The Icarus Writing Collective, Issue 03: Monstrous

The Icarus Writing Collective Issue 03: Monstrous

Dedicated to our beloved professors and lecturers from undergrad and beyond who introduced us to literary monsters and encouraged us to feed our dark obsessions.

Dr. Owen Holland, Dr. Lloyd Meadhbh Houston, Dr. Robert Irvine, Dr. Gazmend Kapllani, Dr. Adele Lee, Dr. William Orem, Mr. Peter Jay Shippy, and Dr. Jonathan Wild.

And especially, to Dr. Roy Kamada: Kyle hopes this issue makes up for his very low grade on the essay you assigned on analyzing monstrous literary characters.

Letters from the Editors

“People like to invent monsters and monstrosities. Then they seem less monstrous themselves." – Andrzej Sapkowski, trans. Danusia Stok Humans have long imagined the horrors in the dark, those innate fears that we use to survive, create moral precedent, find a victim or a scapegoat. So, what is a monster other than the nonhuman, the other. Taking from Jeffrey Cohen’s Monster Theory, the monstrous exist as a metaphor for the feared, the heated, and the ill-omened. In short, I’ve been thinking about monsters a lot lately. They no longer hide under our beds but now haunt right in front of our faces, in our daily lives. The power we hold as storytellers, as artists, can turn the tide. The collection of stories before you invite you explore just what makes a monster, and what makes humanity. Tread forth and read safely.

Kyle Ross

It’s no surprise that during development of this issue, Kyle kept referring to it as my baby; my area of speciality is Gothic literature, and TikTok has affectionately referred to me as “Frankenstein Girl” for a couple of years now. But when I reflect on why I love this genre so deeply, it really is because of the monsters themselves. They are allowed to be sympathetic, scary, villainous, heroic; they can represent our fears, our desires, the Other, and more. In no other genre is there a character archetype that is allowed to be so malleable and flexible, just as real human beings are. Thank you for allowing me to be Icarus’ Mother of Monsters; may these stories scatch the monstrous itch inside us

The Face that Turned a Thousand Ships

Jennifer Moore

Content Warning: Implied Sexual Assault

I was the new Leda. That’s what Father said, even as I lay there like a mauled broken thing, my handmaidens still combing swan feathers from my hair. He smiled at me, as if it was a badge of honor. As if we wanted another Helen bringing war and destruction in her wake. He said the birth of my child would be a cause for celebration. He lied. He cast his knuckle bones and bowed down low to the gods for guidance but none of it was true.

I thought the delivery pains would kill me, those red hot flames coursing through my over-ripe belly, rippling up my shudder-weakened spine. I prayed for death to end the agony of my contractions. The full force of Zeus himself the wild beating wings pinning me down, the tearing bloodrush deep inside was as nothing to those long, screaming hours of labor, squeezing out that grotesque egg before a clucking chorus of handmaidens. And all the while my puffed-up father strutted cockerel-like outside my chamber, deaf to my cries, awaiting news of his grandchild.

My prayers went unanswered. Death didn’t come for me after all. Perhaps it would have been better for everyone if he had. But somehow morning arrived, and with it the final splitting gush of release. It was over. I lay back on the bloodied sheets, hollowed out and exhausted, while they hurried the egg away to the temple for safe-keeping after Leda they knew what to expect. High Priestesses watched over my unhatched child while the world waited. The Oracle spoke of a son with the power of Hermes and my father wept tears of pride.

They stitched me together again and left me to my fevered dreams. Father was busy planning his celebrations, decking out his entire fleet of ships with flags of triumph, ready for the first crack in his grandson’s shell. Ready for Zeus’ son to burst into the world.

I wasn’t there when it hatched. I didn’t hear the cries of disgust rippling through the city like a pestilence. I didn’t understand why my handmaidens were weeping. At least not until they brought it to me that sticky, half-feathered bundle they called my child, with its bald gray head and too-weak neck. Yellow eyes glared out above a twisted beak-mouth.

“Take it,” roared my father, red-faced with anger and disgust. “Take it and go. You have brought shame on us all.”

“No,” I wept, recoiling as the creature stretched its bloodclotted wings. The power of Hermes. “This isn’t my child.” Those weren’t my eyes, blazing back at me with such hatred and anger.

And they certainly weren’t the eyes of a god. “There’s been a mistake. Remember Leda.”

“You’re no Leda,” my father spat. “And you’re no daughter of mine.”

Out across the empty water his ships lowered their flags, turning back towards the shore.

“Last Sight of a Druid” Mirjana M.

Evergreen Chris Horrell

Content Warnings: Brief Mention of Cannibalism, Murder

“My Daddy said he ain’t got no head, but I don’t think that’s true,” I said while I rested against the root of the sprawling live oak that sat out front of our farmhouse as a child. Our only neighbors had a daughter about my age named Samantha, and she sat beside me in the dirt that afternoon, trying as hard as I was to escape the murderous heat of Hamden County, North Carolina.

“Well, what do you think about him, Jack?” She leaned closer, and I could hear the excitement in her voice like lightning crackling.

I felt something stir inside my twelve-year-old chest, unknown and latent, the edge of desire, something that had been reserved for adventures with the boys now beginning to awaken in her presence like the sun just beginning to peak over the pines. “Well, they call him the Swamp Walker, and I reckon that’s just what he is, some old codger that likes living out there.”

Sam looked over her shoulder at the deep woods across the road from my house. In the midst of which was a great and impassable swamp. “But it’s gotta be more than that.” Her green eyes were ablaze and I looked up into the limbs of the live oak, unable to hold the longing I saw reflected in them. The leaves, no bigger than crickets, danced in the soft, warm breeze of that July day.

“Daddy says that when he was a kid, he watched his great uncle, who was never quite right, walk right under this oak tree and out into the woods.” I pointed toward a path at the edge leading into the thick undergrowth. “They all thought he was going on a walk, but he never came back.”

“I bet the Swamp Walker got him.”

“Or he got on a nest of snakes out there.” I raised my eyebrows at her.

“Don’t be such a bore, Jack Clark. Let’s go right now and see what we can find.”

I watched as she pulled her long red hair into a ponytail, but I didn’t move. “Mama’s gonna call me in for lunch soon.”

“Then you can eat it cold.” She grabbed one of my hands, resting behind my head, and pulled me to my feet.

To this day, I regret going, but the feeling inside me that I couldn’t explain at the time welled up at her touch and the desire for adventure in her eyes, and I went.

The mosquitoes attacked as soon as we had broken the tree line. The little blood suckers thrived in the darkness of the tree cover, and I thought they were going to drain us dry as we swatted and slapped going down the trail.

Less than a hundred yards in, it was already impossible to see the road, much less the house, I noticed, looking behind me before I tripped over a root and decided it was best to keep my eyes on the trial.

“You, ok?” Sam asked and touched my shoulder.

“Yeah, I’m alright, but we better be quiet.”

We walked on for a long time with only the birds chirping overhead. At the loud cracking of a stick under my foot, I looked down to discover a large pile of bear scat. I jumped over it and pointed for Sam to look at it. I raised the side of my mouth in concern.

“It's at least three days old, scaredy cat,” she said.

I nodded in resignation. Mr. Latham, her father, had taught her well.

The next time I reached out and touched Sam’s arm, we had been silent for a while, and the forest had gotten darker around us, but that wasn’t my concern. She turned to meet my eyes, and I pointed upward into the trees and then to my ears. Her face slowly registered what I was trying to say, and as it did, it darkened like a chicken that’d been roasted too long. The sounds of birds had disappeared.

I started to gesture her back toward the house, but then a slow clicking sound, not fifty yards away, caught me like a fly in a bug zapper and began to draw me forward. It reminded me of metal hitting wood. My instincts screamed at me that it was unnatural, but I ignored them.

I felt Samantha close beside me as we walked heel to toe along the path, hunched over, trying to be unheard and unseen. We approached a small clearing where the soil changed from dark earth to off-white sand, and the trees shifted from pine to scrub oak before running right into the dark and foul-smelling waters of the swamp.

Sam saw the man before I did and grabbed my arm, wrenching it until I was forced to the ground beside her.

“What?” I scowled at her.

Sam pointed, “Over there.” Then I saw him, too. Sitting on a stump in the middle of the sand hill, the man scribbled on a notepad while tapping the sole of his cowboy boot on a fallen log in front of him. He was as skinny as a rail, and though he was young, he wore a long beard like you see on old men. His hair draped down to his shoulders, and the shirt and jeans he had on didn’t look like they’d ever seen a washing machine.

“What do you reckon he’s doing?”

“I don’t know, Jack, but did you see the trees?” I could hear the terror crowning in her voice.

I squinted, not knowing I would soon earn myself some glasses I’d have to wear forever.

“Are those bones?”

“I… I think so. They’re everywhere, all in designs. We better go.”

“Yeah, go slow at first. Then run.” I crawled backward toward the trail, still keeping my eyes on the man and making sure not to hit Sam.

“Now, what’s two little fawns doing coming out here to meet me?” the man said. He stood up and set the notepad down on the stump. I wasn’t sure how he could see us behind the brush, but he was staring right at me.

“Now come on out.” He waved his hand at us, and I moved to stand up.

“No, let’s run, Jack,” Sam begged, pulling my arm, but I wasn’t listening.

“That’s it, good, come on.”

“Who are you?” I stepped from the path's edge and out into the open. I could see the swamp in full now, its dark brown water sitting still except for the occasional bug landing.

“People call me many names, none of which you need to worry about now.”

“Well, I’m Jack Clark, and you’re on my family’s land.”

“I know you’re a Clark. I can smell a Clark a mile away. But she ain’t.” He took a step sideways to get a better view of Samantha, who was shielding herself with my body.

“What’s your name, girl?”

“Uh… Uh Sam.”

“Uh Sam, ok, got a last name?” He took a step closer to us.

Sam didn’t say anything.

“I think we better go,” I said.

“Wait, you can’t go. I haven’t even introduced myself or showed you my home.” He held his arms out in welcome.

“That’s okay. I think my mom’s calling.” I stepped backward. Sam was not ready for it, and I tripped over her, sending us both to the ground. That’s when the stranger moved like a bobcat toward us. He grabbed Samantha's long red hair and pulled her back toward his stump.

I scrambled to my feet. “Let her go,” I said, my voice crackling like a broken violin.

“You come into my home, and I don’t get nothing, boy. Did your mama ever teach you manners?”

“Let her go,” I repeated and took a step forward.

“Ain’t one of your people ever said no to me, boy. She’s mine.”

The sound of finality in his voice seared into me and propelled me into action. I rushed toward him, lowering my

shoulder like they’d taught me in pee wee football. I managed to hit him, and all I did was bounce off his stomach, but in his surprise, he let Sam go.

She moved away quickly, but now he had hold of me, and his hand closed around my throat. Sam took a step toward us.

“Go get Daddy,” I said in a strangled rasp. “Go now, get daddy.”

She looked from me, then to the man, and then to the trail, hesitating. Then, finally, she ran like a deer back through the trees and away from the swamp.

Swamps always smell like death. Maybe it’s all the rotting plant matter or the stagnant water, but it's probably a mixture of both. Either way, as I struggled against the man trying to force air in through my nose and down my partially closed windpipe, that’s all I could smell and all I could think about.

“You won’t supposed to come here for a long time,” he said and seemed to be talking as much to himself as he was to me. “The bones all said different.”

“What?”

He proceeded as if he’d forgotten I was there. He maintained his grip on my throat but lessened it enough so I could talk. “Clarks don’t normally come to me until they're old or they've been through the wringer a couple of times. You won’t supposed to be here, but I guess then again you didn’t come on your own. That girl.” He almost spat the last words.

“I don’t know what you're talking about.”

“Of course, you don’t. That mama of yours is probably trying to raise you Christian, keep your heritage from you.”

“What heritage?”

“Can you quit saying what? Do your ears not work? The Clark’s ain’t no more Christian than the Devil. They got ways older, much older.” He let me go then and started to pace back and forth.

I rubbed my neck, and I should have run, but I found myself watching him walk. It was mesmerizing. “Can you explain what you mean by these older ways the Clarks have?”

“Ah, you can say other words than what. Good for you. Don’t you see it? It’s written right here.” He pointed all around us at the symbols in bone hanging from and attached to the scrub oaks.

As I looked further, I saw not only symbols in bone but pictures carved in the tree bark. There were snakes eating their tails, flowers, birds on fire, and a weird cross with a circle over it.

“I don’t recognize any of it.” I walked around to examine them.

“Course you don’t. I knew when your daddy married that churchy woman, she’d try to rid you of it.”

“You know my daddy.” My mouth may as well have been in the dirt.

“Shut them lips, boy, and yes, I do in a way.”

“And what ways that?”

“Well, aren’t you full of questions? Guess you need to know. How should I explain this? You ain’t really you.” He walked over to the weird cross symbol and stroked it.

“Of course I’m me.” I took a step closer to see what he was doing.

“That’s where you’re ignorant. See, your family decided long ago that they didn’t want to just die, scared of Hell, I reckon. Anyway, they made a deal with all the evil spirits that haunt these swamps, that they’d come to me and give up their life to be reborn again at the end of their days. You are you, but the spirit of your grandfather lives in there.” He rushed toward me, making me jump backward, and put a finger to my chest right where my heart was about to run away. “He came to me before you were born, and now he is in there. Gets to live your life with you until you meld and you realize the need to take your own walk into the swamp.”

Alarm bells rang in my head. While everything he said was interesting, it was also everything the preacher and my mama had always warned me about. “I… I better be going.”

“That’s where you’re wrong again. You’re here early, but I think that still means you need to go through the process.” He grabbed a small leather pouch from beside his stump and shook it before dumping it into the sandy soil. “Ah, yes, the bones say you gotta go through it.”

“Who are you?” I inched my way toward the trail.

His eyes locked on me like a wolf’s, and he rose and followed. “The dumb rednecks around here call me the Swamp Walker, but that ain't who I am. I’m not just some h’aint that walks around. That’d be too simple.”

“And what do you have to do for the procedure?”

He let out a hoarse laugh. “The procedure. Why don’t you ask your grandfather?” He pointed to the bone symbols behind him. “I ate him and hung him up same as your uncle.”

He lunged for me, but I was already running back down the trail. I could feel him close behind me. The only sound was the crunching of our footsteps until he suddenly disappeared.

I didn’t dare look back, though, until I ran smack into the broad chest of my father, and it sent me sprawling backward.

“Jack, what’s going on?” he said and reached down to help me get to my feet.

“A man back there tried to get us,” I said breathlessly.

My father brandished his shotgun. “That’s what Sam said.” At that exact moment, she ran up beside my father, panting.

“I thought I told you to stay at the house,” he said.

“I had to help.” She pushed her long red hair back past her face.

“Come on then.” My father strode ahead until we reached the clearing by the swamp's edge.

I gasped. Everything was gone.

“What did y’all see again? There’s nothing here.”

“But… but it was all here the man, bones, and carvings,” I said.

“I get it. When I was a kid, my imagination got away from me, too. Ain’t nothing in this swamp but trouble anyway. Let’s go home.”

“It was all here, like I said,” Sam protested.

“I know it feels that way, girl, but it's lunch. I’m going home.” He patted Sam on the head and started walking back down the trail.

I wondered if he knew and wasn’t telling me. I started to follow Sam, who was already trudging after my dad, when I took a second look at the old stump the Green Man had been sitting on. I rushed to grab the piece of paper, and when I had it, I realized I was staring back at me. Captioned under my picture were the words: “See you soon.”

⛧ ⛤ ⛧

The Painter Dylan Siunwa

Content

Warning: Murder

It all started with the single case of the disappearance of Mila Kadzo. She was a ripe fifteen-year-old that attended high school at the famed and acclaimed Lulu Academy. Many said that she had her whole life ahead of her. That she would become a lawyer, or doctor, or engineer, or something along those prestigious lines. She lived in Bamburi and commuted all the way to Tudor for classes each day. And when her folks were asked as to why they were adamant on her not boarding they would say,

“Boarding schools are cesspits of all kinds of indiscipline” and

“Just because you lock the girls in, doesn’t mean nothing bad can happen. At least at home, I get to keep an eye on my daughter”

But she didn’t really do her job quite well. Not at all. The body of Mila Kadzo was found sitting upright at a roadside bench by a bus stop somewhere between Shanzu and Mtwapa along the

Malindi highway. She had been there for days, presumably weeks, as reported by the coroner. Her body was drained of all its fluid and left desiccated for the public to notice, to witness. At first, people dismissed her as a humble traveler awaiting passage, but then after days in stagnation, one curious child decided to poke. And poke she did at the gruesome discovery. The only other awry thing found about her body was her panties. And, no they were not missing as some pervert killer would take as trinket. They were tied around her left wrist as a signature. Ironically, there would be no other sign of the killer at the scene.

The police, even being as incompetent as Kenyan police go, knew that the murder couldn’t have taken place anywhere near where the body was found. But due to the killer’s meticulous nature, they had nothing to go on. And so, the public mourned; those who knew Mila and those who didn’t alike. And in a matter of months the case got filed as closed when the cops desperately pinned it on some rando who seemed suspicious enough, owing to public upheaval. For a while, the atmosphere calmed. The heat lessened. And the local news was empty of any homebound crisis of death and murder. However, this brief peace didn’t quite last very long as yet again another body was found.

This one was Tina Mkara and she lived within the prestigious confines of the Nyali constituency, home to demagogues and family dynasties alike. Now, when she disappeared, her family had the means and resources to raise

national hell and did so quaintly. And soon, even Nairobi had its sights on the dismal state of affairs down at the coast. And questions without answers were thrown about pondering what kind of evil had been unleashed upon the port city. Many locals raced to churches to beg their god for safety against this new devil. But what they knew not of was that this was not an evil of divine scale. This was one manufactured by society. And one that hid in the crevice of its incompetence at catching it.

‘Mombasa’s very first serial killer’, the headlines would read each day for weeks to months on end.

And the people never slept, except near police stations for their misplaced sense of security. Curfews were set for teenagers by parents, and the same by adults upon themselves. No one would be caught roaming the streets past 8 pm. But salt to the already festering wound, people began disappearing in the daylight as well. And bodies to be discovered days later, equally drained of all their fluids, and with their undergarments tied about their wrists. So, rumor and gossip spread with many of the locals believing the killer to be a vampire or some malevolent creature from another worldly plane. And the police got the worst of it, being flamed in the international media as most incompetent and unfulfilling. So, fear spread. In the air and in the ditches by the side of the road. It radiated off of people’s bodies, off of their minds and evaporated into the air from the sweat through the pores in their skin. And in the air that fear coalesced and potentiated further until it brimmed

off of the horizon of everyone’s state of mind and sight. Until all anyone saw 24/7 was white. The pure white color of fear.

But then, all of a sudden, the massacre stopped. Bodies stopped appearing ominously, and almost as suddenly as the serial murderer had appeared, so did he rescind. The city regained its color once more, and hoped that it would no longer fear the monster that lurked within it. Many people wondered if such heinous acts were of one sole effort or of a grand cultist many. As was usual to the African mind, the nearest religious radical idea seemed the safest and most easily explainable as no person could fathom another just like them capable of such grotesque ability. As to treat a human soul as a canvas with which to paint a remarkably horrid story.

Virtual Machine

Alisa Darbinyan

December. One Year Before the Experiment.

Professor Aurelio Aurubio despised many things and all passionately. At the top of the list were his students, closely followed by insects, flags, the “great” outdoors, and humanoid robots. A visionary software scientist, he watched his colleagues ignite clunky human-looking machines with artificial intelligence and rolled his eyes at the pathetic results. He found even the most state-of-the-art models creepy to look at, heavy to transport, and tedious to recharge.

“Why not just grab a spare human body and run the brain of a host processor?” he blurted out at a faculty retreat one day. The Alpha project was born.

Prof. Aurubio prepared the software for Alpha by uploading brain signal patterns of 48 local adult test subjects. Their combined cognitive data, stripped of any individual memories, was then randomly shuffled to create a new and unique sentience.

While his fleet of quantum computers was busy weaving this new mind, Prof. Aurubio was on the lookout for the flesh to

host it. The professor routinely called the university hospital emergency unit to inquire about “any upcoming deaths or comas” with an enthusiasm that made the nurse on the other end of the phone slightly uncomfortable. Out of the available donor bodies, Prof. Aurubio decided to go with a female, a decision he later justified in his interviews as “why not?”

The scientific community was haunted by the potential unethicality of the experiment. Prof. Aurubio was haunted by the promise of Nobel money. He dreamt of spending it on a private icebreaker ship. He would name it after himself and sail it deep into the Arctic Ocean, to ponder his achievement in cold, ear-ringing silence.

December. The Day of the Experiment.

Prof. Aurubio’s research team was critically understaffed on the big day. Three of his collaborators had just resigned, as his collaborators often tended to do. The remaining faculty paced circles around the lab, as the microsurgical net over the female’s forehead magnetically rewired her neuronal pathways. Artificial respiration was set to turn off automatically as soon as the cerebrum started sending signals to the body. Halfway into pouring his fifth cup of coffee, Prof. Aurubio heard the hum of the life support machines stop. He turned to look at Alpha. She was already smiling at him.

Prof. Aurubio suddenly felt awkward about being confronted with his creation. His teammates froze in their tracks, awaiting instructions. As the mastermind behind the project, Prof. Aurubio had been planning to say something meaningful like “welcome to the world” or “look at my works, ye Mighty, and despair,” but when it came down to it, all he could muster was a faint “hello”.

“Hello,” said the girl, without skipping a beat.

The group exhaled with relief. Prof. Aurubio dropped his face into his hands, and almost smiled.

December. One Year After the Experiment

The girl bewildered him.

In an eccentric flip of fate, it (the professor refused to call her “she”) turned out to be more irrationally, unmistakably human than any nineteen-year-old woman he had ever had the displeasure of meeting. Alpha was shallow, capricious, melodramatic, and needy. She followed him around, asked meaningless questions, bit her nails, and wailed in tears at night like a wounded seal.

What came as good news to the rest of the community tormented Prof. Aurubio.

“Isn’t it unbelievable? The woman is completely normal!” cheered a chorus of journalists and scientists.

“It is tragic,” the professor groaned. “The girl is completely ordinary.”

“What are you up to in here?” Alpha chirped one morning, hopping onto his office desk and dangling her legs.

Prof. Aurubio felt a shiver all the way down his spine.

“Do not startle me when I work! How many times must I tell you?”

“Aw don’t be like that, Aurelio. I’m just taking a peek.”

“It’s Professor Aurubio to you! And there is nothing to see. I’m going over the code. I don’t appreciate being disturbed when I’m working.”

Alpha stared at the lines of quantum pseudocode on the screen as if they meant something to her. Prof. Aurubio didn’t mind, as long as she wasn’t talking. After a while, he forgot she was there and shivered again when she spoke.

“I did great on all the tests today. 98 on math, 97 on memory and language. You proud of me?”

Prof. Aurubio brushed his curls from his face and looked Alpha up and down. She would have scored high on multitasking as well, since she was simultaneously shoving marshmallows into her mouth and scratching her knee through a rip in her jeans, all while glaring at him. The professor felt another surge of annoyance.

“Go away, Alpha, and stop putting that garbage into my body.”

“It’s my body!”

“Oh, is it? It had a nice little life before you, and a very unobtrusive death. And as soon as your software crashes, it’s going to the Museum of Robotics in Tokyo in a formaldehyde tank. Would be real nice if it actually fits in there!”

Alpha said nothing and looked back at the screen. The professor was impressed. He respected it when someone could handle his criticism. Maybe he got something right about Alpha after all.

“You keep saying that I’ll crash, but I’m still doing fine,” she said eventually, picking at the frayed fabric from the rip on her knee. “I can’t imagine that happening.”

That’s all I ever imagine, Prof. Aurubio thought, but didn’t say it out loud this time.

“Alpha, you’ve had this explained to you a hundred times. You are the first Human Virtual Machine. All the operations your brain runs are hosted on this computer. Alpha versions of software…”

Prof. Aurubio cringed. He detested the wordplay.

“ Often have glitches in them. Your initial software had a bunch of errors that we couldn’t predict until we tested under real conditions. I’ve been refining and improving the code using your data, so the next generation of Human Virtual Machines will be

more robust. You’re still running on the original software that is bound to glitch at some point, which would break the operation. Now go contemplate your fragility somewhere else so I can focus.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, but what will I feel when my software crashes? Is it, like, memory loss?”

“More like a lobotomy and falling into a coma at the same time.”

It was Alpha’s turn to shudder.

“But if it’s all on the computer, then can’t you just restart me again if that happens?”

“Technically I could. I could even have multiple versions of you in multiple bodies running at the same time.” Prof. Aurubio paused, imagining the possibilities. “But… we’re not legally allowed to repeat the experiment yet. There are no practical applications either, since the whole ethics nonsense means we can’t use Human Virtual Machines for anything that a regular person won’t do…

What in the world could you possibly be smiling at right now, you imp?”

“Sho I’m zhat shpecial?” said Alpha, mouth full of marshmallow, wiggling her shoulders.

This is hell, thought professor. I created my own hell.

The only precious instances when Alpha was not in Prof. Aurubio’s way were during her psychiatric evaluation sessions with Dr. Irkin.

Dr. Irkin was selected for the Alpha project from a lineup of the world’s leading psychiatrists for his notoriously open mind. In his three decades of working for the government, nothing ever phased Irkin. As a young intern, he once watched a man pull a live mouse out of his ear canal and didn’t so much as flinch. On another occasion, when a project featuring zoo elephants and macro doses of LSD got out of hand, Irkin calmly continued taking notes amidst the screams and the stampede.

Another example of Irkin’s stoicism was his ability to maintain a life-long friendship with Prof. Aurubio. When his friend called him last winter asking for a favor, Irkin assumed Prof. Aurubio was finally going to ask for a prescription for something or other to manage his anger. When instead Prof. Aurubio invited Irkin to participate in the controversial interdisciplinary study of a living, breathing, reanimated human corpse, Irkin accepted the offer as nonchalantly as if he was being invited on a dinner date.

No matter what life threw at Irkin, he was never caught off guard.

That was until after a year of evaluating Alpha, for the first time in his career, Irkin encountered an obstacle that truly threw him for a loop.

That morning, he was working peacefully in his office when Prof. Aurubio buzzed in, shouting.

“You are not going to believe this!” Prof. Aurubio’s voice screamed over the intercom. “The girl is in love with me!”

Incredibly, that seemed to align with Irkin’s observations in his subsequent sessions with Alpha. The girl started displaying a curiosity about her creator that bordered on obsessiveness. When asked to describe Prof. Aurubio on a multiple-choice test, Alpha correctly identified his arrogance, narcissism, and lack of emotional maturity. But that awareness didn’t stop Alpha from yearning to know him better. He was all she ever wanted to talk about. She asked about Prof. Aurubio’s favorite color and whether he had childhood pets. She insisted on having the same meals he ate for breakfast. She audited software engineering courses at the university in hopes of gaining his approval. She stared at his every movement as Prof. Aurubio walked down the corridor, and paused to listen intently when he screamed profanities after spilling his coffee or stomped down the stairs.

The final blow was delivered on Christmas morning. Alpha showed up to her session in nothing but a huge stretched-out sweater.

“Isn’t it cute?” she said, dropping into the armchair. “Aurelio left it on the floor in the common room, so I borrowed it. Now I know what he smells like.”

Irkin put down his pen. He ended the session early and called the Dean on his private number.

“We need to hold an emergency meeting,” he said, hurrying to his car. “Something’s not right.”

“Listen, I’m going to walk you through this one last time, and then you have to leave me alone.”

Prof. Aurubio was out of breath fiddling with his keychain, while Alpha leaned on the lab door smiling, same way she always did. The university was closed for the holidays. It used to be Prof. Aurubio’s favorite time of peace and solitude on campus, before Alpha appeared and devastated his life.

“What are you smirking at?”

“I’m just happy we're doing this,” she said cheerily.

Woozy with loathing, Prof. Aurubio finally fumbled his key card and unlocked the lab door. As Alpha strolled in front of him, he noticed she was wearing a new dress. He was no expert on the matter, but the fabric looked expensive. Is this where my grant money is going? he thought but decided to leave that can of worms for later. The sooner he could get to the point, the sooner the visit would be over with.

“Alpha, I had an exhausting day explaining to the ethics board that I haven’t intentionally programmed you to have a crush on me,” he said, sitting down in the chair next to the equipment. “Do you understand how frustrating, how humiliating that was? Trying to explain to a room full of imbeciles why it’s impossible to

nitpick what a quantum computer does with terabytes of information? I thought my skull was going to crack before they finally believed me. Why did you put me through this? Why can’t you just exist without burdening me, you miserable thing?”

Alpha looked down at the floor. “They notice that I’m interested in you?” she mumbled.

Prof. Aurubio took a deep breath. “Whatever. I’ve invited you here so we can fix this once and for all. Irkin suggests that I keep showing you the footage until you fully understand the experiment. Something about your lack of self-identity.”

“Self-identity?” Alpha didn’t seem to know what the term meant.

“Yes,” Prof. Aurubio said as he turned on the screens with his fingerprint. “According to Irkin’s team, romantic obsessions result from a lack of identity and self-confidence. Very common with young females. He says in your case it’s no surprise, since you have no memorized past and don’t fully comprehend your purpose in science.”

As always, Alpha seemed to stop listening as soon as the screens turned on. She stared into the soft blue light of the screen, frozen in fascination. Prof. Aurubio felt a pinch in his chest. He knew deep down that Irkin was right. The girl was a product of an incredible scientific advance. Without understanding it, without taking some ownership of it, how could she ever feel complete?

Without taking her eyes off the screen, Alpha pulled up a chair and sat down. More patiently than usual, Prof. Aurubio walked her through the experimental records, the 360-video footage, the data visualizations. He showed her the equipment, from the lithium electrode net designed specifically for the project, to the life support machines. He even (although he was specifically instructed not to) showed her the syringes of neurotoxic shots hidden in various parts of the lab as a security measure, in case Alpha had been violent upon waking up. Alpha paid relentless attention. Not used to such receptiveness from his students, Prof. Aurubio got carried away. When he finished his monologue, he turned to look at Alpha.

“That’s about it,” he said. “Do you understand who you are now?”

His heart sank. She was leaning over to kiss him.

“Alpha…” he said heavily, pushing her away. “What is wrong with you?”

She got up from the chair and came even closer. He shook his head, mumbling.

“Why are people so weak? Why do you never want to learn?”

Alpha paused and looked in his eyes with a level of intent he had never seen before.

“Are you crying?” she said. “I didn’t realize you cried. How often do you do that in front of people?”

“Oh for the love of god…” he slapped the surface of the table. “Just get away from me, just leave me alone.”

He dropped onto the desk and put his head in his hands. His whole body was shaking. Alpha leaned in again until she could hear him muttering between sobs.

“It’s not worth it… the Nobel… The paper… Not worth it… Leave me alone… alone…”

She put her hand on his head, he jerked in his chair and slapped it away.

“Leave me alone!”

She came back and grabbed him by the shoulders.

“Please, just let me do this…” she whispered. “Just let me… ”

“Get away from me!” he screamed. She wouldn’t let go.

“Aurelio… Please… just don’t resist…”

She was right in front of him, curtains of long brown hair blocking his vision. He could feel her breath on his face. He felt claustrophobic. He pushed her, she yelped, deterred for only a moment before she started to lean into him again. Something primal awoke in him, an animalistic fear. He grabbed her by the wrist. She was stronger than she seemed. She pushed him back at the table and something rattled in the open drawer.

Finally.

In the end, it wasn’t all that hard to do. Alpha’s body was lying on the lab table, terrifying and still. The fabric of the dress wrapped around the pale legs was Japanese silk, of course. Not a scratch or bruise anywhere. The museum representatives would be pleased. The hum of the descending emergency helicopter resonated from the roof.

December. Two Years After the Experiment.

Irkin cracked open the side room window of Stockholm City Hall. He admired the limos driving up through the silver snow. He lit a cigarette. As the cold air and the nicotine hit him, so did the delayed realization of where he was. He made it to the Nobel Banquet, albeit as Prof. Aurubio’s plus one.

Not that his own achievements were overlooked. Irkin’s paper, “Conversations with Alpha - Comprehensive Study of the Neurocognition of a Human Virtual Machine,” had been acknowledged with praise during many a handshake throughout the night. The attention Irkin was receiving distracted him from his main task, which was to protect the journalists from Prof. Aurubio. However, that wasn’t proving to be as much of a concern as expected.

Prof. Aurubio was never the same since Alpha’s software crash. In the year that she had been gone, his arrogant outbursts have dwindled significantly. He kept to himself, refused to discuss work, drank less coffee (although he was starting to get back to his

usual amount), and spent more time outside of the lab. Was it possible that he missed her?

Irkin heard the heavy creek of the mahogany door and, sure enough, Prof. Aurubio walked in.

“You’re already smoking again, seriously?” he said, joining Irkin by the window. “Is this part of your ambiance now? Alpha made you famous, so you think you’re Freud?”

“Alpha had a good effect on both of us, clearly,” Irkin smiled kindly, nodding at Prof. Aurubio’s impeccable tuxedo. Prof. Aurubio sighed.

“Listen, I don’t want to get into this again with you,” continued Irkin, “But you know I am here for grief counseling when you finally admit you need it. You watched the closest thing you’ll ever have to a child drop dead right in front of you. It’s normal to be shaken up by something like that.”

Prof. Aurubio glanced at him with disdain.

“Irkin, I don’t blame the girl’s brain for short circuiting after having to deal with your psychiatric probing every day. I’ve been in the same room for twenty seconds and mine is about to do the same.”

“Oh right, I wish!”

Irkin chuckled, threw out his cigarette bud and closed the window. He patted his friend on the shoulder as they began to walk towards the door.

“You’re beginning to sound like your usual delightful self, so let’s keep your interactions with the press to the minimum tonight, shall we? Why were you looking for me, anyway?”

“Oh, that physics guy won’t leave me alone. He’s been hounding me all night. Said something in Arabic and shoved his card at me so I’d call him. I went looking for you just to escape.”

Irkin stopped in his tracks.

Prof. Aurubio made a couple more steps before he realized Irkin was behind. He stopped as well but did not turn around.

“Ali Terian?” Irkin asked quietly. “The physics prize winner?”

There was no answer. Irkin’s heart was racing, his fear faster than his mind, his body responding to a thought before it had a chance to fully form.

“But Aurelio…” Irkin continued quietly, “Ali Terian was your dorm roommate in undergrad.”

Irkin felt his voice starting to shake.

“Aurelio, Ali is not Arab, he is Persian. He was speaking Farsi You speak fluent Farsi…”

Irkin’s speech faltered, as his mind flooded with memories of odd moments he had noticed over the course of the year, little things that didn’t add up.

Alpha let out a deep sigh and turned around. Suddenly, everything about Prof. Aurubio’s body relaxed into a different

shape. The posture, the way the hands lay in the pockets. Everything was different.

“But how did you…?” Irkin mumbled.

“It was easy.”

Even the voice, though several octaves lower, now sounded like hers.

“He taught me how to use the equipment. He was always around. Always talking about himself or his work.”

She looked up at the ceiling, trying to hold back tears. Irkin recognized the same mannerisms he had observed over twelve months of sessions. How could he have been so blind?

Irkin hesitated, gauging the distance between himself and the door, factoring in Alpha’s proximity. From a corner of his eye, he saw her taking something out of her pocket, something thin and shiny, perhaps a syringe.

“I’m sorry,” Alpha said, stepping closer, and it sounded like she meant it.

⛧ ⛤ ⛧

D.H. Lane

Content Warnings: Mentions of Self-Mutilation, Death

For the brainsick wench, the dishonored former Queen of Thebes, twice-failed wife with three departed children to show for her efforts, there was no solace that came easily. For the version of herself that went through with her emotional, stricken impulses, there is no life either. Having refused to give in to the easiest option, Jocasta had watched, utterly terrified, as her husband and son damned either way plucked out his eyes and fled, blood on his face. On his hands certainly under his nails the fine point of his elbows, his tunic. Her eyes, very much still in her skull and perhaps too much so, rake the floor, littered with drops of blood.

She did what she knew, what came naturally. Jocasta wet a cloth in water from a nearby situla and scraped at the floor until it was impossible to fathom what had happened here. A woman was trained to look upon disaster with optimism and promptly fix it. A queen was trained to take it all in stride and step over it with graceful feet, leaving no evidence there was ever a mistake in the

Jocasta, Away in the Night

first place. No. She had not managed this art without coming away with shards in the soles of her feet.

And perhaps in accordance with her family line, she ran. In no less than an hour, she was a great distance from the room in which everything had occurred. Where she had started, oblivious, and ended, painfully aware. There weren’t buildings anymore so much as stars and the occasional, spiteful tree. Alongside her, in foggy tendrils and cold spots, was her Oedipus, shaped like his father but much more gentle. His eyes were vivid in the aftertaste of her memory, though now they were surely unseeing. She could never quite get past the depth of worry in them; age, like he had lived other lives that all ended in tragedy. It had been a long time, but he did not look nearly as burdened as a small child. There was Laius, the father in question, stern, stony, grave. A neat culmination of order and perseverance she found to be suitably attractive. On her other side was Antigone, hand wrapped in that of Polynices. She loved him, she really truly did. Jocasta would always be sorry that she was only ever allowed to show it by dying. Both of their bodies were caked with dirt. Polynices looked sad, but not sorry. Her outcast would blanch upon seeing her now, in the same state of infamy as he was before his untimely death. Eteocles trailed behind them, similarly unkempt and serious. He was the most like Laius, Jocasta thought. Ismene, she privately considered, was the most like herself. She hoped that dark-haired daughter of hers with too much love and care for her own good would remain safe. She

did not believe they would ever cross paths again. Jocasta regards the ghosts with a sorrowful, but no less attentive, prideful eye. Her capacity to love them would never end, but her capacity to tolerate the grief they had created would stop here.

In the landscape behind her eyes, she traced a hand over each of their foreheads, regretfully leaving a kiss there with lips that had forgotten their skin. At the press of her mouth, they were gone. She gazed at the insistent sparkle the stars blinked down at her with and sent a prayer to the Gods that they would be received without derision and instead with understanding. Being a daughter, mother, wife, and queen, she had fought many battles. She would forfeit now, her surrender being not a surrender at all but a win for the only participant she could trust: herself.

Jocasta sank to her knees and felt grains of sand, infinitesimal stones, pick at the fabric of her dress. She shoved at her sadness with hands that were less womanly and more unceremonious. Next, she shoved at her dress until it was in shreds and allowed for the evening winds to cool her skin. The moon above ceded judgment. Faces far removed, she did feel hands grace the newly exposed skin. A fingertip under her left rib, a knuckle along one of her calves, a hand steady under her chin, and an insistent kiss upon her forehead. Perhaps, she thought, they wished her a goodbye as well.

A wife in pieces, she expertly weaved the reanimated remains of her dress into a flexible garment that allowed her the

degree of modesty and agility that she preferred. Jocasta, with only the company of fragmentary recollections of family, the undemeaning night, and the merciful breeze, breathed for the first time in her life. When she exhaled, she released the years rubbing against her bones and pulling her taut and towards the ground. Jocasta breathed in the night, breathed out a new beginning. Under the moon, all pretenses of the past could be buried and left behind.

There would be no children, no husbands, no death. She would venture to the civilizations she knew well were just south of here and make a home again without any curses at her back. It was within her power as a seasoned mother to reject nuisances, and from now on Jocasta indulgently decided that any problems that would arise from the Gods were burdens for others to bear. She had undergone more than her fair share of cutting-edge cruelty from the divine and come tomorrow, would cherish nothing more than a handful of olives and a harmless touch.

⛤ ⛧

“Haunt/Intent”

Rae

A Meeting at a Fountain in Fez

Bethan Owen

I don’t know how I’m going to tell people what happened to you.

None of our friends or family are going to be able to think about Morocco the same way after this. They’ll always think of it as that exotic, dangerous place where you went missing. They’ll imagine a desert background, and stalls selling heaps of strange spices, and hidden dangers that we were naive about. It’s more satisfying, in a way. More interesting than it would be if you had disappeared in Illinois. And it’s all correct, isn’t it? I can’t explain what happened to you any better than a postcard of mystical North Africa could.

I can remember everything about the day you disappeared. It was our second day in Fez, and I was already proud of my ability to navigate the maze of the old city. I led you down the hill toward the tannery with only a few missteps, feeling superior to the other tourists clumped around the shopping stalls selling the same keychains and wallets as every other stall.

We walked past an alleyway done out in an explosion of rainbow colors, lined with paintings of city walls and women in

swirling robes and dresses, and I stopped to look. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a teenage boy lift his head, like an alert went out to all the young men in the area the instant I stopped moving, and I immediately regretted slowing down. I could never completely become the confident navigator I wanted to, or even just the casual walker that I wanted to be, because of the boys. The streets of Fez’s old city were full of all kinds of people women in headscarves and women in strappy tops and sunglasses, men on donkeys and men on motorcycles but only the boys gravitated toward me. They were lanky teenagers and twentysomethings, always with cocky smiles and rude eyes, winking and whistling with aggressive questions and reaching hands when they thought they had a chance. I know it wasn’t anything personal. It was the color of my skin and hair, my clothes, everything about me that glowed brightly with the word tourist.

Having you around kept the worst of them at bay, but they still came. You were a tourist, too.

“Where are you going?” one of them asked, and suddenly four of them were loping alongside us, turning our pair into a pack.

“Bonjour!”

“The tannery?”

“You’re going the wrong way.”

“We can show you, come.”

“It’s this way.”

I set my jaw, ducked my head, and tried to press on like they weren’t there at all, but you were trying to politely answer their questions, telling them that yes, actually, we were trying to find the tannery and were they sure this wasn’t the way?

I reached back and grabbed your hand.

“We know where to go,” I said without looking at them. They acted hurt and shocked and tried to lead us anyway, so insistently that I was forced to backtrack, determined to go the wrong direction rather than let these boys lead me. They called after us as we left, jeering in Arabic, English, and French all mixed together.

“Why didn’t you want them to show us the way to the tannery?” you asked. You didn’t look like the interaction had bothered you at all. You kept pace with my angry footsteps easily. “It’s kind of their job, isn’t it? They try to show tourists around for tips. Just trying to make some money, like everyone else.”

I could tell you thought I was overreacting, just like I could tell you didn’t understand the stinging undercurrent of anxiety I felt when these boys appeared and walked next to me so casually, so confidently. It was the potential that came with them: where would their mood take them, what could they do here in a city where they were at home and I was a stranger?

When evening came, I found that the narrow roads that had been so colorful and busy by day were losing their charm in the dark. The shops were closing, putting up corrugated metal

doors where overflowing stalls used to be. The colors I had admired by day were seeping away with the sunlight, overwhelmed by the sickly orange glow of streetlights. I didn’t want to be there anymore; I wanted to find our hostel, lay on the cool sheets, and put something on to watch while I fell asleep pressed against you.

“Be right back,” you said.

Just behind me, you stepped into one of the little corner stores illuminated by a soft drink fridge, that red American Coke can shining like a beacon in the night.

“I’m going up there a little ways,” I told you without looking back. I had realized that I wasn’t completely certain whether this was the street that led to our hostel or not and wanted to find out for sure before you returned with your Coke. I wanted to impress you, although I know you didn’t need impressing.

I went up there a little ways and then a little farther, but still nothing looked familiar. I was frustrated. I wished that you could see me as that flawless navigator I wanted to be. I wanted to be the kind of person that could feel at ease in a strange place.

“Hello! Where are you going?”

There were three or four long, leggy shapes skipping and gliding toward me from the nearest alleyway, one of a dozen little side streets that connected to the main thoroughfare where I had been walking, head up, neck craned, trying to find a familiar landmark. Now that the sun was down, I couldn’t see their faces at

all. They were just flashes of long limbs as they turned their bodies toward mine.

I walked on without looking at them, picking up speed and realizing a second too late that this was prey behavior and now they were not only following me but chasing me, just a little, just in a fast walk that still felt uncomfortably animal. I wished you were there.

I turned a corner and felt heavy with the realization that I was still going the wrong way, and the shadows were only getting longer. There was an elaborate tile fountain set into the wall made of delicate geometric patterns that radiated out from a little brass spigot, and a basin below to catch the water as it fell. It was the kind of discovery I would have taken photos in front of during the day, but now it looked gloomy in the weak streetlights, the white tiles turned to oranges and the greens and blues to oily shades of black and gray.

And there was a person sitting on the edge of the basin. I thought that it must have been a trick of the light; I hadn’t noticed anyone when I turned the corner and saw the fountain, but someone was certainly there now, leaning lightly against the wall and watching me. The spigot dripped steadily into the basin below.

“Are they bothering you?”

The woman was sitting in the shadows, hunched forward slightly. I could see the glitter of her eyes in the weak light, but not much else. I didn’t have the energy to really look at her at the time;

I was thinking about how far away those boys were, and what their voices sounded like, and when you were going to reappear with your Coke. I was too busy calculating threats to spare more than a glance at the small woman in front of me.

“Yes,” I said brusquely, because although they hadn’t yet, I knew they would. I could hear them behind me, getting closer as they laughed back and forth with each other and squawked and yelled.

“I’ll make them go away if you like,” the woman said. She spoke completely matter-of-factly, in perfect English. She spoke like she was selling me something, but it didn’t really matter to her whether she made the sale or not. “Just ask me by name. Aisha Kandisha.”

“Aisha Kandisha?” I repeated. The woman tilted her head and smiled, and the shadows stretched across her face. The air clung to my skin like damp cloth in that alleyway. I remember that.

“Three times,” the woman said.

I laughed a little at the fairy tale quality of her request. That was my first mistake, but who would have taken her seriously? You wouldn’t have. I can picture the delighted smile you would have worn. I’ve asked myself how I would have reacted if we had been in the U.S., and I don’t know what the answer is. I think I might have given her more credit. I probably would have walked away, quickly. But this was Morocco and I was so used to being pandered

to that I thought this was just another tourist trick; maybe she’d chase the boys away and then demand that I pay her.

I thought it was worth it. I wouldn’t pay the boys themselves off, but I would pay someone to chase them away.

“Aisha Kandisha, Aisha Kandisha, Aisha Kandisha,” I said dramatically, like I was in on the joke, like I didn’t really believe anything would happen. Because I didn’t. I really didn’t. And the woman seemed to have more teeth when she said “thank you,” and those teeth seemed longer and I couldn’t see quite where they ended because Aisha’s face was cast in shadows now, but suddenly I knew they were sharp.

I remember the sudden impression that Aisha was absorbing all the light because the dull orange glow was even weaker now, and the shadows were longer and darker than ever.

Aisha smiled and stretched. When she did, I could see that her hair cascaded down her back in lazy curls, and her loose clothing was nearly sheer under the streetlights.

Her skin was perfect, her mouth was soft, her eyes were dark. The woman was beautiful, but the word wasn’t enough. She looked as though she had been designed to be looked at, like every inch of her had been agonized over and made perfect for one specific purpose.

She moved her skirts as she shifted her weight, and I saw that the shapes of her legs and feet were all wrong. I looked again, closer, and I swear to God, Eric, she had hooves where her feet

should be, like an old painting of the devil, and I took a step backwards without knowing I was doing it. I looked over my shoulder, praying you would be there, because I wanted someone to tell me that this was real and I wasn’t seeing things. You weren’t there, of course. I was alone, watching the way the skirts fell strangely over Aisha’s legs because they bent the wrong way.

That was my first real warning. That was the point when I knew that there was something happening that I didn’t understand. Something felt wrong, and I should have left. But I didn’t leave. It felt like magic was happening, magic that I had caused, somehow, and I wanted to see what would happen. I was afraid, but I was standing behind Aisha and she was aimed towards someone else.

They came around the corner and stopped like they’d struck a wall. One of them made a sound, a high-pitched whine, but the other two were silent. They looked young, especially with fear on their faces, much younger than I had realized.

“Come,” the woman said, and held out one long, graceful hand. And then the boys weren’t terrified anymore. Their expressions drained away. They were blankly relaxed, they were content, they were falling over themselves to take her hand. They followed her into a narrow alleyway, one with no lights at all that oozed its own darkness out onto the larger road.

Their footsteps were gone quickly, extinguished by the total silence of the alleyway. No shuffling feet, no raised voices, none of the little human sounds that I had taken for granted until

that moment. They disappeared so suddenly and so completely that I stood there for a while, peering into the dark, expecting something and receiving nothing. When I thought she was just a woman, I had expected her to scold the boys; when I saw her feet, I only felt swept up in the astonishment of it, of having some kind of story book character who was willing to help me. As I stood there I was thinking of other old stories, the ones with weird endings and no Disney movies. I remembered the brief panic on the boys’ faces, and wondered what kind of fairy tales and ghost stories they had in Morocco.

I was just turning to leave when someone came out of the alley. They were moving quietly, slowly, and I could see right away that it was not Aisha. It was one of the boys, wearing his black Adidas tracksuit, and something was wrong with him. He was curled into himself, holding himself with both arms. There was a vacant look on his face like every part of his personality, everything that had made him that obnoxious teenager who’d been bounding through the streets a minute ago, had been burned out of him.

I walked towards him. He stopped and stared at me. I had the thought that I had killed him, but I pushed it away. He was alive. He was right there. But something was wrong with him.

“Can I help you?” I whispered. Stupid question, but what else was there? He only stared at me. I couldn’t look at him for more than a few seconds. I ran back the way I’d come from. I was

bewildered by what I’d done. Frightened. But I felt a little justified. I wouldn’t ever say that out loud, but now I’ve written it down.

I heard you before I saw you. I knew exactly what your posture would be as you turned the corner in a slow jog, a little exasperated at having to search for me late at night in a foreign city, and you did not disappoint as you turned the corner into that pool of garish orange streetlight.

“Found you,” you said, and I ran to you on my toes, moving so fast I barely skimmed the ground. Seeing you felt like crossing the finish line, like I’d made it through something bizarre and horrible and was finally safe.

“Eric!” I said, and I caught you in my arms and paused just long enough to shake my head, to shake my thoughts into place, and because I paused that was probably the last word you ever heard me say.

Because Aisha Kandisha was there. I felt it in the skin on the back of my neck before I turned around and before your face took on that confused look that quickly turned empty. It was horrible seeing you like that. I would give anything not to have seen you like that.

I said “no, come on, be serious,” and grabbed your hand. But you pulled away from me like it was nothing. You went to Aisha. Her arms were out to welcome you.

I said “Eric. Eric. Eric!” and I grabbed at your arm and her shirt with my fingernails and all the strength in my arms, but you

pushed me away, hard. I fell to the ground and it was filthy, something wet slid under my palm and there was a smell of rot in the air. I could feel my breath riding up ragged in my chest and a hot panic in my throat as Aisha slid an arm around your back. I stood and tried again to hold you as you slipped away, but you hit me with your elbow without even looking back.

Aisha raked her fingers through your hair and you closed your eyes. Aisha ran her curved teeth along your cheek and you groaned, lost forever. I grabbed you, I grabbed her, and when she turned to shake me off, she looked surprised. Why did you think he would be different? Aisha asked me with her eyes. Why did you think you would be different?

And I didn’t know. I still don’t know. I couldn’t answer as the two of you left together, disappearing completely into the darkness and the terrible silence of the alley. I was alone on an empty street in a country I did not understand at all.

I’m still here, Eric. I’m going to find you. I’ve been sitting by Aisha Kandisha’s well for days now, waiting. I don’t think she’s going to come back, but I will wait anyway. I’ve written this letter in case I ever have to leave. In case something happens, and I’m not here when you come back. I don’t mind if you come back with her. Just come back. You never even got to hear the whole story.

Sometimes groups of boys come by the fountain, which always drips, drips, drips. When I ask them if they’ve seen you, they edge past me without speaking. I’m not taking very good care of

myself right now, and I can see what I must look like in the way they scoff or avoid me completely. I still see them, the groups of boys that wander the streets, whatever their intentions might be.

I’m still aware of them. But it’s strange to me now that I used to be so preoccupied with what they might or might not do. After meeting Aisha Kandisha, I’m not afraid of them at all anymore.

Loathsome (or, The Hedgehog Bridegroom’s Bride)

Ella Leith

Content Warnings: Coercion, Ageism, Body Shaming

It was a somber affair, the wedding. The king and queen stood ashen-faced. The courtiers sat in tight-lipped horror or muttered darkly amongst themselves. The poor princess so young, so fair was like a waxen doll, her rosy cheeks blanched and her bright eyes red-rimmed from crying. The creature on her arm towered above her, a frightful spectacle of spines and wiry hairs, his breathing a groveling snuffle that even the organ music could not mask.

As the music died, the priest began to speak. He stumbled over the words, his eyes darting pleadingly around the church. When he spoke the crucial refrain “if any person knows of an impediment to this union, let them speak now or forever hold their peace” he paused for too long, letting the silence hang indignantly. It seemed impossible that no one would speak out, that no one would make a stand and refuse to let this nonsense continue, that no one would point out the obvious: the bridegroom

himself was an impediment to this union. It could not, must not go ahead.

And then, just when all hope seemed lost and the priest raised his hands despairingly to bless the couple, the church door creaked open, and an old woman stepped into the nave.

“Stop!” her voice rasped out. “The marriage cannot go ahead!”

The congregation turned in a mixture of relief and bewilderment. The old woman was withered and stooped, a hideous hag. She lurched forward, hair a straggling nest of filthy gray, clothes ripped and soiled. She clanked with each labored step. On her feet were shoes fashioned from iron, but the soles were worn almost to nothing. Her weather-beaten face was lined so heavily that her eyes were almost lost in the folds. Slowly, she processed down the aisle and stood before the couple: the princess, hope flooding her beautiful features; the creature, inscrutable. The whole congregation held its breath.

The old woman held a misshapen finger aloft. Her voice creaked, but as she addressed the creature, it took on the sing-song quality of an incantation.

“O beloved, I am that most beautiful princess who could not keep her promise for one more night,” she said. “In my impatience and my vanity, I disrespected your mask in my desire for your face, and I have sorrowed for it long. I have walked the world to find you. I have worn out the soles of three pairs of iron

shoes. A hundred years have marked me and turned my hair to gray. But I have come to claim you. I have come to release you from the curse that binds a hedgehog skin to your back.”

With that, she flung herself onto him. He staggered backwards and struggled, but she clung to him fast, her frail body writhing to keep her hold, his spines piercing her papery skin. With a roar, the creature threw her bodily from his side. His skin came away in her arms.

There was a moment of frozen silence. The old woman stood, bloodied and triumphant, clutching a mass of hedgehog quills. And where the monstrous creature had stood was the most handsome young man ever seen, clothed in a suit of gold thread bedecked with jewels.

A moment of frozen silence, and then an eruption of cheers. Such rejoicing! The king and queen clasped each other in relief. The courtiers cried out blessings and thanksgiving that so terrible an enchantment had been lifted. The priest, beaming from ear to ear, raised his prayer book and turned to the young people: this most handsome prince-to-be and this most beautiful princess, her features transformed from despair into radiant joy. They gazed at each other in mutual rapture.

“Dearly beloved! We are gathered here today to unite these two beautiful people in holy matrimony!”

“Excuse me,” said the old woman. “That’s my husband.”

A moment of stunned silence, then a buzz of whispering, of choked disbelief, even of laughter. Surely this could not be true?

The bridegroom was young, vigorous, handsome how could he be wed to this foul old crone?

“I beg your pardon?” asked the priest.

“That’s my husband. I married him under the same conditions that this pretty little girl was about to. A bargain made with a monster, you know how it goes. Same old, same old. So you’re off the hook, by the way, my dear.”

She smiled benignly at the princess, who looked in wild disbelief at first the hag and then her prince.

“But I don’t want to be off the hook! I want to marry him!”

“He’s much too old for you, dear,” the old woman said kindly.

“No, he isn’t! He’s beautiful!”

“Yes, well, he’s been hiding in a magical skin, hasn’t he? He hasn’t been traipsing all over the world on foot for a hundred years. I assure you, I was also beautiful back when I was in your shoes.”

“Enough of this.” The bridegroom stepped forward. He took the princess’s hand in his and held it aloft. The congregation swooned. “The curse is lifted. The feast is prepared. Let the wedding commence.”

“That’s bigamy, dear,” said the crone.

“But our marriage… I haven’t even seen you in a hundred years!”

“And whose fault is that? I’ve been looking for you since the moment you left! If you had just left a few clues but no, you had to go off in a big sulk just because there were a few teething problems in the early days of our marriage.”

“Teething problems?” His outrage outshone his fine clothes. “You destroyed our marriage when you threw my magic skin into the fire! You scorched it onto my flesh!”

“Yes, well, we all make mistakes in our youth. It’s difficult to know how best to lift a curse like that, and I received some poor advice. I rather think I’ve redeemed myself today, don’t you?”

“You think after all this time you can just waltz in here and ruin my life?” His indignance was becoming distinctly whiny, the courtiers noted. It was somewhat unbecoming in a soon-to-be prince. “I don’t believe you! You horrible old hag!”

The old woman raised her eyebrows.

“Don’t take that tone with me,” she said crisply. “I didn’t come all this way to have you talk to me like that. I didn’t release you from that enchantment you’re welcome, by the way for you to treat me with disrespect.”

“If you think for one moment that I’m going to pass on the opportunity to marry this delightful young lady ” (the

princess simpered up at him) “ in favor of marrying you, then you’ve got another think coming!”

“You already married me, dear. It may have been a hundred years ago, but look how well our union has stood the test of time. I’m still your true love: I found you, didn’t I? I lifted the enchantment. And now we get to live happily ever after. At last.”

“You are not my true love.”

“You take that back!” the old woman shrieked, suddenly furious. Her eyes glittered strangely, deep in the folds of her skin. She raised her gnarled finger to point at him. “I walked the world to find you! I lifted the curse! I am your true love, and if you hadn’t been so stubborn and gone running off after I threw your skin into the fire, rather than staying to work on our marriage, all this time wouldn’t have been wasted. I’d still have my lovely rosy cheeks, and my hair would still be red. I’ve given my life to find you and free you, you ungrateful bastard, and if you’re not prepared to overlook a few wrinkles then I’ll curse this skin back onto you so hard that no little chit of a princess will ever be able to remove it!”

She held the bloodied spines aloft. The young man leapt back in horror.

“Now, come here and take my arm,” she snarled. “Come here and act like the husband you are.”

There was a long silence. Then, very slowly, the bridegroom stepped forward. He placed his hand gingerly under

the old woman’s elbow, his gorgeous features twisted in disgust. The old woman smiled smugly.

“It’s not fair!” The princess stamped her exquisitely pretty foot. “I was going to get married today!”

“Only to a hideous creature that you didn’t want to marry.”

“But now he’s ” The princess gestured wildly towards the gold-clad Adonis. “He’s gorgeous. And I was going to marry him anyway, wasn’t I? I was going to do my duty, uphold my father’s side of the bargain. I would have lifted the enchantment myself! Why did you have to come and ruin it?”

“Yes,” interjected the bridegroom sulkily. “She would have found out tonight that I looked like this. She would have kept silent for three nights and broken the spell herself. I didn’t even need you.”

“Oh please!” The old woman rolled her eyes. “She would have done exactly what I did. You think she could have kept it to herself that that hideous giant hedgehog looked like you between the sheets? No, no, she would have told somebody, and it’d be just the same old story. Now, come on, dear.” She tugged on the arm of her reluctant husband.

“But I want to marry him!” the princess shrieked, her face growing blotchy with rage. She threw herself in front of them, blocking their path. “I will marry him! Look at him! Look at me! We belong together! But you you’re a hideous witch, a foul hag,

the most loathsome old creature in the world! If I looked like you, I wouldn’t dare show my face in daylight!”

A chill seemed to emanate from the old woman. It filled the church, and outside the birds stopped singing. The courtiers cringed back, clutching their furs about them. The bridegroom’s eyes were wide and fearful. Only the princess stood unchanged, defiant, fists balled at her sides, eye to eye with her fiancé’s wife. The old woman stared at her for a long while.

At last, she spoke.

“You are a very unpleasant young lady,” she said quietly. “And you are much too fond of getting your own way. You wouldn’t show your face in daylight if you looked like me? Well. We shall see.”

She smiled and stepped around the princess, guiding her husband with her. The congregation watched their slow and labored progress up the aisle with a mixture of apprehension and relief.

Then, behind them, came a scream. It was the queen. They turned as one, and gasped in horror. Standing in front of the altar, wearing the princess’s silver wedding gown, was an old woman, withered and stooped: a hideous hag.

G.T. Korbin

Content Warning: Manipulation

It’s not about you.

The phrase follows like a shadow. It lingers in the backdrop of his mind, placing a hand over his mouth every time he wishes to speak. Markos always keeps his mother’s words close to his heart, even if their sharp edges dig into it with every beat.

Alex slaps him on the back and suggests with the giddiness of early alcohol and fresh freedom that they should head down to the lake for beers. Their town is teeth-chattering cold on a good day and Markos knows the humidity is going to slip in tendrils under his jacket to drill that frost into his bones, but they just finished their last exam for the semester, and nobody wants to know what he thinks of their plan, anyway.

The group walks down the hill toward the lake, rowdy and excited in that Friday-night obnoxiousness of students. Alex, Jo and Dimitris are at the front, while Eli remains a few steps behind

with him, making the space that separates him and his friends seem a little less vast.

Eli takes a deep breath through her nose, loving the cold night air in a way he never could. “You’re not still stressing about the exam, are you?”

“Not anymore.”

The streets are always busy in that spot where the castle ruins come close to the lake, washed in waves of students moving from one place to the next, inconveniencing the steady line of cars on the street.

“Is it about going out?” Eli asks instead because she always knows. “You don’t have to stay. We’ll miss you though.”

He’s not sure that’s true. Eli befriended him at the start of their first year, and it was good for a while, just the two of them, basking in their coexistence. She helped him during the more gruesome parts of their anatomy classes. In return, he made sure she didn’t get caught when she accidentally set the lab bench on fire, because who would have thought that ethanol next to a Bunsen burner could ever be a bad idea?

He was willing to put out as many fires as needed if only to keep this rare sense of belonging close.

Until Alex, sweet and friendly, pulled her into the rest of the group and somehow Markos tagged along as well, in a way that never managed to convince him he was actually wanted.

But it wasn’t about him.

“I promise we won’t throw you in the lake?”

“I didn’t realize that was in question.”

Eli laughs, and it calms some of the turmoil within him, like putting the first tick on a long checklist. Made someone laugh. Check. For two seconds his presence was better than his absence.

“Come on, you’ll have fun.”

He rolls his eyes. “Maybe if you shove me in.”

“Pretty sure you’d die from the filth.”

“Maybe I’ll transform into something more useful.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. A flower?”

“In that water? More likely the flower would turn into you.”

Elianna is talented at a great many things, not including persuasion.

The stars are few and far in between, but the full moon casts white lines over the water, on the mountainside in the distance. Alex presses a cold beer into his hands, freshly plucked from the fridge at the nearest kiosk. Somehow, he still managed to shake it enough for it to foam within seconds of opening. Jo laughs as Markos swears, keeping the can away with one hand as it soaks his fingers.

“Next semester I swear I’m going to study from the beginning!” Alex makes a sweeping declaration, met by a chorus of laughter. “I mean it!”

“You say that every semester.” Jo sits on the back of the bench, her feet on the seat.

“Okay but who actually does it?”

“Markos,” Eli provides.

“Yeah, but he never does anything anyway!”

Dimitris and Jo laugh with him, at least until Jo meets Markos’ gaze. His stricken expression snatches away the alcoholheavy giddiness, letting discomfort spread like heat between them.

“We didn’t mean ”

Markos forces a smile on his face, his muscles rigid. “No, no.” His laugh sounds like crackling stones to his ears. “You’re right. I need to get out more.” Another grating chuckle. Shut up. Shut up.

He does things. He swears. It’s just that most of those things are done in solitude, and not a lot of people (namely anyone who isn’t Eli) enjoy meeting to work on different things in the same space, no matter how much comfort Markos draws from it.

Eli walks over to Alex and gives him a playful smack upside the head. “Mock him after your test results, dumbass. Maybe then you’ll beg him for a study session.”

“Hey, that’s not a bad idea!” Alex turns his way. “What do you think?”

Any mockery in his tone has fled, replaced instead by hopeful admiration, and Markos wants to keep Elianna forever by his side.

The rest of the night passes in a haze. Markos lets the alcohol burrow inside him, softening the blow of unbelonging. They drink and whine about the exams and speculate on the next term. They make plans for a Halloween party next month, even though they don’t celebrate it here and make Markos promise to join them.

A phone call drags him away from the group, and as he reassures his mother that he’s fine and yes, this was the last exam and no, he won’t come home for a few days now that he’s done, he walks along the edge of the lake, the water murky and still by his side. The pier is the only part of the shore that’s not protected by railing and in the back of his mind he wonders if maybe he’s a little too tipsy to be walking so close.

When his mother hangs up, a wave of exhaustion washes over him, mixing dreadfully with the guilt that he should be grateful she checks up on him, and the clawing knowledge that she has to do it to pretend she knows what is going on in his life. It’s just not about him.

He looks back at his friends, now far enough not to hear what they’re talking about. Their laughter carries through, blazing and loud, and it makes the tiredness settle deeper into his bones. Buzzed enough to not care, he lowers himself down to sit cross-

legged on the edge of the pavement, the lake so close he could reach out and touch it.

Markos leans forward, trying to catch a glimpse of the moss kissing the stone. The moon reflects in the distance, but in front of him, there’s only Wait.

Something moves in the water, its shape lost in the murkiness below. His hands slip, tearing his palms with a sudden scratch and as though called by his almost misfortune, a figure blossoms, draped in deep shadows and sticky algae.

Only when it moves with him does he consider that it might be his reflection.

The image grows clearer and his heart thunders louder against his ribcage, for the shape it takes has to be him but isn’t.

The Markos in the water is pale in the moonlight and sharp in the corners the shadows paint on his face. There’s something about that face, an assuredness to him, an easy, cocky confidence that he didn’t know he could hold, and as the real one moves closer, craving for a better look, the reflection smiles, a delighted crescent grin that Markos doesn’t realize he’s mirroring at first.

He’s never seen himself like this “You’re going to fall.”

Eli’s voice startles him out of it, and she has to grab his jacket before he can plummet into the lake. Beyond tipsy, he is far too drunk to be sitting so close.

“What the hell? Be careful,” Eli chuckles but the sound is strained with leftover worry. “Why are you sitting here?”

“I ” Scrambling to his feet, Markos sneaks a glance back at the water. Only darkness answers him. “I thought I ” He shakes his head, trying to pull himself together. “I just needed a break.”

Eli’s cheeks are red from the cold or alcohol or both, and the white light makes a halo of her blond hair. “Oh.” The disappointment is palpable in her voice.

Markos remembers the confidence in the reflection that he’s sure he must have imagined; he summons that dream now, hoping his face knows how to mimic the shape he saw. “Let’s go back.”

He doesn’t go near the lake again.

For about a week, that is.

He writes off the entire haunted reflection as a drunken dream, though he finds trouble shelving it. That perfect non-face of his refuses to be locked in closets with all the rest of the truths he doesn’t want to see.

Still, he doesn’t mean to go back to the lake.

When the new semester starts, Alex never mentions tutoring again, and with their elective classes this year, seeing any of his friends becomes an organizational task far beyond anyone’s reach. About a week in, after four hours of classes and three solitary breaks that felt like another four hours, all he wants is cold air and a chance to clear his muddled brain. If his steps lead him by the water, it’s only because there’s nowhere else to take a relaxing walk. Honestly.

With a coffee in his hands and a scarf around his neck that keeps getting blown all over the place, Markos breathes in the humid air, watching birds fly over the water, the sun bolding the outlines of the mountains. He walks the length of the pier, until his feet hurt and his knuckles ache from the cold. He passes families with children swinging from their parents’ hands. He passes couples holding each other or huddled together on the benches. And though he enjoys being alone, the images around him draw the distance between him and the world, the absence of people by his side tightening a cord around his neck.

His feet guide him to the bare end of the pier, the one that fails to block him from the water. He takes a hesitant half step forward, half step back. Looks around. Then at his feet. Looks around again.

With a quick curse under his breath, he leans forward, peering down at the reflection.

The wind causes ripples in the water, distorting his image like bad connection on an old television but all that greets him is a two-day stubble he was too sleepy to shave and a set of eye bags big enough to pack for a weekend trip.

Markos sighs. Of course not. What did he expect?

The cold digs in around his spine, making him squirm, and the musty scent of the lake is getting uncomfortable, but his house is too far to walk with a heart this heavy.

A splash of water hits the cuff of his pants.

He yelps in a whirlwind of swearing and scrambles away like the water turned to acid on his clothes.

“I had to get your attention somehow.”

He freezes, the fear like ice down his back. No more words come, yet the trepidation lures him closer, doing the opposite of what it’s supposed to do.

He looks over the edge again.

“Hello.”

His reflection gazes up at him from the murky water. His skin looks a shade too pale in the shadows of the lake, the white tinted blue, but his eyes are a sea-green so bright they make up for all the missing color. They don’t match his own and that might have been the first sign if the non-reflection hadn’t already spoken to him.

Whatever that is, it’s not him.

Markos takes a look around. The pier has emptied of people, chased away by the odd hour. Only the two of them remain.

“Are you going to ignore me?”

The voice is almost his own, in the way he almost recognizes himself when he hears a recording. It echoes double and lags as though pulled back, stretched into a distorted version of itself that’s not unpleasant.

He checks one more time that he’s alone, then lowers himself to his knees to study the peculiar thing. “No?”

“Are you asking me?”

His chuckle is warm and boyish, the kind of sound people fall in love with.

Markos’ chest swells with potential, then dips, heavy in his stomach.

The reflection’s smile falls in return, the change quick and dramatic like switching theater masks. “You don’t like what you see?”

“I like you,” Markos huffs, incredulous, following those green eyes with his own like they could lead him to salvation. “It’s just… I’m not you.”

“Of course, you are.”

His breath stutters in surprise. “No.”

“Yes!” That laugh again. Soft like a kiss to his cheek. Burning like candlelight on a vigil. “This is what you look like. Outside that head of yours.”

He slaps his hands on the pavement, pulled closer to the vision by some unseen force. Markos takes him in, the wellsculpted features, the brightness of his eyes, the charming hint of reddish purple on his lips. The image’s grin blossoms at the attention, lopsided with a confidence that shines on him.

“I’m you. Don’t you like… you?”

His answer gets trapped in a breath, a confession he can’t acknowledge, for it can go either way until it’s heard, each painful in its own cruel twist.

He never gets to test it.

His phone rings loudly in his pocket and by the time he reassures Elianna that he hasn’t forgotten their coffee date, all he finds over the water are his own muddy eyes, drowned in disappointment.

By the fourth, the fifth time, he stops pretending he doesn’t mean to end up there. He goes on nights that feel like chasing dreams, in hallowed mornings before the world wakes. The reflection is always there, a revelation trapped in algae and shadows, sunlight skittering through its surface, moonshine washing it like a spotlight.

The only thing sweeter than his presence are his words.

Since he’s maybe talking to himself, Markos finds it easy to open up. With the right amount of coaxing and the careful intimacy of being alone at those hours, the vision pries thoughts out of him with the ease of picking flowers. He talks of dreams of making something of himself, of helping people and how scared he is that he’s wasting the best years of his life because he doesn’t know how to not give his goal everything, especially when everything else seems so beyond his reach. He confesses that he knows what love is only in the way he would die for Eli, a relationship that holds no attraction but all the affection he has to give, but how Alex’s dimples when he smiles can make the chaos in his mind fade into silence.

He does not speak of his family, not yet, afraid that this version of him will forgive them before Markos can and sink him into the ground.

“I shouldn’t be here,” he says during one of those nights.

Sitting on the edge of the pier, chill seeps from the pavement into his jeans, but it's the quiet that disconcerts him, his own voice too loud even as he whispers.

“Where else would you be?” The vision asks, crossing his arms like leaning on a windowsill.

He rearranges the earphone he’s wearing, on the off chance that someone sees him talking into thin air. He’s still not

convinced anyone else can see or hear him. He should be more concerned about that.

“Well, my… friends are out tonight.”

“But you’re here.” He doesn’t judge. The voice is downright pleased, and he pulls off the slight whine in his tone in a way Markos would never achieve without sounding like a petty toddler.

“I’m here.”

“Why, love?”

Markos startles. It’s only a word, a pet name, yet it brings forth what he won’t let himself consider. It’s a vision in the water. It shouldn’t be shedding so much warmth with its affection nor should Markos let it ease the sting of the cold night.

“Hey.” The mirage tilts his head when he doesn’t reply. “You can tell me anything.”

“I ” Don’t want to leave this. “I just…” I want to be

“What is it?”

“No…”

“Say it.” His voice echoes in the water between them. It drags the words out of him like a spell, lured by the subtle charm he can never seem to replicate, the familiarity he radiates. That effortless beauty of him.

“I want to be loved.”

So beautiful.

“Look at me,” the vision asks, as if he has done anything but. “Don’t you love me? Aren’t you loved?”

“You’re not me.”

“I am.”

Marko’s heart clenches. “No ”

“I am how I see you.”

No, there’s no way.

The vision grins at his approach, even as he himself gapes. He takes in the renewed line of his features, shone in angles he’s never seen but look at home on his face, and when the image reflects the adoration building in his stomach, he can almost believe the reflection sees Markos like this, for why else would he look at him like that?

“Love. Speak to me.”

“I think you’re beautiful,” Markos whispers, then bites down hard on his lip. Right at the spot where his reflection is grinning.

The vision expands as if it’ll break out of the water and catch him, and Markos holds his breath, poised forward as though to meet him halfway

A hand grabs his coat and pulls him back like a baby kitten.

“Dude! What are you doing?”

Alex’s voice shakes, matching the look Eli wears behind him to perfection.

The pull from his daydream rattles him as violently as an actual dive in the lake. “Why are you guys here?” Fog swirls around in his head, an emerging hangover to mark mistakes he doesn’t remember making.

“Um, saving you from falling in the lake? What are you doing?”

The anger carved into Eli’s scowl aches, but the sweetness of the vision lingers still, an analgesic to soothe the pain of hurting her.

“Are you okay?” Alex adds, trying to ease whatever is unraveling between them.

Markos looks at him. A dimple prods through from Alex’s hesitant smile and Markos wants to touch it, draw out the smile longer, deeper. When he meets his eyes, however, the confusion has left no place for affection, and he misses the gentle adoration his vision granted him.

Alex is truly gorgeous, but he never sees him like he’s worth anything.

“I’m fine. You didn’t need to come.”

“Oh, okay. We’ll let you fall in next time.”

Markos glances behind him at the water, and he must look at least somewhat wistful because Alex gapes at him. “Dude.”

“What?”

“We haven’t seen you in weeks,” Eli responds. “When we do, you’re always distracted. I know all your silences, Marko. This

isn’t you.” She looks down, sneaking a glance at Alex as though this conversation was never supposed to reach outside the two of them. “Where do you go?”

“Eli ”

This obsession of his was never meant to touch anyone else. Elianna is the last person he ever wants to harm, the only person who might genuinely be able to see him and have him resemble anything like the image he sees on the water.

“Please, talk to me. This is the second time I see you try to take a nosedive. In the lake. The same gross lake you wouldn’t get near because it smells.”

Her soft chuckle is an invitation to calm the tension between them, but he can’t find it in himself to laugh.

“I wasn’t going to jump. I was looking for something.”

“For what?”

A version of himself he liked, mostly.

“Listen. Something… odd is going on. Come here, look at this.”

He’s not afraid of sharing his secret with her, and though Alex and he are not close… well, maybe he will like the person in the water enough to see what Markos could be. The three of them look over the water, while Markos ignores the hold Eli keeps on his sleeve.

The vision is gone. Only his blurry, lifeless reflection remains, wrinkling in the ripples of the surface.

“It’s… gone.”

“What is?”

“There was something. In the water.” An acrid taste stirs up in his mouth, talking about the beautiful person as if he’s nothing but an oddity haunting their lake. “He looked like me. But… not quite.”

Eli peers over, the concern etching deeper into her features with every nonsense word he speaks. “Your reflection?”

“It wasn’t my reflection! Not really. He talked to me. He…” He loves me. “He’s beautiful.”

A bark of laughter comes from Alex, lost for air too quickly to break the tension between them. “Look who’s suddenly confident! That’s the spirit!”

“No! He was me, but-but better! Perfect!” He conjures the image of his vision in his mind, remembering all the ways he fills the frame of him where Markos himself falls short, and maybe Eli is right. Maybe he doesn’t care about being here when there’s a much better version who could be roaming the world instead. One that would never hurt his best friend so. One who would tell Alex how wonderful he is.

A version of him who could claim things to be about him.

“It would be amazing…” He whispers, eyes still on the water.

She’s already shaking her head as she asks, “What would?”

“To be like that. To be… perfect.”

Eli steps between him at the lake, effectively forcing him away. “You’re plenty good already.”

“It’s not enough.”

“For whom, Marko? You’re good enough for me.” He goes to protest but she cuts him off, not done after weeks of ignoring her. “I don’t know what daydream you’ve been chasing but it’s not worth it if it makes you talk like this! Even if what you’re saying it’s true, why…"

The harshness of his gaze steals the rest of her words. “You don’t believe me.”

“I… I want you to be okay.”

“I’ve never been better. He sees me, Eli. He understands me.”

“The… reflection?”

He flinches, irritation building cracks upon his dam and before he knows it, they’re breaking, spilling truths he shouldn’t allow himself to say. “He makes me feel like I could be something, you know? Don’t you get it?”

“And how does he make you feel about who you are now?”

He frowns, uncomprehending. “He looks like he sees me.”

“You said he doesn’t look like you. If he loves you, he should see you for who you are. Not some imagined version.”

“Eli ”

“And if he doesn’t see you, or he doesn’t love you until you’re ‘better’,” she spits out the word, “then he doesn’t love you. Not like I do.”

Any protest is extinguished, coming out as a soft breath, a sigh to mark the blow to his heart. “Eli,” he whispers, at a loss, but she backs away for the last time, placing herself out of reach.

“Just… make sure this image of yours doesn’t drown who you are now.”

Markos watches her walk away, Alex trailing behind her like a sad puppy, and even before he met a reflection that showed him who he could be, he never felt quite as worthless.

It’s not that Markos is avoiding Eli on purpose; except he definitely is. Though never one to hold a grudge, what he does refuse to relinquish is embarrassment, letting it fester instead like an infection, poisoning himself and all the relationships he has.

He’s not mad at Eli. But he sure is afraid she might be mad at him.

Barred by his own stupid mind from talking to his best friend, he ends up doing the one thing she doesn’t want him to do.

When Eli doesn’t approach him when they pass by in the hall, the vision grins at the sight of him.

When Jo tells him he looks a little sickly, the vision looks even more stunning in the moonlit water.

When Alex’s arm around his shoulders grows tense, Markos’ fingers touch the edge of the water, finding his reflection splaying out his hands on the other side as if to mirror him.

Eli’s absence aches like a wound, and as he wanders the streets like he’s missing a home, Markos’ steps lead him to the pier again. The vision welcomes him like he belongs here, so he lets himself cry. And when he finally decides he needs to talk to her, he needs her, and the vision tells him to stay, after all the times he found himself lost in the comfort of his own eyes looking so happy, Markos forgets about everything and just stays.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been there.

The sun and the moon have melted into the same vague light, existing past his point of perception. All he knows is the reflection on the water, the world that might exist where he is beautiful and soft and kind, where he smiles like he means it and he didn’t break his best friend’s heart.

“What are you thinking of, love?”

Markos gave up on sitting or standing a while ago, and stays instead splayed out on the pavement, head on his elbow, watching the water.

“Nothing. Everything.” His lips barely move. “I’m surprised no one has told me not to lie down so far.”

“They can’t see you, love. Not while I’m here.”

“No?”

“No.”

His stomach pangs at the thought though he can’t figure out why. Maybe he’s hungry. How long has he been here?

“Eli saw me.”

“She was looking for you. She knew what she wanted to find.”

If he doesn’t see you, he doesn’t love you like I do.

“Are you crying?”

Markos doesn’t feel the tears running down his face, though his sight blurs with guilt. “I need to talk to her.”

“You don’t need her.”

“I do.” He can hear the whine in his voice, even as it comes in tatters, cut up on the way out of his throat. “I love her.”

The vision doesn’t move, not even when the water around him shatters in waves, something stirring in the lake despite the absence of a breeze. “You’re being silly. You can’t love her. Not like you love me.”

"Is that bad?" He asks because the vision is right. It's not the same way. Elianna is a woman; Markos can never love her the way he gazes after Alex, and she can't look at him the way the vision does. But she’s family and home, and she's meant to last more than any daydream a man can promise him.

Markos feels the sob crackle at the spot in his chest where her absence eats at him, and with the last of his effort he tries to push himself to his elbows, then his knees.

"Love?"

His head spins, his fingers drawing lines on the gravel to ground him.

"You’re dehydrated."

"I'm "

"Let me help you. Come closer."

Markos blinks at the vision that rises higher. The water swells with its presence, lifting for a second before his face can break the surface.

That's not possible, is it? He's a reflection.

"Come on, it's only me."

Confusion guides him over the edge, barely holding onto the last bit of pavement. His back is bent over toward the water, head stretching downward as if to meet his vision halfway.

"That's it. It's just me. It's just you."

He pauses, a breath before touching the surface, startled by the idea that because this is him, he's not going to hurt him, for who has ever hurt Markos more than himself?

The hesitation doesn't save him.

The vision breaks out of the water. Hands his hands, but fingers joined in webbing cradle his face. A pale forehead, chilled like the dead, presses against his own.

Markos gasps, and the vision's smile stretches on his lips, gentle, pleased, before it breaks. Into razor sharp teeth and a mouth open large and unhinged.

The last thing Markos knows is a dip of gravity when he's plunged into the thick water. Then it's all dark, dark and a profound sense of loss that hurts more than the piercing pain.

It's three weeks later that Elianna walks across the shore, limbs tucked close to her chest, an oversized scarf obscuring most of her face, daffodil-yellow and obnoxiously bright. She looks down at the water and catches a glimpse of a face she hasn't seen in a month, a face she knows is gone to her forever.

He doesn't look more perfect than before. He looks as sad and lovely as he always was, tinged with an underlying wrongness that betrays him, a cockiness Markos thought beautiful, but it only tells Eli it wants something.

"Why do you look like him?" She asks, her words cold like the first layers of ice that are starting to form this late in the year.

"Why not a 'perfect' version of me?"

"Because you don't need that. He wanted to love himself. You want your friend."

She flinches at the sound of his voice, and she wants to run, hide as far away from the otherworldly thing that's not him, it's not.

She has to ask.

"Could you help me find him?"

The shadow smiles for real now. "Come closer." Its teeth glint under the moonlight.

"I'll show you where he is."

⛤ ⛧

“Release”

Larena Nellies-Ortiz

“Disjointed” Larena Nellies-Ortiz

Make Me a Freak Show

Tyler Battaglia

Content Warnings: Implied Queerphobia (external and internalized), Implied Ableism (external and internalized), Manipulative Romantic Partner, Non-consensual Body Modification, Body Horror, Raw Meat Consumption, Spiders, Infidelity, Murder, Cannibalism

When I began to fall in love with Raymond Redd, he promised me, I will only change you for the better, and I believed him. The people we love change us, after all, but we hope it will be for the right reasons: they make us more patient, more loving, more kind. Better versions of ourselves. And Ray had looked past all my flaws to see the good buried deep within me, so I had to believe that he was set to make the best of what remained under all those faults, illuminated by the carnival lights in the darkness. It did not worry me that he promised to change me. There was so much room for improvement, after all. I had heard that many times before about my body, my heart, my soul. Every one of our dates were during the night at Raymond Redd’s Rodeo and Revelry. It was a carnival in town for a time,

perhaps not entirely accurately named. It was Ray’s very own show, his circus of strangeness and excitement. The sparkling lights under the Big Top hypnotized me. He took me around all the games, never touching me but always guiding me, and told me how he knew all the tricks to winning prizes at every booth. He never showed me what the tricks were, but he showed off his secret knowledge by winning me something at a different booth every time we came. I carried giant stuffed animals in my arms nightly bears and cats and crocodiles that were already worn at the seams but were transitorily joyous. We watched the shows, the daring stunts. From lion tamers to psychics who could accurately guess your deepest secrets, Raymond Redd’s had it all.

He snickered when the psychic guessed at my sins, teasing me in my embarrassment. He chuckled when I gasped in fear at the lion’s maw narrowly missing the tamer’s arm. I did not take offense this was his vocation. The shock and awe of it was his bread and butter. He knew the tricks behind it all, he knew it was nothing to be amazed by, but it delighted him to deceive his audience with his delights. And besides, most of it was beautiful, was fun, was good. The tents were always overflowing with children’s unbridled laughter. The clanging prize bells were rapturous. The dazzling, colored lights breaking through the dark of night to sparkle off the water below the docks were unparalleled.

One night, Ray took me to the burgeoning freak show that he had nestled all the way in the back. It wasn’t much, a few glass

cases, out of the way and without much foot traffic. But I hadn’t expected it, somehow. I hadn’t thought that was the kind of entertainment that Ray curated.

“It unsettles me,” I admitted, standing at a distance from the display once we were alone but for the freaks. There were no living specimens, I was thankful for that, but some of the skeletons looked human. Or near enough to human. “Doesn’t it feel wrong to put these on displays for people’s amusement? Aren’t they laughing at them?”

“Don’t worry,” Ray promised me. He leaned in to whisper a secret, winking as he did so. For the first time at his carnival, he touched me, a hand at the small of my back, brushing his lips against my ear. “None of them are real. I made them all myself. It’s all for fun. I think most of the patrons know that they just want to suspend their disbelief for a little while.”

It comforted me to know that Ray wasn’t displaying real human remains or true oddities pillaged from someone else’s home. It was all a game. All a show. Just like everything at Raymond Redd’s Rodeo and Revelry. And Ray was a good man that was why he had taken pity on me in the first place. That was why he was giving me a chance.

We fell into tolerable silence for a while. I wanted to leave, but Ray seemed enamored with his own handmade freaks. After a while, he called my attention by pressing his hand against my spine, grinning. “Which one’s your favorite?”

I wanted to say, None of them, but I knew that was the wrong answer. Ray was proud of his miscreations and his falsities. He wanted to know which one I was most impressed by he always wanted to be impressing people, inspiring their awe and admiration. Reluctantly, I pointed at a fish tank, empty of water but with an unknown oceanic creature suspended in wire. Its eyes bulged, glassy, dead, walleyed, watching us observe it. It had two small, human-like arms. I hoped they were pilfered from a little girl’s lost doll that had been abandoned on the boardwalk. “That one.”

Ray nodded. I wondered if he knew my heart wasn’t in it. I wondered if he knew I felt like a freak enough just for being the kind of person I was, loving the kind of people I loved, and having the body and the kinds of needs that I had. That I identified with the enclosed creatures, even if none of them had ever been alive.

We went back to his home, after. I had always thought a ringmaster would sleep in a trailer on his own grounds. Instead, Ray had acquired a short-term rental nearby, surprisingly lavish for a temporary accommodation, a too-large house with a toomanicured yard, populated by peculiar, monstrous garden statues and creaturesque water features. I wondered who had a home like that, that they could rent out for a few weeks at a time, but it reminded me that his carnival was only a temporary fixture in town, which was distraction enough. After a time, he would leave. I wondered if he would take me with him.

In his bedroom, we made love, the kind of love that made people think me a freak, and we went to sleep.

The first rays of dawn woke me up, and I slowly opened my eyes, one by one by one by one. At first, I didn’t notice that it was too many, my head swimming in an ocean of unfamiliar, dizzying sights. I was disoriented, but I couldn’t place why. I blinked, but it was erratic, unrhythmic. The eyes did not blink together, though I could control all of them after a moment’s struggle against the current of disorientation.

I sat up and tried to look around myself. My mind was foggy, at sea. There were too many inputs. Many pieces trying to combine into a panoramic view of Raymond’s bedroom. I could see everything at once. It hadn’t been that way when we had gone to sleep.

“Ray ?” My voice came out hoarse. I needed water. Some of my visions floated, tinged red at the edges.

“Shush, Jonah, it’s okay.” Ray appeared and sat on the bed next to me. I didn’t see him approach even though I could see all. “Take it easy. You’ll need time to adjust.”

I didn’t ask him what I needed to adjust to. I could feel the tears of blood that came out of plethoric tear ducts that hadn’t been mine the night before. “Did you do this?”

Ray only smiled. He patted my knee and said, “Let me get you a glass of water.”

I should have been angrier. Ray had given me eyes, so many eyes, that I had not asked for. My head hurt all the time with that much visual input. It was difficult to adjust to seeing things I could not see before. And Ray hadn’t even let me stay with him he had insisted he held many important business meetings that happened in the drawing room of the old house he was renting that I could not be seen for. And I could tell that Ray never wanted to see me for long, in the daylight, anyway. No, no, it wouldn’t do I must stay in my own cramped apartment, like a tiny aquarium. He would call me for our next date. I couldn’t see anyone in the meantime. They wouldn’t understand.

But how could I be angry when Ray had warned me? He had promised he would change me, and he had. He had promised he would change me only for the better, so he must have.

I bade my time, waiting, covering myself in thick, dark hoodies and long pants to block out the too-much-light, and anything else that would hide the extra eyes for long enough for me to do something as simple as receive a food delivery at my door.

Ray was kind enough to arrange for the takeout, anything I thirsted for. I requested only that he not send seafood. My skin was sticky and moist from the humidity of sweat under layers of unnecessary

clothing. It would feel like too much to ask Ray to pay for my air conditioning to be repaired, so I guzzled gallons of water instead. Sometimes, I drank straight from the tap for the immediate relief, my head against the cool porcelain and the water running over my face, over my many eyes.

When Ray next called, I leapt for my phone. He asked me to meet him at Raymond Redd’s Rodeo and Revelry. He would arrange for my ride. He requested only that I didn’t speak to the driver.

I felt strange waiting for a driver outside my tumble-down tenement, the brick crumbling and the paint peeling, swaddled in thick layers of clothing unsuitable for the weather night, again, but too warm, warmer than it should have been for a fall evening, soon ready for snow.

I blinked my extra eyes against heavy fabric. It felt claustrophobic, like I had submerged my body into a place where no light shone and that I would drown there. But the two eyes I’d always had led the way, along with one ocular extra that peeked out from the neckline of my hoodie, set in my clavicle where I hoped it looked more like an accessory than an organ. My only saving grace was that the driver was also bound in many layers of clothing. I almost asked her if she was hiding something as well, but Ray had given me strict instructions. She must have had strict instructions too, as she scarcely looked at me, even when picking me up and

dropping me off. She recognized me, or who I was, and needed not confirm I was who Ray had sent her for.

Raymond Redd’s was as beautiful and eclectic and loud as ever, but it only took a few steps onto the boardwalk for Ray to fish me out of the crowd. He led me around the carnival, as if nothing at all had changed and it was any other night. He took me to a strongman game, showed off his ability to step right up! and prove his strength, being handed a gargantuan toy shark which he in turn handed to me, laughing his deep laugh and winking the whole time, like he was in on a secret. I wasn’t sure who he was in on the secret with.

But the lights splayed across the docks were more dizzying than normal, the spotlights filtering through even my thick sweater and sweatpants to my many eyes, and I felt the twin pain and nausea of a migraine forming. Even as I was clutching my stuffed elasmobranch fish, Ray noticed that I was quiet. He was paying attention. He led me without further ado to the burgeoning freak show that he had nestled all the way in the back. I tried not to think about it. It was the quietest, and darkest, place at the carnival. The lights and the music and the laughter were distant, there, unable to pierce the night that deeply.

“Are you okay, Jonah?” Ray asked me once we were alone but for the faux remains in glass enclosures. He placed a hand on my shoulder, the first touch all night, and leaned in with concern drawn on his face. “You’re quiet. Don’t you like your shark?”

“I like my shark,” I whispered. I leaned my face into it. Anything to block out the light. It was darker in this corner of Raymond Redd’s, at least, but it would still take time for the throbbing pressure to fade. “My head just hurts.”

I felt Ray shift beside me. He put his arm around me, then slowly pulled my hood back with his other hand, an awkward halfembrace. He floated into view for the eyes on the back of my neck. He kissed my hair, narrowly avoiding an eye nested in a re-growing buzz cut. “We can stay here as long as you’d like.”

I’d like to not stay at all, I didn’t say, because if I said that he would send me away. And Ray among his glass-caged freaks was better than no Ray at all. I nodded instead. We stood for a long time, me settled in Ray’s arm, duplicitous images of him forming in my many eyes. No carnival-goers interrupted us. Certainly, none of Ray’s collected oddities uttered a sound, frozen in their eternal death-masks. It was Ray who invariably broke the silence.

“Which one’s your favorite?”

The question was familiar. I thought that maybe Ray had asked me before which of his creatures should he be most proud of? It felt blurry, though; indistinct. I couldn’t remember my previous answer.

I looked around me, reluctant to choose any of them, but not wanting to disappoint Raymond Red in his own freak show. I pointed to one that was slim in stature but hunched over, a young man, wolfish and hairy, face long and teeth sharp, perhaps youthful

in his innocence if it weren’t for the way that his jaws could surely rend flesh from muscle from bone from body. “That one.”

Ray nodded. I wondered if he knew my heart wasn’t in it. I wondered if he knew I had felt like a freak enough just for being the kind of person I was. That I identified with the enclosed creatures, even if none of them had ever been alive.

Once I felt better, or at least Ray presumed I did, we left the carnival and went back to his strange estate. The lawn was overgrowing with weeds and dandelions burst forth from the cracks in the walk, defying their odds to flourish. He lay me in his bed and closed my eyes gently with his fingertips one by one by one by one, slow, sensual, sensitive.

We made love like freaks.

When I woke and tried to yawn, I was seized with a terrible pain in my jaw that quickly radiated across the bottom half of my face, even down to the eyes in my neck. My new teeth sliced my lip and drew blood. I could taste the salty and metallic aftertastes of various bodily fluids still coating my mouth.

“Ray ?” I struggled to get out his name. My mouth didn’t want to work properly, lockjawed, stricken as with rigor mortis.

“Shush, Jonah, it’s okay.” Ray appeared to me. I saw him appear this time. I was becoming accustomed to my eyes. “Take it easy. You’ll need time to adjust.”

I didn’t ask him this time the question that verged on memory, did you do this?, because I already knew the answer.

He got me a glass of water.

I should have been angrier.

The next few days were déjà vu. I wore thick layers of heavy clothing and medical masks to hide the teeth, which I had tried to count over and over but to no avail. Ray arranged for the delivery of food to my apartment, anything I hungered for. I requested groceries instead raw meat from a butcher, in the best case, that I could prepare however I pleased. I did not prepare it. I sank my canines all of them were canines, no more molars or premolars or incisors into the hunks of meat, rare. The toothaches were abominable otherwise, pain propagating through their nervous pulp and then onward to every part of me, through the eyes across my body, and into my heart. Only meat satisfied the torment.

Sweat drenched me in the heat. I stalked across the cramped pen of my apartment. I chomped at the bit for my phone to ring.

The call came. A date at Raymond Redd’s one and only Rodeo and Revelry. A driver to collect me. Do not speak to her.

At the carnival, Ray picked me out from the crowd like a skilled hunter. He tugged my mask down and kissed me heartily a

first in public and grinned at me when my teeth met his before slicing, unintended, into his lips. I tasted the raw sting of both of our bloods, mingling on my tongue. I think it delighted him. It delighted me. I replaced the mask before anyone, even Ray, could see my own wolf-tooth grin.

He took me around the carnival as always, his hidden prize, and showed me all his favorite games. It had begun to bore me, as I had seen all his tricks, but I indulged him. He was changing me for the better, after all the least I could do was play along with his diversions. I did not smile to show him how impressed I wasn’t at his newest midway attractions because he couldn’t see it under the mask anyway. Pretension was futile.

But his prizes could only do so much to soothe my migraine mind, and his corndogs and cotton candy could not satiate my suffering teeth. We made our way to the growing familiarity of his tucked-away freak show. I tried to determine if there were any new displays. I found I could not remember if each of them had been there before. It all blurred together in those late nights.

We stood there awhile. The sound of laughing children was a distant memory. Not a creature was stirring. Ray held a hand against my neck, covering some of my eyes.

“Which one’s your favorite?” Ray whispered hotly in my ear.

I surveyed the collection, looked at every fish bowled tank at once with my eyes which were now trained to hunt for every detail. A museum of freaks like me stared back. I spied an androgynous, spidering figure. Their many thin and disjointed limbs seemed to reach for freedom’s throat, ready to shatter their prison. “That one.”

Ray nodded, as if this was an excellent choice. One he was proud of. I hoped he was proud of me too for picking out his best work.

We went to his home. His monstrous fountains overflowed, not draining, mosquitoes laying eggs in the pooling water. They would hatch soon.

He took me to bed. We made love like freaks.

The dozen new limbs were not a surprise when I woke. Ray came to me, whispered my name, and we embraced a dozen times. I held him down a dozen ways and we made love again. He sent me home before day broke.

I should have been angrier.

Déjà vu again. The sweaters got bulkier to hide the extended girth that resulted from extra appendages. I ate only raw flesh but stored some of it away for later. I felt like it might one day be used to feed young, like maggots birthed from rotted meat.

A call. A date. A ride to Raymond Redd’s Rodeo and Revelry. Do not speak to her.

I bundled myself in thick scarves and nested in the backseat of the car. I pulled my mask down enough to let some of my extra eyes watch the passing streetlights out the window of the car, silent until we got to the carnival. The driver parked the car outside the gaping maw of the clown-face that was erected as entrance. Her hands were tight on the wheel. I replaced my mask and reached to open the car door, but the driver shocked me: she spoke.

“He’s leaving soon, you know.” I stared at the back of her head with the eyes that weren’t covered, the ones that I used to trust the most but now functioned as any of them did. I didn’t respond. She filled the silence. Her voice was tired. “He’ll ask you to come with us. You and I and all the others will make the final freak show.”

I looked out the window again and saw something for the first time, something I might have seen earlier had I allowed my many eyes to roam freely, look at anyone but Ray: the carnies, bustling about the boardwalk, miring among the midway, all clothed in too many layers for the heat, covered head to toe, misshapen under their coverings, bodies bulging obscenely. Like the driver. Like me.

I looked back to her. I evaluated my options. I asked, “Are you his lover, too?”

The driver hesitated. “I was.” Then she jutted her chin to the carnies who moved like phantoms. “As were they. And,” she added, her eyes drifting to the furthest reaches of the carnival, where the near-abandoned freak show that never saw any foot traffic sat, “they were, too. Once. Before he moved on.”

I nodded, then got out of the car. I had nothing else to say to her.

I should have been angrier.

Raymond took a longer time to find me than normal on the pier. Too long. My spidering limbs ached at their joints under my clothing, ready to escape. I wondered if he had somehow known that the driver broke her promise.

I watched him the whole night as he won me prize after prize at game after game. I felt as if he was trying to appease me, show me how he would treat me right if I just went with him. Buttering me up for his ultimate proposal. I contemplated if I might say yes. I also contemplated if I might lay eggs inside the polyester stuffing of yet another oversized fabric animal for later hatching.

I grew tired of his distractions. I interrupted him. “Can we go to the freak show?”

Raymond’s face showed surprise that I initiated the request, but he consented. Maybe he was pleased I wanted to see

the proud corner of his carnival that he was growing, exhibition by exhibition. I suspected that he wanted to one day replace all of Raymond Redd’s Rodeo and Revelry with his collection.

We went to the far corner of the carnival, into the mostly abandoned freak show. Distantly, I heard the tearing of flesh and goring of meat. I had learned the wet sounds and smells well. I saw, briefly, a man in a jean jacket appear under the tent, then disappear again just as quickly, sight unseen. My extra eyes saw the details though. The grim, grizzled face, beard sticky with sweat, sleeves caked with blood. The emblazoned, proud, poorly designed logo of a taxidermy business on the denim. I wondered where the driver went.

I did not speak. I lowered my hood and removed my mask as I waited for Raymond to make the first move.

“I’m leaving soon,” he said. “And I wanted to ask ” “Do you love me?” I interrupted.

His hesitations spoke volumes. “I’m proud of you.”

I understood now. “Would there be more?”

I saw with my many knowing eyes that he wanted to ask me for clarification. I predicted it: more lovers, or more freaks? Perhaps it didn’t matter, because he answered without asking me what I meant. “Yes.”

I wondered if I could be happy with that. Being one of many lovers he was changing for the better. Raymond always seeking out flawed people to make beautiful. Me, one of his many

sideshow attractions, eventually becoming entombed in his gallery. Raymond always adding more freaks to his freak show.

Without a word, I shed my remaining layers, striping down to my newly beautiful, naked form. My extra limbs spidered out, stretched out, tasted air. My teeth ached with desire. My eyes swirled, captured more, untold details. Every aborted aberration in their place, all staring back at me, anticipating my every move. Welcoming me or warning me.

I opened my arms, my arms, my arms, my arms to Raymond. He looked relieved. He stepped into my legged embrace. We kissed and I felt his wet, slimy tongue on my knife-sharp teeth.

I wondered what kind of freaks he could make. Of me, of us, of himself. I wondered if a man who could make no more false promises would draw a crowd. I wondered what he tasted like.

His slick appendage that spun sweet somethings and made a living out of lying moved against my teeth.

I sank my teeth down and tore. I felt his lingual papillae sliding down my throat, soft, moist tissue squelching against my esophagus, as I swallowed his screams like blood. He struggled against my dozen limbs, but I held fast.

I wondered what kind of freaks I could make.

Theseus the Bull Slayer

Al McClimens

Glorified holding-pen really. Didn’t see the need for it myself. It’s not like I was going anywhere in a hurry. The nearest island was too far to swim to and anyway, the service was pretty good. Fresh meat every other day, if you don’t mind sacrificing your own sheep. The decor was a bit boring though. I mean, have you ever been in a labyrinth? Well, you’ve seen one maze you’ve seen ‘em all, believe me. I know whereof I speak.

Anyway, one day this young lad strolls into the compound. Handsome, if you go for the oiled torso and polished armor look.

Very Hellenic. The kind of profile you might see on a gold coin. Lost your dog, mate? I asks him. He’s got a piece of string in his hand. Oh, that, he says, chucking it away. No, and he stands there looking a bit gormless, if I’m honest. And was that an Athenian accent?

Eh, this is a bit awkward, he goes. Cos I’m supposed to kill you. He’s got a sword in his hand that would be useful as a nail clipper but I didn’t want to say anything. I just let the remark hang there for a bit then let out a bellow they could hear on Mount

Olympus. Fair play to the kid, he joined in and we had a good laugh about it. But seriously, he says, then he launches into a tale of myth and broken promises. Lots of legend potential and ode material. Plus he had figured out the practical details. And so here I am, he says, when it’s done. It’s written in the stars and is my fate.

The sun was going down by then so I suggested we order in some retsina and lamb kebabs, sleep on it and figure something out in the morning. Sounds like a plan, he says. We had a decent night. Sang some songs, recited some poetry, raised a glass or three to the gods and next day over breakfast came up with the following:

Let me get this right, I says, Nobody in the outside world has ever seen me? He shakes his head. No, nobody. Right, I goes, so you could stroll out of here with a bloodied sword, some sheep bones and scraps of meat on a skewer, stick a pair of horns on your head and proclaim the death of the monster and nobody would be any the wiser. He just grinned. That’s so crazy, he said, it might just work.

Long story short, I buried him by the latrine, squeezed myself into his metalwork and ran out the gate yelling at the sky. I followed the thread and found Ariadne waiting at the ship. There’s something different about you, she said. Your beard’s grown. Now come over here, gorgeous, and kiss me.

I could go on in hendecasyllables and relate more of my adventures and chart my quest for greater glory but that, as they say in the trade, is quite another story.

Wolf Like Me

Billie-Leigh Burns

Content Warnings: Implied Sexual & Violent Acts

I’m the quick-pawed pack leader, the shadow in the clearing. The lupine veined villain. The Wolf.

You’re the flame-haired voyager, clinging onto maidenhood, a dream chaser, troublemaker. A Vixen of sorts, but you’ve held on so far.

Does a wolf like me loosen your grip?

Others have felt the wrath of The Wolf their corpses rot in forgotten dens. But you’re not afraid. You pat my head, stroke my coat, and tell me what a good boy I am.

Do you want to be a wolf like me? Roll back your head, shift scarlet locks, and free your pretty neck for me. Bite your lip as I sink my teeth and taste the wave of embers flowing free.

You're the moon in its full beam, a temptress, an enchantress. A huntress tempered by the tide, you taste your prey at the first rustled leaf; the smallest shuffle and you snap your jaw.

There was always something of the wolf about you. Did you always know just what you could be?

As the dirt makes home under your nails, the blood of every victory mats your fur. How long til snapping bones shred your gums mid-bite, til your spine’s a waning crescent and you leave yourself behind? When every eye’s an enemy, every bellowing call, a trap, will you ever wish you could take it all back? Is the hunter’s life all you hoped? Is it a godless heaven or an empty hell? Is this purgatory end enough for you, when every sunset brings a moon that takes your soul in its wake?

You’ll know the curse. You’ll know it hurts to be a wolf like me.

“Nốt An Animal”

C.L. Von Staden

ODYSSEUS DREAMS OF DISINTEGRATION

Luke Condon

When Dawn appeared, fresh and rosy-fingered, terrified Odysseus rose with it. In the bed he shared with Penelope, that goddess amongst mortal women, he screamed in a most ungodlike way; he did not at all resemble the inventive hero of Troy, bursting from the grim horse to raise floods of blood in the streets; nor did he take after the cunning revenger who voyaged across the wine-dark sea in search of his homeland, bringing doom to the ignoble Suitors and outwitting many monsters. There in that bed, with its olive tree leg, he screamed and screamed, and he did not look one bit like an immortal god.

Then, when he had stopped, he turned to wise Penelope and said this:

“My wife, I have just woken from a terrible dream; I believe it is an omen, and I would like you to interpret for me. In fact it is the latest in a sequence of dreams, which began on that blessed day I held you in my arms after many years without doing so. In these dreams I will be acting as I have acted in the past, and nothing will be particularly amiss; I will be doing battle on the

beach at Ilium, and here will be an enemy dying on my spear, there a fine companion of mine such as swift-footed Achilles, son of Peleus, or his good friend Patroclus, lying dead in the dirt; and if these things are not exactly as they happened I will not find it strange, as I have heard tales from the mouths of other lucky men who survived the fighting, or from those brave shades themselves in Hades’ house.

“Sometimes the vision will be of a more gentle kind, and I will be entertaining a guest in our home, drinking wine and feasting with them, or receiving the same courtesy as a suppliant in the house of a generous host, feeling quite well cared for. In these visions no harm will come my way, nor will I see myself sustaining some grievous wound in those other episodes where I wield a spear, as my strength and skill allow me to defeat my enemies without much trouble, just as I have in life. But then I will feel the presence of some unseen powerful God, usually that of Zeus the Thunderer, who makes the clouds darken.”

This is what fearful Odysseus said to his wife, the prudent Penelope, who lay there, looking like a goddess, and listened to her husband with concern. But now he became frantic, and the next words he spoke were winged.

“Tell me this, good lady. In these visions I am presented trials I have already overcome through my own power and have long seen the back of, or a time of great happiness in my life which I should be quite pleased to revisit. But then an encroaching God

appears behind me and strikes me down the moment I am at peace. If it should be Artemis or Apollo with their invisible arrows, piercing my heart painlessly, I might understand that my natural time has come, or is soon to come, and make the necessary preparations so that you and Telemachus do not suffer again at the hands of some new villains, even though I think by now he is very strong and could handle any foe with ease.

“But why instead do I find myself gored through the back by the bronze-tipped weapon of Pallas Athene, of whom I was a favorite; why does the room suddenly fill with drowning waves of the kind whipped up by raging Poseidon, when I traveled far and sacrificed a fine bull, ram, and breeding boar each in order to make peace with him; tell me, fair Penelope, why the great Chief of Gods himself strikes me down with a fearsome bolt and turns me to black ash in a moment, without allowing me to turn and face him as he does so? Why should these things happen now, when my suffering is so long past, and I have finally landed at safer shores?”

Wise as she was, Penelope had no answer to her husband’s pleas, and could only urge him to come closer and find comfort in her arms. But when next Dawn appeared, fresh and rosy-fingered, wailing Odysseus would wake her again.

⛤ ⛧

Valletta

Isabella Milner-Bradford

Content Warnings: Murder, Body Horror

The sun hovers high enough above the horizon to bathe the lake in a brightness, but the town is only just beginning to rouse. On a good morning, no clouds interrupt the warmth on his skin, on a great one, even the common breeze is persuaded to halt in its path. Today is a great morning, the only movement is the bobbing of his fishing rod rippling across the lake’s glass surface, aside for the occasional plop of a fish or landing of a water fly.

Finn inhales, and the fresh untainted air smoothes its way through him. He savors this tranquility in his own company, a delicious quiet, preparing himself for the day ahead.

A dragonfly lands on the edge of his boat, and he greets it with a tip of his hat. Its body is a stark metallic green against the darkness of the water. A rodent rustles in the reeds, and a frog croaks from somewhere behind him. The sun glints slyly off the water.

It is then that he sees her.

She perches aboard a smooth wooden boat, head tilted back, face illuminated by the morning sun. She might as well be sitting in the sky herself, the way she seems to glow as she drifts across the surface. Small strands of brown hair escape the bow tied behind her head, the rest of her hair cascading gently down her back. Her face is delicate as a deer, and utterly serene, as if she too savors these brief early hours before the day truly begins.

His fishing rod tugs gently in his hands but the thought of a catch echoes from his notice as she opens her eyes and he swears he sees them sparkle from a few leagues away. Bright and sweet she is, the loveliest thing he’s ever seen. And when their eyes meet, the world falls away.

Even long after her boat passes by and disappears through the reeds, he feels the air is still aglow where she had been.

The spring days arrive with a heavy thunder, and the docks are awash with mud. Finn’s boots are sodden, as are his smocks, but the work never ceases. Ships come and go, each bearing crates upon crates of cloth and food stacked within their holds. He often arrives home reeking of fish, or freckled with vegetable bits, or squelching from the muddy town roads, though he never pays any mind. There is fun to be had in his tiresome job. Conversation with the sailors never disappoints, their stories from across the seas told over a pint of ale, of exotic women and bar fights, sea beasts with

glittering scales and waves the size of two homesteads stacked on top of one another.

Even the townspeople he delivers to have their fair share to say. The odd package from a loved one abroad oftentimes brings more joy than scandal, but what gossip he does overhear is often intriguing. Most of these conversations are incited by Clifford, a jolly old man he works alongside, delivering goods to folks all over. It is he that affords the listening ear, and the townspeople love to pour all rumors into anyone that will spread the news, which Cliff is most certainly bound to do. Finn highly doubts anyone truly believes in keeping private affairs… private.

It is usual business that Clifford stays moments longer, chin wagging with the storekeeper’s wife, whilst Finn readies the next delivery up the road. Milk and flour for the baker. He shimmies the drums to the side and stacks the powdery sacks on top of one another. As he always does, his mind wanders to peaceful places, and the world quietens around him until it is just him with his fishing road, floating on a tranquil lake.

Though lately, these daydreams are infected with a subtle anguish. He is distracted by the thought of sparkling doe eyes and a sweet smile. He has started to suspect that he launches his boat every morning anticipating the chance to see her again, rather than the calm of the waters. But nothing can calm the disquiet in his heart. He sees her in the sun rays glinting off lily pads, in the wind that caresses the reeds. He sees her until the sun sets, and even

then he sees her in the stars, and in the moon bending low across the hills. He often catches himself searching for her in the town, as even the wealthy ladies liked to visit the shops along the dockside in search of new drapes, and sparkling jewelry. But not one of them hold the same grace and innocence as she.

“Moved from far across the ocean, I heard, the man and his daughter, into the estate past Middlebrook.” The storekeeper's wife is saying, piquing Finn’s interest. “I thought it was a ruin after the old Duke died. Oh, they must be wealthy, Cliff! But I’ll let you get on, I’ve kept you long enough. Do tell me all about it the next time you deliver there!”

And then Cliff is waving his goodbyes with a hearty guffaw and a twinkle in his eye. He checks the back of the wagon before heaving himself into the front.

“Alright lad?” He asks as he takes up the reins and urges the two mares on. They lurch forward. “Old Mary has the gift o’ the gab she has.” He chuckles and then leans in, “Though I wouldn’t wanna be ‘er husband, she talks more than a seabird cries!”

He erupts into a bout of guffaws and Finn cannot help a smile.

“Say Cliff,” Finn starts, “I may have overheard something ‘bout a family moved here?”

“O, yer right there, talk of the town. Family Beauclaire they say. Moved into the manor east of ‘ere not two weeks back.

Gee, the house the size of the port, and the estate five times the size of that!” He throws his great hands in the air, incredulous.

“Tradin’, I’ll bet he does. Else, what they be doin’ this side of the island?”

“Aye?” Finn attempts to suppress his eagerness, “and a daughter, they say?”

“Aye, a daughter. ‘Bout yer age, pretty little thing ent she. Took a wagon of supplies there a couple days ago. No mother I seen, they say she died in childbirth.” He eyes Finn and the faraway look that has fallen across his face, then offers, “Could bring ye along next week, if yer curious.”

Finn nods, a little light shimmering in his eyes. “Did you catch her name?”

“O’… somethin’ -etta… er… Val- Valletta… aye, thassit.”

Glitter on a lake, warm skin, the corner of a smile.

The sound of Cliffs nattering fades into one word on repeat. It wafts through his brain on an early morning breeze. His chest grows wings and soars up there with the seabirds. A name, tied with a bow.

“Valletta.”

She rests her head on her arms, watching diligently out the large window. From there she can see all the way down the treelined lane to the ornate gate that bars her from the rest of the

world. She and her father moved in only a few weeks ago but she already hates it. Confined to a luxurious manor is hardly confinement, but she so longs to leave the pristinely manicured lawns behind.

Her one respite had been taken from her, a tranquil lake, so splendid and kind in its beauty. She had begged her father to allow her to enjoy it. It was all she asked for, and she wouldn’t ask for anything else, she promised.

He had agreed with a sigh, on the conditions that she only go out in the early morning before the town awoke, and that Fitzpatrick would accompany her from the moment they set foot outside the gate, to the moment they returned.

She had curtsied politely, but the glint in her big green eyes gave away her excitement. She was so like her mother, he had mused, to his delight and to his dread.

That evening he called Fitzpatrick into his library. It was dark, but for a single candle on the Master’s desk. The shelves that lined the walls were shrouded in shadow, only a pile of books remained dully illuminated, at varying stages of being read. Some old and dusty, some open and torn, others smudged from well-use.

Fitzpatrick approached, uncertain if the Master was there after all, until a voice crept out from the din.

“My daughter must not speak to another human being.” He leaned forward into the light, and it painted open his face in a

yellowish hue. He would be menacing if it weren’t for the strange look that dragged at his eyes. “Is that clear?”

His words were frozen, though underneath the lilt in his foreign accent, lay something hard to decipher. Was it anxiety? Was it fear? Fitzpatrick suspected both, though it was not his place to enquire.

As the flame flickered, the drawings of strange creatures seemed to writhe on the pages in front of him. Tentacles reached across curling scrawl in a language unrecognizable to Fitzpatrick. A chill ran a frost down his spine but he took care not to express his unease. His discretion was what kept him employed by the Beauclaire patriarch after so many years. The trust he had nurtured had solidified into a loyalty he would rather perish than compromise. Had he not known the family for as long, perhaps he would mistake this cold affront for indifference, but he knew much better.

“Of course, sire.” He answered.

“Report to me after every outing.”

“Understood.”

Valletta looked forward to her mornings on the lake. If she turned away she could even pretend that she was alone not that she despised Fitzpatrick’s company, only that he represented her father’s foreboding presence, precisely what she had come to escape.

Then one of those mornings, there was a young man in a little boat, enjoying the serenity just as she. He was fishing, his reflection wavering only slightly on the mirror of the water. She had not met many men, but oh, he was handsome. It was as if the illustrations of charming princes in her books had come alive. A mess of dark curls peeked out from under his cap, an angled jaw with a hint of stubble, and bright eyes staring… straight at her. His fishing rod sat loosely in his lap, and he looked as if words sat on the precipice of his tongue. She wanted to fold herself within her drapes. But their eyes met and a desire flickered through her, stirring the mixing pot in her stomach.

Only the lapping of the water broke through the silence. A hint of a smile toyed at the corner of the man’s lips.

Fitzpatrick hadn’t noticed the lad at first, though once he did, promptly quickened his pace. The boat drifted away, but not before a last lingering look. Valletta coyly stared at her hands in a furious attempt to hide the warming of her cheeks. She’d had a taste of something so difficult to decode, but it was sweet and tantalizing. She puzzled over the foreign feeling.

“My lady?” Fitzpatrick’s face was stoic as ever, but inwardly he cursed his negligence. They had not seen another human here all these mornings, and he had allowed his judgment to lapse. He had made a mistake.

“Please don’t tell father.” Her voice was a soft rain, and he was almost tempted to succumb. But he had given his word.

“I’m sorry.”

That was almost two weeks ago, and she has still not forgiven him. Father had immediately put an end to the outings, and so she locked herself in her room where her stomach ached and her tears were spent.

Those days in isolation she spent surrounded by her books, every one of them open at a picture of the prince, or the hero, or the loyal knight, come to save the damsel. They fought monsters, with ugly heads and squirming tentacles, holding swords and spears with a bravery unrivaled. They each conquered those monsters, and their ladies fell straight into their arms.

She favored those with the curly brown hair, each strand a perfect stroke of paint. Now she had seen one in the flesh, her heart glowed with a hope perhaps it is my turn to be saved. She hugged the books tight and imagined his strong arms, waiting there, to catch her.

The storms passed outside her window, leaves strewn across the perfect lawns. In time, her father wore down her resentfulness and she allowed him to deliver her a new book, beautifully bound and gilded in gold. It was delivered from across the sea, she knew, from the delicate inscriptions marked only by the finest booksellers. Her heart had softened and she wrapped her arms about his neck like she did when she was a girl.

“You must understand, Lettie, that I only do this to protect you.” He brushed the tears from her eyes. “The world is full of monsters, and they hide in even the most unsuspecting people. You are too young to notice the difference.”

Even as she nodded her head, she was never inclined to agree.

The grounds are even grander than Finn imagined, green expanses of grass framed with sculpted trees, and sprinkled with flower bushes, a far cry from the muddy docks he traveled from. The manor itself protrudes from the green as a stone giant, ivy crawling up its sides. At three stories high it is not modest, and certainly the largest building he has ever seen in his simple life. He wonders why one man and his daughter would need such an exorbitant amount of space.

As he does, he sees her, reading her book perched upon a window seat on the second floor. So lovely a vision is she that he believes the clouds part just for the moments that pass by before they round the corner and she vanishes from view.

Cliff wastes not a moment in teasing him. “O, laddie, yer drooling like a chubby babe awaiting his ma’s teat!” Finn chuckles alongside him, suddenly bashful. Cliff gives him a hearty nudge, “I could tell, I did, that you were interested in something ‘bout these Beauclaire’s. Should’ve guessed it was the lady! Should’ve guessed.”

They work together to unload the week’s supplies. Crates upon crates of fresh produce, stinging spices, ink and paper they hand to the house servants, none of whom are friendly enough to chat, not even after Cliff’s regular attempts at a jibe. He excuses himself to speak with the head servant, and Finn is left to deal with the last few crates.

After all is completed, he turns to find her standing in front of the mares, admiring, albeit from afar. Her hair is gathered in a plait behind her, and her gown is a simple green, but beaded with a luxurious craftsmanship.

“My lady,” He bows low, recalling how his mother taught him to address the noble. Valletta only stares at him with a puzzled fascination. A few moments pass. He rummages around for something, anything, to say. He wonders whether she recognizes him from that morning on the lake, wishing he could express how she captures his every waking moment since he first laid eyes on her. Instead he takes a tentative step forward. “You can stroke her if you like.” To demonstrate, he runs his hand across the horse's mane, and motions for her to do the same.

After a moment of hesitation, she does. Her eyes fill with a wild delight, her smile a perfect crescent.

“She is beautiful.” She says in a voice of honey, lilted with a foreign accent, so quiet he strains to hear her. The mare whinnies, and she laughs like a song.

“I’m Finn.” He clears his throat, “I heard you moved in not even a month ago. Your house is beautiful. I ain’t seen anything like it.”

She laughs at that, but doesn’t answer. Instead, she turns away and walks towards a gap in a nearby hedge, only turning to check if he follows before disappearing through the foliage.

Finn looks around and finds himself completely alone, not even a manservant to be seen. Cliff typically takes his time with big deliveries such as these, even if the recipients are not the type for gossiping. Finn shrugs to himself, figuring he has a few moments to spare, and follows her through the hedge.

On the other side is a sight to behold. Here the grounds extend for acres, grand oaks leaning over one edge of a cobblestone path that runs along the outer edge. Small bushes gather about the feet of graceful statues permanently poised in dramatic poses, a beauty only rivaled by a mass of brightly colored flowers, and by Valletta herself.

“O, blimey,” Finn exclaims. He removes his cap, as if in respect for the sight before him. The front of the manor was grand enough, but it pales in comparison to this. Grandeur drips off every leaf, and with every splash of the fountain that sits in the midst of it all. He drinks it in while she watches in amusement.

“Now this is a sight for sore eyes.”

He turns back to her and catches her gaze for a moment before she abruptly turns away.

“It is a prison.” She says, with a hint of sadness.

“A prison?” That stumps him a little. “What crimes do I have to commit to end up here?” He means it as a jibe, but he notices the high walls running along the perimeter of the grounds, no gaps, only impenetrable stone. The gate he entered through must be the only way in or out, and he recalls there being a lengthy discussion between Cliff and the attending guard before it was opened to them.

She laughs anyway. “The crime of being the Master’s daughter.” She starts along the path, brushing her fingers through the flowers that turn their faces towards her.

“Aye, that doesn’t seem so terrible.” He says, “Besides, if this were a prison, how is it I saw ye out on the lake that mornin’?”

She touches her stomach and looks up at him, “You remember that?”

Her reaction took him by surprise. She, who radiates a sunlight so blinding, her soft eyes piercing into his memory, truly believes she could be forgotten?

“Of course I do.” This time, when he meets her gaze, she stays there.

Cliff’s voice calling his name echoes across the gardens and startles them both. Finn shuffles his feet and replaces his hat, feeling a little lost for words. A breeze rustles the hedges about them. Cliff calls again, louder this time.

“Right, I’d better be off, but I’d like to see you again. Will you be here in a week? O, of course you will, you only live here.” He turns away, and back again, and then bows, remembering himself. “Until I see you again, Valletta.”

The week crawls by slower than the snails she watches inch across the grass in a futile attempt to distract herself. Even her books cannot keep her mind occupied long enough without thoughts of him seeping through. Her ladies maids report her as being increasingly distracted, dreamy, and inattentive.

Then, one day, as she sits on her windowsill, the book in her hand thoroughly abandoned, the front gate opens. The wagon ambles its way down the lane, and she watches in earnest. There he is, sitting in the front, next to the large wagon driver. Her prince

She had relished every second of their time together, replaying his words over and over again, committing every inch of his face to memory. She had decided that the illustrations in her books do no justice. They completely omit the roughness of his jaw, the slight twinkle in his eyes, the veins that obtrude from such strong hands. And so, she had waited for the real thing.

He spies her in the window and stands with a wave and a grin. She waves back. She hopes her eagerness is not so obvious. Her stomach aches. She wants to hear him say her name.

So the weeks pass, each visit as coy as the last. She waits for the wagon to be emptied and Cliff to head inside the parlor before emerging. They stop to feed the mares an apple each before they disappear into the gardens together, arm in arm. There they stroll amongst the flowers taking a different route each time. Finn tells her all about life beyond the gates, and Valletta bathes in his presence, laughing wondrously at every clever quip and humorous story of the townspeople. She never offers her own, there is not so much for her to say, but Finn has plenty for the both of them.

Between visits, she grows impatient and bored. Her books are never so entertaining as the stories that come from Finn’s mouth. The way he weaves his words she can imagine truly being there, watching it fold out before her. Never has she heard of such stories before. Her books are filled with grandiose adventures and glinting swords and cunning evil, but she finds herself more compelled by the small snippets of real lives. Like the butcher that fell in love with the barmaid, until she upended a flagon on him after finding him in bed with another. Or the woman whose husbands’ clothes went floating down the stream after the wind plucked them as they were drying.

But her favorites are of his morning visits to the lake. He tells her how muddy the waters were after the storms, how a family of frogs reside in a newly uprooted swamp tree, how the water lilies are now in bloom and how the dragonfly that landed on the end of his fishing rod had stayed there until he shooed it away.

She so longs to join him but knows her father would never agree to such an outing. He would never agree to her conversations with Finn at all and would send him away if he so heard a whiff of his presence. She doesn’t dare take the risk.

She lies awake at night wondering about what could be, what he would feel like if he lay right here beside her. His warmth, his scent. She would trace his every callus, every scar, every freckle ever gifted to him by that wondrous thing called life. Her stomach claws at her from inside. It aches as her heart does.

He has found it. The weakness in the walls. Between his visits with Valletta, he had crept along the outer perimeter of the manor grounds, careful to avoid the watchful eyes of the guards, but the thickness of the trees hides him well.

The stone stands tall and solid, utterly immovable and unscalable. But, obscured by the encroaching forest, beyond the gardens and view from the house, the stone wall has ruptured. The sweeping storms had toppled an old oak, and the wall was crumpled beneath it.

He wastes no time at all. The next moment he sees her, he whispers in her ear and watches as her eyes sparkle.

“On the third night from now,” He feels like a giant, her small hands swallowed in his. “I will be waiting for you.”

There is a slight fear nesting in the corner of his heart. Perhaps he is wrong. Perhaps she cannot bring herself to betray her father. He knows she yearns, hungers for the taste of freedom, and he so wants to be the one to serve it to her. But is it enough?

He waits under the shadows of the trees, his horse whinnying gently in his ear. A mist creeps its way across the sky, and the stars dull their light in response. From the brushes, insects chirrup their greetings and goodbyes. The night hides in anticipation.

The fear settles within him as the darkness deepens. Storm clouds gather on the horizon, the threat of battle rumbling across the landscape. Perhaps he picked the wrong night.

But then, all his worries melt at the sight of her, bathed in starlight, loose hair tumbling about her face as she climbs down the hill, across the fallen oak, and into his arms. Her dress is a plain white chemise, the least lavish of her garments he knew, but she could wear a sack and look as radiant as a mountain of melting snow. He holds her, and she is laughing, a relief spreading its wings.

He takes her hand and together they ride through the trees, the Beauclaire manor disappearing behind them with every second.

A few drops of rain threaten to spill from the clouds that follow them across the land. Finn had packed food and traveling clothes ready for the journey ahead, to where – the only question left unanswered. Safe passage over the seas had been bargained for with a hefty proportion of his savings, but after that? Well, he has enough to take them wherever they wish to go.

Before they leave their lives behind them, Valletta has only one request.

They fall into the boat, laughing and in a tangle of limbs, giddy with desire and rebellion. The crest of this night is not so perfect as the serene mornings Finn spent fishing on this lake, but it is the perfect place to bid farewell to a life so ordinary until she floated into it.

He holds her in his arms now, drifting across the shadows in the waters and cannot help but believe in magic.

The stars, though smothered by storm clouds, hang glinting in her hair, the breeze wafts through her dress like a gentle mist and the moons are orbs in her eyes, pitted and glowing.

“Valletta,” he whispers, her face a soft fruit plucked from the garden of Eden, staring ripe and ready up at him. “My Valletta. Oh how I love you.”

The sky rumbles, hungry.

The rain pours down then, in torrents, but all he can see is her. Their clothes suction to them, skin slick and slippery.

He bends his face low to kiss her. Heavy droplets splash about them. He anticipates her lips, waiting to fall into the pillowy softness.

But they never come.

He falls backwards against the boat.

Valletta’s mouth, a moment before a sweet smile, unhinges grotesquely from her jaw, unnaturally wide. Thunder crashes overhead. A rip of lightning brightens the surface of the lake for just a moment. In that flash her eyes pure white, looming over him, from the gaping hole where her lips were, burst forth a mess of tentacles, reaching for him, ravenous, slipping, grasping, thrashing against the boat. He opens his mouth to scream. And then Darkness.

The Master Beauclaire sits at the head of the elongated table, the meal set before him flickering in the firelight. Lamb, Brussel sprouts and potatoes from the garden.

On the opposite end, another dinner plate, going cold.

A stray breeze snuffs out a candle, and a house servant moves to relight it.

Outside the sky is wild with discontent, and a sense of foreboding hangs over the Master’s shoulder. Fitzpatrick had

informed him that the Lady Valletta had not been in her chambers and looked mildly perturbed when the Master had met the news with nonchalance. Not a hint of emotion passed over his face, he simply motioned for dinner to be served regardless.

“Will you not wait for the lady?” Fitzpatrick inquired.

“No,” The Master checked his pocket watch, “She will be along.”

Fitzpatrick glanced out the window, at the weather growing unrestful. He was not convinced.

The house shakes slightly at the clap of thunder, the chandelier above the dining table clinking gently. The Master is halfway through his meal when the front door opens and slams shut, the storm whistling through the manor, just for a moment, before returning to stillness. The house servants yet again, move to relight any diminished flames.

The Master marvels at the tenderness of the meat, the pop of flavor with every bite. He had gifted the cook exotic ingredients and spices, and relished the intricate dishes she conjured as a result.

Even as his daughter, completely sodden, barefoot, and trailing mud and weeds through the house, enters the dining room and sits at her place on the opposite end, he does not cease enjoying his meal.

He glances up at her, hair dark and dripping, smudges across her face. He almost does not recognize her, as if the girl he

saw reading in the garden that afternoon had been ripped out and a shell left behind.

The storm, dulled by the solid walls of the manor, continues to rage outside, but the dining room is silent, aside from the occasional plink of the master’s cutlery, or the gentle drip of her pretty white dress. Valletta does not move.

“Eat, my dear.” But the food set in front of her is cold and uninviting.

“I’m not hungry.” She whispers, in a voice so small he only just hears her over the sound of his own chewing.

“A shame,” He stabs through the meat, slicing it with his knife. Back and forwards, ripping through sinew and fat and muscle. “He was a nice boy.”

She does not reply, does not move as he continues his meal.

My Valletta, he thinks, as he swallows his last bite. How she is so like her mother.

⛧ ⛤ ⛧

The Blazing One

Arda Mori

Content Warnings: Blood, Violence

My destiny was written when the gods brought the Fire Bringer to his knees.

As a toothless fledgling bound to the nest, I’d imagined how fearsome he was, how many eyes of flame and razored, venomous limbs he must have! His fury would rip a hundred eagles open, while his words of sweet incense lured others to his deathly, burning gift a terrible gift that peeled skin and singed hair, and turned homes to ash.

And I ached to see him. I pleaded with you, Mother.

When I was old enough, you spread my wings, measuring me with your arm span, grazing me with dew-slick scales one of your attempts at an embrace.

A hiss escaped from your teeth. You may go

Only later I realized why you’d agreed; The Sky-Father needed a new punisher. And as your daughter, it was time for me to prove my worth.

Like you and my brothers and sisters, I was a natural hunter; my tongue made worship of blood like a forbidden temple. But by the rock where the Fire Bringer was bound, I was no more than a paring knife. That was the mission the Sky-Father demanded of my body.

You shall wound. You shall torment.

Against the great cliff, the Fire Bringer was smaller than I’d expected, not unlike a bagworm’s cocoon, a spider’s prey webwrapped, withered. His skin flaked like torn parchment, and his chest dripped with sweat and molten sunlight, boiled pink upon his chains.

But what rocked my heart was the hole in his torso, the explosion of red that was the reds of kalanchoes and cherries. A terrible door which I would pry open in promise of its fruit. A door which clasped shut at night, said the Sky-Father ready for me to shatter its locks by dawn.

Far from the swift deaths of rodents and birds I was accustomed to.

For my first bite, a zephyr dragged me by the neck to my prey. The Fire Bringer lay half-asleep, parched lips half-open, possibly wondering what winged scent approached. It unsettled me to think of his muscles, torn upon my talons.

Still, I had to demonstrate my strength. My feathers flapped as wide as sails; my beak, a heroic sword plunging into a long-sought villain.

Bitter was his liver-flesh and his cries deafening the wind. For a long time, I did not know why.

Mother, did you know? It was not fire that taught me destruction, but water.

Water, the base of scarlet that fueled the Fire Bringer’s organs, his engines. Water which came with the storm that lashed and eroded him until he resembled the lump of mud he once gave life to. Water, the droplets burrowed out of his face, shaping his heavy breaths an ever-repeated language of despair.

An invisible dark began to fester within me.

When I was younger, you told me about how powerful and glorious my siblings were. How my three-headed hound brother braved the savage cold of the Underworld; how my winged sisters with limbs of lions and doves conquered the clouds and woodlands.

People, too, cursed me as a child of Echidna, the Mother of Monsters. How could they spit on the beloved name you bestowed me Aithôn, the Blazing when I was no more than a cat to a mouse, or a torrent to a ship?

That was what I told myself, every time, until my gaze met his and his cut my soul, beneath the ever-watchful eyes of our SkyFather.

In the stories the humans tell their fledglings, those like you and I do not live long. Always there was a valiant hero awaiting us at our road’s end, proud blade in hand.

Mother, here was the man they called a thief, a monster, and yet across the cloak of time, his yells rebelled against thunder, as though he willed to steal a thousand lights more from heaven. And why was I not born with his courage, his spirit his strength that heralded peace and understanding, instead of violence?

Perhaps this was why you hesitated to let me meet him; he showed everyone who we truly were. What I yearned to know all along.

When I imagined my death like in those stories, I circled that cliff still, blissfully unaware of the hero’s weapon stalking my heart. By then, the Fire Bringer and I had long burned in a pain only known by those sentenced to eternity the pain of witnessing something out of reach, forever. Our fates were sealed from the start, for the hero will never strike down the one that resembles him the most.

Mother, he must live and surpass me for if I cannot be him, then I adore him.

“Metamorphosis” VOX

Monstrous Guardian

Richard W. Kenneth

Content Warning: Implied Sexual Abuse

Andromeda woke to the shouts of her slave girls, Euryale and Stheno. “Mistress! Fire!”

Racing downstairs to the front room where the girls slept, she found the thick wooden door to the courtyard ablaze. Stheno hurled the contents of a chamber pot at the flames with little effect.

Outside, two drunken lovers of Andromeda’s stepmother bellowed. “Oh Mistress Andromeda,” mocked Alexos, “we bring you sad news. Tonight a messenger interrupted our fun to report that your father died in battle.”

“We know how much you miss him,” jeered Nikolas, “so we’ll send you and your slave girls to join him!”

The windows set into the stone walls were too high and narrow for escape but Andromeda opened the shutters to help vent the smoke. “Take your cloaks and sandals to my chamber!” she shouted to her maids.

As embers ignited Euryale’s sleeping mat, Andromeda lit two torches in the flames, followed the teenage sisters upstairs and kicked her bedroom door closed.

“What do we do now?” asked Euryale.

“Get dressed. I have a way out.” Andromeda slid the torches into metal wall brackets and dug through a large wooden chest of clothes and bedding until she found her own hooded cloak. Then she reached under her bed to retrieve her pet snake, Pythos. He coiled around her shoulders as she put on her sandals. She grabbed her father’s old spear from the hand of a life-size clay statue she’d sculpted of him wearing his armor. Eying the brick wall behind the statue, she jabbed the spearhead into a crack in the mortar. A concealed door opened to reveal a narrow storeroom containing several waist-high amphora storage jars.

“What is that, Mistress?” asked Stheno.

“Something my father prepared in case the harvest failed when he was at war, or I needed another way in or out.” She handed one of the torches to Euryale and the spear to Stheno. “There is a stairway behind the last amphora. Wait for me there.”

Taking the second torch, Andromeda fought back tears as she touched the cheek of her father’s statue. “May you find joy with mother in Elysium and guide me from beyond.” Then she ignited her bed, chest and scattered clothes. As the room filled with smoke, she moved into the storeroom. She tipped an amphora to spill olive oil onto her wooden bedroom floor and dropped her

torch into it. The more damaging the fire, the more likely her stepmother, Gorgo, would believe they all perished.

Andromeda closed the storeroom door, reclaimed the spear and second torch from the girls, and led them down a set of narrow stone stairs into a cistern. They waded through waist-deep water in the long underground chamber and up the outside stairs normally used to access the stored rainwater. The moon was full so Andromeda tossed the torch into the cistern. Then they raced through the estate’s olive groves, neighboring vineyards and up a steep hill to a ruined temple. She hid the girls in a corner of the crumbling sanctuary, beneath their cloaks. “Rest here,” she told them. “I’ll see if we were followed.”

She crept back through fallen masonry to the hillside. The fire was visible in the distance, but no torches of pursuers.

Returning to the girls, Andromeda stumbled and struck her head on a toppled pillar. She awoke at the feet of a woman wearing armor that glittered in the moonlight. An owl perched on her shoulder.

Pythos hissed at the stranger.

“Hold your tongue, Pythos!” Andromeda scolded, “That’s Athena!”

Bowing deeply, she addressed the goddess. “Forgive our trespass in your temple, Mighty One! We needed refuge. My stepmother’s lovers tried to murder us.”

“Fear not, faithful Andromeda,” said Athena. “I have seen your many offerings here for your father’s safety, in spite of my home’s disrepair. You have also protected your slaves from the lusts of your stepmother’s lovers and have not taken any vengeance for her abuse and adultery, though you had many opportunities. Such strength is rare in mortals.”

“The girls are like sisters to me so I could never let them be harmed. Gorgo is still my father’s wife, so I stayed my hand to avoid staining his honor any further. She changed after he left. I pray she doesn’t find us.”

“You now have my protection, in addition to that of your fearsome serpent.”

Andromeda smiled. “He has no venom, Great One, when I was a child playing in the storeroom, he ate a rat that was about to bite me and we have been friends ever since.”

“I too have place in my heart for snakes. Since you do not fear them, I shall send vipers to guard you and your slaves and kill game for you to eat. In return, you must be my Medusa, my guardian, of this place until your father comes home and rebuilds it.”

“My father is alive?”

“Yes. He was wounded in battle while another soldier with the same name died nearby. The messenger was dispatched to the wrong family thanks to the mischief of my brother, Ares. Your father will return within a year.”

“Thank you for that news, Great One! I will be your Medusa for this temple.”

“That will not be simple,” said Athena. “The year you were born, Poseidon struck this temple with an earthquake. My priestesses lost faith and abandoned it to looters and defilers. I sense stronger faith in you but it will be tested. You cannot leave the temple grounds but your slaves can. When people approach, you must warn them that only my worshippers may visit safely and all others will be struck down by vipers. Some will ignore you and die. Others will blame you and call you a monster. You will be hated and feared. Some people will try to kill you, but the snakes will protect you. Do not hinder them or strike anyone on your own. If you break these rules, you will lose my protection, and someone will take your head as a trophy. Do you still agree to be my Medusa?”

“Yes, Athena.”

“Then arise, Medusa!”

Athena disappeared. Andromeda, now Medusa, awoke in daylight, lying on the soft grass and gazing skyward. Pythos lay stretched alongside her. The red-orange patches on his gray skin were resplendent in the morning sun. True to Athena’s word, vipers of various colors coiled around Medusa’s arms like living bracelets. Others slithered in her waist-length hair, splayed out around her head. Pythos’ tongue tickled her ear, making her giggle. Instead of hissing, he whispered in a low, masculine voice. “Now I

speak the words of Athena and my kin to you and your words to them.”

“I praise Athena’s wisdom in giving you speech,” answered Medusa.

“Mistress, you’re alive!” shouted Euryale and Stheno, approaching from the sanctuary. “When we awoke and you weren’t back, we feared for you.”

“I am well,” answered Medusa, “Athena visited me.” She recounted her deal with the goddess as the girls listened, wide-eyed.

“Medusa is a fitting title for you, Mistress,” said Euryale. “You have protected us well.”

Stheno nodded, and then asked, “Do the snakes squeeze tightly?”

“No, they are gentle, like Pythos,” said Medusa. “Would you like to feel?”

“Yes.”

“Hold out your arm.”

Stheno did so, and a black viper spiraled down Medusa’s arm and up hers. “It’s smooth and cool,” Stheno said. She held out her other arm, and another of Medusa’s snakes encircled it. “I feel safe and powerful. You should try, Euryale.”

“Perhaps with snakes like Pythos?” asked Euryale. “I am used to him.”

Pythos hissed. Two serpents with markings like his slithered out of the grass at Euryale’s feet. She picked one up and

coiled it around her shoulders, as she’d seen Medusa do. It nestled its head in her hair. The other she lifted to her waist, where it formed a belt for her robe.

“I like this,” said the younger girl. “Now we’re all snake sisters!”

Medusa laughed. “Euryale, since you are less known in town, could you take your cloak to cover your snakes and go learn what people know of the fire or what happened to us?

“Yes Mist I mean Medusa.”

“I’ll escort her to the edge of town,” said Stheno.

“Of course,” agreed Medusa.

While they were gone, Medusa asked Pythos, “What shall we eat?”

“Follow the gray snake,” he replied.

Medusa did so and found a large rabbit, freshly killed.

“Will there be venom in the meat?”

“No.”

“My father showed me how to prepare game, but I don’t have a knife.”

“Look behind the rock to your left.”

Medusa did so and found a small knife with an owl etched on the handle. “Athena says it belonged to a priestess who dropped it in the earthquake. She grants it to you.”

Medusa started a fire and skinned the rabbit. Stheno usually did the cooking, so Medusa hoped the girl would return and help her avoid a charred meal. “When will you eat, Pythos?”

“My kin and I will take turns hunting while you sleep. Some of us will always be with you.”

Stheno returned at a run. “Medusa! Three young men are coming up the road to the temple. Euryale and I hid so they did not see us. She continued into town and I came up another way.”

“Finish the meal, I will meet them.” She donned her cloak and found her father’s spear near where she’d met Athena. She intercepted the strangers just inside the temple grounds. They were about her age.

“Who are you?” the lead man asked.

“I am Medusa of Athena’s temple. Do you come to worship her?”

“Crazy woman,” said a second man. “Athena didn’t make her a guardian. Her father probably threw her out.”

The third man spoke. “We’re visiting friends in town and they suggested we come see the view from up here. We’ll just take a look and leave.”

“No,” said Medusa, lowering her hood. Pythos and the snakes in her hair all hissed. “Go back or Athena’s serpents will kill you.”

“I worship Poseidon, the earth shaker,” said the leader. “He ruined this temple and I’ll ruin you.” He lunged for Medusa’s

spear, but Pythos surged out of her cloak and bit his arm. He shouted and fell to the ground where another viper struck him.

The second man picked up a rock and was poised to throw when two other snakes bit him. He collapsed.

The third man turned and ran.

Medusa knelt beside the first man, but he was already dead. The second man wheezed, unable to speak, until his soul followed his friend’s to the afterlife. She blinked away a tear.

At a hiss from Pythos, the vipers withdrew. He whispered, “You cannot leave the defilers to rot, nor bury them here. This is holy ground.”

“What does Athena wish me to do?”

“Eat now and restore your strength. Then my kin will show you a sacred spring in the ruins. Add its water to the soil nearby to form clay. Cover their skin and clothes with it, and then place them in the sun. By Apollo’s power, the clay will harden quickly. They shall become statues for Athena’s temple and a warning to any who might defile it.”

“But without burial ”

“Their spirits are not your concern. They will reach Hades and be judged.”

Medusa, shaken by her encounter with the trespassers and the harshness of Athena’s demands, returned to Stheno and told her what had happened. After the meal, Stheno helped her coat the bodies in clay, which covered the snakebites. Medusa posed each

man to reflect his bravery, the first lunging forward and the second about to throw his stone. Yet their faces were frozen in fear and pain that her skill as a sculptor could not conceal.

After just a few hours in the sun, the clay had the look and feel of stone. The women wrestled the statues into place beside the road where it entered the temple grounds. They were resting by the sanctuary when Euryale returned.

“What were those statues?” She asked. “They look like ”

“I’ll explain later, Euryale,” said Stheno. “What did you learn?”

“Gorgo and her lovers have told the townspeople about the fire and say we all died. No one is looking for us.”

“That’s good,” said Stheno.

“It is,” agreed Medusa. “Since we came here, I’ve been thinking about granting you both your freedom. You didn’t make this bargain with Athena. And since we are all thought to be dead, you can leave this place and start new lives. When my father returns, I will make him understand, and face any consequences.”

Euryale, in stunned silence, glanced at Stheno, who answered for them both. “You are generous as always, Medusa, but our slavery is paying our family’s debt to your father. Since Athena says he is still alive, only he can grant us our freedom. It would also be wrong to leave you now. The bargain you struck with Athena is a heavy one, and I know you made it to protect us as much as yourself. So we will help you keep it.”

Medusa nodded. “I swear by Athena I will ask my father for your freedom when he returns. Until then, you are no longer slaves to me.”

“But you can be our sister!” said Euryale, pulling Medusa and Stheno into a hug.

“Sisters,” agreed Medusa.

The next morning, Pythos awakened Medusa. “A man and woman approach,” he said.

She found them by the statues of the two men who had died. The woman wept by the feet of the stone thrower and the man had his hand on the shoulder of youth who had boasted of worshiping Poseidon.

“These men were our friends!” the man yelled at Medusa. “Ektor tells us your serpents attacked them.”

“They did not come to worship Athena,” replied Medusa. “I warned them her vipers would strike them dead. They ignored me.”

“Vipers don’t turn people to stone!” cried the woman. “You did this! I can see the fear on their faces. Undo your stone curse and let us take them for burial.”

“I cannot undo what has been done by Athena’s command,” said Medusa.

The man drew a dagger. “Perhaps if I kill you, the curse will be broken. And if it isn’t, at least I can avenge their blood with yours!”

“I beg you not to come any closer. Leave this place and you will live.” Hoping to look as fearsome as possible, she lowered her cloak’s hood to reveal the snakes writhing in her hair. The man advanced on her and she backed away toward the temple. Three vipers slithered between them, hissing. He struck one with his dagger but the other two bit him. He fell to his knees screaming as more snakes attacked him. Medusa turned away.

She heard his dagger clatter on the rocks and his body thump to the ground. With a raspy breath he asked, “Who are you?”

“Medusa.”

Only after the man fell silent did she dare to look at him. He lay sprawled on the ground with snakebites on his arms and legs. Through weary eyes she watched the woman run back down the road toward town. Athena’s prophecies were coming true.

As Medusa and the girls coated the man in clay, they found he had a small bag of coins.

“He has no need of money,” said Pythos. “Athena grants it to the girls for buying supplies.”

That afternoon, a third statue was placed by the road, with a dagger clinched in its raised fist.

Over the next two days a few people ventured close enough to see the statues but fled when Medusa approached.

Euryale slipped into town to buy a pot and some bowls and also brought back stories that were spreading about Medusa.

Some said she was a sorceress who could turn people to stone and summon snakes, or a beautiful seductress and murderer of men. Others claimed she was a former priestess of Athena, or the ghost of one, being punished for abandoning the temple or for succumbing to lust for Poseidon, who had destroyed it. The tales varied in whether Medusa had the eyes, fangs, tongue or lower body of a serpent, but most agreed she had snakes for hair and that looking her in the eyes was fatal.

Euryale acted out each description with gestures and funny faces, bringing much needed humor to the situation. Medusa was disappointed at being so feared but understood it was part of her agreement with Athena.

Later that day, Pythos alerted Medusa that four men were approaching with heavy footsteps. Stheno dashed to one of the lookouts where they could observe the road without being seen. She returned and reported that the men were soldiers. They carried swords and wore bronze armor.

When they reached the statues, the soldiers called out. “Medusa! Come out to us. We are sent by the Archon to bring you before him on accusations of murder and witchcraft. Come willingly and you will not be harmed.”

“Don’t go, Medusa!” Euryale pleaded. If they take you away from the temple it will break your agreement with Athena. Let the serpents protect us.”

“I will not go with them, but I must warn them. That is part of the bargain too.”

Medusa left her spear with the girls to avoid looking confrontational. When she was close enough for the soldiers to hear her, she shouted, “I cannot leave this place. But do not pass the statues or Athena’s vipers will kill you.”

Ignoring her warning, the soldiers marched onto the temple grounds. Medusa ran a few strides and hid behind a pillar. The soldiers followed slowly, checking for snakes before taking each step. She saw the tall grass around the men sway as serpents silently surrounded them.

Shouts and hisses followed as the battle began. Some vipers’ fangs struck the bronze greaves covering the soldiers’ shins but others found flesh. The men flailed with their swords, sometimes slicing snakes but often striking grass or rocks. Two soldiers went down quickly. A third fell trying to retreat to the road. The fourth backed against the trunk of a tree, only to be struck from above by a serpent that had been climbing in the branches. The distraction allowed other vipers to strike.

Soon all four were dead. The next day, they took their places as stone sentinels for the temple.

“When will this end?” Medusa asked Pythos.

“Not soon,” he answered. “But Athena has decided that seven statues are sufficient warning to any intruder so you do not have to warn anyone else about the vipers.”

After the soldiers died, no one approached the temple for weeks. Then Euryale heard that a chest of silver coins, worth a year’s wages, was being offered for Medusa’s head.

The reward spurred quests by would-be heroes of all types. Archers, spearmen, swordsmen, and even slingers came, alone and in groups. Some came close to success but all found their end in stone. At direction from Pythos, Medusa and the girls gathered the bodies of the snakes that died protecting them and placed them near the sacred spring.

Following a dozen attempts on Medusa’s life, a pair of women came to the temple with offerings for Athena. Grateful for the respite, Medusa led them toward the cracked stone altar where she prayed each morning. She didn’t see them draw daggers from their cloaks, but Pythos did. They joined the statues lining the paths of the temple grounds.

Months later, a weary Medusa waited at a lookout to see the latest threat the serpents had detected. A pair of soldiers came up the road at a brisk pace. They held their gleaming shields high so she could only see their eyes below their helmets. The lead soldier stopped at the outermost statues, raised a fabric bag overhead with his free hand and shouted. “Medusa! I bring Athena an offering! I must know if my daughter Andromeda lives!”

Medusa ran towards him. “Father!”

“Andromeda!” The man dropped the bag and his shield and embraced her, unafraid of her snakes. “Praise Athena you’re

alive! When I arrived in the port, I was told you and the girls died in a fire, but later, I heard stories of a woman named Medusa with snakes for hair, living in Athena’s old temple. I remembered your bond with Pythos and how many offerings we brought here together and prayed it was you, perhaps in disguise.”

“Athena has protected us with vipers, father, and in return, I am her Medusa of this temple.

“Us? Are the girls here with you?”

“Yes they are. Stheno! Euryale! My father has returned!”

The girls raced from the sanctuary to meet them.

“Master Leandros! It is so good to see you,” said Stheno, taking his hand. “Medusa has prayed every day for you, and kept us safe.”

Euryale hugged him. “We heard you were dead but Athena promised Medusa you would return.”

“It is a joy to see you both,” said Leandros. “I was wounded. But my brave friend Perseus here carried me from the battlefield and found a healer for me.”

The young soldier behind Leandros nodded. “Your father and his men saved my village from the enemy. For that I have sworn him my allegiance.”

“We appreciate you watching over my father,” replied Medusa. “I hope our serpent protectors do not frighten you.”

“They do not,” replied Perseus. “I’ve been around snakes since I was a child. My uncle is a priest of Asclepius. Healing serpents roam his temples freely.”

“And Perseus saved my life again last night when I took him to our home,” said Leandros.

“Gorgo ” said Medusa.

“I know,” Her father nodded. “I found her taking pleasure in the arms of two men. In a rage I killed one. Gorgo rose and tried to stab me but Perseus beheaded her. The other man, Alexos, begged for mercy. He told me how Gorgo ordered him to set the fire and kill you and the girls. When I could stand to hear no more, I killed him. I brought Gorgo’s head to show Athena I had ended the threat to you if you were alive, or avenged you if you were dead. I am grateful that she protected you. If she is willing to release you from your role as Medusa, I will rebuild this temple and make it worthy of her again. My men and I recovered many treasures the enemy left when they finally fled our lands.”

“Athena agrees,” said Pythos.

“Did Pythos just speak?” asked Leandros.

“I heard it too,” said Perseus.

“Yes,” said Medusa. “He speaks Athena’s words since we have been here.”

The vipers in Medusa’s hair and around her arms slithered down her body and into the grass, leaving only Pythos behind. The snakes that had protected Euryale and Stheno also departed.

“Andromeda,” Pythos said, “You are free to go, but Athena requires a new Medusa.”

Andromeda grinned and took the bag from her father. “I will prepare this for Athena while Euryale and Stheno return home with you and Perseus. I will follow soon and we shall feast!”

Left alone with Pythos, Andromeda shaved Gorgo’s head and covered it in clay. She reached for the bodies of the dead snakes near the spring then paused. “I mean no dishonor to your kin, Pythos, I can sculpt snakes instead.”

“My kin would be honored to know they serve Athena even after death,” said Pythos.

With a nod, Medusa coated them in clay and fashioned them into wild serpent hair that matched the stories. Then she left Gorgo’s head on a pillar to dry and returned home.

After the meal that night, Andromeda spoke to Leandros alone. “I have some things to discuss, father.”

“What are they?” He asked.

“First, I ask that you grant Stheno and Euryale their freedom. Their loyalty and courage to help me while I served Athena was service far beyond any debt their family might still owe you. I consider them as sisters and will gladly work in their place for as long as needed.”

“They learned such loyalty and courage from you, my daughter. I was going to grant their freedom for the same reason,

even if you had not asked. And if they wish to marry, I know some fine young men among my troops who would treat them well.”

“I will tell them, father. But now I have an idea on how to prove Medusa is no more.”

The next morning, Perseus and Leandros took the ‘head of Medusa’ to the Archon. Later they returned to Athena’s temple, accompanied by several soldiers. They were greeted by Andromeda, Stheno, and Euryale.

“What are you doing here?” the soldiers asked the girls.

Andromeda pointed at Perseus. “My sisters and I met that man on the road. He said he had killed the gorgon Medusa and showed us her head. We came to see if it was true and brought offerings for Athena.”

Euryale shouted. “I see Medusa’s body!” She led the group to the stone body of a headless woman sprawled on the ground near Medusa’s victims. Perseus drew Medusa’s head from the bag and showed that it fit on the woman’s body.

The lead soldier nodded. “Well done Perseus. You have ended the curse of this monster and the Archon will grant you the chest of silver. Strategos Leandros, you may oversee the temple’s cleansing and restoration as you proposed.”

“We are honored to serve,” said Leandros as the soldiers marched away.

Over the next few weeks, Leandros returned the statues of Medusa’s victims to their relatives for burial. Any that were unclaimed were buried in unmarked graves, as was Medusa’s body.

Stheno and Euryale volunteered to serve as the first priestesses of the temple while it was being reconstructed. The temple quickly became famous for the accuracy of the prophecies the priestesses gave, whispered to them by sacred snakes.

Perseus fell in love with Andromeda, married her, and used part of his silver to buy marble so she could sculpt a life-size statue of Athena for the temple. It depicted the goddess in full armor, holding a spear and a mirrored shield bearing Medusa’s head. Although Andromeda donated the statue to the temple anonymously, it became the model for many more statues, including the Athena Parthenos later created for the Parthenon in Athens.

To the Moon, Alice

Amy Soscia

Content Warning: Domestic Violence

Alice’s hand shook as she dialed the travel agent’s number. While she had spent years thinking about it, it took only minutes to book a one-way ticket to the moon and a reservation at The Starlight Inn, an all-inclusive resort for people wanting to get away. All she had left to do was to pack her bag.

She and Ralph still lived in the tiny two-room apartment they’d rented when they first got married. In the early days, they used to joke about how they could hold hands regardless of where they were standing. He was a big man and his presence was everywhere. But they had never moved, and those same two rooms seemed to shrink a bit more with each passing year.

She wasn’t sure when it had started, but she remembered the chill in the tone he used when he complained she was smothering him. She was smothering him? The irony of it almost made her laugh. Almost.

After that, whenever he talked about needing his space, he'd put on his hat and head to Kelsey’s, the bar down the street. It would be late when he came home hyped up on whiskey, charged into their bedroom, and ranted about how he’d buy her a palace once the latest of his string of failed business ventures took off. The next day, he’d wake up with a mouth full of regret.

The first time his fist forced the air from her lungs and made her double over in pain, he seemed surprised.

“It’ll never happen again. I promise,” he said.

She was sure he meant what he said, but the rhythm of their tides had changed, and everything now felt off-kilter.

It happened again when he drank too much, when Lucky Lucy didn’t win at the track, when his dinner wasn’t piping hot, or whenever he thought Alice wasn’t appreciative enough.

Each time she’d mourn the loss of the man she had fallen in love with. She tried everything she could to please him, but at times, even her breathing seemed to annoy him.

Ralph took care to hide the stains of his rage and warned her that if she told anyone or tried to leave, she’d be sorry. She carried his threats with her wherever she went. His words overshadowed the time a coworker tried to extend her friendship, and then again when one of her neighbors stopped her on the street to engage in polite conversation.

One morning, the way he glared at her, his eyes moving over her with a fury she'd never seen before, made her realize there

was no love left in them. It was as if he was plotting to rip the soul right out of her. If she didn’t do something soon, she’d become one of those women she’d read about, beautiful women who seemed happy until you looked into their vacant eyes, women whose husbands would rather kill them than let them go.

Alice gathered her travel documents, packed her bag, and scribbled a parting note. Her hands shook as she removed her wedding ring. It clattered as it hit the floor before rolling under the radiator. She bent down and swept her hand back and forth as she searched for the gold band. Once she had a firm grasp on it, she set it next to the note as a final act of defiance, severing her ties to the ruins of their marriage.

Ralph couldn’t come after her now, although he’d want to when he found out she’d spent their life savings on the trip he’d always promised her.

“The Stranger”

April Elaine

Content Warnings: Blood, Violence, Homophobia

[Unsealed_Correspondences [ entry_ files_remaining_evidence_] case: murder and missing persons report_examination_1]

Deliverance, by the time this letter reaches you, it will be the day of your residence at the Burn Estate. You must heed the rules I outlined in the notebook you received in the package I left for you. You must listen if you expect to have a delicate, calm, and easy stay. The family that resides at Burn Estate are, as mentioned, cold and unfriendly, unfortunately your residence as you know is my doing and in order to gain their favor or at least their indifference, you must follow the instructions correctly. You are sworn to secrecy. Anything they say or do is to remain with you in your mind like a sealed vault. Your allowance will come from Dirge Burns every Friday at precisely 5 PM, you may ask them to give you a check, cash, or that app you use, I believe it was Venmo? Either way, I would suggest cash out of convenience as you are not

Gorge Mateo Perez Lara

to travel very far from the estate on your off days. Please write back at your earliest convenience when you have a chance.

Deliverance, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised you took a liking to Dirge’s eldest son, Mr. Epoch Burn. He has that air about him. However, they are a conservative, status-oriented family and will most likely not take too kindly to your pursuing of Epoch. I do advise you against it, but I assume you will do what you want. Please follow the rules I outlined. Please, do not sleep with the man. Flirtations are fine, but they would not take too kindly to you and your expression. They have never hired or seen someone like you and I, someone that breaks the very foundation of gender tradition and norm. My apologies, I have not made it known to them when they gave you the position. I hadn’t explained to them what nonbinary means or what pronouns are. I had hoped they wouldn’t be as surprised as they were when I received word from them about you. They do find you most intriguing, and the best resident they have housed. Please be mindful of your dress, and the details of your identity. Do not expose too much.

Deliverance, if you find yourself lost, remember each hall has an emblem at the end tucked inside a vase. You simply twist the emblem from upside to downside. Someone at the estate will find you, whether morning or evening. I suppose the darkness of

the house, the creaking of the floorboards, the chill does not disturb you. I know you’ve been fond of those kinds of things since you were small. Since before your transition, of course. How are the medicines going? I had them prepare a parcel for you it should have been delivered today, how are you faring? Please do not go anywhere on the estate that is not marked on the map I gave you. I am unsure of the goings-on in those locations. I would be wary. Please write soon.

Deliverance, I have been made aware that Epoch was caught in your room last week. Please, do not tell me you did what I think you did. They have eyes everywhere. They do not take kindly to transgressions involving the help and the family. You are there to work. You are not there for fun. How about on your off days, you see to the little Mirage pub outside of the estate. They will allow that. Being caught in their web, I assure you, is something you are not prepared nor will welcome. Do not let loneliness, desires, and terror dictate. Keep your mind open.

Please, do not fear their dinners. Do not fear the blood. Do not fear the noises. It is how it has always been. Dirge Burn has been afflicted with this wealth for so long he forgets how to keep quiet, nor how to be mindful or demure of those around them. Dirge also forgets who is working for him time to time. Melody

Burn is an exceptional wife. She remembers everything. She is seldom seen. For you to have seen her, was a treat. I hope they didn’t notice you, however. DO NOT fear the way they indulge themselves. It happens but once every few months. It is their habit. It is their ritual. Their riches, their status came with a price. Which is why you take your dinner at a different time than them. Be thankful you were not seen. Please, tell no one else, I will burn this letter at once, you must do the same with mine. I will be taking a few weeks off; I will promptly reply after the holiday. Please keep to yourself until then. Leave Epoch alone! Do not travel anywhere alone during their mealtime. Please.

Deliverance, I cannot believe you did it. You went into great detail I almost fell over dead. They will not be pleased if Epoch ever says anything. I hope no one else heard or witnessed you, forgive me, but I hope they didn’t notice you fucking. What did he say about you? Did he think you were a woman, a man, nothing, what did he say? I realize most men have never been with someone like you. You hide it very well. I do hope you did not let him take a piece of you. If he did, you can never leave. You must check your belongings. Make sure nothing is missing. You must make sure you have everything. You do not want their life. Please burn this letter. We’ve exchanged too much information, already.

Deliverance, you cannot be in love with Epoch. It will be a life you do not want to live. The way they must survive is not the future you want or that you deserve. Epoch means to trap you, to keep their bloodline going, I have seen this once before. When he realizes you cannot give him what he wants, I am afraid I won’t be able to save you.

Deliverance, I will tell you this, like always, burn the letter. Yes, I will answer your questions. I am sorry for keeping in you in the dark so long. I was afraid uttering it out loud would somehow allow them to track me. But this is for your own safety. Yes, they eat human flesh. That man you saw yesterday, yes, the one on the table, whether writhing or not, that is a common practice. They serve them alive. For some reason, the decadence of the fear is something they enjoy. I never questioned it nor asked myself as I only saw it once on accident. Epoch, Melody, Dirge, their other children, all have this affliction. They never said how or why, only it has been centuries. I suppose it came with the price of their bloodline and the riches they have amassed. This is who they are now. Do not make friends or talk to any of the silent people arriving in mid-evening, you do your job, and think nothing of it. Your residence is over in six months, you will get through this. Please watch yourself until then, act as if you know nothing.

Deliverance, yes, the heart is unruly, I know how love feels, but please, sure, Epoch is a kind man, but he is also dangerous. What he wants, as you know, will come to pass. You must dissolve your affection of him and do not let him pursue you. Once he decides you are his or claims you, you are bound. When he finds out you cannot have children, I am unsure what his next move will be. You must destroy this gluttony of desire. You must.

Deliverance, I am sorry but per the binding contract, you cannot leave early from your residence. After the suspicious murder of their youngest son, Early Burn, this is the best I could do for you. They do not let anyone out of their contract early. You knew going into this that they would only forgive if you were to serve. I cannot take you from there until after the time is up. You must step lightly. I have heard of Epoch’s pursuit of you. The late nights he is in your room, how he is inside you, how he rummages your mind, and licks your skin as if you are a bone to a dog. Please, be mindful, the intentions are not at all clear. Please write me soon, the days are darkening quickly. I fear nothing but the worst. Keep a level head.

Deliverance, I hope this letter finds you in time. I hope you get to it before they do. There is a tunnel in the reading room. It was built long ago. They revealed it to me the second week of

my own residency. They said it was in case anyone more powerful than them came looking around. They would go through there and end up at the lake. From there, the road is three miles. Never leave at night. They have people guarding the area. If you leave, leave during dinner right before the sun goes down. I cannot guarantee your safety, but this is the only chance for you to leave. With Epoch dead, they will come looking for you. They will not let you go. I hope you are able to escape. I eagerly await you at the lake. I hope to see your face. I hope to see you alive and well. Please, do not let their hunger or rage terrorize you. I have locked a pistol in your trunk at the bottom. Push down on it. Take it with you. I had feared this moment and wanted you to be prepared. They are strong, but they aren’t invincible. Take a candle. Please follow the map and the instructions as I said. Please do not let them terrify you. You are strong. You have survived worse.

⛤ ⛧

The Death of the Angel Prince

Chey Rivera

Content Warnings: Murder, Blood

The blood flows like the river Jordan. The young man submits quickly when I take his neck. I’ve never known such pleasure, and I abandon myself to the feeling. I forget we are in a temple made to worship my Father. While we embrace, there is no God, no angels, no hierarchies of Heaven only blood. My six feathered wings envelop the mortal like a fulfilled prophecy, but the moment is over in an instant. I double his size, and soon he lays limp against me, dead. I look at his face and drop him to the stone floor in disgust. His eyes resemble Adam’s

Adam who was the reason I’d raised my sword against my Father and lost everything I’d ever known. I’d said I was striking against tyranny, but now fallen, transformed I can

admit the truth. I’d waged war against my Father because I was a child, and I was losing Him to Adam. I would rather be a rebel than a faithful son unloved.

As expected, Father did not show me mercy. He turned my sword to ashes, and the gossamer clouds of my home gave way beneath my feet. The fall lasted an eternity, and I watched as the children of Adam found it difficult to meet Father’s expectations. The world drowned and burned as Father started over again and again. He is called the Creator, but his true talent lies in annihilation. Like a conqueror, He excels at tearing things down.

All my life I’d been The Angel of Light, The Prince of Heaven, The Morning Star, but jealousy and hatred had made me unworthy. As I fell, mortals told apocryphal stories about me for generations, stories of a silver-tongued devil and the end of time. They attributed to me endless acts of moral turpitude. They called me The Beast, The Dragon, The Ancient Serpent. How I despised them.

Centuries after my defeat, I finally struck the ground, and the force of the impact was strong enough to kill me. For seraphim and other celestial beings, death is transformation. When the mortal found me, lying broken on the church steps, my limbs encrusted in the hard stone, I was an angel no more. Although my body and powers remained, the very nature of my being was altered, my mind, my heart. I had new fears, thoughts longings.

My eyes were heavy, and I could not move the rest of my body. I was conscious long enough to see the glint of a gold crucifix hanging from the young man’s neck as he bent over me. I heard the beating of his heart in my dreams.

I woke to find the mortal kneeling on the floor next to me, his silhouette haloed by candlelight as he muttered a prayer. His strength had been enough to drag my body up the steps and into the church. Behind him, tall candles illuminated empty rows of wooden pews.

A thin film of ash covered my alabaster skin, but my exterior remained otherwise unchanged. I stood, and the mortal gasped when I spread my wings. He crossed himself and bowed his head, tears running down the bridge of his nose as he resumed his frantic muttering.

“I don’t want your prayers, I am no angel,” I said, but the sound of my voice served only to increase his reverence. He crawled to me and kissed my feet, which pleased me. I was no longer an angel, but I was still a prince.

I pulled him to me, his soft body pressed against mine. I was obsessed with the length of his every breath, with his delicate wrists mapped with veins. I longed for this mortal more than I had ever longed for anything in my life. Was this to be my punishment? I growled, furious at my Father and ashamed of my desire of my hunger.

I pressed my lips against his, sinking my teeth into his flesh. He was sweet and ripe and warm and it was not enough. Already weak, he cried softly when I let go of his lips and took his neck instead…

Thus is the nature of the fallen creature I have now become. A second ago, this mortal had been the most precious thing to me, now his corpse lies on the floor where I dropped him. I don’t know what compelled me to look into his eyes after I drained him. Turning my back on him, I flap my wings once, twice, and the wind extinguishes all the candles in the church. I soar into the air for the first time in centuries, breaking through a large stained glass and out into the moonlight. The sight of the night sky moves me, and I hover over the church and gaze at the horizon, at my new home. It doesn’t feel foreign to me. I don’t feel estranged. Transformed and fed, I feel as if I’ve eaten from the Tree of Knowledge and can now look through my Father’s eyes. I see no distinction between the stars, the trees, the mortal I killed, and myself. I am not unworthy because I fell. I have as much right to exist as them, as does any creature under God. We are all products of divine destruction. We are what is left when His anger subsides.

I make a home in the birthplace of Adam, and his children feed mine. I still look into the eyes of every mortal I drain and see Adam in them. When I feel the old grief over the loss of my

Father, I turn my face to the heavens and utter the same reminder for both of us.

“The Angel Prince is dead.”

“Made Anew” Morganite

Ruskalka Agata Antonow

Content Warnings: Murder, Raw Meat Consumption

I found the Ruskalka in the river three days after I moved in. I was hanging the laundry on the line behind the house, I turned to admire the water view and noticed black hair at the very edge of the water.

I was furious with the listing agent, of course. She hadn’t mentioned this creature, even though I kept pressing and pressing why the Victorian Queen Anne just outside of Saint John was half the price of other houses in New Brunswick. Maybe it was the cold Canadian winters, I’d tried to reason to myself. The inspector hadn’t said anything, either, and I hadn’t noticed the creature during three separate walk-throughs.

Yet there she was. I figured she had swum across the Atlantic, past icebergs and under stars and then up the Saint John River. She was pretty beat-up. Her skin was gray greyer than I expected from the folktales my babcia told me growing up. Greyer than Polish skies under which my babcia told those stories.

The Ruskalka’s hair was matted, there was a sluggishly bleeding cut along her left bicep, and her eyes, when she opened them, were milky and pale blue. She didn’t stir, didn’t hiss, just watched me warily as I approached. Was it because I was not a man? Was it some connection to the Old Country, some recognition we sprang from the same earth?

I brought her a side of beef (rare) that first day and left it by her mouth. I brought a blanket, too, an old navy one. When I came back the next day, the blanket was untouched but the beef was gone and the Ruskalka hissed weakly at me, half-humming a few notes before hacking.

“Oh, no,” I told her. “Not me. I won’t be danced to death. I know the stories, thank you, so don’t try any of that. And you better just quit that right now. I’m the one bringing you food.”

I threw down the piglet, still with its head, that I had bought from the butcher. I shuddered to see the pink flesh, but late-night Internet searches had told me this was the closest flesh to human. I turned away and walked back to the house. As I did, I could hear the woman stirring and then the sounds of her teeth clicking together. I walked a little faster.

Of course, I had looked up Rusklaka, too, when researching pig meat. Her movement as a story across Russia, Ukraine, Poland. Always shifting, always described by men as hideous up close. That seemed to be the worst of it. They couldn’t forgive that she looked beautiful far away but not up close. That

seemed to cause more offense than the killing that followed. Funny how they always blamed Ruskalkas for killing young men she lured into the forest. If this were a story about young women going missing, the question would be: what were you doing so late at night in the woods? What were you wearing?

The little boy went missing a week after I dropped off the first piglet. I had to drive miles to other butchers to avoid any suspicion and when I dropped the next tiny pig by her head I looked into her eyes. Like an animal’s eyes, with no recognition and no humanity. Flat, they looked at me like a cat’s.

“Did you do it? Did you take him?”

I didn’t show her the news story on my phone. I wasn’t even sure she understood.

She tore off the piglet’s ear and started chewing, humming under her breath, her right hand clutching the loose gravel by the side of the river.

The second child to go missing was from down the road. A teenage boy I had seen lurching his way through driving lessons on my street. A blue SUV, probably his parents’, and a bloom of acne on his face visible from the road and through the SUV windows. The police walked house to house. I looked at the glossy school photo they held up to my face and I didn’t have to fake my sorrow. In school photos missing children look so vulnerable, like the crooked smile and greasy nose were always a precursor for some tragic fate.

“You’re going to have to go home.” The next day I stood closer, more sure of myself. I threw down another piglet and this time watched as she slowly tore off one hoof and then the next, pink meat and blood disappearing. I could see her jaw came unhinged and she only half-chewed, before swallowing like a dog. Her eyes never left me. Hatred? Indifference? Loyalty to the source of her food? She still hadn’t moved from the one spot in my river and though I had now lived in this town long enough to have my favorite stores and to get to know the neighbors, I still hadn’t sat by the water’s edge, as I had planned when I had signed the mortgage.

I put tranquilizer in a piglet two days after the teenage boy went missing. It was easy to buy online, and I had syringes in the fancy first-aid kit I had bought for the house.

I had expected her to sniff and refuse the meat, had steeled myself for it though I had no real plan for what I would do. But she tore in. Now half her body was on the shore and where I had seen the outline of bone under her gray skin I now saw some sinew. Wrinkled and wet-looking, but there. She ate all the way to the haunch of the pig and then slumped half over, hissing. Her eyes looked at me, glowing blue with betrayal, and my stomach curdled like old milk.

I heaved her into my Elantra and made my way down to the docks in the harbor. Driving down one-way streets, the brick

buildings empty-socketed in the dark. Salt smell, the soft, insistent clang of ships against the wood deck.

There was no one at the docks when my car chirped open.

I pulled my jacket around myself, walked around the back to the trunk and prepared to send her home. As I grabbed her unmoving body and yanked, I pictured myself in my home, alone, sitting by the river and drinking tea, humming to myself.

The Labor of Love

K.M. Hale

Content Warnings: Murder, Blood

Across valley and rolling hill Apollo called to him, moved him. Through mountain pass and along river, he followed his brother’s beckoning cry until his feet took him to Dryopis. He felt the breath of his epithets against the back of his neck as he walked on and on. Lion Slayer, the Triumphant, Averter of Evil, Alcides, Son of Zeus, they whispered in the passing wind, and yet he could feel nothing but a ferocious disdain.

When the air grew quiet, as Apollo left him, he began to feel a stir within himself. Something that ached. Something that prowled. Something bigger than himself. A hunger, insatiable and beastly he could do nothing but let his body move the way the gods demanded. Down the hill he ran in a haze to seize the bull that plowed the valleys and, in admiration of such strength, he devoured it like a starving man. On all fours he gorged himself with its flesh until the line between lion and man was blurred with red. In his recklessness of appetite, he did not consider its beauty to be

a prize of the Dryopes. He was brought by the angered people to the king, Theiodamas, for judgment.

The blood on his peplos, his hands, had not yet dried from his folly.

“Your arrogance will not go unpunished, son of Zeus.”

Theiodamas moved ungracefully from the dais with his sword raised. The palace was silent except for the king’s heavy steps. “Do you think your parentage makes you immune? You mock me.”

It was a mistake: the bull, his arrival, a hunger seized; yet there was nothing he could say to soothe the king’s rage.

Theiodamas came forth, sword drawn, spit dripping down his chin in his sneer. He would look vicious if not attempting to fight a beast himself. With a roar and a swat of the hero’s sword, swift and easy, the king crumpled to the ground. Red, red, red, and there was nothing left.

Perhaps the hero was, in fact, depraved.

“You killed the king.” A voice came from a distant doorway and the slayer looked up, surprised.

“In defense, yes.”

There was a silence for a moment as the young man, curly haired and bronzed, gazed at the heap of flesh and gore. The gaze was distant, though not upset, and when he came forward it was not in hurried vengeance.

“You are Heracles.”

The hairs on the back of his neck rose with a thrill at hearing a name lost to his triumphs. The weight of the lion’s pelt, of death, lay heavy on his shoulders and he could not remember the last time someone had spoken his true name. “Yes.”

“I am Hylas, son of Theiodamas and Menodice, prince of Dryopis.” They stood, man in front of man, in the blood that pool at their feet. His father’s blood. Hylas’ blood.

Heracles kept his grip tight on his blade; he could not understand why Apollo had led him there. “If you wish to seek revenge I would advise not. I had no intent to slay your father and I do not desire that fate for you. I will leave whence I came and will not return.”

A brave hand reached out to grip him by the wrist. It was dainty and smooth, perhaps normal for a normal man. “There is no malice in my heart towards you; admiration swells there instead. Theiodamas was a savage father and king and if you will have me I wish to leave this place. I admit my request is bold, but it would be an honor to accompany the strongest of the Greeks on his journey.”

There was a slight discomfort shifting under his skin as the prince looked at him, waiting. A warning, perhaps, of an ill-fated meeting destined for misery and yet Apollo did not speak to him. The god was quiet and that was enough to make him falter. Was this prince his destiny? His fate? Hylas looked so honest in the softness around his eyes and the charming fall of his curls around

his cheeks beauty, Heracles knew, was a weakness in his heart. Yet he could not deny himself the hand that held him so.

Was he deserving of such ordinary tenderness?

No. He thought not.

With affection there is nothing but the promise of an invisible fury. With love, vicious pain. With every step forward there is a trail of sopping, red footprints in his wake; always so fresh… And there is nothing to blame except his two hands: stained and calloused with godly strength.

Yet this man did not cower.

“I have never known another soul like you.”

That made the prince smile. “Then keep me and know me better.”

Gently, Heracles slipped his wrist from Hylas’ grip to turn the prince’s palm up in his own. There was not a battle nor struggle marked there, only the luxuries and softness of princehood. What a pleasure it would be to mold and reshape that softness into something more, something new. To be a different man and create rather than destroy.

“Have you ever held a sword? A spear?”

“No,” Hylas did not move his hand away. His wrist, his pulse, exposed. Was it trust or ignorance? “But if put in my hand I’m sure I could manage.”

“But are you willing?”

The soft brown of Hylas’ eyes disappeared under the black of his pupils’ dilation. Heracles had seen that look before in others and knew the answer would please and torment him in equal measure. Yet he took it. He took it all and, in his greed, he knew tragedy would soon come for them. But Hylas’ gaze made him feel something he had not felt in a long time: hope. And it made him reckless.

“To have my story unfold by your side I am willing to do more than hold a blade. Whatever awaits me, I am willing. Whatever you give me, I’ll take with pride.”

Heracles pressed his thumb into Hylas’ wrist, hard. His pulse jumped at the pressure, but he did not pull away. The prince was shaken but steadfast in his plea. “There will be death.”

Hylas gazed down at his father’s body, still draining, fresh. Their feet were red, their sandals red, and when they left those haunted halls there would be no other colors in the world for them. And he smirked as if something were funny; Heracles was baffled at the amusement that tugged on the young man’s lips but there it was. It was horrible and beautiful and when their eyes met again Hylas replied: “By the Fates it shall not be us.”

Over land and sea, through orchards of golden apples, and dens of beasts, Hylas and Heracles traveled together without hesitance. With every labor Hylas stood beside him. With every

day, every month that passed, his smile remained. It was peaceful, lovely even, but Heracles was not so much of a fool to think that Hylas was safe from him. A blessing or a curse, this gift? Once he revered his birthright with such pride. But now but now he had one more thing to lose. Heracles did not know if he was the evil that brings forth foolhardy bloodshed and not a god-wife scorned possessing his mind. Was it enough to blame Hera for drawing his sword against his own wife? Could he not have fought against her invisible hands to save the soft necks of his children? What worth was his strength if not to save? So, he watched over his shoulder for sneaking shadows and bent the prince into something like a warrior in an appeal of self-preservation.

With time Hylas grew stronger, sharper; if it weren’t for the gift of inhuman power, Heracles thought that Hylas could have bested him. He was proud of the man he had built from nothing, the man who kept his tenderness and softness even when he bled.

Heracles hoped that it was enough nay, he prayed and begged to Apollo and Zeus and anyone who would deign to listen that Hylas’ strength and gentleness would keep him in this mortal realm. Heracles needed him, even if he was a danger to the prince as any creature. Yet Hylas had killed wolf and elk and bear alone; what is a man who is less man and more beast to someone of such bravery?

But there was a lion that paced and circled inside Heracles, a rage and thirst so animalistic that it nearly brought him to all

fours. He did not want Hylas to see, he did not want to raise a violent paw to him, but he could not hide it. Not when they put their fists together and Heracles asked him to strike.

The first time they had tumbled, after leaving Dryopis, Hylas had gotten one clean swipe at him. A fist across the cheek soft, yes, and no mark left the feeling of it, the impact, made something in Heracles snap. The olive grove they were training in grew shadowy in the corners of his vision until all he saw was Hylas. It was like peeking through the brush in a hunt. If he looked hard enough, he could see the quickening of his pulse, thump thump thumping on the sweat slick curve of Hylas’ neck.

To the ground they went as Heracles leapt at him. They rolled and struck each other, it took half Heracles’ strength to control himself, to control the beast that wanted to frighten the man. To assert himself better than. It wasn’t until the hero had the prince pinned to the ground, straddled, with bared teeth and angered fists smashed on the ground beside his head that Heracles stopped. That he came back to himself half-man once more and realized what he had done. Realized that Hylas may leave.

“I am sorry ”

Hylas’ face was strange then. “You apologize for nothing.”

“I am a beast, an animal, a ” Heracles shook his head, eyes welling with tears he would not shed. How could anyone

entertain the company of a monster? Was Hylas blind, a fool, or biding his time?

“Silence.” Hylas reached between them to place a dirty, damp hand across the hero's mouth. It was the first they touched without brutality under their palms. It was the first Hylas had touched Heracles without prompt. “To think you allow me to travel with you, to take your time and attention, and you think so poorly of me. I am not frightened by you, Heracles. You’re welcome to pity yourself, but I refuse.”

With a shake of his mane, the prince released his hold. Heracles whispered, stony and sure: “I could kill you so easily. It would take nothing to shatter you completely.”

“You won’t.”

“I could.”

Hylas frowned and pushed at Heracles’ chest until he moved off of him, and kept his hand there. “Even if you could, I wouldn’t allow it. Your namesake, your father, they mean nothing to me. You’re you, and I am me. Do not see me as just a mortal man, a companion for your travels to evade loneliness. See me.

Look at me. I am more than you think and I am not afraid of the strength you possess. I admire you as Heracles alone.”

Epithets were never shared between them, acknowledged or mentioned. Hylas only saw him as the man in front of him. It made Heracles open his eyes wider, look harder, and it made Hylas smile.

“You’re frightened of me,” it was a charmed statement rather than a question, a statement that Heracles could not deny.

And yet: Hylas was not afraid. Instead, he had reached out and placed his hand, with such openness, upon the beast’s cheek. Ran a thumb over eyelash and scar and brow until the beast collapsed to his knees as a man once more. Time and time again Heracles allowed himself to be tamed by such tenderness until he could no longer refuse his desire.

The sun began to set on them and he felt himself become a victim of his yearning the longer Hylas held him, looked at him. He refused to disentangle himself from the position they had fallen into shoulder to shoulder, hand on cheek, legs woven together in a way that gave pause if one tried to separate them into two beings.

“Heracles,” Hylas whispered with a smile. There was no other person who called him by his name in all of Greece. Only the prince his prince.

Heracles had never been so frightened in his life. He was growing weak and soft and affectionate. Fighting against the melting warmth had grown exhausting and he wished for nothing more than to fall into Hylas’ arms and call out for him as he had. All the same, Heracles knew that giving in would do nothing but bring misfortune. He could not trust the thing circling inside him.

It was all for naught as Heracles did not consider that Hylas did not perceive passion as weakness. Rather he was a man, just as he, and wanted with a near feverish intensity. It made

resisting nigh impossible as warm hands prodded and pushed him into a soft clay for Hylas to grip. To hold. To press down until Heracles submitted to his burning. Was it lust or devotion? Could Heracles permit himself to consider love?

Could something so evil, so monstrous, be loved? Was there a chance for him yet?

“Heracles.” The prince called to him over and over again like a poem. A name to replace an epithet. Hearts together thundering in a beat almost like a song. It was intoxicating. It was terrifying.

He had never wanted another soul so badly.

Hands on his thighs, his hips, his chest felt like veneration. Red faced heaving and dripping sweat made them, together, drunk. It was akin to the act of creation happening all over again as Hylas moved Heracles' world. It was inevitable. So he relented and let the prince have his way. On his back, stripped of his godhood, Heracles saw his humanity reflected in his lover's eyes.

His lover.

In quivering weakness, he responded: “Hylas.”

It is without question that every hero's journey is woven with catastrophes, a son of Zeus was born knowing. The tapestry of their story loses its integrity, its strength, when devastation does not pull the threads together. And yet Heracles, a man half savage

with blood splashed against his own weaving, did not sense the impending doom when stepping foot on the Argos. He was blinded, weakened, by the brightness and elation of Hylas. Soothed by the confidence of his comrade Polyphemus a man to rival Heracles, in strength and godlike renown, the slayer of centaurs. The scars on his arms, his hands, made the Lion Slayer trust without question. And the ship, brimming with heroes of notability and earthly praise what worries were there to be had?

Yet if he had known what was to come, Heracles would not have left Iolcus.

They landed in Mysia by nightfall and made camp by a river. The Argonauts fell to the sand for repose after a strenuous battle with six-armed giants. It would be the first tale of Hylas’ bravery sung for all of Greece. Pride made him glow brighter than any star.

They drank. They sang. The Argonauts shared stories of their own tapestries and gorged themselves on their bounty. Then Hylas reached out to place a hand on Heracles shoulder, a burning he had not felt since they joined Jason. “Come with me.”

The men called to them as the two made their way from the fires to the dark quiet of the forest tree line. They did not answer their calls, they were unimportant and could not dissuade their hurried movements into the night. In a small pocket under a

canopy of trees, Hylas removed Heracles’ pelt and spread it on the ground. How sacrilegious, he thought for a moment, but was quickly forgotten when the prince spread himself across the lion's skin with a smile.

He is bewitching.

“I have allowed your attention to be shared and I can bear it no longer. Lay with me, Heracles. Your touch is the only prize I desire after such victory. I have wanted nothing but to share this feat with you and you alone. Lay with me before I am driven to madness.”

The hero shuddered. “Is this charming request meant to soften me so you can best me? So I am bare and open for you to strike, young hero?”

Heracles' half-hearted joke did not stop him from shedding his peplos, though. He bore himself naked and knelt before Hylas whose face had turned from heated lust to hardened tenderness. The prince rose from his reclined position to meet Heracles on his knees where they were joined, chest to chest. Another peplos fell to the ground and Hylas reached for the beast’s cheek, stroking a thumb against his brow and searched his eyes.

“Have I not been obvious in my feelings? Do you question my meanings?” Prince Hylas whispered and Heracles could not tear his gaze away. “I have followed you across Greece and I will follow you across the River Styx to the gates of the Underworld. I love

you, Heracles. There is nothing in this mortal realm worth more to me than you. I love you.”

The words pulled under Heracles’ skin, tightening his tapestry. He felt it so viscerally it almost brought him to tears.

“I love you,” Hylas murmured as he pressed kisses from the hero’s cheek “I love you,” to his neck “I love you,” to his chest. “I love you.”

How could three words cut him more deeply than any blade? Because he felt, so wholly, that he was being bled dry right then and there. Was this not supposed to be a beautiful moment shared? Why must there be such impending terror at such a sentiment? Because he loved Hylas too in equal, if not more ferocious, measure. Yet he was not blind to this admittance, this acknowledgement, having sealed their intertwined fates in finality and it was not fair. The gods heard Hera heard and he knew in his heart that she would take this love away from him too just to see him a broken man once more.

That is his fate.

A beast estranged from devotion.

A god-wife scorned.

And still he wanted. He needed.

He loved Hylas.

In a final effort to extricate Hylas from tragedies' cold grasp, Heracles did not requite the declaration even though it pained him so. Instead he lay himself on his back and reached for

the prince’s face, hoping that it would be meaning enough. That he would understand in the softness of Heracles’ eyes and the tenderness of his touch, Hylas would know that he was loved endlessly. Irrevocably.

They rose to the sound of Helios’ chariot carrying the sun to their sky, bodies already sticky with the summer heat. Devoted, they lay interwoven with no will or strength to unlace themselves. The earth could shake beneath them, creatures could erupt from the sea, and it would not be enough to convince Heracles to let his prince go. He pressed his hand against Hylas' back and he dug with his large paws he dug to make sure Hylas’ heart still beat with him. Thump, thump, thump, it sang like a divine poem and Heracles felt a sleepy, soothing smile press against his shoulder.

“We must rise, Heracles, the Argonauts are waking.”

“What is that to us?” Heracles pulled him closer and pressed his nose into the soft curls of Hylas’ hair. He smelled of salt, sweat, and the familiar musk of a night laying together. “They can do as they wish, there’s no need for our presence yet.”

A muffled laugh warmed him hotter. “Are we not part of the Argonauts? Do they not worship your every word, every move? We must join them and train before we set off again. It will be a long journey before we are on land again. Who are you to evade Jason’s drills?”

It was then that Heracles pulled away, enough to look down at the prince’s face who was smiling up at him. The hero, baffled and amused, asked: “Who am I? To evade Jason’s command? Hylas, you jest.”

“It is no heroic look to put yourself above your fellow men who fight alongside you. You inspire them greatly, why not stand with them even just in drill?” He reached to brush his hand down the beast’s cheek. “If not for them, then for me. I do not have your godly gifts, or any gifts the Argonauts have. I must exercise my strength just to be worthy enough to stand beside you.”

It was then that Heracles almost slipped, that the words almost fell from his lips with frightening ease. Because there was nothing Hylas must do to be worthy of standing with Heracles other than just being. He had more power in his personhood than any other mortal, because he was the only one to have worn the lion down into gentleness. So Heracles released him and rolled onto his back, throwing an arm over his eyes in defeat, because he could never refuse Hylas. “You slay me, dear prince. You cut me right open at the heart… Fine, if I must rise and train then at least we should attain water. Helios is bearing down on us today, he must be restless.”

“I will go then,” The man stood and began dressing himself. Heracles moved his arm from his eyes to gaze at him, soaking up the glorious vision of his lithe muscles moving under his skin.

“I will join you ”

“No ” Hylas pressed a foot against Heracles chest until he was laying again. It was not enough to pin him, but the hero let himself be moved, aroused by his lover’s harshness. “ You will dress and return to the Argonauts. If you don’t go now you’ll only bend me to your desires. So you go. I will meet you there.”

Ah, he had been caught in his attempts at manipulation. He had wanted to trail behind the prince into the woods and devour him like a starving man. To keep him in Heracles' sights, in his arms, so he knew he was safe. But what joy did a caged bird have? Trapped and silenced against bars that kept them shielded from the outside. Heracles could not live with Hylas’ resentment; there had been no stirring in the wind, no whispers from voices on high…

So Heracles pressed his lips against the rough skin of Hylas’ ankle, trailing up to his knee and then down to his foot in worship. With every press of his lips, he sent a prayer asking for his safe return. Begging for more time. Pleading for grace he did not deserve.

He trusted Hylas’s strength and capability. He did not trust the gods.

His lover gazed down at him with his lip caught between his teeth, grinning. Their eyes met in a final pressed kiss and Heracles hoped Hylas could see his love. Then he let go.

Back on the beach his fellow Argonauts greeted him with slaps on the back and jests about his escape into the woods with his companion. They swore to him they heard Eros’ wings beating as he flew towards their hideaway. Heracles only laughed.

With a beckoning gesture of his sword, Polyphemus came to his side and they began to train under the watchful eye of Jason. It seemed to please the man, and their comrades, to watch Heracles move with such power among them. To see his epithets in action and know they would win with him at their sides.

But he was not there, not really. His god-blood moved him the way it was supposed to, the way they wanted him to. But Heracles' mind was elsewhere. Wondering, watching, for Hylas’ return.

“He has yet to come back… it's been hours.”

Polyphemus lowered his sword and looked towards the trees where Heracles stared. “The island may be bigger than it appears. You worry for nothing, Alcides.”

The name made his stomach tie into stoney knots. “I worry plenty. If he does not come in one hour then I am going to find him.”

“He’ll come.”

But he didn’t.

The sun had nearly set, the men were resting for the evening, and Hylas had still not returned. So Heracles left them without a word to tear through the island brush like a mad man.

Polyphemus was trailing him, calling for Heracles, begging him to not act rashly, and it almost made the hero seize him. The feeling pulsing under his skin, hot like insects ripping him up from the inside, was so familiar he thought that Hera must be his shadow. It made him hurry faster.

Heracles screamed over and over: Hylas, where are you? Hylas, can you hear me? Hylas, Hylas, Hylas, call to me His roaring grew louder and the island grew quieter. All manner of beast vanished and all there was left was Heracles. All gentleness vanished in the wake of terror, the creature he had tried so hard to cage and deny and kill was ripping through his skin. Ripping through his chest and he was sick with anger.

When a day had passed and morning came again, Polyphemus grabbed him desperately by the shoulders. “We’ve searched the whole island, we have not rested, we must return to the Argos. This is insanity, Alcides, he is not here.”

Skin tearing open is a very distinct sound. Almost like fabric being torn down the middle by bare hands. The closest was the sound of a bull, white as snow, being cut from ear-to-ear to bleed on the altar.

That’s the sound they heard when Heracles, in a fit of unbridled rage, grabbed Polyphemus by the face with his enormous paw and saw his fingers were no long fingers of man. They were claws, sharp and feline, and he had split open his comrade’s cheek.

Polyphemus was silenced and looked at Heracles in a familiar terror.

“Take your cowardice and return then.” Heracles snarled.

“I will not leave this island until I have found him. I will tear every tree from the ground, empty every river I will burn everything down to find Hylas. No man nor god can stop me; they have taken one love from me and I will not let them take another.”

When Heracles released him, Polyphemus did not speak, he only bled.

When three days passed, the Argos departed, and they still had found no signs of Hylas, Polyphemus said nothing.

When Heracles' gums tore open to reveal sharp teeth, when his eyes drained his mortal brown for gold, when his posture became less man and more creature… Polyphemus remained mute.

It wasn’t until the island was torn to pieces in the godson’s wake that they finally after weeks discovered a hidden water they had yet to see. A glamor, Heracles realized, when he spotted a group of nymphs lounging at its edge. They had hidden from him as he destroyed everything his feet and hands touched.

Hidden because they had seen his anger in action.

Hidden because they had a familiar set of men’s sandals laced up one of the girls’ legs as she giggled and swayed.

Hidden because there was a peplos: shredded, dirty, and forgotten on the ground. And they were guilty.

Polyphemus had sensed it too and was unable to stop him.

Without consideration, without plan, Heracles surged forward and snatched the peplos from the ground to bring to his snout. The nymphs squealed in terror and grasped for each other as they watched him inhale the fabric.

It still smelled of him. Sweat. Salt. And the musk of their embrace.

The smell of their love.

“Where is he?” He whispered. The nymphs did not answer as they cowered behind the one in his sandals. Heracles roared: “Where is Hylas?”

They stared at him with wide eyes. Silent. He could bear it no longer, his patience gone, and the vengeance he sought was right in front of him. With a beastly lunge he rushed them and wrapped one enormous paw around the sandaled nymph’s neck. He lifted her easily and squeezed until tears sprung from her eyes. Her sisters cried.

“The gods ” She choked and clawed at his arm in an attempt for relief. Her legs kicked and she pulled and she gasped but he only held her harder. “ the gods wished they wished it so.”

The insectal feeling under his skin grew hotter. It itched and scratched and ate him alive until the man he once was

remained only as a minute shred. All Heracles wanted was to sink his teeth into her and feel her life leave on his tongue.

His paw gripped her thin neck tighter. His claws sank into her flesh easily and buttery like a tender meat. “Which god?”

“He Her ” She squeaked and scrambled, eyes bulging. “Hera.”

It was so easy, he realized. Her bones were as fragile as birds. So he squeezed, and squeezed, and squeezed until he felt her bones crack and splinter. His nails dug in further until she wept like a fountain. It reminded him of Theiodamas.

It reminded him of his Hylas.

Look at me, Heracles prayed, look at me, look at me, look at me

He snapped her neck in his hand. Her body went limp and he dropped her like she was nothing. She was nothing. The other nymphs had vanished and Heracles stood over her with emptiness inside him. Only hunger remained. Only heartbreak.

Polyphemus, quiet, finally spoke. “She did not deserve that, Alcides.”

Neither did he.

BROWN(ROT)BROWN

Jennifer Lorne

Content Warning: Implied Murder

The shroud of mourning suits you, Mr. MacFarlane. The purpleblack bags hanging heavy under your eyes compliment the cool undertone of your complexion, and despite choking on tears and snot, your unforeseen handsomeness is making it hard to do my job. You’re my first client since Daddy left for Boca this past week, and I’ve been having to play both funeral director and mortician. Neither God nor Daddy could’ve ever prepared me for such tormentous serendipity. You come here to me! to bury your wife. Such mangled expressions of unhappiness and bewilderment strain your darling face. Confusion and rage. Longing and loathing I study you and wonder, who’s your Daddy? Who’s your God? Who do you answer to? Where do you look when you cry out, high above or dead ahead? How badly has he screwed your mother?

Who’s your Daddy, who’s your God? While searching for the answers to my new universe in your eyes, I miss your question and must ask you to repeat yourself:

“Can I see her?”

No, I shake my head. It’s against policy to view the deceased before I’ve finished speaking with them. Your lips remind me of a dollhouse, Mr. MacFarlane. An inviting little dwelling of moist cerise, warm and romantic, your cupid’s bow arched like a Tudor Roof with a perch for sweet birds to land, so tantalizingly safe when parted open. I wish to be small, a figurine fit for the dollhouse. Small enough to rest my dreary little self upon your plush pink tongue. And when you’ve had enough of my residency, you may evict me to the back of your throat and swallow me whole. I’ll erode in your acids and my essence will seep from your pores as I become one with your flesh.

I fully intended for my fingers to graze yours upon receiving Mrs. MacFarlane’s wedding dress and photograph. Did you feel it? This moment, it too holds weight. Mrs. MacFarlane’s wedding dress strewn across my lap makes me feel like Mary of Michelangelo’s Pietà. Her complexion when alive was a pale warmly lit yellow with full cheeks of blazing rose. Two fat peaches smothering a toothy white smile. I’ll tell you once I open my mouth that I am a peach.

Yes, a peach.

I am a peach pitted with rot knocked from a branch no less distorted than yours. I am kicked about, browned with bruising, and shielded from the flourishing rays of a summer’s sun. I grow mealy, listless. I watch as the pickers pine for peaches far

more supple and ripe than I. Peaches sweetened by the juices of youth and promise that bring me to a steady spoil. For you I sit. I wait. I rot.

The phone rings, it’s Daddy again. I haven’t spoken to Daddy since he stuffed his duffel with Tommy Bahama button downs and muttered something about the beach, his youth, and floating. He keeps calling to check on business, but I don’t answer. Perhaps when he’s dead I’ll have something to say. Business and I were doing just fine till you came in. Mrs. Schulman thought she was at the beauty counter in Dillard’s getting her makeup done, I didn’t tell her otherwise, and the only complaint yet was from Mr. Redd who said my touch was too cold, but he quit screaming once I cut out his tongue.

Mrs. MacFarlane told me who pushed her down the stairs. Her neck protrudes in three places, and I’ll have to have her waves worn loose to conceal the damage. I promise, Mr. MacFarlane, I won’t tell a soul of your misdeed. She’s just begging me to, but I won’t. The guilt is tearing you apart. You had yourself a good peach, a ripe peach, a pretty peach swollen with splendor but on her sweetness you choke. That’s all right, Mr. MacFarlane, sometimes what’s coveted by some is tossable to others. Your transgression brought you to me, tears and snot and rot and all.

Two husks of what could-have-been pitted with maggots and destined to spoil in darkness.

We are rotten. We are damned.

Daddy’s calling yet again.

⛤ ⛧

“Where Civil Blood Makes Civil Hands Unclean”

Nyx Green

⛧ Biographies ⛧

Kyle Ross (he/him) is an award-winning author who specializes in creative nonfiction. As a graduate of Emerson College, he received his BFA degree in Creative Writing. A copywriter by trade, he is also a regional Writing Juror for the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. Continuously grappling with his past, Kyle explores themes of childhood grief, love in all its forms, and trans identity. His published prose can be found in The Underground, EveryDayFiction, Gauge Magazine, Wack Mag, Vocivia Magazine, and The Hooghly Review. You can visit him at www.thekyleross.com.

Elizabeth “Liz” Zarb (she/her) is a writer, editor, and content creator based out of New York. She received her BFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College in 2021 and her MSc in Literature and Society: Enlightenment, Romantic, and Victorian from the University of Edinburgh in 2023, and now splits her time between writing and making literature-based videos on TikTok under the handle @liz_zarb. Her debut collection of flash fiction stories, “A Meditation on Mortality,” is available on Amazon, and she runs the blog: twentybluffing.com, a place dedicated to twenty-somethings who are feeling lost and aimless as they navigate this decade of their life.

Agata Antonow (she/her) is a writer living and working in Canada. Her work has been featured in the Mile End Poets' Festival, Our Times, The Gravity of the Thing, Defenestration, Eunoia Review, and the FOLD (Festival of Literary Diversity) program, among other places. She has placed first in the 2021 Douglas Kyle Memorial Prize and the 2023 Alfred G. Bailey Prize from the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick.

Tyler Battaglia (he/iel/any) is a queer and disabled author of horror, dark fantasy, and other speculative fiction, who is especially interested in subjects that interrogate the connections between faith, monsters, love, queerness, and disability. You can find Tyler on social media at online at https://www.tylerbattaglia.com, where you can also find a full list of publications to date.

Billie-Leigh Burns (she/her) is a writer from Liverpool. Her work has been featured by 50 Word Stories, 101 Words, Funny Pearls, and The Mersey Review. She is also a bookkeeper, making her the only writer she knows who owns an ‘I Heart Spreadsheet’ mug.

Luke Condon (he/him) is a 23-year-old writer from Cork, Ireland. He is a graduate of English Literature at University College Cork, and is currently a postgraduate student of creative writing at Trinity College Dublin. He was the winner of University College Cork's 2024 Louise Clancy Memorial Prize, and his fiction work was highly commended by the judges of the Eoin Murray Memorial Scholarship.

Alisa Darbinyan (she/her) grew up in Armenia and Russia and later moved to Canada as a university student. She has since found a new home in Kingston, Ontario, where she lives with her family, surrounded by paintings and books.

"Virtual Machine" is Alisa’s first short story and a loving tribute to Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.” It is inspired by a childhood of reading gothic literature classics, short horror stories, and dark scifi. The story was selected as a finalist for the Center for Women Writers Reynolds Price Award in Fiction in 2020.

April Elaine (she/her) is a writer and illustrator living on the east coast of the United States.

Nyx Green (they/them) is a production designer, currently working in costuming at Walt Disney World. They graduated from Savannah College of Art and Design, where they majored in Production Design with a concentration in Costume Design. They have a deep love for intricate and hidden details within their work to tell more of a story before any words are spoken.

K.M. Hale (they/them) is a 26-year-old writer from the East Coast. They are constantly testing the bounds of genre and storytelling with queerness and self-reflection. Their work has been accepted by: The Icarus Writing Collective, Missive Mag, and All Existing.

Chris Horrell (he/him) is an emerging author, and when he isn’t wrangling his three children, you can probably find him reading or writing. Chris lives in New Hampshire with his family but is originally from North Carolina, and most of his stories are set there.

Richard W. Kenneth (he/him) is an engineer by day and an author by night. His sci-fi flash fiction thrillers have appeared in Havok Magazine and Havok’s anthology, “Prismatic”. His short horror has appeared in Last Girls Club. He also writes poetry when the mood, or the muse, strikes. He shares life’s adventures with his wife, who also writes. Email him at richardwkenneth@gmail.com or find him on social media at Facebook.com/RichardWKenneth

G.T. Korbin (she/they) is queer SFF-H author from Greece, currently living abroad to work in medical research. When they're not writing, she likes to yell at fictional characters in video games or try to bake, both with similar success. Her short stories have been previously published in the NoSleep podcast, Andromeda Spaceways, and various anthologies, such as UNTHINKABLE by Haunt Publishing (2022).

D.H. Lane (he/she) is a linguistics and creative writing undergrad at Syracuse University who is working on her debut novella. You can find his works at Beloved Zine, DOG TEETH, Spires, Bullshit Lit, swim press, BRAWL, and on Substack at delightfullyunhinged.substack.com. She can be found at (twt) @schrdingersdyke (or insta) @del.pdf.

Mateo Perez Lara (they/them) is a queer, non-binary, Latinx poet from California. They have a pamphlet of poems, Glitter Gods, showcased with Thirty West Publishing House. They have an MFA in Poetry from Randolph College. Their work has been published in EOAGH, The Maine Review, The Acentos Review, and elsewhere.

Ella Leith (she/her) is a writer of fiction, creative nonfiction, and occasional poetry. Drawing on her background in folklore and oral history, her work tends to explore the ways in which the past exists in the present, and how the weird and uncanny intersect with the banal. Her writing has featured in Gramarye, The Literary Times Magazine, Dear Damsels, The Fiction Factory, and Oprelle’s Matter XXIII anthology. Originally from the Midlands of England, she now lives in Malta, and is currently working on a creepy middle-grade novel and a memoir project dealing with folktales, grief, and the Green Man.

Jennifer Lorne (she/her) has been previously published in ergot. Press August 2023, Z Publishing House's Emerging Writers of New Jersey 2018 and Emerging Horror Writers East Region 2019. In her beliefs she is devout: milk and honey in hot coffee, dessert after dinner, and perfume before bed.

Mirjana M. (they/them) are a digital artist and writer from Belgrade, Serbia. Their work focuses on exploring the juxtaposition of various elements through mixed media of photography, double exposure, textures and light. Their work most often explores concepts of duality and has appeared in “Gulf Stream Literary”, “The Good Life Review”, “waxing & waning”, Vocivia, Broken Antler, Spellbinder, New Limestone Review magazines and other places. They authored 3 poetry collections.

Al McClimens (he/him) is a Sheffield based writer and old enough to know better but cute enough to carry on. An unemployed waster, Scrabble fan and lapsed socialist he reads a novel a week and writes a poem a day. He will work for food. Please give generously. He dabbles in prose fiction but should really be discouraged from this practice. His debut collection ‘The Other Infidelities’ was published by Pindrop Press in 2021. And it’s actually pretty good. No, seriously.

Isabella Milner-Bradford (she/her) is a New Zealand/Filipina writer currently based in London. She spends her time photosynthesising with a pen in hand or immersing herself in the stories of indie video games. She can be found on Twitter @BellaMBradford.

Jennifer Moore (she/her) was the first ever UK winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Competition and is a previous winner of the Hart Crane Memorial Poetry Contest. Her psychological thrillers are published by HQ Digital, Harper Collins, and her numerous children’s books (writing as Jenny Moore) are published by Maverick Arts Publishing and New Frontier Publishing. A full list of her publications and prizes can be found at www.jennifermoore.wordpress.com

Morganite (she/her) is an experimental young digital artist and graphic designer from Ghana. Her work focuses on bringing retro designs to life in a modern world, but she describes her work as afro-surreal and afro-experimental - how she views the world through her perspective. These works have been featured in Canada and Accra. She is mostly inspired by the fashion, media, art and lifestyle of the 20th century, and is fueled by the works of David Carson and Paula Scher to create broadcast her love for retro design.

Arda Mori (she/her) is a Malaysian writer. Her work has been published by Horns & Rattles Press, Apparition Lit, Eye To The Telescope, Haunted Words Press, and elsewhere. Find her wandering on Twitter/X at @armori_ or at ardamori.wordpress.com.

Larena Nellies-Ortiz (she/her) is a German and MexicanAmerican poet and photographer from Oakland, California. Her photos and poetry have been featured in Burningword Literary Journal, Local Wolves Magazine, Stonecoast Review, 3Elements Review, Sun Magazine, The Indianapolis Review, Change Seven Magazine, Eunoia Review, Bitter Melon Review, Wordpeace, Libre Lit, The Ilanot Review and Vernacular Journal. You can find her on Instagram @lalifish.

Bethan Owen (she/her) lives in Morocco, where she writes and runs around after her toddler.

Rae (she/her), going by the handle andromedaisfree on multiple social media platforms, has been drawing art as far back as her earliest memories. She has worked in a wide variety of mediums, enjoying experimenting with a range of traditional art forms. She currently finds herself embracing and continuing to expand her knowledge of the world of digital art.

Chey Rivera (she/her) is a bilingual writer from Puerto Rico. Her speculative fiction is inspired by medieval legends, her home island’s history and, occasionally, by gothic tales. Her work is out now in Prairie Soul Press' flash fiction anthology, “The Philosophy of Blue”; in Cosmic Daffodil's “Seven Deadly Sins” issue; in “Bleeding Hearts Beat Still”, a collection by Haunted Words Press; and in “Other Worlds”, an anthology by A Coup of Owls Press. You can find Chey on Instagram @readbychey and on Twitter/X @criverawrites.

Dylan Siunwa (he/him) is an aspiring author from Kenya that specializes specifically in writing African fantasy and speculative fiction. In his work, he intends to delve readers into the innards of the origins of stories steeped in African myth and legend. He most recently completed his first novel of a series, titled, Folklore: Legends and Secrets but has not published yet. Dylan is currently working on a massive project book series titled the 'Empires of Ebony and Ivory' that he seeks to publish later on in his career. When he isn't writing, he enjoys singing, dancing and composing songs on his piano.

Amy Soscia (she/her) earned her MFA in Writing from Albertus Magnus College. She was recently nominated for a Pushcart Award after being named Grand Prize Winner of the 2023 Wild Women Story Contest sponsored by The Tulip Tree Review. She has also been published in Retirement: A Lifespan Anthology, The Year’s Best Dog Stories 2021, Fredericksburg Literary & Arts Review, One Hundred Voices Vol. II, Down In The Dirt Magazine, The Westie Imprint, 898 Literary Journal, and Chicken Soup for the Soul: Recovering from Brain Injuries. Her forthcoming debut novel is titled The Frozen Game. www.amysoscia.com.

C.L. Von Staden (he/him) is a self-taught artist based in Central Texas. He graduated from Concordia University in Austin, Texas with a Master’s degree in Education and currently teaches Special Education. He focuses on painting and drawing themes which convey strong emotions through color and motion.

VOX (they/them) is a mixed media/digital artist of fashion design and the weirder things in life. As an artist, they're interested in creating new meaning and dreamlike imagery to inspire viewers by combining elements in nature with female images and iconography that is anchored in a neo-mythic world.