Once Upon a Time with the Dead

July 19, 2023June 29, 2023 ~ Charles Gramlich ~ 6 Comments

Alkali dust under the white blaze of a Mexican sun.
Riders are coming. To a village standing idle on a ghostly quiet day. Or so at first it seems.

Then, from the bell tower of the adobe church a lone guitar chord rings out. Quick fingers pluck a haunting tune. From one blank window comes a wink of silver. From another a click-click snap. Men are waiting: good, honest men who are aware only that an old hatred is sweeping across their land.

The riders drift into the village square, long gray coats flapping in the dry wind that moves the dust. There are five of them. Known men. Wanted men who covet what doesn’t belong to them. Men with strange, dangerous names like Doc, Clay, Jesse, Ringo, Sundance. Their eyes are black, colder than the single-action Colts at their hips. The leader is Jesse. He dismounts, spurs chinking on the paving stones that mark the square.

Jesse’s movements are a signal. The guitar clashes, strings shredding with sound. From the windows of the town rifles speak smoke, and the rolling crack of gunfire hammers the brilliant sunshine. Bullets tug at gray dusters. A horse drops, and another, their riders leaping free, hands diving for pistols, coming up belching fire.

Jesse takes a shotgun slug to the chest, a .44 round through his shoulder. But his own guns are banging. Splinters and glass fly from the building above him. A man tumbles through a broken window, crashes through fleeing pigeons to the street.

The villagers are outmanned. This is not the predictable evil they had expected. Their bullets tear holes in flesh and tattered gray, but it is only the defenders who fall, until they all lie crimson and still against a canvas of light and stark shadow.

But the gray riders? They do not bleed. They will not lie down. Though dirt has been their friend before.

∼ Charles Gramlich

Open Doors

July 12, 2023June 19, 2023 ~ TheDamned ~ 3 Comments

In the centre of my back I feel the pressure of something start to grow, like a hand sending me one way and not another. My skin has started to peel back, and white feathers peek out. I see them in the mirror, feel the stubble of the new ones when I lie down. I try not to toss and turn in case I disturb my feathers.

My wings are growing every day. As spring is approaching, I stare out of the window, willing for birdsong, for greenery, for the sun, to hear the rustle of my fully-grown wings. There is an ache in my bones when I see the sky: a calling, a compass growing on my back, wanting to take me home. I worry my heart fluttering inside my ribcage is too heavy for my wings to carry me, so I try to think about beautiful things like butterflies and birdsong, and sunny parks, and the swell of the sea.

Open windows.

Open doors.

When my wings are fully grown, I’ll wrap them around me to keep me warm; they’ll shield me, so all I will see is white light and purity.

In the nest of my single bed, I dream of my new body making friends with the air, the sky, stroking it with the beat of my wings. I glimpse myself flying between the trees, touching the tips of canopies, my white plumage trailing and pure in the dappled light.

In the half-light of the early morning, though, I see only my thin shoulder blades casting shadows onto the wall. In the mirror, I see that my face has grown fierce and hard. There is no rustle of feathers or beat of wings. Ashes from my lost years and lost loved ones scatter around me; they keep settling. One day, I will be buried under them.

The pencil, a quill, a feather, a weapon. Only my pen writes compassion. Who or what will save me?

~ Louise Worthington

DISCARDS

July 5, 2023March 23, 2023 ~ Marge Simon ~ 3 Comments

I. Composer

Wracked with problems of the bowels,

sick and damned with tinnitus,

Ludwig tore up his tenth symphony.

When Gerta came to clean his room,

finding shreds of notes beneath his bed,

she swept them up to fuel the kitchen fires.

II. Artist

Behind five months in rent payments,

an artist in Arles gave his landlord a painting.

In the long cold winter months that followed,

the landlord’s wife used it for kindling;

“Still another picture of sunflowers!” she said.

“Such a waste of his brother Theo’s money!”

III. Author

Hans Schmidt is a dour man, grown old before his time.

He fidgets behind his desk, uniformed and pretentious.

In the last two years, he’s lost most of his hair.

His wife wants out. Frowning, Schmidt dispatches a group

of Jews to the showers. Among them is a frail teenager

with huge eyes. Her name is Anne.

∼ Marge Simon

Orchard of Bones

June 28, 2023June 23, 2023 ~ Lee Andrew Forman ~ 5 Comments

A vast expanse lies before me. Its emptiness is broken only by ivory totems, arranged long ago by an unknown artist. Each one takes its own form; limitless shapes and arrangements construct the populace of bones. I follow the path without going astray. I know not to approach these structures. This land is cursed, forever soured by the evils it holds deep. A rumble sounds in the distant sky. The winds bring its inhuman voice to my ears. I hear it pure, unadulterated by the unnatural spires of mankind. It’s a calling, a welcome, an invitation. I must follow. The journey leaves my feet hot and blistered; my legs, weak and thin. But I know no choice existed. I come to meet the caretaker of this garden of death. And death, it is. My past is behind me. The present is here. My future, non-existent. I’ve arrived here not by folly, but by destiny. My life expired long before this trek. And this is but the final destination. My flesh dissolves, exposing the osseous frame which will be used to construct a new totem, my effigy, to be added to the growing garden of memories.

∼ Lee Andrew Forman

Grave of the Damned

June 21, 2023June 7, 2023 ~ afstewart ~ 6 Comments

A soft mist tangled through the trees past the haunting of midnight, as the wind rustled a few dead leaves still clinging to the branches. One crooked gravestone leaned under the shifting moonlight, its crumbling edges and rough surface slowly losing the fight against time and the elements. The winter-tinged breeze swirled the detritus on the ground in crinkles and crunches as if someone was walking across the grave, bent on disturbing the mouldering remains of one Jebediah Osbourne.
A rich man in life, the last of an ancient family, Jebediah embraced the esoteric and eccentric, shunning polite society. In death, society had abandoned him to a dark eternity alone in the woods, buried and forgotten.
Well, perhaps not entirely forgotten.
The box appeared with the full moon, on that October 31st in 1913, summoned by the rumblings of a war beginning across the ocean. The faint drum of a heartbeat reverberated from inside, inexplicably echoed by the corpse interred below the earth.
Thump, thump. Thump, thump.
A pulse vibrating along the earth, sinking its rhythm into the soil and intoning through the trees until they trembled with the cadence. Sensing the unnatural disturbance, an owl screeched in the distance, The forest screamed in response as the dirt quaked and shifted, as streams of blood poured from the deep bowels of nightmares.
Thump, thump. Thump, thump.
And then a click.
The box opened. Not with a shriek or a howl. With a soft, lingering chuckle.
And the hand of dead Jebediah Osbourne broke free of its grave, reaching for the night sky.

~ A. F. Stewart

Why Their Eyes

June 14, 2023June 7, 2023 ~ Miriam H. Harrison ~ 4 Comments

Evelyn hated that she couldn’t remember his eyes. All her memories were painted in broad strokes, leaving out the precious details. Some nights she could find him in her dreams. There, he’d be as he once was—still young, still innocent, still alive. She would pull him close, breathe in his scent, sob her joy and relief into his tousled hair. But always he would look up at her with two empty holes where his eyes should be.

“David,” she’d say, “what happened to your eyes?”

Each time she would wake without an answer, gazing into the dark of her too-empty home.

David, she wondered again, what happened to you?

***

It was now ten years since the boys had started disappearing. Their faces had been everywhere: nightly news, shop windows, church pinboards. They were impossible not to see, but even harder to look at. Each one had made Evelyn think of David, made her grateful for his safety, made her ashamed of her own selfishness.

Then the posters started coming down. That was even worse. In those posters there had been hope: the boys’ smiling faces captured in time, safe and whole. But one by dreadful one, those hopes disappeared. The town’s whispers said what the news could not: the bodies that were found were not safe, not whole.

“Why their eyes?” the neighbours had murmured.

Why their eyes? Evelyn wondered still.

***

Maybe the answer was there, in his childhood. She had searched her memories so many times that they were starting to fray, to unravel, to fall to pieces all around her. Evelyn tried to knit them back together, but she doubted herself more each time.

Those eyes that she could never remember, was there something there? Something she had ignored? Something she hadn’t bothered to see? There were too many questions she had never thought to ask until it was too late. Now they hung about her—heavy and unanswered.

She wondered what others had seen, looking at him. What he had seen, looking at them. In those eyes was the mystery, the truth.

Those boys, what had they seen with their missing eyes?

***

The eyes of the town were all around. She felt them every time she left her home, which wasn’t often. She tired of being seen, of the unheard but constant whispers that accompanied those eyes.

There had been a time when she was unseen. As a single mother, she had gone through the paces of work and home in quiet obscurity, leaving little to be seen.

David hadn’t been so lucky. He had told her he didn’t fit in. He had said the other kids picked on him, singled him out. He had felt all too seen.

A rite of passage, she had thought.

Now, she wondered.

***

She had tried to ask him once. That last time she had seen him alive.

“Why their eyes?”

David had met her gaze through the glass partition, those unknowable eyes creasing in a smile that chilled her more than the prison, more than his scarlet death row uniform.

He never did answer.

∼ Miriam H. Harrison

The Last Post

June 7, 2023May 29, 2023 ~ Richard Meldrum ~ 4 Comments

This happened in 1952. I was young, a boy of seventeen. A conscript, like so many of my friends. Some of them were unlucky enough to be sent off to fight in Korea. I was one of the lucky ones, posted to Norfolk on the east coast of England. It was a bleak and isolated place, but I didn’t mind; it was better than fighting. My service consisted of endless parade-ground drills, physical exercise and rifle training. I’m not sure what good I did for my country, but perhaps the boys fighting and dying in Korea felt the same.

I was heading back home on leave. I planned on catching a train passing through the local station at 9 p.m. Getting this train would allow me to catch the overnight mail express in Norwich. I would be at home first thing in the morning.

I headed out front gate of the camp. It was already dark and the country roads were unlit, but I knew the way to the station like the back of my hand. After a fifteen-minute walk, I arrived at the station, a small red-brick building. The platform was empty. The station building was dark and the waiting room was locked. I was alone.

I read the notices on the platform to pass the time. Having quickly exhausted this diversion, I stared without thinking at the other side of the railway line, across from the platform. I found myself looking into misty blackness. I knew in front of me were hectares of flat farmland. I checked my watch. Five minutes had passed, with ten to go. I looked up from my watch and glanced over to the other side of the railway tracks again. Shapes were moving in the dark fields in front of me, just beyond the reach of the platform lights. As I stood there, my mouth open and my heart racing, I could hear voices. British voices. I could hear words being spoken, words which were very familiar to me. They were orders, barked in an all too familiar military tone. Attention. At ease. Dress right. These were the commands I was used to obeying without question at the endless drill parades I endured. I could feel my muscles twitching to obey.

I wondered if a troop embarkation was scheduled, but I would have known. There are no real secrets on an army base. I also knew troops wouldn’t wait for a train in the darkness of a muddy field, not when there was a perfectly good platform. The noise from the fields beyond the railway line continued. In the darkness, in the muddy field in front of me, troops were on parade. I was terrified. Against all logic and reason, I knew there were dozens, if not hundreds, of soldiers in the field opposite me. Soldiers I couldn’t see.

I heard a command. Attention! The troops were suddenly quiet. There was a pause, laden with tension, then a bugle sounded. It was the Last Post; the signal the military day had ended. It was also played when a soldier was laid to rest. The bugler stopped, the notes drifting across the field. There was one last command.

“Soldiers! You have done your duty. You are dismissed!”

The field opposite me was suddenly empty.

I jumped out of my skin as the train slid into the station. I took it to the next station and caught the mail train. I spent a week with my family then returned to Norfolk. I finished my time as a solider without firing a shot in anger and, my duty done, went home with a clear conscience. I only have one thing to add, something which might help with the solution to the mystery. Over the last few years I have done some investigating. The camp where I was stationed had been used as a disembarkation camp for troops in the First and Second World Wars. From the camp they were taken straight to the docks to board the ships to would carry them to Europe and beyond. Many of the men sent overseas never came back home. Perhaps it is of significance, perhaps not, but I will never forget what I witnessed in 1952.

∼ RJ Meldrum

Prince Charming

May 31, 2023April 18, 2023 ~ Elaine Pascale ~ 4 Comments

He had always known he was different.

The celebratory ball had been planned years prior, at a time when he had been a child playing “castle” with little Ella who was brought to the courtyard by her nanny. Current day Prince Charming wanted to scream at his parents for being so blind. Didn’t they realize he did not want to marry, or at least, he didn’t want to marry a princess? Did they need a more obvious hint than his always insisting he was the queen of the castle when he had played with Ella?

Ironically, the ball was considered a “coming out.” It was meant for the debutantes to be offered as if they were impersonal wares instead of daughters that were cherished.

At the ball, the maidens were paraded in front of him, each one growing more unappealing than the one before. Finally, Prince Charming signaled that it was time to dance, and his parents reluctantly conceded. They had hoped he would select a bride prior to drinks and dancing.

Prince Charming managed to avoid contact with the slavering single ladies as he swayed alone in a corner. Then he saw her.

He hadn’t seen Ella since her mother had died and her father remarried. He strolled across the dance floor and asked her to dance. She was perfect: no one remembered her, no one was chaperoning her, no one would interfere. Furthermore, her sense of style was flawless. As they twirled, he ran a hand over her back.

“Silk?”

She winked. “Magic.”

“It is some sort of magic that made you appear.” He smiled. “We used to have such fun together; we were quite the pair.”

Ella could not match his smile. “I believe that is the last time I ever had fun, and the last time I was ever called by my real name.” After some gentle nudging, she recounted the abuse she had suffered since she had last seen him. She confided that she had to sleep on a bed of ashes and that her meals were the spilled food she secretly scavenged from the burning coals of the fire. “If I were to remove these gloves, you would see nothing but scars.”

Prince Charming’s heart broke for his old friend. “No one helps you? What about that kind nanny?”

“She was fired when my father remarried. There is no one comforting me except the feral animals I have befriended. My stepmother and stepsisters take turns beating me; it is how they find enjoyment.”

Prince Charming considered this sad information throughout the next song and then he told her, “I could help you escape, but you would have to live a different life than you may have expected.”

Without hesitation, she said, “Any life would be preferable to the one I live.”

“Then I have an idea. I noticed your beautiful shoes that are unlike any others I have ever seen…”

She leaned closer, “I told you; my outfit is magic.”

“I fully believe it and we will need more magic to get away with my plan. What I was thinking was…”

The two hashed out the details while deflecting the envious looks of those who wanted a turn to dance with the prince. At midnight, as planned, the girl accidentally left one of her glass slippers behind. The prince dramatically swept up the shoe, held it aloft, and proclaimed he would marry any girl who could fit the slipper. He said he would go from house to house the following day, until he found the maiden with the right shoe size.

Also as planned, he only visited one house.

When the door opened, Prince Charming realized that two of the ugliest eligible bachelorettes from the night before were Ella’s stepsisters. The women were beside themselves when he entered their home. They knocked each other with their elbows, pushing so that they could be the one closest to their visitor.

“You are here about the shoe?” a stepsister asked.

“Indeed, I am,” the prince said loudly. He knew that Ella was waiting for her cue. “May I ask how many maidens live in this home?”

“Just the two of us,” the other stepsister answered.

This lie made it easy for the prince to follow through with the plan. “Then please be seated on the sofa.”

The women perched on the edge of the cushions, kicking off their large satin shoes.

The prince handed a shoe to one sister followed by the other, confident the dainty slipper would never fit their large, calloused feet.

The stepsisters grunted and struggled, but the glass construction would not give. They fought over the shoe, believing they could make it fit. Each woman panted and cried, “I can make this work, give me a minute…”

The prince scoffed, “I don’t think either of you really wants to be a princess. If you did, you would make the shoe fit.”

Both stepsisters sobbed and wailed, “I do! I do want to be a princess!”

“Those sound like magic words,” the prince announced, and Ella appeared.

“What is she doing here?” the women scoffed.

“Just this.” Ella put her fingers to her mouth and whistled loudly. A mischief of rats ran into the room and the stepsisters pulled their feet up onto the cushions; their squeals and squirms rivaling that of the rodents.

“More magic,” the prince exclaimed. Ella looked alarmed but he had made a solemn promise to keep her secret.

What happened next was far outside of the realm of courtly decorum. The rats were not shy about attacking the women’s feet, devouring toes and heels quickly.

When the stepsisters fainted from blood loss, the prince called loudly, “Is there no other woman in the house to try the shoe? Even a widow who might like to live in the palace—”

Ella’s stepmother ran down the stairs and looked from Ella to the prince expectantly.

“We have a special shoe for you to try,” the prince explained. Ella pulled the iron shovel from the fire.

“That’s for scooping ashes,” the stepmother noted.

As their plans had not included touching the abusers directly, Ella whistled, and two large hawks landed on her stepmother’s shoulders, forcing the woman to sit on the sofa.

“That shovel has many purposes,” the prince assured her as the rabbits Ella had called forth pushed the shovel onto the soles of the woman’s feet, scorching the skin with a sizzle that could be heard above her screams.

Prince Charming and Ella vacated the house, understanding that they could have left without bringing harm to anyone, but feeling fully satisfied with their revenge.

A month later, they had an extravagant royal wedding. When it was time for the groom to kiss his bride, their lips met but there were no fireworks, no tingling spark. In fact, there was no feeling of romance at all.

Ella smiled knowingly at the prince and whispered, “I will keep your secret, too.”

In their happily ever after, Ella no longer suffered abuse and Prince Charming was free to be the queen of the castle.

∼ Elaine Pascale

Invaders

May 24, 2023May 21, 2023 ~ Nina D'Arcangela ~ 4 Comments

Growing in clusters and well cocooned in a thistle-like brush, this non-indigenous species has begun to bud on the south-western side of Pular. The stratovolcano has been active for some time now, emitting noxious fumes that have kept researchers and volcanologist rife with both anticipation and abundant caution. As the area is not stable, we are unsure if the flora emit carbon dioxide or not, though other plant species in the area seem to be dwindling which would indicate a rise of gaseous fumes that smother what sparse life is able to grow there.

Recent reports seem to indicate that when the bud has reached maturity, it will detach from the stem allowing for a new bud to form. This naturally occurring ‘dead-head’ process releases the buds in what might be referred to as a rhythmic pulse. Once the buds separate from the mother plant, they begin gathering in small clusters, making their way toward the western shoreline of Chile along the Pacific Coast. There is a sense of waiting, a pregnant pause if you will, in the tension forming in the seemingly endless row of invaders.

One can only deduce that a sufficient number have gathered as the thousands of buds lining the shore have begun to mobilize. Waves of what look like gray sleigh bells have entered the water, and appear to be moving with intent toward the continental shelf.

Two weeks have passed, and what we initially believed to be floral pods are clearly presenting as small aquatic beings. Unlike the naturally occurring creatures in the depths of the ocean, these lifeforms appear to be toxic to any fish, crustacean, or invertebrates they manage to hunt down or infiltrate. At this rate, predictive algorithms suggest all life in our oceans will be consumed within a matter of twelve to fourteen months, though I would posit that figure to be munificent of the actual impending depletion. As more buds bloom, detach, and make their way to the water, I would suggest that six months of life left on planet Earth is a generous estimate.

∼ Nina D’Arcangela

Full Moon

May 10, 2023April 23, 2023 ~ Ian Sputnik ~ 8 Comments

Rebecca pulled the heavy bolt across the front door. Picking up a lantern, she made her way to the kitchen. On the table, she pushed the pile of cutlery to one side and picked up the pistol. It was heavy in her hand. She could barely lift it. Was it the weight or fear that made her hand shake as she practiced aiming it? Maybe it was a mixture of both. She picked up a bullet and put it in her pocket. It was a conscious decision of hers not to load the gun at that moment, as if not doing so would delay the inevitable.

She breathed in long and deep to steady her nerves and made her way upstairs. Retrieving the round of ammunition from her dress she rolled it between her fingers. It glistened in the light of the lantern, and she paused, marveling at its beauty. It was her father who had shown her at such an early age how to melt and shape metal into a bullet. The silver spoon she had chosen made just the right amount of material for one perfect round.

Loading the weapon, she walked quietly down the corridor. It was a Peacemaker. The type that she had seen in the dime novels about the Wild West. The local sheriff would usually be armed with one. She moved past her parents’ room and stopped. It was 29 days since her father had been killed by the beast. 29 days since the last full moon. 29 days since he had tried, and failed, to protect his family from the hideous creature that came for flesh and blood. On that night it had received both in ample portions.

She made her way to her little brother’s room where he was sleeping soundly. She bent down and kissed him gently on the cheek, feeling his warm, innocent breath on her face. He was not yet even four years of age and was the apple of her eye.

Silver was the only thing that could stop the creature, or at least that is what she had heard. After her father had fallen prey to it, she knew it was now down to her to protect what was left of her family. Her mother had died of fever three summers ago.

She left James’s room and silently closed the door behind her. There was a leather high-backed chair in the corridor which she had moved from her room so she could be as close to him as possible. She settled herself in it to wait.

The clock above the mirror on the opposite wall ticked loudly. It was ten to midnight. She hoped with all her heart that the monster would not appear that night but with the moon shining full it was a fool’s hope.

Rebecca awoke with a start, not intending to have slept at all. A growl filled the corridor, low and menacing in its pitch. She stood and caught her reflection in the mirror. Her eyes shone yellow, her ears started stretching into hairy points, and her teeth grew into razor-sharp fangs. She raised the gun to her temple and pulled the trigger.

∼ Ian Sputnik