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

The Other Shoe

September 20, 2023September 5, 2023 ~ Marge Simon ~ 5 Comments

He was a big man, tall enough, and his shoulders could stand two bushels of grain. By day he worked the docks of a mighty river. He lived alone in a tin-roofed shack near the pier, avoided rum, spoke only when he had to, but that was before the last war. Now the river folk were gone and the storehouses along the river were dark and empty.

He sat on the bank, chewing a sassafras root. Once a frothy blue highway for barges and fishing boats, it was sluggish and rust colored. In fact, a perfect match for the shoe, the only thing left to remind him of her. He’d found it by the campfire, brought it to the spot where the river turned southward to the Gulf. On a whim, he’d stuck a few pathetic purple flowers in it. A token of their love? Not exactly.

Her name was Violet and she was the last woman on earth. In fact, as far as they knew, they were the last two people. All the food was gone. No surviving animals, no fish or birds. Even the vegetation was dying or poisonous. They were starving. He was a big man, a strong man, and he was very hungry.

Idly, he wondered what happened to her other shoe.

∼ Marge Simon

Remainder

September 13, 2023September 5, 2023 ~ Lee Andrew Forman ~ 3 Comments

Gene looked at the photograph of his family. Death isn’t pure, he thought. It’s damn filthy. It chews and spits, leaving you half-digested until you eventually dissolve.

He watched the virus take them. Minions of quietus ravaged their bodies until souls departed through fevered brows. The infection killed them quickly. But it never let go. A collective consciousness still carried their undead frames. Shuffling feet and hands scraping against the boards nailed over the kitchen doorway were all he could hear anymore.

What little strength his mind retained had been used to pretend they weren’t there—trapped together, rotting away… But nothing remained in the world to divert his attention. He hadn’t seen another living person in weeks. He considered if he might be the last. In a way he hoped it were true. Then at least humanity would be unchained from the nightmare and could finally rest.

Guilt tightened his gut, more than pains of hunger. Why had he been spared? What made him immune? Was it punishment for some forgotten sin he committed? Maybe it was just shit luck. He preferred to assume it was only his misfortune; it made the most sense.

His eyes lazily rolled to the makeshift barrier keeping a ravenous, zombified family from eating him alive. He wondered how long it would hold; but realized it didn’t matter. Sure, he’d suffer an agonizing death if they broke through, but no one would ever know of it. He sat alone in a miniscule blip of time. Human life no longer held meaning. History had been erased and would never again be recorded. In a way, he didn’t even exist.

He found that to be a comforting thought. It settled his nerves, calmed his raging heart.

Fingertips released their grip. The picture of his family rested next to a shotgun on the table.

As a calm settled within, he picked up the gun. Peering into the box of shells to see how many were left, he made his choice.

∼ Lee Andrew Forman

The Smell

August 16, 2023January 4, 2024 ~ Elaine Pascale ~ 6 Comments

“What’s that smell?” Ben asked.

Lydia inhaled deeply. “I don’t smell it.”

He stood and walked to her. “It’s you. It’s coming from you.” He sniffed the air around her. “Definitely you.”

“Thanks. Tell me more about how I stink.”

He lifted her arm and brought it to his nose. “It’s the shirt. The shirt stinks.”

She pulled her arm back, insulted. “I just bought this shirt.”

“Well, it smells…like you got it off a dead body.”

“I got it at the thrift shop. That one on Gulfspray.”

“Then it probably did come off a dead body.” He started to go to the kitchen but stopped in his tracks. “There isn’t a thrift store on Gulfspray. That’s a residential area.”

Lydia rolled her eyes. “Such a gaslighter. If there is no shop, then how did I get this shirt?”

He shrugged. “Smells kinda like you pulled it out of Satan’s ass.” He knew he was right about Gulfspray, he drove by it every day on his commute.

He looked at the shirt again. He had thought it was a red and brown tartan pattern; now it looked orange and tan. “You washed it right?”

“Of course, I washed it!”

“Well, it smells.” He whispered the next part, “And it changed colors.”

“I don’t smell it, you’re crazy.”

As Ben walked into the kitchen, he considered that he might be crazy. It wouldn’t be the first time that he had seen something, heard something, or sensed something that Lydia was oblivious to. He had never had an olfactory hallucination and he took medications for the others. Lydia preferred to live a pharmaceutical-free life and she sometimes disassociated to the point of disappearing. There were times when he would not know where she was or what she was doing and she would return, tight lipped and cementing psychic walls of privacy. He had learned to respect that, and he respected that their relationship was one of feast and famine in terms of intimacy. At the moment, he had little respect for someone calling him crazy or a gaslighter when they were seeing mirages in the form of thrift shops. “It’s in here now. The smell, it’s following me.”

“You’re crazy,” she repeated.

Crazy or not, the smell permeated the house despite the warfare enlisted. Ben tried incense, perfume, and sage. The windows and door were propped open. Nothing made an impact and Ben swore that he could taste the smell. It made it so that he had to skip dinner and that was unheard of for him.

That night, Ben dreamt of spoiled food, rotting carcasses, and noxious garbage dumps. Each hour brought an increase in the olfactory assault, and his mind conjured images in accompaniment.

When he woke, he found Lydia in front of the bathroom mirror, clad only in the shirt that now appeared to be purple and crimson. He rubbed his eyes, hoping to reset the colors, but it still appeared with different hues than the day before.

“You’re wearing that shirt again?”

“It’s my shirt.” She was standing at the bathroom sink, looking at her mouth in the mirror. She was sticking her tongue out as if a doctor were waiting with a tongue depressor.

“What’s wrong with your tongue?”

“nhuthin,” she replied, keeping the tongue on display.

Reading her body language, Ben went to make his coffee and give her some space. The sound of his ancient Keurig was overwhelmed by Lydia’s coughing. “You alright?” he called, bringing the cup of coffee close to his nose in the hopes of quelling the odor. It didn’t work and he was tempted to toss the coffee out and purchase a latte on the way to work, but those coffee pods were expensive, and he hated to waste one.

From the other room, Lydia’s coughs graduated to a throaty gag.

“Lyd? You ok?”

“Fine.” Her voice was raspy and phlegmy to the point of being difficult to listen to. In fact, it was almost the auditory version of the smell. Almost.

Once he was ready to leave for work, Ben gave Lydia a kiss on the forehead. As he pulled away, she whispered, “Spider tonsils.”

“What’s that, Lyd?”

She made eye contact, but the person behind the eyes was far away and Ben recognized this as his cue to exit. If he pressed, she would grow agitated, and her isolation would last longer than he was comfortable with.

She lowered her head and picked at the thread of a loose button. “Spider tonsils,” she repeated.

Ben wanted to ask which one of them was crazy now, but he knew that was insensitive to her very real mental health issues. Experience had taught him that she would snap out of it, and he was looking forward to putting in hours at the office as a respite from the odor.

When he returned home, there was no Lydia and no note. There was only the shirt, crumpled on the floor in the bathroom. It was damp and sticky.

The smell was as strong as ever, but the shirt was no longer the source. The shirt, now blue and green, had no odor at all.

He tracked the scent like a bloodhound. All he found for his troubles was an old candy wrapper and a large, long-legged spider weaving a fresh web in their closet. Without hesitation, he put the spider out of its misery.

Leaving the closet to start dinner, he realized that the smell had disappeared.

Ben ate alone and in peace. He made a plate for Lydia in case she returned hungry. He then showered, finding pleasure in the pleasant fragrances of his hygiene ritual. He was sure that Lydia would return home by the time he was ready for bed.

His instincts had proven wrong, and he slid beneath their scent-free sheets alone. He left one voice message and one text for Lydia but reasoned that more than that would look like he was not respecting her boundaries, and he knew that upset her. Now that his world was without noxious fumes, he could grant Lydia a great deal of grace.

The next morning, Ben pulled a shirt off the hanger in his closet. It was a shirt he had no recollection of buying. The tag was still on it, and it was from a thrift shop. Lydia must have bought it as a surprise for him. He would google the name of the store later, to find out where it was truly located.

Ben felt guilty that he had not given her the chance to give him the shirt; he had been so focused on obsessing over the invasive smell. When she returned, he would be sure to apologize.

This shirt did not smell. And it fit perfectly. He decided to work from home so that he could be there when Lydia returned. She was not answering her cell and it was unlike her to be out of contact for so long. Ben didn’t want to alarm her family, but he resolved to contact them if he hadn’t heard from her by lunch.

The thought of lunch made his stomach rumble, even though he had just eaten breakfast. He tried placating his appetite with a strong cup of coffee, but as he brought the mug to his lips, his stomach recoiled.

He dropped the mug, gagging as the fumes from the spilled coffee entered the small space.

As he cleaned up the mess he had made, he was overcome with a coughing fit. He coughed until his throat felt ragged. Then he gagged. It wasn’t nausea causing him to gag; there was something lodged in his throat.

Moving to the bathroom mirror, he opened his mouth and peered at his throat. Directly behind the uvula, there was a dark shadow. Ben made a low growl in his throat, seeing if the shadow would move. As he watched, a long, spindly spider leg crawled onto the back of his tongue.

He now knew what “spider tonsils” meant and he knew what had happened to Lydia.

∼ Elaine Pascale

Unlucky Moon

August 9, 2023July 26, 2023 ~ TheDamned ~ 5 Comments

“How am I always unlucky?”

The question was rhetorical. Topi was the one who wandered too far away. She hadn’t kept an eye on the sun. Now she better find shelter fast before the bacteria began to drift in the fertile dark.

Frank Sinatra’s voice crooned about flying to the moon from a deserted shop front. No one knew what powered the music behind the boards, but it had played the same tunes since as long as she had been here. She stopped and looked up at the night sky. A full moon would help a little but it had not yet risen.

Frank was out of touch. His song didn’t age well, she thought. No one would want to fly to a landfill. She scratched her forehead and one of her sensors snagged under a nail and came off.

She studied it in the dim light. A ruby red gem winked in the electric glow, like a drop of clear blood on her fingertip. She flicked it into the shop front. Frank could fly to the moon on that.

The sensor landed on the curb near a flower wrapped in lace and tissue paper. It was tied with a thin silver ribbon that would make a nice gift for her baby sister. Topi had never seen a rose except for illos on old signs. Roses were for the second-tier rich—too poor for Mars evac, but rich enough for the greenhouses. They never came out to risk the pollutions, let alone drop their roses. Yet here was a rose.

I should back off, run away… this is danger.

Topi thought of her baby sister carefully unfolding the fancy paper to find an even fancier ribbon. It would be the loveliest thing any of them had ever owned. Carefully, she moved toward the deserted flower. A sweetness in the air overcame the scent of asphalt and sick. It was like magic. Topi crouched, fingers inches away, undecided.

It was too suspicious to find a rose in the Squallys. Frank’s voice crooned through the shadows. “…in other words, please be true. In other words, I love you.” She could be lucky for once. She could believe in a miracle. Topi picked the rose up and held the silky petals to her skin, inhaling.

“I’m sorry…” The whisper came from a bundle of trash piled up against a broken guardrail. There was a woman sitting there, near buried in the refuse. She was hiding, but Topi could see her fancy gown shimmering white through the pile of greyed, collapsing cardboard.

“You’re rich—how are you here?” Topi clenched her fist around the flower. “This is your rose.” The petals were soft against her lips and she imagined how it must be in the greenhouses. She didn’t want to give it back.

“The filters failed,” said the woman. “We could smell the stink coming in. I panicked.” Her skin was dotted with pearl gems, each a glass drop of milk, defying gravity.

Topi stepped back in shock. “You’re sick! Your gems are white!” She threw the perfect rose at the woman in disgust and wiped her hands on the street. Grime was better than what this woman had. “Go back to your glass city!”

The woman vanished back into the pile of refuse, pulling a sheet of newsprint over her head. “We can’t. The filters failed…. trapped.” She said no more, only closed her eyes. Ttears shimmered silver in the dim light..

Topi turned and ran, rubbing her hands raw against the brick and concrete she passed. She stopped at every puddle and plunged her hands in, wiping her face. Then she realized… She couldn’t go home. Not to the children, not to her mother. Not until she knew if she had caught it.

She examined her wet and bleeding hands under a blinking street lamp. Most of the sensors had been scraped off during her panicked flight, but the few left winked up at her in reassuring hues of sapphire, ruby and jade.

She sighed in relief. She could stay away until dawn. The sun would burn away any bacteria drift she carried. If her gems stayed bright she could return home. She would never do anything so stupid again.

Then, against her knuckle, a pearlescent drop of glass and photoelectrics. It was milky and pale, colorless. Her hand shook. Her life was draining from her, each of her jewels would now wink out until she followed. “Please just be the moon’s reflection…”

She sat where she was, back against the wall and gazed upwards to the sky. There was no moon to be seen. “How am I always unlucky?…” Topi put her hands over her face, pushing her fingers into her eyes to stop the tears. There was no sense mourning the facts.

“I should have known better,” Topi felt calmer. “It was too lovely to be safe.” She inhaled as much air as her lungs could hold, leaned her head back and closed her eyes. A delicate wind brushed her skin, carrying remnants of Frank Sinatra with it, still crooning. Topi let her breath out and re-imagined the heady scent of rose. She wanted to carry it with her into the next world while her last breath escaped into this one. The rose may have even been worth this.

Overhead and unseen by the girl dying below, the moon finally rose.

∼ Angela Yuriko Smith