Fiction, Volume 16 Issue 4
Allison Wallace
It's Not For Everyone PT.IV

I don’t understand why this is still a problem,” the ACS Director says, point-blank from behind the line of tiny crystal goblets filled with discreet, elegant sips of sherry. The Director’s flight, and that of every sherry-flight at the table, glistens in the muted light of the cabin. He stares on through the front windows of the yacht’s dining room into the night. The city is partially hidden on the horizon, and, up above it all, almost insignificant pin pricks of light lie scattered like fallen sequins.

It's Not For Everyone PT.IV
Volume 16 Issue 2
Sky Ford
Dreaming in a Mundane World

I am locked up in a cell. The captors are conducting medical experiments on us. They give us metal wires to stick in our necks, which I know instinctively will erase our memories.


Dreaming in a Mundane World
Volume 16 Issue 2
Jules Dubel
The Psychic Moles from Outer Space

They crawled from shallow darkness out of a crack in the sidewalk. They each stood as tall as a man and a half. Their bodies were covered in hazelnut fur and their nose tendrils writhed like skinned octopi. There were three of them, and one of me.

I fell backward onto my ass in the street, whimpering and whining, completely expecting to have my brain eaten out backward from my skull like a stew by these terrible, loathsome, horror-inspiring… Psychic Moles from Outer Space!

The Psychic Moles from Outer Space
Volume 15 Issue 5, Contest
Skye Caldwell
Jackalope

When I was in the seventh grade I found a scalpel after school. I think it belonged to my mom. There was nowhere else it could have come from. And this scalpel almost glowed. The black, black, veiny marble counter it was sitting on reflected a kind of halo around the silver knife, anything but subtle.

Contest, Volume 15 Issue 5
Albert Kerelis
Empty Cassettes

The first time I watched my dad climb up on the roof, I was 11 or 12. "You stay down there and take my phone, so if I fall and break my neck, you can call the paramedics." I think of that every time I climb up. Who's waiting at the bottom for me?

Volume 8 Issue 3

étude

light ended            between two oak trunks     a breath caught
sharply drawn        because I can’t      speak can’t say          the bird
over there              with beak like knife like     tongue is
broken cannot       fly I call        out in song               and blade
I resent the ground          this bird         this one        is you and   your arms are
bent               the wrong way    and I did that            to you and you
are lying on your back       and the city sinks   like shoulders under water
under the faucet   and can the heat        of you undo            the knots in my back
in my shoulders    I am twisted I              am bent     the wrong way and
the night is   full of hands        clasped palm             to palm holding
the light        of eyes of flight  of lampposts              holding on because
I do not want           to fly anymore     to release to             open my fingers
            to end

Day One: Reflections from Cell #4505

And the light shone in through the light, through the negative, and the sprockets could not keep pace. They tore themselves in all directions, limbs of suicidal silver nitrate turning them- selves into whispers of reflective hair bounding itself into ropes and cords, in chains, that hair. And from the acid it emerged, not revealed, but completely blank, so that not only was the current picture removed, but all traces within the mind of the event, of the day, of the moment, obliterated. It was a snake, and eventually it tore itself free from the bath of my own self resignation, my own complacency with the past, and began to crawl forward. Image after image, no longer images, but notes of condemnation branded in by the reflective light of Mars. I slowly crept backwards, but the film, the light and light, kept moving forward, this time, with almost military skill and precision. I grabbed it by the throat, and the blood rushed.