A Holiday Gathering

December 6, 2023December 2, 2023 ~ Marge Simon ~ 4 Comments

Long silent, the grandfather clock awakes to strike a full twelve bells at midnight. On a glass topped table, five candles light without the need for human hands. Chairs cushioned in flawless red and green await the guests.

Dr. Mengele passes through the door with a box of spectral chocolates. They are the same kind he gave to Jewish twins when their train arrived in Auschwitz, prized subjects for his surgeries.

Ilse Koch, Red Witch of Buchenwald, appears in fashion, with fancy gifts, made from Jewish prisoners’ tattooed skins. She places lampshades. handbags and wallets on the table, each with a discrete price tag. Himmler brings his book on the naughty sex and racist jokes he hopes to share when the opportunity arises, and he’s sure it will.

Adolph and Eva are fashionably late, she with her two terriers, he with his German Shepherd, Blondi, all wagging tails and licking hands. It’s just like things used to be, before the last few days, when Blondi took the cyanide to assure her master that it worked. Eva’s terriers were shot, along with Blondi’s newborn pups.

The comrades commence to toast the yuletide spirits, and reminisce the joys of bygone times. At dawn, the clock’s ticks cease.

∼ Marge Simon

Surviving Winter

November 29, 2023November 25, 2023 ~ afstewart ~ 6 Comments

Entombed in the embrace of the soot-black night, the frigid snow caught the eternal edge of the waning moonlight. Pristine, yet jagged, its frozen surface shimmered in an iridescent sheen, poised like the steel jaws of a trap waiting for the unwary; its beauty was undeniable but deadly.

For the mortals that lived in its grip, winter ruled the world and waited.

A northern gale rustled down from the high mountains, bouncing against the village; layers of ice cracked, flexing the cold’s wicked bite throughout the empty streets. Not a breathing soul stirred in the night air; the living huddled inside around meagre fires. Those fated few trapped outside had long since perished, left as the offerings.

Sacrifices were necessary.

For Winter took its price. Better the chosen, than the innocent.

And always the question remained: How many days this year? Last season the village barely survived. Only a change in the weather, a surprise thaw, saved them all. That year the weather lingered longer.

What would happen this season? Would more die before spring? Would they all die?

It wasn’t something they could fight.

They could only prepare for what was coming…

Claws skittered against the glacial snow. Heaving pants of breath threaded white vapours on the wind. A soft whine wormed its way through miniscule cracks and people shivered. Louder noises followed; the crunch of ice, bone and frozen flesh. Some villagers silently wept. Here and there, a looming shadow passed the shuttered windows, breaking the warm light of the fires. Sometimes, when the children whimpered, they heard scratching at the doors.
No one could leave, and no one spoke, save in whispers.

Huddling, trembling, afraid.

How many days?

Fearful another sacrifice would be necessary.

Praying the doors could stay shut.

Praying they wouldn’t starve.

Praying they could outlast the beast of winter.

~ A. F. Stewart

When a Raven Calls

November 22, 2023November 16, 2023 ~ Miriam H. Harrison ~ 6 Comments

When Marie first saw the raven struggling under the mound of pebbles, she thought it was the strangest thing she would see that day. She couldn’t imagine how the raven had gotten there, its wings pinned at strange angles as it struggled under the weight of countless stones. Yet the stones themselves were stranger still. They were worn smooth, gleaming as if polished. They were unlike anything Marie had ever seen in this forest.

Marie’s grandmother had told her stories of ravens. Stories of how they kept the deeper evil of the forest out of their homes.

“When a raven calls, you listen,” she would say. “They speak in warnings to help us.”

But this raven seemed to be the one in need of help. Marie moved the stones, careful around the writhing bird. At first it snapped its beak at her. But as she made progress, it seemed more resigned to her help. It was disheveled, disgruntled, but unharmed. As Marie cleared the last of the stones, she was glad to see the raven shake its wings, clearing the bits of debris from its body. She watched it fly out beyond the treetops, certain she had seen the last of it.

Returning to her home, Marie thought nothing of the passing shadows, nothing of the cawings of corvids overhead. But when she arrived at her porch, she saw them: three stones, smooth and gleaming, waiting on the porch bannister.

Marie considered the stones carefully. She was sure they were the same strange ones that had trapped the raven. She remembered her grandmother’s collection of small and shining things left for her by the birds.

“Sometimes nature tests our gratitude,” her grandmother would say, “but the ravens repay their debts.”

Bringing the stones in, Marie had barely closed the door behind her when there was a knock. She opened the door, and there stood a young girl.

“Please,” the child said, “might I come in for a piece of bread?”

But Marie heard the raven call a warning. She gave the girl a stone. The stone turned to bread in the young girl’s hand, and Marie closed the door.

Again, she heard a knock. Opening the door, Marie saw a young woman standing at her doorstep.

“Please,” the stranger said, “might I come in for a drink of water?”

But again, the raven called. Marie gave the woman a stone, and it became a goblet of water. She closed the door.

Again, a knock. This time, Marie opened the door and saw an old woman.

“Please,” the woman said, “might I come in and rest for a time?”

Still the raven called, and Marie gave the woman her last stone. The stranger took the stone and sighed deeply. As Marie watched, the woman crumbled bit by bit, leaving behind a pile of stones, smooth and gleaming.

From all around, ravens came. They gathered the stones one by one. At last, only three stones remained. Just for her. Just in case.

∼ Miriam H. Harrison

Jumper

November 15, 2023November 15, 2023 ~ Richard Meldrum ~ 6 Comments

Even though dozens of people saw the body hit the sidewalk, only six people saw the man jump from his balcony. The man had stood on the edge of the balcony railing for at least a few minutes, before he stepped off the ledge. All six witnesses told the same story. Taking their statements was just a matter of getting it all on the record for the inquest. While they waited in the police station reception, the six swapped cell phone numbers. There was no specific reason, just a feeling they should stay in contact.

The first physical meeting of the group was a month after the event. Catherine was the first to start the conversation.

“I dream about it every night. I see him fall, but in my dreams he makes eye contact with me all the way down to the sidewalk.”

Tara nodded.

“I keep getting flashbacks at the oddest moments.”

Donna spoke.

“I don’t dream, because I can’t sleep.”

“I’m drinking myself to sleep every night,” said Stephen.

“Dope for me. I don’t dream,” replied Jennifer.

“Same here,” added Vicky.

“I can’t imagine what if felt like, to plunge so far,” said Tara.

“To feel your head pop open on impact.”

“I wonder why he did it?” mused Catherine.

“Money troubles. That’s what the newspaper said.”

“I heard it was his wife.”

“He was a troubled person,” said Donna.

“He must have been, to take his life like that.”

“I wonder what it felt like,” repeated Tara.

“Did time slow down for him?” asked Catherine.

“Did he have a feeling of euphoria, of finally being free?” said Jennifer.

“Perhaps,” replied Vicky.

“Perhaps he was terrified, regretting his final choice,” said Stephen.

No,” replied Jennifer firmly, shaking her head. “His body would have released enough endorphins to make his last seconds pure bliss.”

“Bliss,” repeated Tara in a dreamy tone.

“I wonder if we only experience true happiness just before death?” asked Vicky.

“Lots of studies suggest it’s true,” answered Donna.

“I almost envy him,” admitted Catherine.

“So do I,” added Tara.

“Me too,” whispered Vicky.

“Same,” said Stephen.

The others nodded.

“It would be wonderful to have that feeling.”

Stephen glanced towards the sliding doors to the balcony. They had met in his condo. It was neutral ground in the downtown core where they all worked.

“We’re on the fourteenth floor.”

The others looked at him, at the doors, at the balcony.

“Dare we?” whispered Donna.

“What about our families?”

“What about the euphoria?”

“Yes, you’re right, we must.”

The six stood, held hands with the person next to them, then opened the door to the balcony.

∼ RJ Meldrum

The Offering

November 8, 2023October 25, 2023 ~ Elaine Pascale ~ 4 Comments

Millie swept the sizeable bug onto the lawn that grew along the cottage. There was no movement from the insect, not even the twitch of an antenna. By all signs it was dead.

She noted that the bug looked like it was sleeping. Just as they say bodies in coffins, before eternal interment, look to be sleeping.

With her foot, she pushed the bug beneath the rose bushes that her grandmother had tended for decades. Greta had been spotted in her garden longer than the next oldest person in the village had been alive. No one knew exactly how old Greta had been at the time of her recent death. There had been a trio of birth certificates issued in her name, all with different dates of birth listed.

Recent death was the correct term, Millie thought. It was never clear if the woman had actually died during previous episodes or if they had only been “scares.” There had been times when the woman had stopped breathing. Her skin would grow cold, her body as hard as a stone. Her spine would appear to curl in on itself, just like the bug beneath the roses. Minutes would pass, sometimes an interval so long that she had to have crossed through the gossamer curtain between worlds. Then her breath would boldly return. Her eyes would flutter as if she had only awoken from a short nap. She would appear rejuvenated, revitalized. Some smirked and said that death was becoming on her. Some did not smirk and claimed she had sold her soul to the devil.

Millie gave the bug another shove and watched as it fell into a hole that had been crafted by a critter.

“Bon appetite,” Millie whispered to the snake or mole that was hidden in the hole, not knowing if it would accept an offering that was already dead.

Millie rubbed the scab on her hand before returning to her chores. She decided that it was perfectly proper to not offer a burial for a bug that she had only known as dead. It had been the appropriate effort: no words, no sentiment. The flowers from the bush would be enough of a tribute.

There had been a far greater tribute for her grandmother. Everything had been to her specifications.

“Not everything,” Millie whispered, rubbing her hand again. There was one aspect of the ceremony that her grandmother would never have agreed to. Then again, her grandmother had put her children and grandchildren through trials and tortures that they had never agreed to.

It wasn’t that the ceremony had been lavish, but it had been unusual. They had been granted a bed burial, even though those had gone out of style when ancient Greta’s great-great-greats had been above ground. The family had received permission solely because the town wanted to close the lid, so to speak, on the woman who had outlived all expectations, and also outlived the patience of all around her.

Greta’s bed had been handcrafted by her father and it was the one possession she had wanted to take with her. The bed had been lowered, by ropes and pulleys, into the massive hole first, its occupant lowered after. The sheet that had been wrapped around Greta had been the mechanism for gliding her into the earth. When the wind caught it, it fluttered like angel wings.

“What a devil,” one of Millie’s uncles had said, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief as he stepped back from the open hole where his mother now resided. Millie did not know if he was talking about the energy required to bury her or about the woman herself.

A beautifully stained piece of wood was balanced between the elaborate ends of the sleigh bed so that Greta would not be visible for the remainder of the ceremony. The family members took turns approaching the hole and dropping dirt on top of the bed.

When they had returned to their seats, Millie’s youngest cousin whispered. “The bed squeaked.”

“The dirt landed on it; the dirt put weight on the mattress,” Millie explained.

“No, it squeaked, like when she would hear us whispering at night and get up to grab the switch,” Millie’s younger sister said.

“Hush, little one, it is all in your head,” Millie assured her.

“And there was knocking,” another cousin chimed in. “I heard her knocking on the headboard, just like she did when she wanted her tea in bed.”

“Hush now, that is grief talking.” The scar on Millie’s hand began to burn, just as if she were being branded by a hot iron. Again.

“If the tea was late, or not hot enough, it was the switch again.”

“Let’s not talk of that anymore,” Millie consoled,” those days are behind us.”

“That rap…her knuckles on the board, she pounded just as hard as any man. Just as hard as…”

“…the devil himself.” Millie hid her hand beneath her skirt, the seal that she had been branded with was glowing like live coals. Millie knew that the littlest ones were not imagining things. There had been sounds coming from the bed.

Greta’s final episode had been particularly lengthy, and Millie had been left in attendance. Millie had checked and rechecked vitals. She had held the mirror beneath the woman’s nostrils. She had felt the waves of coldness, ebbing and surging. And she had kept one eye on the switch on the wall, vowing that it would never be used again.

Millie knew what she knew, and she knew when it was time to alert the family. She also knew, when she saw the old woman’s finger twitch as she was being covered with the sheet, that it was time to make the offering.

She had also anticipated the children noticing sounds; she had anticipated the adults ignoring them.

While Greta was capable of making noise on her own, it wasn’t the old woman who had made the springs squeal and the headboard knock. It was the minion that had come to claim the offering Millie had made. She had made it, knowing it would not accept an offering that was already dead.

∼ Elaine Pascale

The Giver

November 1, 2023October 20, 2023 ~ TheDamned ~ 2 Comments

The baby lies in the crib, struggling to breathe. Her parents are passed out in the next room, the television screams overpowering her feeble cries. She is on the edge of the veil. This little thing is so frail—I envy her delicateness. She will pass from this life to the next as easily as a sparrow flies through shade.

Impervious, I travel anywhere I please on this planet—unaffected by heat, ice and flame. I explore it all. Lava has sizzled on my cold skin as I sunk into molten depths and I rose up to find myself unscathed. I once sought to drown myself in the deepest cracks of the ocean floor. I walked along the barren depths for an age, but eventually I again rose, unscathed.

Immortality hangs around me like a chain. I am the First Darkness. I am the Father of Death. Shtriga, vrykolakas and strigoi… I have many names. I have been here from the beginning and will likely remain until the end is memory. I have limitless power, but this tiny, weak thing goes where I may not.

I bend over the human trifle, a shadow moving within shadow. I have a gift.

I slide my hand beneath it, cradling the flesh clad bones against my palm. It shifts against me, mewls and falls still. They never fight. My omnipotence quells the mortal struggle. I am inevitable. They sense it.

I stroke my finger along the sallow cheek. It smells of feces and nicotine. The baby is naked, but for the bloated diaper. I trace the web of blue beneath the skin. There is life here. It belongs to me so I may choose: take or give. I choose to give.

I open my mouth and the gates of Hell gape wide. Here have passed kings and paupers, creators and destroyers, mothers and daughters… I do not discriminate. I descend upon the infant, my lips of ice do not warm on her fevered flesh, and breathe into her.

I am the keeper of life force, and a taste of this I send into this child. Her chest swells at the incoming gust, nearly bursting the sacs of air within, but she holds. Her baby mind lights up, synapses firing as they form a new network beyond the map to mediocrity they were originally programmed for. I breathe into this child and it lives.

“You will suffer,” I whisper to the infant. “But your suffering will give you depth. You will burn, but your heat will warm this earth.” I lower the baby back onto the stained crib mattress. Her breath is strong now. She is strong now. She will do much in a lifetime before I return and take back my gift.

I exit the crooked, grey trailer in its nest of junk. It sags in an unkempt copse of tree and shrub. Tattered remnants of plastic bag and paper tremble in the bushes like ghosts. A skinny dog watches me from beneath the splintered wooden stairs. He whines softly, a plea to leave his life to him, in spite of suffering. His blood smells sour and doesn’t call to me.

I leave the hovel, following a trail of moonlight. Anyone watching would see only the shadow of a cloud passing across the moon’s face. Some, more keen, may notice the dancing of dry leaves at my silent step. Only the mad would see my true form.

I have given a gift, and now I must receive a gift to retain the balance. There is no method to my choosing. I am neither good nor evil. I am yin and yang. I am the eternal circle of life. I spy a tent draped in white roses, and I move toward it.

Behind the tent is a small, yellow house. The scent of golden anticipation wafts toward me, drifting through twilight, and I follow. It leads me up the wooden siding, through a trellis of wisteria, to find an open window. Thin eyelet curtains are the only barrier between me and the heady odor that calls. I traverse glaciers. I push through ice sheets that trap mammoths. I meditate on mountains so high the air can’t climb them. I push through the curtain easily.

A young woman lays in a tumble of sheets. Her hair is tangled from restless sleep. Laid out on a nearby chair is a dress of white satin and sequin. Veils, silk flowers and ropes of pearl cover a bedside table. She smells like hope, love and lavender dreams. I lick my lips and move toward her.

I stroke my finger along her blooming cheek. It smells of perfume and musk. Her bare shoulder lies exposed where the sheets have fallen, cream against white. I trace the web of blue beneath the skin. There is life. It belongs to me so I may choose: take or give. I choose to take.

I slide my hand beneath her, cradling the flesh clad bones against my palm. Her head falls back, leaving her neck open to me. I descend, a shadow moving within shadow. I take a gift.

I open my mouth against her skin and the pulse of her blood warms me. I pierce her, and all of her joy flows into me. I fill with her essence, a rich and fragrant life. I drink deeply until she goes cold and I grow warm. I lower the woman back into her cocoon of linen and depart. Outside, beneath the trellis of heavy, purple flowers, I find night bleaching into dawn. I make my way silently through the tent, and toward my own repose.

In the tent, I pluck a rose, hold it to my face and kiss it. My lips are still wet from her blood and the petals curl and stain with red. I inhale deep, relishing my rich and fragrant life. Immortality graces me like a chain. I place the reddened rose on the altar and depart.

It is my gift.

∼ Angela Yuriko Smith

Reflections

October 25, 2023October 12, 2023 ~ Ian Sputnik ~ 4 Comments

As I looked into the mirror, I found it hard to believe it was my own reflection. When did I get so old?

I traced every line on my face back to its cause. The ones around my eyes due to squinting from reading in bad light with failing eyesight. The receding hairline, when it used to be standing room only on my head. My lips, once full, now tight, cracked and pale. My face, well formed with a chiselled chin, now thin with sunken cheeks.

Time just passed by so quickly. The doctor removed the mirror and checked it for signs of misted glass. He looked towards my family who stood around my bed and shook his head solemnly.

As they put me in the coffin and nailed the lid shut, I wondered how long it would be before my face started to putrefy and rot to such a degree that I would not be able to recognise myself at all.

∼ Ian Sputnik

Fallen

October 18, 2023October 15, 2023 ~ Nina D'Arcangela ~ 4 Comments

Her wail spit the air.

“How… How could you let this happen?” she crooned as the young boy lay motionless in her arms, blood trickling from his cracked skull. “Why choose him when there are so many others?” Inconsolable, the mother stood and limped back to their home where she placed his still body on a rock bench.

The afternoon and evening spent grieving, she finally drifted off to sleep. In her dreams came the answer, but not one she expected.

“Do not shed a tear for the young one, he was meant for things unkind in this world and could not have stopped himself, Giver of Life.”

“Things, what things? Couldn’t stop himself from what?” the mother asked of the Taker of Life.

“Things I cannot explain. Things that would break you, tear him from you, make you wish you’d never given birth.”

Jerking fitfully, even her dream mind could not fathom a world in which her young son was taken before manhood, before he was old enough to claim a wife who would bear him children of his own. She spat at the Taker of Life, “Nothing could make me wish such a thing! You took him because of greed and corrupt desire – do not claim nobility as your cause. You’re evil! I should tear your effigy from the temple, you do not deserve our reverence.”

As her heart seized, the winged God sighed. “Woman, I speak the truth. He was not destined to be mundane; he would have brought about an end to all. Do you not see what resides in his soul?”

But a mother’s grief can never be sated with prophetic words, nor could she see beyond the love that tinted her sight. The Taker knew of this but did not wish the breeder to suffer. “Kind woman, hear me clear – your boy would have brought ruin to the village, he would have led riots that would have crumbled our civilization, MY civilization.” The Taker is not without compassion. “I can seed you another, kinder child.”

“No! Insuetti was my child, I do not wish to carry one of your kind. I want my boy back – damn your village.” Wracking sobs fed the small gasp heard in the waking world.

“Giver of Life, open your eye, see your boy. Do you not see that his blood runs black as the night? Do you not understand that he was the antithesis of all you are? Must I show you the atrocities he would have wrought?” The mother refused to wake and accept her child for what the Taker claimed him to be. Where there was darkness, she could see only light. Where there was malice, she could remember only his joyous grin. Where there was deceit, she could perceive only childish antics.

Left with no way to console the Giver, the Taker showed her a glimpse of what would have come to pass if the child hadn’t fallen to his death. He showed her images of greed and cruelty, of her sweet boy grown to manhood, of the acts of violence he would commit against their people. The plague he would bring upon the land. He showed her fields barren of crops; their village in ashes; men, women and children slaughtered by the droves. All because her child was brought into this world.

Once again, the Taker prompted for her to wake, to see Insuetti with clear eyes, and she did. She woke, looked upon her son with the reflection of the dream-vision playing against the back of her eyes. She could not deny that she had glimpsed the things the Taker of Life spoke of, but she could not accept them into her heart either.

Climbing upon the stone bench the child’s body rested upon, she straddled the young one, drew a sharp rock across the soft flesh of each inner thigh, and bathed her boy in the blood that gave him life with fervent hope that it would bring him breath again even as it stole the air from her own lungs.

∼ Nina D’Arcangela

Spot

October 11, 2023October 9, 2023 ~ Charles Gramlich ~ 8 Comments

Spot is my pet and I love him. My daddy brought him home last week, but already we’re inseparable. He sleeps on the floor by my bed and I feed him scraps from the table when no one is looking.

I love my daddy, too. And not just because he brought Spot home after my dog, Rover, died. Daddy knows everything. He teaches at a major university and is a doctor, though I’m always sposed to remember he’s not a “med doctor” but a doctor of Sperimental Psychology. He says med doctors are just plumbers.

I’m eight years old and one thing that worried me at first about Spot was that he was older than me. So was Rover. But when I asked Daddy if he thought Spot might die soon from old age, he said not to worry, that Rover had died from barking too much and Spot doesn’t bark.

Spot plays all the games I like, as long as I give him clear orders. I especially like to play fetch with him, and he never gets the ball all slobbery like Rover did. The only thing I don’t like is that he’s not as much fun to pet as Rover. Part of it is that he doesn’t have Rover’s soft fur, but I think a lot of it is the ugly black box attached to his head. It gets in the way a lot.

Daddy says the box is really important, though. He says it has lectrodes that control Spot, and that without it Spot would run away. I don’t want that, so I’ll just have to live with the box, I guess. I sure wouldn’t want to see Spot’s picture on a milk carton like those other lost kids.

∼ Charles Gramlich

Not My Annabella

October 4, 2023September 30, 2023 ~ TheDamned ~ 3 Comments

Annabella thinks she is the custodian of the happy ending in her narrative. She slips through gravity into a character she decides. I watch her from the wings of the theatre of our house, with a mug of tea, and try to enjoy the show.

I like Rapunzel best, and Lady Macbeth least. Ophelia and Juliet make me think.

A tourist in her own life, sightseeing here and there, a magpie picking up roles to take home.

Words remembered from some place, but she summons my attention, delivers them sincerely as if her own sweat exists in every syllable; and as I bend down and kneel at her feet with a proposal on my lips drying like spit, she hurts me with sworn untruths.

I cannot stomach the drama in an empty theatre, her performing as if I am the lights, the music, the audience, so we walk to the park where she can have her audience. I indulge this once.

We hire a rowing boat. Annabella tells me she loves me which sculpts the clouds into angels and unicorns. The sun is shining and daffodils and tulips in the park decree it is spring. She smells of lavender and her voice, singing The Owl and the Pussy Cat, tickles my ears.

Annabella wonders how the oars sound as they caress the water; if our boat leaves an echo on the river the way someone’s laughter does on a listener’s smile; if the swans make a sound when they glide and stop, glide and stop, and how the eddies sound to the fish beneath.

Her hand trails in the water like a vapour trail in the clouds. She likes to leave a mark wherever she goes—my Annabella.

And she loves me, she says. And it is spring, and we are rowing nowhere in particular, and I close my eyes, just for an instant and pretend she isn’t lying.

Raindrops land on my eyelids. April showers. As I row the boat back the way we came, I think of the umbrella stand in our hall. It is always empty because she leaves them whenever she remembers to take one. She used to joke it was a way of making it easy for family and friends to buy her a present.

I bought her one once – a duck handle, which she said she adored – for two weeks.

Am I an umbrella of hers waiting to be held, only to be forgotten? Are there enough umbrellas in the world to catch her lies like rain?

Back at home, I say I need a shower. My hurt needs to be wet. The soreness lubricated after her abrasive tongue. Standing akimbo in the shower cubicle with the tiles swimming in and out of vision, I resolve to possess a greater beauty than her: the pure truth.

It has to be done.

Annabella is cooking something aromatic for supper, but it will go to waste. Soon she will know my feelings, and I will need to shower again.

~ Louise Worthington