’s eyes flashing when he caught me last night in the hayloft. I was up there with my flashlight, reading from my stash of books. Most I had gotten from girls at school—old-school fallen angel, vampire, werewolf romance type stuff. I was 14, after all. Even without a computer at home, I found ways to satisfy my curiosities. “You must purify your mind to ascend, Norea,” Dad said as he tossed the books into the fireplace. He had the striking ability to speak in a genteel monotone while his gaunt face bloomed with fury, made even brighter by the contrast of his long white hair. Shortly after Mom died, it had turned white overnight. “Do you want to ascend?”  I said no. Somewhere, Seth was crying. The sound brought tears to my eyes too. Then Dad locked me in my room and ordered me to contemplate his scriptures. The Final Testament of the Second Coming of Christ. Yes, I should have mentioned: Dad believed he was the second coming of Christ.  Not so long after Mom died, but before we moved out to the middle of nowhere, something happened. He stepped out of his bedroom in our tiny Chicago apartment, eyes wide and hair white, speaking alien syllables that slowly reshuffled into English again over the next week.  That’s when the craziness started.  He was constantly scribbling down new mental downloads from the Entirety, new instructions about how to wage spiritual battle against the daimons keeping humanity imprisoned in this dimension, new rituals and codes to hack through their layers of deception. I could never keep up.  I heard a click. I stood quickly. Dad did not usually let me out after only one night.  The door swung upon. Seth stood there. The faint light from the hall backlit his frizzy dark hair. Even though he was already four, he was small for his age. He still sucked his thumb. He clutched a chewed white blankie in his other fist. “G’morning,” he said.  I crouched to his eye level and peered behind him. A few oil sconces along the walls were already lit—that was odd. Dad did not usually get up early.  Dad had long since shut off the electricity in this farmhouse. Only oil lamps and candles. He claimed he could hear the electric hum, and it interrupted his downloads from the Entirety. Another evil scheme. And besides, fire is a purifying element, he would say.  To which I would say, “But Hell is full of fire, and lightning comes from heaven.” “Lightning is from the Demiurge,” he would reply. Sometimes he would laugh after saying this. Sometimes he would not laugh at all. It seems strange to say, but I often got the sense that as much as I came to fear Dad, he came to fear me too. Sometimes, when I entered a room and he looked up at me, I caught a light in his eyes. It was like headlights reflecting off the pupils of a deer in the path of an oncoming semitruck. And then it was gone. My eyes adjusted to the wobbly light. No sign of Dad. Just the foliage of handwritten pages carpeting the floor, alongside empty plastic bottles, various food wrappers, cardboard boxes taped up and stacked along the wall, and manila envelopes stuffed between them. Every day, Dad packed up scriptures to send to his growing register of followers.  “Seth, what’s wrong?” I whispered, stepping forward into the hall. Immediately, my shins hit the rung of a small object, sending it clattering across the floor—Seth’s child-sized stool, painted red, yellow, and green. I froze. The noise wasn’t loud, but in the quiet of the sleeping house, it filled every crevice of my consciousness. Seth must have dragged the stool from his room to reach the bolt on my door—the bolt Dad had installed to lock from the outside.   “Bad dream,” Seth sighed. Images of the previous night flitted across my mind. I had somehow already forgotten the black cat crushing my ribs and issuing strange orders. Its blood-moon eyes rushed back to my mind now, its flickering sexless voice.  you have been selected for a task . “I’m thirsty!” Seth exclaimed. I shushed him. “Where’s daddy?” “Outside.” Maybe he left while I was mid-sleep paralysis. It was not uncommon for him to wander into the woods, sometimes for days at a time. Or maybe he was on his way to the post office. Spewing his spiritual seed into the world.  “Okay, let’s hurry. I’ll get you some water.” I grabbed Seth’s sticky hand and began picking my way through the detritus. “Then you need to lock me back in. Else we’ll get in trouble.” The smell of stale air and mold permeated everything in that house. Seth and I passed Dad’s study on our left—it was the source from which the endless reams of paper and boxes tumbled like foam from a waterfall. The faint smell of rotten eggs—which I knew was sulfur—drifted from the doorway. Inside the study, the hall lights glinted off a huge metal prep table hosting an array of beakers, burners, double boilers, and twisting alchemical labware with no obvious purpose. A fire extinguisher lay on the floor. A big analog clock hung over the table, next to a window that had been papered over with yellowing newsprint. It was 6:15. I kept leading Seth onward, past the living room archway on my right and toward the kitchen straight ahead. Seth began singing to himself, softly at first, then louder. “Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream…merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a—” “Shh!” I pressed a finger to my lips and ushered him into the kitchen ahead of me.  I stopped dead.  Standing before the sink, piled high with dirty dishes, Dad stood with his back to me. He was naked but for a pair of boxers, his long white hair hanging in mats along the knobs of his spine. The light seeping in from the window above the sink gave him an almost angelic glow. The tang of rot wafted to me from the sink. Every kid sees their parent at some point as a human weakling for the first time—sometimes in a moment of childlike rage, or the throes of grief. But sometimes it comes in a quiet moment. This was that moment for me.  His body, frail from fasting, twisted first, his gaze still locked on the window. His head turned next. His eyes came last, meeting mine—dark blue, like Seth’s. They were distant, undefined, clouded by a shroud of tears.  In that moment I saw a flash of the man I saw standing before my mother’s coffin, something breaking in him, or breaking loose in him.  I didn’t feel fear now. I didn’t feel love. I felt pity. Pity and disgust. Dad’s brow furrowed, pupils twitching from me to Seth. Weak sunlight filtered in from the gray miasma outside the window. The nearby mining operations had choked out the sun years ago. Water dripped from the sink. Plink. Plink. Plink.  “Seth was thirsty,” I said at last. It came out a half-whisper. Dad said nothing. He turned to the sink again and plucked out a cup. His hands were shaking. I crossed the room slowly. Takeout bags, crumpled plastic wrap, and more scrawled pages crunched under my feet. I stood next to Dad and grasped the cup in his hands. “I’ll get it, Dad.” I spoke gently, as if to a wild dog.  He let me take the cup. As he stepped back, he placed a spidery hand on my head. I looked up at him. His eyes were hard, but his voice was choked with tears. “I will do anything—anything—to make you ascend with me. That is why I must purify you.” I nodded. Tap water overflowed the cup now.  “Put Seth in his room and come to my laboratory,” he said, and turned away. My heart rate spiked. To this day, I don’t fully understand why I did what I did. I wasn’t operating on the level of conscious thought. I set the cup on the counter, between a sponge and a brown apple core. Then I reached across the sink and unlatched the window. Gray dust coated my fingertips. I hooked them under the sill and yanked. The window squeaked a few inches up its gummy track.  Dad’s footsteps halted. I yanked again. The window squealed halfway open before he was upon me. He reached his long arms over mine and grasped the window. I slithered out from between his body and the sink, then scurried backwards to Seth, who had dropped his blankie. I grabbed his hand again as Dad struggled with the window.  “Unclean, unclean,” he hissed. “Shit!” He jumped back from the sink. A small, oblong object shot through the last gap in the window, screeching. “Birdie!” Seth grinned and stretched out his arms.  A little brown finch rocketed around the room. Dad abandoned the window and lunged after it, cursing the Archons. Instinctively, I ducked and clutched Seth to my stomach as Dad careened past, giving chase into the hallway.  A thud. A crash. Then, a cry. I let go of Seth and jumped to the doorway. It took me a moment to fully comprehend what I was seeing. Dad was standing in the hallway, legs apart, hands at his sides, mouth agape. Blood dribbled down his right arm. On the floor, shards of glass glittered in the orange glow.  Dad and I stood there dumbly. The flame from the shattered oil lamp lapped at the paper on the floor. The oil accelerated its growth. In that eternal moment—probably only a few seconds—the flame jumped to the wall.  I blinked twice and Dad was upon me again. He must have jumped around the fire because his eyebrows were singed. He grabbed my arm with one hand while simultaneously reaching behind me to grab Seth. He shoved us both into the hall and toward the living room doorway. “Go to the McNams,” he said, voice calm as if we were going out to play.   I didn’t have time to feel afraid. I took Seth’s hand and crossed the living room to the front door, jostling the knob, almost forgetting to slide open the multiple deadbolts before shouldering the door wide.  I plunged into the gray morning. I didn’t bother looking back. I knew Dad wasn’t following us. I knew he was going back to save the lab.  Seth stumbled behind me and I picked him up, wrapping both arms around his skinny body. I ran.  The gravel driveway gave way to crabgrass. It sliced at my bare feet. I noticed the pain abstractly. A small object flew over my shoulder and into the sky, chirruping. I didn’t stop, not even when the smell of sulfur prickled my nose hairs. I felt the explosion before I heard it. The wave of heat shoved me to my knees. I scrambled upright, Seth squirming in my arms. I didn’t look back. Seth was screaming words I couldn’t understand. I just kept running. The neighbor’s farmhouse got closer and closer.  The total blankness I felt in that moment has never quite left me—an unbearable lightness. Even now, it threatens to lift me away from this world.  I know if I ask myself too many questions about that day, I will tumble so deep into the possibilities that I may never claw my way out. I don’t know who I saved or doomed, or if I did nothing at all but follow the inevitability of a collapsing wave form. Either way, I don’t allow myself to feel guilty for what a 14-year-old did. After all, I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t do anything at all.  My life continued. So did Seth’s. We spent the rest of our childhood with our maternal grandparents back in Chicago, the strange years with Dad fading away like chemtrails in the eternal gray sky. The fear was over. That’s all that matters. I waited, meditated, and even prayed for it, but I never saw the Monitor again. Nicole Kurlich is a writer, editor, and amateur seamstress living in Chicago with her two cats, Toast and Jelly. Her work has appeared in literary journals including Poet Lore, Contrary Magazine, Gravel, and more. Her debut chapbook, girls are figs , was published by Milk and Cake Press.

I. Camellian She was made in the image of Camellia. Her lips boasted a cherry blossom, carved carmine cheeks dripped into her yellow eyes, lean and sharp as a prowling cat. Camellia, keen and defined by her crimson kisses, her leaves wide and striped with emerald green drew in her own creation. This image, fleeting and sprinkled with dew, was forgotten in the imagined seas of Miryoung, grasping at the petals of her sweet Camellia, swept away at the glance of an artist's brush. She is Camellian. Her colors change with but a whim, flickering in a cosmic sunset kaleidoscope. She licks them like candy as they drip off her lips, staining the artist’s canvas. When she becomes the muse she eats poets for breakfast. Her taste buds burst with the caviar of art: imagination. II. Drawing Camellia White camellias are a sign of my adoration, handed to the clear air and draped across the shoulder of the mountains breathing in the distance. It is a curse: to be surrounded by the pollution-stained  beauty of South Korea, the trembling hills lifting into the hazy horizon. I write love letters to the camellias as they die in droves, rotting and falling to the sidewalks, crushed by the passerby into a nondescript smear of brownish pink. Even in death, the camellia stands proud, reminding every allergy sufferer that they will return to torment next spring, their rose-like buds mixing with the gentle cherry blossoms. In Korea, camellias are the flowers of weddings, adorning the  paths of faithfulness and piety, matching the bride’s brilliant red hanbok and the groom's muted blue. Perhaps the artist can breathe the fumes of loyalty as she sketches her final command, her finality, Camellia. III. Helper to the Priest It draws an irony that starving children can walk along arching walkways and donation-lined walls like those of St. Patrick’s cathedral. It has a  bitter taste and bleeds the tongue like a sword to the throat. It draws  a metaphor that camellias line the pathway to disorder. It burns the nose with smoky desire. It brushes the skin in anointed oil and lights a candle of devotion. It splashes the soul with moldy holy water.  It looks upon the holy trinity: Camellian, devil, she.  IV. Camellian, Pt. 2 I am Camellia, which is to say, I breathe. Paige Eaton (she/her) is a poet who is currently teaching English in South Korea and is originally from Rochester, New York. Her work has appeared in Dark Entries, Does it Have Pockets, Long Winded Anthology, and Unlikely Stories  among others, and is forthcoming in Pink Hydra  and The Bitchin’ Kitsch .

the damned stands before her ʻāina ,  repressed tears embellish her limpid eyes  as she overlooks the lavender, melancholy skies,  acknowledging those before her  with a silent prayer and nod.   winds swim around her,  the trees serve as companions,  and the distant chants of spirits grow closer to her despondent heart as seconds speed by. she sits on the sand,  watching the intricate waves clash against the rocks— ( i remember clashing like that with…  “ embrace the little things, my girl, ”)   a tear skips down her cheek  and she’s hasty to wipe it away,  as if someone’s there to judge. poor soul,  sitting on the ashes of her damned spirit,  contaminating the ʻāina . ( everything i do —  i do it wrong  i deserve to — become an ancestor )  –  the damned  retrieves a shovel  from pa’s tool room. she returns to the  spot—  the spot of self,  the spot of ola . –   6 feet deep  sand grave. she throws the beaten shovel aside,  then grabs the matches. slowly, she descends into the grave. (“ goodbye, my dearest ola .”) –  the damned takes a final glance  at the lavender, melancholy skies,  cherishing the moments she had during this ola . aesthetic of her ola —death.  the end.  for the damned .  she lights the ahi ,  and smiles,  relishing in her final moments,  before being welcomed by mother earth to her new ʻāina ,  just across the alaula .  the end. M.S. Blues is a writer, editor, and advocate from San Jose, California. Her objective is to raise awareness to issues that society tends to neglect, as well as represent her communities. She’s one of the most decorated figures in the literary magazine community, having been published over 130 times and serving on multiple staff boards. She’s an editor for; The Amazine, Adolescence Magazine, The Elysian Chronicles, Hyacinthus Zine, Low Hanging Fruit, Sister Time, DICED Online Magazine , and The Mixtape Review. She is a poetry/prose reviewer for The Cawnpore Magazine . In addition, she’s the Prose Submission Manager of Chromatic Scars Review . She’s also the co Editor-in-Chief of The Beaulieu Gazette and Sorry! Zine , as well as the Assistant Editor-in-Chief for Voices of Asylum . Lastly, she is the Founder & Editor-in-Chief of The Infinite Blues Review. You can interact with her on Instagram @m.s.blues_

Violet Plays With Raindrops, 2024 With a fingertip, I caught raindrops on the windowpane one by one, letting the coolness shock my skin and obscure the whorls of my fingerprint. “They broke the fabric again at the accelerator site,” my brother said as he passed through the room and turned on the TV. He flopped down on the futon and scrolled through streaming services. He didn’t seem to see me, but I saw him perfectly well even without looking at him. He was in my peripheral vision, not to mention he was doing the same thing I’d seen him do every day forever. “At least that’s what the weirdos are calling it. They say the accelerator ‘breaks the fabric of reality.’” He snorted. “All anyone really knows is they’re detecting unusual energy fluctuations.” He shifted sideways to face me. The old futon creaked. “Are you even listening to me? What are you doing? You should close the window. It’s raining.” I caught another raindrop. “I know it’s raining. That’s why I have the window open.” “Honestly, Violet. How old are you? Four?” “Times a few.” I muttered the words into my forearm, because I was resting my chin on my folded arm, and I was just as happy if he didn’t hear me. I was eighteen and saw nothing wrong with raindrop-catching at any age. Besides, it kept me facing away from him, which made it easier to hide the fact that I was more interested in his talk about the fabric of reality than I wanted to admit. I didn’t know why I resisted showing interest, except that it plucked a string inside me that resonated with half-formed ideas, things I didn’t want to have to try to describe because I had no words for them. Violet Feels the Crossroads of Dimensions, 2034 The side room of the bio-physics lab was a mess. It was the space dedicated to cutting-edge molecular and subatomic research that would one day be used for new medical technology, yet somehow it had collected more than its share of junk. The fume hood contained a few kilos of dried leaves for reasons only one of the grad students knew, and I had to turn sideways to get past all the clutter in the room—boxes, a broken stool, a bin of stained glassware. Two thermocyclers were running at one end of the bench, alternately heating and cooling DNA to allow the heat-tolerant Taq polymerases in the tiny tubes to make thousands of copies of the genomes within. I knew not to touch those, and I also knew not to touch the plasma particle collider at the other end of the bench. My only job was to wash and put away the day’s glassware and shiny steel spatulas and scoopulas, make sure the hot-water bath and shaker plates were all turned off for the night, and sweep the floor in here and out in the main lab. My job was not to think about the text from my brother, who was on an overnight solo hike in the desert mountains. The text that said only, I screwed up and forgot to pack enough water. Ran out before nightfall. That’s fifteen miles to go tomorrow before I get anything else to drink. My job was to be a good assistant and clean things well so next year, when I applied to grad schools, Dr. Farmer might consider letting me join her lab. Worrying about my brother wouldn’t aid that cause, since I couldn’t do anything to help him.  Someone had left their electrophoresis apparatus on the counter between the thermocyclers and the particle accelerator. I needed to wash the apparatus and put it away or Dr. Farmer would be annoyed with me in the morning. To get to that side of the room, I stepped over one of the boxes that stood crooked on the floor, misjudged the distance, and tripped. My hand shot out, jostling the particle accelerator. In the space between stumbling and catching myself, the room dissolved. My own matter became not the solid suit of meat I was used to but something that shimmered, something indefinite yet more truly me than I’d ever been before in this life. A crystalline grid of stardust surrounded me, instead of the familiar lab. I caught myself on the black epoxy resin bench before my nose would have smashed into it. The particle accelerator slid a few inches and came to a stop. The machine was unharmed, as far as I could tell. But I was not the same as a moment before. I still felt made of shimmering light, and the air, the walls, and everything else seemed to pulse in time with the vibration of my body. I straightened up and took a deep breath. Maybe I was just dizzy from the near-fall. The air pulsed again, stronger this time. It felt like the waves of sound that hit you physically when you’re near a jet taking off, except I heard nothing. My torso compressed and released in rhythm. My jawbone vibrated. “What’s going on?” Since I was alone and no one could hear me, it made me feel better to speak the confusion aloud. As soon as I said the words, the pulsing calmed to a low buzz in my chest and in my bones. Relieved, I took a deep breath, gazing absently toward the fume hood, toward all those red maple leaves spread out to dry inside it. A form appeared in the hood’s shadowy glass. I whirled to see who’d come up behind me, but there was no one there. When I turned toward the glass again, the form remained, a pattern of shadow vaguely humanlike in shape but lacking any distinct features. “Must be a trick of the light.” We are not a trick of the light. I looked around again, pulse pounding. Still no one there. We have always been here. “What do you mean, always?” There was still no one in the room that I could see, but I felt the presence of someone—or some ones —as surely as I heard their words in my mind. Always is always,  pulsed the voice in my mind.  Time is not what you think. Time is not linear, or cyclical, or multilinear. All time is simultaneous; all pasts, presents, and futures, as you would name them, are equally real and equally here. I sat down on the grungy tile floor and closed my eyes. The pulsing from earlier returned and vibrated the marrow of my bones, my brain stem, my heart. In my mind’s eye, I “saw” the beings who were talking with me, but I didn’t see them as a visual image—just as I didn’t hear what they were saying as sounds. You don’t have to close your eyes to see us,  they say. We’re non-corporeal, which means we’re not made of matter. Our decisions are not determined at the quantum level. Distance does not exist for us, neither in space nor in time. Humanity will know this in time. We wait for opportunities such as this one, when a disturbance in the quantum field allows you to perceive us. The words didn’t fully make sense, but I felt  their meaning—just as I felt my body and the room and all the world beyond it made up of billions of points of light. You are bound by a vast set of either/or decisions made every moment at the quantum level,  said the voice, now seeming warm and familiar even though I’d only been acquainted with it for a few minutes. In physical reality, there exist an infinite number of parallel realities, each unfolding from a quantum possibility. My hands felt warm on my knees. “So there’s a reality in which my brother will walk home without a problem, and a reality in which he’s about to die, and another in which he’s already dead.” The air pulsed again, placing an even pressure on every surface of my body. Yes . And every other possibility that exists across all multiverses. They all exist. They all, also, do not exist. I sat feeling the pulsing for a few minutes, listening to the loud rush of the overhead ventilation system and the lower hum of the various small machines in the room. “You said humanity will know this? Have other people had the same experience I’m having now?” A few have. Many more will in the near future, as plasma particle colliders become more common and as you expand their usage. When you corporeal beings look at the world, what you think you are perceiving is not technically inaccurate, but it is only a fraction of the story of reality and therefore not truly correct. “How do I know I’m not just hallucinating you?” Our access to your realm is weakening, but if we act quickly, we can show you something that will remind you of these moments. Name one thing you would like to change in the version of physical reality you inhabit right now. My eyes opened and I sat up straighter. There was no question about what one thing I wanted to change, even though I knew it was impossible.  “ I want my brother to have water. But he’s a thousand miles away.” The feeling of soft laughter vibrated in the air around me. The apparent distances in your spacetime are not real, not in our dimension. I pictured myself filling a bottle of water and handing it to my brother but shook my head. He was several states and two time zones away. Try it,  the voice urged. I got up and went to the computer area in the entrance to the lab suite, where I’d left my blue plastic one-liter water bottle. Outside in the hall, next to a dark window looking out on the quad, I filled the bottle at a water fountain.  As soon as I screwed the bottle’s cap back on, I felt the air around me grow warmer. Close your eyes,  urged the voice. I did so, and in the dark of my temporary lack of sight, I saw myself standing in a dark desert landscape, bending over, and placing the water in my brother’s green hiking pack. When I opened my eyes, I didn’t have the water bottle in my hand. Probably I’d wandered out here into the hall without it. Probably, I was half-dreaming all this and needed to go home and go to sleep. I re-entered the lab, and the air inside it felt normal again. One of the thermocyclers had finished its run and entered its overnight hold at four degrees Celsius. The other thermocycler was almost finished, and the particle accelerator had entered automatic shutoff mode too. By now, the data it had collected had been transmitted to Dr. Farmer’s computer and would be waiting for her in the morning. I checked the water bath and the shaker plates. Satisfied that everything was shut down for the night, I turned off the lights and locked the lab. Violet Wakes in the Certainty of Rain, 2040 The morning of my dissertation defense, I woke to a steady rain, looked up at the gray window, and put my hand over my heart to feel the steady beat. Whatever happened today, I would be at peace. There was a reality in which I would pass the defense, a reality in which I would fail, and a reality in which the defense never happened at all. The sound of each drop striking the windowpane contained a world of possibility. I picked up my phone to read the screenshot of the text from my brother six years ago, the same thing I read every morning as a reminder of how I, and the world, had changed. Thought I forgot to pack an extra water bottle, but I was wrong! Found another in my pack. Didn’t even know I had a blue water bottle like this one. A.J. Van Belle is a nonbinary biologist and writer who lives on Vancouver Island with their husband and two dogs. Their stories have appeared in journals and anthologies from 2004 to the present. A member of HWA and SFWA, A.J. is a literary agent intern at the Booker-Albert Agency, volunteers as a submissions reader for Apparition Lit, and a mentor in two novel-writing mentorship programs. They are represented by Lauren Bieker of FinePrint Literary.

With enough years of practice, I easily store six days  of outfits in a single backpack pocket Crumpled five dollar bills tucked in bunched socks stuffed in  every jacket pocket—-  I pray to the gods of Just in Case of What If  of What We’ve Had to Do Without It Most of the orange safety bottles hold hoarded prescriptions  needed but rationed— yet some hold thumbtacks  coarse salt  old to-do’s as scrolls,  as fortunes   Nothing unconsidered,  an ex’s birth certificate stored with the lack of fulfillment  of medical records requests  from the institution  where I was unfree  on my sweet sixteen I leave this baggage behind,  filling space with tarot cards  I bought my best friend  three Christmases before her last. She died on my little brother’s birthday so I pack something he gave me in the before times  willing this magic enough  to extend the lives of those left in my usual and expected absence. I pack eyebrow tint  but never concealer  I am trying to look older  not prettier… I don’t want to be spoken to,  just want to look alive enough no one tries to change that. Hot pink hairbrush unsheathes  cold pink plastic knife, serrated blade too dull  to slice bread, to defend  A memory aid, a false sense of safety.  A tube of San Marzano tomato paste contrastive enough from toothpaste they won’t get confused  When my depression creeps Mom’s sauce recipe  far exceeds the importance of brushing my teeth. Caidyn Bearfield (she/her) is a queer Italian-American poet from Columbus, OH. Her debut chapbook, INIZIARE, was published by River Dog Press in 2024. She has featured all across the Midwest at festivals, museums, punk shows, and more. Caidyn is also a peer and legislative advocate for current and former foster youth who enjoys making anything from crafts to cakes to change.

My Sufi guide and I are meeting on Zoom. She welcomes me with a home-run smile and a “Hi” laced with joy. “Read me one of your poems,” she says, eyes glistening. When I finish, she exclaims, “That’s wonderful. You’re doing holy work.” She taught me to typeset my poems by hand, then published them in a beautiful letterpress book, seeing me with God’s eyes. “How are you feeling about the surgery?” I ask about her six-hour operation next week. A hint of anxiety flits over her angular face. “I’ve asked my son to be with me in the hospital. I’ve been doing practices to calm myself, but I still feel a little nervous,” she confesses, willing to be vulnerable. “Many of us will be praying for you,” I tell her, referring to all the people who love her, a fountain of light illuminating my life and so many others, the mother I might have had. Ralph Dranow works as an editor and poetry guide. His most recent book is At Work on the Garments of Refuge , poems of his and his late friend Daniel Marlin. He lives in Oakland, California with his family.

Letter from Wolfgang Jakob Welsch to his friend Julius Hofmann, 1627. Translated from the original German by Dr. Angela Windsor, 2009. My closest friend and colleague, By the grace of God I have found the opportunity to send a last protestation against the fate which has befallen me. As I have never married and have no children, and my mother and father and dear sister have long since ascended to Heaven, I entrust you and you alone with this message; I have assured the guard who carries it that your lips are sealed as tightly as the grave, and neither his complicity nor my own story will be revealed. Though these will not be the last words from my tainted soul, they are final words I will write as my own man. There is no truth I can give to them that will satisfy the court; resisting will only prolong the torture, which my own foolish stubbornness—a trait you had admonished me for!—has perpetuated for an age of agony. I cannot be honest with my judges and jailers, and therefore I must be honest with you. I am not a guilty man. I have had no hand in the crimes of which I stand accused, and I pray that you will believe me when I say I have not committed any witchcraft they have laid before me. Yet there are things I have never told another living soul, not even one so dear to me as you.  My confession will be within the week. I have stood silent for as long as I can, but my resolve has failed me; I must tell them something, gain some last bit of peace, even if it requires bearing false witness against myself and my fellow man. May the Lord forgive me for the petty sins I have committed and the worse ones yet to come. May you, my friend, forgive me for the stories I will relay, and for the request I must make. Before I relay my present, I must relive our past, as it is the only way for you to truly understand the circumstances I now find myself in. I am forever grateful to you for your tender care during the weeks after the Lord recalled my sister’s soul these two years past, for I was inconsolable; the grief made me weak as if with fever, and I wept incessantly, unable to rouse myself from my bed. The patience and diligence with which God has blessed you made you akin to a saint to me, and I know now that without your presence I may never have recovered my strength. But you could not always be with me, and in-between the hours you spent standing vigil at my bedside I became aware of other visitors. Perhaps my fever had awoken them, or else the depths of my grief, or something else entirely. Regardless of the means, it began as a stirring in the corners of the room, a shapeless whirlwind sweeping aside dust to leave behind clean floor. Though I held out my hand to feel the air, I could discern no wind against my fingers. It was a mild enough occurrence, but it shocked and terrified me, my body weakening until I could barely raise my head. An old fear, and one that seems strange to me now, after all the fresh horrors I have seen. These events continued throughout my convalescence; wind from no source ruffling my hair, unseen hands rattling my chairs and bed, sweet and quiet laughter from places I could not locate. Eventually they ceased to frighten me; though they moved in my home they never harmed me, and as the weight of mourning began to lift and the memory of my sister’s pious, humble nature and kind demeanor lost the sting of pain, I began to go outside again for short walks. It was then that the unseen transitioned to the seen, and I could, for the first time, observe the phenomena that had visited me. An aside: I swear to you that I have never kept company with the Devil, though I know not whether you will hold my promises in any regard after you have read my account. Nevertheless, I so swear to you now; though the things I have seen are strange and frightening, I believe them to be God’s creatures as surely as you and I, and I speak of them not to admit to witchcraft but to divulge a long-held secret. I saw them in the woods and fields most often, though occasionally they would venture into town. Their shapes I can hardly describe for they were so varied. Some were as if the branching flashes of lightning had fashioned bodies with which to stride upon the earth, jagged arms and legs in constant jerking motion as they danced, shining blue and white. Others were gnarled, with twisted, crooked features that put me in mind of the knots of a tree, shambling hunched and uncanny through the streets; still others were playful creatures with the lightness of eiderdown, which had the sweet laugh I had heard so often in my home and which left behind strands of gossamer web and a smattering of fish scales. Soft beings lived among my clothing in nests of discarded hair and dust, their entrails pulsing with gentle light through their skin, and things with many eyes and twining arms of wrought-iron hung from the eaves of each house, watching the passersby. And there were more, some apparitions of unimaginable ugliness, others of beauty so awesome I could barely keep from weeping. I have seen these beings every day from my recovery until the day I was interred here, in this prison for witches, this Hexenhaus , and never once have I been acknowledged.   Here it is that we come to my true reason for writing to you. Since the testimony of Herr Gottlieb’s daughter Liesel I have been a captive (and do not judge her, for she has begged forgiveness from me and I have given it! In this place we try to save our souls in any way we can, and since her own confession was recanted she has spent as much time in this Hell as I). I do not care to enumerate my torments or detail them too thoroughly, but let it be said that I have been fortunate. I was not stretched on the rack, and my feet were not pressed between the metal plates of the boot to be crushed; nor was I subject to those more often fatal forms. And yet the pain was such that at times I was sure I was viewing myself from the outside as they took to my body, buzzing like a hive in their pursuit, until the thread of agony drew me back to my anguished form and my vision narrowed to the size of a pin-prick, obscuring even the face of my executioner and leaving me in darkness. It is here, in this place of pain and blood, that I have seen something terrible. The beings outside do not come here, but something else does; it lives in the pools of blood and waste on filthy stone, crawls in darkened corners, seeps from every shadow and crack in the wall. Things, pale as maggots with tiny, black eyes covered by a noxious film of foul water, move among these moaning and wailing forms. Sometimes a poor soul catches their attention with their cries; then they form a circle around the unhappy subject and reach out with spindly arms to grab at bleeding skin and torn flesh, pulling gobbets of pain from the sufferer and glutting themselves until their stomachs are bloated with the signs of their feast. Their mouths have no teeth or tongue, merely a dark, empty hole through which nothing can be seen but smooth, pink ridges of muscle, and when they are not eating they open and close it mindlessly in the manner of a fish. These beasts, shadows cast by the pitiless hearts of men, are here always save for on the days of an execution, upon which they follow the executioner in rank and file. On those days we are left alone, each dwelling within our own torments. Upon my arrival I was stripped and shaved, left naked and shivering in the rank darkness, surrounded by faint whimpers and coughs from my fellow prisoners. They began with no torture, merely questions, threatening and cajoling in turn, offering small mercies and promising dire punishments. Then, when my only response was to insist upon my innocence and pray upon our Lord for forgiveness, they began to pull my limbs into awful contortions, poking and prodding at me with their pins. They declared that I had the witch’s mark and insisted against all evidence that I felt no pain, even as I thrashed and howled. The sun could have risen and fallen a thousand times in that span, and I would not have known, for every question seemed the same, until all voices turned to drones and all faces to masks. Eventually they left me upon a cot and beset upon another prisoner, and I lay with my arms and legs bound in chains, lacking even the strength to turn my head. Yet I did not lose faith. I prayed for the strength to withstand the ordeal I was now facing. I believed, then, that there was still hope. Time ticked on, and pressure mounted. The clearest horror in my mind is of my first personal encounter with the creatures: the memory of when they made me observe the torture of old Frau Schafferin , whose son Peter was burned winter last. Her wrinkled skin was fragile and translucent as the membrane lining the inside of an eggshell, veins bulging blue on skeletal hands. She shook with cold and fever, and though they had taken her prayer beads from her I heard her praying to our Lord and to the Blessed Virgin as if she still held them—until they placed a pair of pincers in the fire and raised them to her flesh, and then her prayers turned to the cries of an animal, as all the while they urged her to give up her accomplices in witchcraft. When I struggled in my bonds, calling out to her and cursing our captors, they beat me until I could no longer move. I sagged, helpless in my chains, watching as they jeered at her. In the shadows cast by the fire their faces looked as ghoulish as those of the creatures, and I saw then that the monsters had begun to gather around our captors, around Frau Schafferin, around myself. Helplessly I watched them surround us, moving like spiders with broken legs. Some were small and stunted, and others towered over me. Their fingers were blunt, ill-defined things like the digits of a newt, their hands misshapen and cleft in such a manner that the thumb and first two fingers dwarfed the others. They raised these curled appendages to stroke the brows and cheeks of the interrogators, a trail of dark slime marking where they had touched, and those who had been marked stood taller and glared fiercer, as if the anointment had solidified their resolve. All the while Frau Schafferin  cried and wailed, unable to see the dozens of glittering eyes and gaping mouths around her, even as the numbers grew until I could not make out where one creature ended and another began, only a sea of writhing, pale flesh. At some unseen signal the ranks broke and creatures covered her and I, burying her frail and injured form under a hoard of bodies, filling my vision with grasping hands. Someone screamed—perhaps her, perhaps I, perhaps both. When the beings retreated, she was dead. Since then the executioners have applied the pincers to me, and other methods besides. I have attempted to remain pious, faithful to God, to myself—to you—but my resolve is failing. I have felt hands slick with filth grasping immaterial pieces of my being and ripping them from my body, I have seen toothless mouths gulp the last bits of my strength. I have tried to be a good man, but now my striving is near its end, or has been over for quite some time. I wish to no longer be in pain. I hope my soul will find its way to Heaven, though I fear that after my confession to the court it will not. O, dearest, how I wish that this letter should never have had to be written! How I wish that you should remain innocent of the creatures that breed within the shadows of cruelty, lurking in the deeds of man against man! But I must ask you to endure one horrible sight, for the sake of my own soul. I will give my false confession soon, and my execution will follow shortly. If I am fortunate I will be subject to the sword; if not, to the fire alone. Either way I do not desire to look into the crowd on the day of my death and see solely those faces waiting for me, beady eyes staring and mouths agape, drooling at the thought of my despair. Before you flee—and you must  flee, for while I will not name you they may still find you—I beg you to attend, though I know it will cause you great pain. If I am to die a witch, though I insist to you forever that I am not, then I wish to die with the image of your face in my mind—your curls, your ruddy cheeks, your shining eyes—and with love in my heart. Then leave this place and never return. May God’s light grant you the rest I cannot have. Keep this letter close, and show no one; it is a piece of me. Yours faithfully, Wolfgang Translator’s note: This letter was found among the belongings of Markus Ruppel, who is listed among the recently hired employees of the Vogelsberg prison during the time of the writing of this letter. Ruppel can thus be assumed to be the guard briefly mentioned within; however, trial records from the time state that he was arrested on suspicion of witchcraft within a week of the letter’s writing, leaving it undelivered.  Wolfgang Welsch was executed on September 10th, 1627, by sword. Though Julius Hofmann is known to have resided in Vogelsberg during this period, his whereabouts following Welsch's imprisonment and death are unknown. H.M. Shrike (he/him) is a debut short story author and graduate student. When he isn't writing, studying, or watching horror movies with his boyfriend, he's usually petting a cat.

The breeze blew only so softly, the dandelions merely teasing their release. The entire field waved with the gentle wind. Massive stones covered in glowing runes stood still to contrast the movement of the green. Scattered between were the stone figures of war. The faces of the statues shared shock, anger, and fear. Only the concerned woman rustling through the field created noise to overcome the whistle of the moving air. Her simple dress disturbed the fuzz more than the wind had done, but without enough power to be carried, the seeds only fell. She moved from statue to statue, searching out something familiar. Her fret grew with each successive disappointment. Nearly at tears, she leaned against one of the monoliths, pulling at her blonde braids in idle measure. Though she was still young by many standards, lines of worry formed easily as her concern grew with the passing time. “You have come far,” spoke an older voice, this one not far away. “What is it I am feeling? Surprise? It has been so long.” The young woman jumped. She spun to see another nearby monolith, this one missing a large enough portion to make for a natural ledge. In this instance, it acted as a throne. Upon this seat of power lounged an older woman, refined and classically beautiful. “Few, if ever, come this far,” the new woman said. Her own purple dress of elaborate brocade glistened in the sun. The elegant lady held a dandelion to her noise, letting the fuzz tickle her skin. With a sideward glance, she smiled. The younger turned to run but the purple-clad royal already stood in her way. “Please forgive my intrusion,” the young woman said as she threw herself to her knees. “I mean no disrespect, your majesty.” The queen in purple bent down to take up another dandelion. “Searching for someone?” “Yes, your majesty.” “And you don’t feel your life is in danger?” “I—” “It is.” “Yes, your majesty.” The queen glided over to the closet statue, this one locked in agony. She beckoned her young subject to follow. “Is it this gentleman?” the queen asked. “No, my queen,” the woman answered, only raising her eyes to glance at the frozen face. “Yes, too old,” the queen realized. “This one has been here quite long. You can tell by the stone, you see?” The queen continued on towards a grouping of soldiers, her own dress somehow immune to the collection of dandelion fuzz. “One of these, perhaps? Newer, younger.” The woman paid closer attention to the faces, recognizing none. “I suppose not,” the queen hummed. “I’m being awfully base. There are so many here in my field. I feel myself growing tired already.” The woman raised her eyes to view the horizon. Its entirety held the silhouettes of soldiers and runed monoliths alike. “Young one, do you have a name?” “Bolly, your majesty.” “Yes. Bolly,” the queen said before pausing, lost in her wandering thoughts. “You are from?” “The eastern reach, near the mountain pass.” “Delightful,” the queen answered. “We are in the proper area for a start.” The queen floated forth, her hand reaching for another dandelion. “Thank you, your majesty,” Bolly began as she attempted to keep pace. “Thank you for helping my search.” “Do you know why there are so many here, Bolly?” “The fate of those who oppose you.” “I suppose that is a way to put it,” she said, pursing her lip. “The stones, you see, they protect me. You see them?” “Yes, your majesty.” “They have stood for centuries, old at the time of my ascension.” “Yes, your majesty,” Bolly’s only possible answer. “My sentinels stand watch. The stronger the urge to bring violence against me, the quicker one turns to stone.” “The ones we passed?” “The unsure, the reluctant heroes, and would-be thieves. Cowardice gets you closer than bravery, but all stone by the time they mustered their courage and intent. Tell me, Bolly, was your man brave?” “My man?” “Bolly, why else come?” the queen said with a wave. “Husband, betrothed, father, brother.” The queen turned for a glance. “Young yet. A husband? A son born early?” “My eldest son, your majesty.” “Be relieved you found him not at the center. You’ve raised well a brave soul.” The queen said little more as they followed the eastward path away from the center. In checking each statue, Bolly found no trace of her offspring. The day wearing thin, Bolly’s hope grew sour. The queen found dandelions. “Ah, this lot. I remember them well.” The queen and mother came upon soldiers in the thousands, stoic in stone display and columns rigid. Her majesty walked to the horse-mounted general and blew him a kiss. “Poor souls, barely into formation and stone in a moment. How brave they were to come for my head. And foolish.” The queen lectured to an audience of none. She heard the sobbing a distance away. Following the sounds, she came upon Bolly beyond the army and at the feet of a stone statute, its visage that of a boy not yet a man. “The bravest stands just inside the outer ring,” the queen said while approaching. “Was he doing it for you? Oh, what will love not do? A boy for his mother.” The queen hummed. “Is there nothing to be done?” Bolly cried. “Betrayal is an act of finality.” The queen circled Bolly’s child. Her eyes squinted at his frozen form. “He is not completely turned, there is life.” Bolly sprang to her feet. “Your majesty, I beg you to be merciful.” “I suppose I can grant one such mercy.” From her hair, the queen pulled a long silver needle. With the gentlest of pressure, she put it to the side of the boy’s neck and pushed. “He will suffer no more.” Satisfied with her mercy, the queen turned to face Bolly, now transformed to stone with her own expression frozen in rage. “Betrayal is an act of finality, Bolly,” the queen began. “And your love shall stand forever as a monument to it.” The queen bent to take up another handful of dandelions. She casually walked away to her castle, humming a love song that rang old at the time of her ascension. The fuzz blew gently in the wind, settling on the two newest statues only for a moment. Kyle Brandon Lee is a Texas born and raised writer of poetry, prose, and plays. As a graduate of the University of Texas at Dallas with a degree in Literary Studies, he has published multiple short stories, poems, and non-fiction pieces. These include works at Backchannels Journal, El Poral  and Fiction on the Web . If someday they open an old and dusty tome made of pecan bark and armadillo hide, perhaps they'll find his work within. Hopefully, it will be plentiful. He can be found at his website  www.hillsdreaming.com   or on Instagram @HDTMountains