SKINMATES by Phillip E. Dixon The obsidian scalpel slides beneath my skin and lifts, serving a slice of subcutaneous pie. A faint sucking sound accompanies the quickening pain, sharp and juicy, filling me with the promise of deeper delights. Claret…
WHAT CATS SEE by Jonathan Fortin Something is stalking my human. I first notice it one night when my human forgets to feed me. She is laying in bed, rubbing up and down the Little Window That Eats Your Soul.…
THE MONITOR COUNTY SAMARITAN by Matthew Roy He drums a tattoo on the dashboard. He drives. +++ “Unit Five, possible hit and run near mile marker 184. Victim is male, aged 20s, unconscious, unresponsive. Time is 08:32.” He looks up.…
THE MOUTH by Kathryn Keane I had been digging in vain for berries and roots for hours when I saw the chicken. Plump and ruffled up like a duchess, it waddled through the bushes and was gone. I straightened up…
MY TRICHOBEZOARby Liz Rosen I could tell her how the Sultans displayed them in gold boxes adorned with filigree and flowers like asphodel and hellebore. Or that the nobility of Europe so coveted them for their healing properties that they…
TOMMY IN THE DARKby A. Faz Daniel stared at the pecan tree in his backyard, a dark shadow against the night sky that towered over him and completely obscured the full moon behind it. The sky itself was clear, and…
BLOOD IN THE WATER by Alexis Hansen Kitty bounces a ball against the walls of his cage, matching each toss to the ocean waves lapping against the beach outside our compound. The rhythmic thud grates against my ears, doing nothing…
ACHE FOR A HEARTby Joe Coates “There’s not much of a story to this,” the Reaper sitting in the driver’s seat of the van said, “but there might be a lesson in it. There was an industrial investigation that I…
BLUE DOGSby Kurt Newton The sky was the color of dirty sheets. The air carried the bite of cold metal. The abandoned industrial complex was as advertised: overgrown and isolated. The perfect hideout. Perfect, except for the fact that Petrov…
YOUR FUNGAL HEARTby Spencer Nitkey The wishers tell you your heart is too fungal. You are spore-fallen. Rot and rhizome where there should be flower and trunk. You’d come to them for comfort, at the insistence of your grove who…
THE CREATURE AT THE CENOTE by Jamie Lackey Red twilight seeped across the jungle like blood into packed dirt. Ehecatl knelt on the path and examined smudged tracks. His torch cast flickering shadows, and the tracks slithered from side to…
A BARE MINIMUM OF EFFORT by Brandon Applegate John snakes his arm under the covers reaching for Cassie. She isn’t there. Gone to check on the baby. John grimaces. He never hears the baby crying. He’s always been a sound…
