The Gray Man

January 28, 2026January 25, 2026 ~ Charles Gramlich ~ 2 Comments

He came frequently to the library. The gray man. He was of average height but above average weight. His hair had gone missing except around the edges. It was lighter than his skin, whose gray color looked bad. I thought him constantly on the verge of heart failure. But he never stopped coming.

When I first arrived at the university library, people spoke of the gray man with intense irritation. He was retired. An ex-professor. But he seemed not to have recognized the “ex.” I heard that he would pontificate and exasperate. He demanded services loudly. Staff members were sent scurrying after articles and tomes. And he never said, “thank you.” Always, as he made his slow way through the doors, the library folk watched with hooded eyes. No one liked him. Some said they wished he’d retired, “to Hell.”

But the gray man’s “loud” days were behind him by my time. I rarely saw him speak, and then only in a stale, asthmatic whisper. He came in, removed papers and volumes from the black satchel he habitually carried, and spread them on a table, rising ponderously on occasion to fetch more books and journals from the shelves. He scribbled notes on legal pads and transferred snippets from one to another. I never heard that he published an article from it, or even that he submitted anything. Perhaps he was working on a book, but his research materials were too eclectic to reveal a subject. The only demand I ever saw him make was to be left alone.

Slowly, the looks the staff gave the man changed: from irritation, to resignation, to tolerance, to pity. Eventually, they seemed not to see him at all. But I still saw him. He became as gray and ephemeral as a passing rain and I knew I could finally approach him. For the dead do not fear the dead.

∼ Charles Gramlich

Mechanica

January 21, 2026November 9, 2025 ~ Lee Andrew Forman ~ 3 Comments

The toil of survival is the unending burden of maintenance and sacrifice; our most valuable asset. It is exchanged hand to hand, mouth to mouth, and with pen on paper. Orders handed down, given, and taken without resistance or complaint. One faulty piece, and the mechanical system stutters. Its heart feels the pain.

As do we all, as I now, reminiscing about hues of gray in my memory, prepare my own sacrifice. One unmarked and unspoken. The only hand in this deal is my own. It’s a plan I’ve designed for many cycles. One I’ve questioned again and again, but only to be certain it was right.

I ponder the Temple of Life, tubes miles long feeding what it houses. They snake through every neighborhood like tentacles reaching out to keep watch on what it creates. The piston strokes eternal, pumping the great apparatus with all it needs to keep its labor going. It cries out in steeled agony; the wailing echoes across our sprawling metropolis, a remembrance that without suffering, there can be no creation.

We, in our feeble flesh can only bow in awe of its awesome nature—our Mother, our God, our Giver of Animation, the perpetrator of reproduction. It’s the source of this docile throng I am a part of. The creator of an unending mediocrity content with existing only to sustain existence. Nothing more, nothing less.

My most private thoughts, those hidden deep in the night, led me astray from tradition. I looked into the obscured night sky and wondered what was behind the curtain of civilization blocking our view of it. What did those long before us see?

That was the first line in my plan. And as it evolved, I learned the architecture of destruction.

I maintained conformity throughout this process of inner transformation. I had to remain blended with the community, else I be liquidated as fuel for the societal engine. I walked with the pack, expression blank, while exploring the vivid thoughts unfolding in my mind. A new dawn arose in my heart. A rising light made known all the dreams and wonders that my hands could never touch. To have this knowledge is a blessing and a curse. I’m grateful for the gift of illumination, yet sigh with grief that it cannot exist outside the realm of fantasy. A true metamorphosis within the confines of this autonomous world would not suit its function.

There was only one conclusion I could come to…

So the blueprint in my mind continued. Its foundation was built from hopes and dreams, but as they weathered, I constructed over them with sorrow and despair. Never have these things occurred to me before. A mindless automaton, I filed in with the system in which I was birthed, right where I belonged. I could not see past the horizon; only the menial tasks I was assigned from the moment I came into this world occupied my mind. But now I am awakened, now I can see.

The great mechanism that produces our producers is an abomination. We have aligned to the point where no figureheads are needed, no leaders are required to lead a population of sheep. Some may call this utopia, the apex of achievement, with our vast cities which are living, breathing entities themselves, and the peaceful nature of our lives within them, speak to the eradication of conflict and strife. But are these things not part of what make life alive? Are they not the darkness to give light meaning?

To suckle on the ribbed feeding tube you’re given is to accept death before it is dealt.

As I sign this contract in my mind, I leave my place of rest, the only space I’m free to pursue these ideas. I notice how moist my palms are as I close the door behind me. My legs are weak as I enter the assemblage of others going where they are needed. But the choice has been made, the plan set in motion.

I’ll consume no more, give nothing else to the needless demand we have forced upon ourselves. We have enslaved ourselves to no one master, but the endless living mechanism that we keep alive, so that it may sustain us. It’s a symbiotic relationship with no future, it’s stalled, stunted, halted at this time we’ve been stranded in for countless ages. Our biological mastery of life itself has taken that very thing from us. We’ve grown our infrastructure, and its living mass has covered all land and sea. It is the great connector, the infallible supreme being that has stolen our very souls by nothing more than its inherent purpose.

As I approach a crossing, I travel left instead of right. My heart races as I fear even a subtle change will raise the alarm of any passerby. I’m where I don’t belong, where I’m not deemed needed by the many. I’m a gear turning the wrong direction.

But no one takes notice. They only continue marching in unison as intended. They allow my place in line just as compliantly as anything any of us have ever done. As I continue toward my ultimate and last destination, my blood boils with the thrill of deviancy. This trifling act of defiance, this willful alteration to the system awakens my heart ever more. My insides bloom with life. I feel the air against my face, the impact of my feet against the ground. My skin tingles with anticipation. This radical digression stimulates my being, spawning a rebirth in my core self. I want to grin in the splendor of change, but I must be diligent in my reserve. I mustn’t reveal this revelation. Not if I want to achieve the end of this terminal journey.

My last meal churns in my gut as I see the Temple of Life stabbing the horizon. Its monumental height dwarfs all which surrounds it. It was created to be the creator, it is the edifice to represent all we are, the face of our inhumanity. It was once an icon of glory in my singular thought, but now I see past it, now my eyes are focused, and my heart is open.

It is why I must do what I must do.

As I approach, the living, breathing Mechanica towers before me in its sickening configuration. Black, ribbed pipelines crawl up its sides in geometric patterns, veins carrying nutrients essential for its purpose. Its curved edges and snaking girders mock me in their asymmetrical symmetry. The entrance, a great black maw waiting for no one. There are no guards, no one enters or leaves this place. I walk in, an unchecked heretic among my people.

The Great Queen Mother hangs in the center of the chamber by shining black chains. A tangle of gargantuan pipes and wires extends from her head up into the darkness of the hollow spire above. Feeding tubes penetrate her massive abdomen. It expands and contracts in rhythmic motion as young are pushed from within. They’re placed on a conveyor, ready to be checked, marked, and processed. I look down at the chip in my arm and vaguely remember my youth. I was a child once, birthed from this very same place, the same Mother.

For the first time since my awakening, regret creeps up and holds me by the throat. Suddenly, I don’t want to commit to what I intended. I feel…affection for Queen Mother, my Mother.

Her eyes look down upon me, an expression of anguish warps her face. She begs for mercy. Although a new concept, no words are needed for me to understand compassion. I sigh, knowing now my intentions are more right than ever. She wants this. More than any of us ever could.

I nod to her in the only gesture I can summon as a goodbye, and step to the pipeline which gives her life. I wrap my arms around its slick surface and pull. It rattles slightly in its port. I take a deep breath, squeeze tight, and wrench it loose with every bit of will I have. It falls to the floor, its torn end pumping white ooze. The port left in her belly leaks bodily fluids, they mix and congeal into a sickly black oil. I weep as it begins to cover my feet.

The throb of the Great Machine quiets, the pumping slows its rhythm. Mother takes a long breath, hot steam mists from her vents, and her once eternal hum of life ebbs away forever.

∼ Lee Andrew Forman

The Vengeance of His Evil

January 7, 2026December 28, 2025 ~ TheDamned ~ 2 Comments

Ted visited psychic surgeon Dr. Munstre Croon after relentless daily pressure headaches pounded the side and top of his head. Tad’s own doctor diagnosed stress and tension with possible depression and hypochondria “you don’t need a specialist,” she said.

“If you won’t help me,” Tad responded, “I’ll find my own cure. Pills aren’t the answer here.”

Sally, the janitor at Ellis and Company Insurance where Tad worked as supervisor, gave him Croon’s name. “This man’s a unique psychic healer.” she told him, “He will charge five thousand dollars cash, but he will solve all your ills.”

Tad wondered for a moment why Sally was being so nice. He always criticized her cleaning because she kept leaving half full wastebaskets all over the office and never scrubbed under the fridge. Tad gave her a written reprimand and announced that the next time she forgot to thoroughly sanitize the wall behind the couch she’d lose her job. “But thanks for the doctor tip,” he told her, “I haven’t tried the psychic angle, but I’ll do anything to get rid of this pain.”

Ellis and Company had hired Tad to get rid of all its unproductive employees so it could cut costs, and he’d been firing a lot of people. Nan, the old boss’s secretary was three months from retirement, but Tad dismissed her anyway, “you’re too set in your ways,” he said.

She pleaded and cried “I’ll lose my pension,” but Tad explained that the company couldn’t keep “dead wood.” She picked up all her family photos and ran crying from the room. Sally gave her a long hug and they whispered together. Tad thought “I’ll keep an eye on that janitor.”

Tad’s headache drilled into him as he sat in Dr. Croon’s office waiting for the healer. Eventually, the Doctor appeared, a very short round faced fellow with big sad eyes. “Sally said you have bad pain in the cranium,” he said, in a low and barely perceptible voice. “I’m sure she told you my cost.”

“I don’t care,” said Tad. “No one else will help me.” He was raking in the dough in his new position as assistant to the executive director, so had no problem passing the doctor five thousand dollars in small bills. “Cheap compared to the regular rip off artists,” he said.

“Let’s begin our assessment,” nodded the Doctor, as he carefully placed the bills in a paper bag, and then carefully placed both his hands on the sides of Tad’s head, as gently as he’d handled the money.

“Hmmm,” he whispered. “Please put on these glasses.”

He stepped back and handed his patient some fake-jewel encrusted specs from a gold case. Tad pulled them on.

“Jeezus,” he said. “What the hell is that?”

“Most glasses look out. These are looking in,” Dr. Croon said. “What do you see?”
“A giant grey and brown blob!”

“That’s your brain. What else do you perceive?”

“Wow, it’s pulsating… and there’s something on it!”

“Hmmm” Dr. Croon put his hand up to his client’s ear. “Now what?”
Tad peered closer with his reverse glasses and exclaimed “Something’s climbing around in there! It’s got suckers!” Tad gasped.

“Hah!” nodded Croon. “I knew it! Does it look like a devil?”

“Well, it’s got spines and omigod, it’s staring back at me… it’s got no eyes!” Tad ripped the glasses off as his head pounded.

“Yes,” said Dr. Croon. “You’re possessed with an extraordinary type of cancer.”

“Omigod, Doctor, how did that happen?”

“Well,” Croon took out a huge pair of curved forceps, at least two feet long. “Everyone’s born with a seed of evil, and while some extinguish that seed with good acts, others feed it with bad ones.” He clicked the forceps. “Do you want me to take the demon out?”

“Oh, indeed!”

“The tumour has grown very large,” Dr. Croon concluded. “You must have done a lot of bad things.”

Tad thought of all the hard decisions he had to make in his life. “A man needs to be tough to succeed,” he thought. “Sometimes he has to be ruthless.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have disowned my son,” Tad told the doctor, “but he did marry trash.” As if in response, needle like agony squeezed its way through his eyeballs, and Tad thought of the demon sucking his brain. “Doctor,” he moaned. “I want this to stop.”

“Well,” replied Dr. Croon. “Then we should go ahead with the operation?”

“Certainly,” Tad nodded as enthusiastically as he could.

“Sit right there.”

Dr. Croon took his giant forceps and stuck the ends inside each of Tad’s ears. The forceps fitted neatly over Tad’s head, and Croon moved the points further in. “Hmmm,” he whispered. “I’ve never seen such a huge devil tumour.” He adjusted his tool and tapped the forceps on the table to remove the ear wax. “In order for this method to succeed,” he explained, “You must tell me the worst thing you’ve ever done; get it out there, and the demon will show itself”

Tad thought of all the rotten lies he’d told, all the firings, all the foreclosures and property seizures he’d ordered when he ran a loan company, but those weren’t the worst things. Tad wasn’t sure he should tell Dr. Croon, but he wanted the pain to end.

“I killed a man,” Tad said. “In the South African jungle, when I served in the army twenty-five years ago; he was injured, and his wound became badly infected.”

“He was one of yours?”

“Yes. I was the patrol sergeant when this stupid guy was holding us back from getting out of there, moaning and crying, he acted like such a pussy. It was gangrene, sure, but he endangered everybody with his noise.”

“So you killed him?”

“I strangled him in secret away from the others. It had to be done. The enemy might hear him and discover our position. Also, we were out of morphine.”

“Well,” the Doctor frowned and rubbed his round stubbly chin. “That fellow is the main demon in your head right now; it’s your worst sin, fed huge by all the others.”

He adjusted the forceps and commanded “Put on the glasses.”

Tad lifted his specs.

“See how fat that sin is.” Dr. Croon insisted.

Tad gasped, witnessing the living tumour behind his eyes, and perceiving the demon’s attached suckers pulsating on his brain. The devil twisted its horny head, showing hollow skull bones and the demon face like the soldier Tad killed, mouth slack jawed in the moment of death. Tad saw huge growths and lumps pulsating all over the demon, and the being’s huge gut “all your other sins are stuffed into it,” said Dr. Croon. “It’s feeding now. A good time to pull him out.”

“Get it outta me!” Tad yelled. “This thing’s a f….. parasite!”

“We will,” said Dr. Croon. “Hang on, Tad!”

The forceps moved in, and through the reverse specs, Tad saw the steel pushing; he screamed as the force points jerked and pierced the devil in his brain. He screamed again and the devil screamed too as liquid and chunks of rancid meat poured out of Tad’s ears. He felt the gushing and pouring, an overwhelming sulphur stench, and an immense immediate pain free relief, like the lancing of a boil. He yanked off the glasses. “What in the name of God?” he yelled.

In front of him, a demon formed from the liquid rushing from Tad’s ears. It twisted and molded itself into human shape right there in Croon’s office, and it looked exactly like Tad.

“There’s your devil,” said Dr. Croon, as the coal-eyed stinking demon snarled and leaped towards Tad’s throat. “And it’s coming for you.”

Tad writhed as the demon pushed into him completely, forcing all its matter back inside Tad’s body. Tad convulsed for the last time and his features shimmered back to normal, as if nothing had ever been cast out.

Dr. Croon pulled out his smart phone and called Sally the janitor.

“Hey, Sally,” he announced. “This Tad guy seems to have had a stroke or something like that in my office.” He looked at the paper bag full of money on his desk and said “I’m giving you a discount. You don’t have to pay for the removal of the body, the police will do that for free. I’m calling them now.”

Dr. Croon knew it was a bit of a risk, having the police involved, but Tad looked peaceful there lying with one hand over his heart; the Coroner’s report would diagnose a burst aneurism. Croon picked the jewel encrusted spectacles off the floor, carefully examined the lenses under the office’s fluorescent lights, and secured them back in the gold box.

∼ Harrison Kim

The Hunter’s Heart

December 3, 2025November 30, 2025 ~ Miriam H. Harrison ~ 3 Comments

They told tales of her heart. They said she was a wild woman, a hunter, living off of the flesh of her traps. In life, she was little more than a dark spectre moving in fleeting glimpses at the edge of village life. In death, her sightings were all the more thrilling, her tales all the more chilling.

No one quite agreed how she died. Some said it was her own traps that caught her, leaving her prey to the appetites of the wild. Some said it was a human beast that preyed upon her, a lover turned wild by her feral influence. Still others said it was her own dark dealings, dues collected on devilish debts. Yet every story told of her heart: of it beating, even now, out in the shadows of the trees.

He had heard the tales. He had scoffed, yet also wondered. And now, out among the trees and darkness, the stories came back to him. The stories, and the sound. The pulsing thump-thump that seemed to come from all around. From the shadows. From the very trees. Steady, but growing louder. He felt the fear of prey, felt the dreadful certainty of a hunter drawing near. He stood frozen, as though stillness would save him.

But when the pace quickened, he knew too well that the hunt was on.

∼ Miriam H. Harrison

No Madonna

October 15, 2025August 27, 2025 ~ Marge Simon ~ 4 Comments

At sunset she serves herself with a candle on an oaken tray, a glass of wine, a plate of fruit. As she eats, she flips through an album. It contains her trials, loves and tribulations in photographs. There is the damask tablecloth from Surrey, embroidered towels, silver spoons; that certain green silk dress, a size too small she wore for King Henry ll’s ball … Melmac dishes from the sixties, the kind a gypsy could afford, they never broke when thrown … the dark-haired boy with smoky eyes, (she made him happy for a time, until her needs got in the way) … a shredded ticket to Belize with Sven, who never understood a word but never did that matter, at the time. One last sleigh ride in snowy Switzerland. Green yarn from a knitted hat. That sad faced man with the cowboy hat, and the older gentleman, the one she wed, both cattlemen and rich, back in the day. A columbine, pressed in wax paper. The lady smiles, having rekindled memories of her many passions. She blots her lips, wipes her fangs with a clean blue napkin.

∼ Marge Simon

Let It In

October 1, 2025September 20, 2025 ~ afstewart ~ 7 Comments

Awake in my bed, I embrace the oppression of the silence, that moment, not at midnight, but before dawn when the night struggles to remain. It presses against your skin, tangibly scratching at the surface of my being. A smell engulfs me, not the stench of old houses, moldy, stale, but the bitter, smoky scent of lightning in summer.
I wait for it, an unearthly presence constraining at the edges of nothing, an impervious void lingering behind the smell. It murmurs cryptic words, weaves unfathomable visions, its existence liberating fear and solace, like the icy touch of death for a terminal patient.
Sometimes I fight against it; more often I concede, accepting its supremacy over my mind. I squirm as it wiggles inside my brain, excising parts of my existence with surgical precision. Yet, I feel free afterward, and my burdens of conscience, of benevolence, vanish.
With the light of day I function as I was, but I am changed.
Hour by hour, day by day, I become…detached.

Yesterday, my perception altered.
It granted me the gift to discern its reality.
It is here.
My home is its conduit.
Slime oozes through the wall cracks, past the floorboards, thick black goop painting my house in shades of the void. A physical manifestation of my entity, cold to the touch, and pulsing with a rhythmic heartbeat. It is my connection, my lifeline. Alive, subsuming, struggling to enter our world.
In response to the cadence, my blood roars, energy surging deep inside my veins, my thoughts explode in a kaleidoscope of radiance and colour, while a lullaby of starfire sings in my ears. And still no outward sign. I still smile and serve breakfast to my oblivious family.
They used to be my world. A husband and two children.
No longer.
I feel nothing…not as they die, not as I feed their blood and meat to the slime.
Not as I watch the black ooze grow, invading, slithering inside this empty house.
Not as it embraces me, unravels my flesh and drinks my blood.
I welcome the pain, the promise.
We will be reborn as one.

~ A. F. Stewart

Natural Inhumation

September 24, 2025September 20, 2025 ~ Lee Andrew Forman ~ 4 Comments

The rolling landscape extended beyond sight in all directions. The emptiness engulfed me in insignificance. This dead world I found myself on was as lonely as I. The howl of the constant wind was my only companion, and this planet was accompanied by a dying star that would one day stop sharing its warmth.

Tumultuous rumbles shook the ground. My compass pinned it south, so I headed north, away from whatever force caused the terrifying shakes. My footprints were swiftly erased by the constant gusts of sandy air. I mentally weighed how I might find my way back to the ship if I went too far, but disregarded those thoughts when I remembered there would be no reason to go back. It was irreparably damaged. I was stranded with no hope of rescue.

I knew this place was where my journey ended. Somewhere on this barren world my corpse would lay with no one to bury it. The distress call would eventually reach home, but by the time it did, it wouldn’t matter—the flesh will have rotted from my bones.

I almost wished for a crack in my visor, a tear in my suit, then at least the scythe would greet me with haste. But I had plenty of oxygen, I’d waste away before I suffocated.

I looked behind me every time the ground quaked. Despite my walking in the opposite direction, the vibration grew stronger. I could feel a violent power in the distance, something I didn’t want to be near. I supposed it didn’t matter, I’d meet my end here one way or another. But fear is the great motivator, it pushes one to survive even when there is no hope to be had. So I walked on.

Soon, daylight receded and the vast abyss of unreachable stars yawned above. I’d never felt so desolate and alone, never so meaningless and fleeting. Madness crept into my skull and began wrapping its fingers around my fading mind. Logic and training would soon fail me, I’d watch them fall with relief. They served me no more, not in this cursed place.

The next quake hit with ferocious tremors, its origin no longer beyond sight. The ground opened in front of me, sand poured in as the hole grew larger. Terror struck and slunk behind by back like the coward I was, fear wouldn’t even allow me to run.

As the sand began to move beneath my feet, I welcomed the swifter ending it would bring. This world would consume me. At least my miserable corpse would be buried after all.

∼ Lee Andrew Forman

Reindeer Antlers

September 3, 2025October 12, 2025 ~ Elaine Pascale ~ 5 Comments

“Myrna, wait!”

The old woman heard a familiar voice behind her, yet she continued to weave her way through the crowded parking lot to her car.

“You forgot your lemon.” Cheryl sounded much closer than she had before. Myrna silently cursed her frail legs and the fact that she had to move slowly to avoid falls. Her doctors warned her that at her age falls could be deadly. She believed that at her age most everything was deadly.

Myrna knew she could no longer ignore Cheryl. “I have no need for that or for you,” she spat. Literally. Droplets of saliva shot from her dentures which sat awkwardly in her mouth. She had lost weight recently, despite having a healthy appetite and, at 85, weight loss did not herald the joy it had in her 30s.

Cheryl stepped in front of Myrna, crossing her arms and examining her in a way that Myrna hated. All younger women gave her the same expression now: a sour look mixed with sympathy. “Did I do something to offend you? I try to be helpful to everyone in the neighborhood.” Cheryl smiled around her perfect teeth and straightened her hair beside her wrinkle-free brow. “My grandparents taught me that ‘we rise by lifting others’ and I have always lived by that.”

Cheryl’s smugness infuriated Myrna. Cheryl’s smugness and all that she represented—women who felt they were better than Myrna because they had careers and educations and advantages that came from being young in a time period which allowed for such things. “You humiliated me!”

“Humiliated?” Cheryl looked confused. “When? How?”

Myrna felt her cheeks burn. She thought back to the day when she had been walking with a friend and they had passed Cheryl’s house. Cheryl had been in her yard, seemingly watering plants, even though her hose was not turned on. “You…you…you made reindeer antlers at me!”

The confusion remained on Cheryl’s face. “Reindeer antlers?”

“Yes.” Myrna placed one of her thumbs against her temple and raised her second and last fingers. “Like this.”

Cheryl tilted her head, looking at Myrna quizzically. “My hands were just like yours? At the temple like that?”

“Yes, exactly like that.”

“Show me again, where were they?”

“Here!” Myrna put her hand at the side of her head.

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely!”

“They weren’t…here?” Cheryl’s hand moved quickly. Myrna felt a lightning bolt of pain shoot across her forehead. Then she felt nothing at all.

***

We rise by lifting others…we rise by lifting others…we lift others to you, oh ancient one…

Myrna could hear voices chanting. Were they talking to her? She tried to rub her forehead but found that her arms were bound. The voices continued to talk about lifting and she felt the air move around her. Her stomach dropped as it had when she had ridden the old wooden roller coaster at the beach.

Myrna opened her eyes to discover that she was tied, crucifix style, to upright wooden pallets. She had no idea where she was. All she knew was that she was in a cavernous concrete room, like a warehouse.

We rise by lifting others…accept the sacrifice at our hands, oh ancient one…

Myrna turned her head to see an old man beside her. She recognized him; he was often at the pharmacy when she was picking up her medication. They had exchanged complaints seasoned with humor about the plethora of pills they needed to wake up each morning. They had compared aches and pains and laughed at how old age had snuck up on them. No complaints or pleasantries would come from this man’s mouth again, as his throat had been slit and blood poured from it as if from a garden hose.

Garden hose…Myrna remembered that she had been talking to Cheryl in the parking lot. As her vision cleared, she could perceive the chanting people. They wore robes that covered their faces and bodies, only their hands were exposed. They caught the old man’s blood in chalices and then poured the blood into a golden tub in front of Cheryl. It was clear they had been addressing Cheryl; she was the ancient one.

Myrna watched as Cheryl rubbed the old man’s blood into her skin. With each application, her skin appeared younger and more vibrant.

“Better than Botox,” Cheryl said, smiling with her wrinkle-free lips.

Myrna gasped, which garnered Cheryl’s attention. “My old friend…but still younger than me,” Cheryl laughed.

That makes no sense, Myrna thought, as she tested the ropes that bound her arms. Even if she were still a young woman, she would not have been able to fight her way free from the pallet.

Cheryl pointed a manicured finger at Myrna. “These wrinkles appeared in the short time I spent talking to her.” Cheryl rolled her eyes. “Normally one sacrifice would be enough, but because she rambled on and on, I have to make it two.”

“Yes, exalted one,” the robe wearers chanted.

Rambled on? “But you, you did something to me!” Myrna tried to remember what happened in the parking lot. Instead her mind went back to the day she had encountered Cheryl on her walk. She realized that she walked by Cheryl’s house often. She realized she had walked by Cheryl’s house for years, maybe twenty years, yet the woman looked no older than when they had met. “You…you made those reindeer antlers,” Myrna spat, not knowing what else to say. Fear had overtaken her. She did not want to meet the same conclusion as the man from the pharmacy.

“’We rise by lifting others’,” the devotees chanted. They lifted Myrna higher, tilting the pallet so that she was bent over a large bucket.

“Antlers?” Cheryl laughed. “Those aren’t antlers, they’re horns. As in devil horns.”

One acolyte produced a large knife and Myrna screamed.

Cheryl tsked. “That’s the problem with this younger generation, they never know when to be quiet.” She rubbed blood into her décolletage. “And when to keep their copious complaints to themselves.” Her smile grew wide. “As I said, ‘I try to be helpful to everyone in the neighborhood.’ I was just returning your lemon. If you had simply taken it then…we wouldn’t be here.”

∼ Elaine Pascale

Hollow

August 27, 2025August 23, 2025 ~ Charles Gramlich ~ 8 Comments

In the time of the hallowed moon, in the season where the chill lingers, the world grows still, and waits. Alone at campfire, I sit, wanting to burn. The firelight draws a sorcerer’s protective sphere around me; I dare not turn my head to see what lies outside. The darkness squirms.

Behind me, the forest exhales. Ashes in the fire swirl into embers, ghost upward into a vampire sky that sucks them gray again. The embers are a surrogate for my soul, fragmented, blackened, lit only by a semblance of heat that leaches quickly away.

I look to the stars. Perhaps they will comfort. Their light cannot be consumed by any earthly hunger. They care not for the concerns of carbon. But their icicle twinkling reminds me too much of cruel laughter. Shrinking, I coil in upon myself.

Nearer laughter swells. It howls in the trees. It cackles in the shadows. The night puts on a cloak of thorns. I close my eyes but my ears are open and stung. A visitor is coming, stalking on tenebrous limbs. I feel the weight of his presence, the surge of air that he pushes before him.

My heart hammers a heavy rhythm; my mouth tastes of venom and brass. Blood drums like the hooves of horses beneath my skin. Sweat crawls like freshly birthed roaches. Stench overwhelms—mold and fungi, toads and spittle-bugs, spider webs painted with tincture of silver.

And now he whispers at my shoulder. Gooseflesh arises as he cajoles me to spurn the light, to gaze upon him, to own his words. He promises a balm for sad fear—if I join him. Perhaps I will accept. Why cling to fire-glow when black-shine offers honeyed freedom from all concerns? Of course, the visitor is lying. Nothing sweet gilts the freedom that he offers.

I’m not sure that matters.

∼ Charles Gramlich

Way in the Middle of the Air

August 6, 2025July 31, 2025 ~ TheDamned ~ 4 Comments

Ezekial sees a wheel a rollin’ way in the middle of the air. Huge and solitary, spinning alone in the Universe. Dull silver and dead on the outside, twirling slowly in the perpetual motion of zero gravity. Ezekial must find out… what lies within? A single oily protuberance pokes from the central axle. A nipple at its end. Something black seeps from the tip, one drop at a time. Is there life inside this wheel? No air in space, but does the dripping and the substance indicate a world within? He and all the scientists and overseers watching from earth wonder. It’s taken years to arrive here, to send an astronaut this far out in space.

Ezekial bobs near, encased within his space suit, a tiny soul examining this humungous silver thing…. attached cameras all over the outside of his space suit beaming back to earth what is discovered. He’s a fly on the wheel, a piece of white dust against the brown. He applies X rays and close microscopic focus to the silver covering, the images shared instantly with those on earth. Then he digs in with his drill. Right into the black protuberance shining oily, many colours as he works, flowing out now, dispersing, disappearing. Behind Ezekial the vast gulf of space shimmers with stars. He knows “The whole Universe is watching,” and stops for a moment. What is the purpose here?

He must find out what’s inside everything, it is like that with all explorers. They are never content the way things are. But changes happen, and then we must either go on or give up. After the death of his wife, Ruth, Ezekial felt like ending it all. His mission to space stopped him from going over the edge. Discovery, challenge, risk, that’s why they sent him up there, the winning volunteer for this edgy job. He wanted it! To escape earth, fly away into nothingness. No jumping off a bridge, with seconds between the leap and the landing. He launched into the vastness, his first mission. This change in his life a miracle. To launch off the edge. What was left, after Ruth’s suicide? She made her decision, and left him and the whole world behind. That took courage. He’s following her example; grateful the overseers chose him. They measured his will, and it was strong.

In the medical centre they implanted his brain with new electrodes, to enhance the leap into this mission. Electrodes giving power to his mind, to his resolve and his endurance to survive. He hasn’t felt much different, only long hours of sleep and dreams on the trip from earth.

When his wife lived, he existed for her. Now he imagines that she’s somewhere in this vast arc of space, waiting. His forlorn hope is that he will find her. Maybe not her earthly self, but a sense of who she was to him, the connection and closeness. Had he said or done anything to cause her death? Put her over the edge? On the long trip out from earth, he contemplated the circumstances over and over, without resolve.

All he knows is this: The physical time with her lies behind him now, like the stars, so far away. But the meaning of who she was, that would be there with him, moving through the Universe eternal.

He lifts the long steel blowtorch from the floating kit behind him, begins to widen the drilled hole in the wheel. Funny how the gap parts so easily. Within that jagged hole, a blackness, yet from that blackness he perceives a form. It takes on a shape that he does not see with his eyes but feels with his mind. Is it imagination? Is he really inside a dream, like he’s been so often on this voyage, or is this the reality, here in space two million miles from earth? This shape whirls and twists, it is a face. Ezekial is sure. What else could it be but a face within the wheel. He wonders if this is delusion, but only for an instant. He peers closer. His eyes and his consciousness tell him this is the face of Ruth, his dead wife! How miraculous! Yet the face stays expressionless. Perhaps bloated somewhat. A bit spooky. Drifting across that hole in the wheel, a shifting form. He perceives his whole existence all around that misty, yet unmistakeable face, his life in relation to the wheel that spins around it. What was the meaning of coming this far? Was this the purpose of his whole life, to arrive here at this moment? There’s an infinitesimal chance that his consciousness came to exist along with trillions of expanding stars, then this moment came to be out of an exploding Universe once the size of a human heart…..As he watches and contemplates, his wife’s face becomes an eye… then his own eye looking back at him piercing through the vision of his wife…Ezekial lets his mind go because inside that eye he sees everything.

When you care for someone, that’s all that matters. What you feel for another is the meaning of everything. Then if you are lucky the other will feel the same way for you. From moment-to-moment things will change, the good times and the bad, yet underneath there’s the feeling, of one with another. It can seem like this harmony will go on forever. If you are lucky. But it ends, maybe only after a few turns of the wheel, perhaps after many. The voices you thought brought you all the significance in your life disappear. Then, the sorrow and the loneliness. Ezekial knows. How life can change in an instant. Here though, within this apparatus floating in space, there’s a place that’s eternal. And Ezekial’s been allowed inside.

He’s been here dreaming for some time. Longer than he realized. Maybe days, if measured in earth time. The oxygen in his suit is almost out. Voices from his radio come in through the suit speakers “Where are you, Ezekial, what’s happening?”

Their voices don’t matter. They’re from another place, another existence. He’s ready to transfer now. His previous life behind him is far away as the stars. What lies ahead is the deeper meaning. He will let the turn of the wheel draw him out, into this other place. Is there a sound? He listens. Yes, there is something. Some kind of music, perhaps the murmur of God? He lifts his head one last time and finds he’s singing to himself, “Ezekial saw a wheel a rollin’.”

He’s heard that one before, and he lets himself go, every molecule of his body draining, disappearing as says the words. Yes, he thinks, I sense my body and mind seeping through my space suit, escaping from the physical, one soul drop at a time. First a drop, then a stream, a cascade, a waterfall. This is where he was meant to be, flowing into the wheel, joined in its turning. This circle in space waited for him his whole life, as he spun and whirled through the years, this always the end point.

He falls into this void, containing nothing and everything, part of the wheel. He exists and he does not. He appears and he disappears.

What do the cameras record? Better yet, what do the overseers back on earth perceive? A bright flash. Then views from an empty space suit spat away from the hole where Ezekial vanished. The wheel still turning, way in the middle of the air.

Another black drop bulges, then plops out of the closing nipple in the axle, where Ezekial explored and pondered purpose just moments before.

∼ Harrison Kim