bygones
Savannah S. Miller
I hope you
find yourself at the bottom of a bottle of red wine
look in the mirror and do not hate what you see
swatch purple on your eyes without regard for others
are haunted by morning memories of me
try the spicy foods that used to scare you
lick your stubborn glass plate clean
bury your wounds in an unmarked grave
confine yourself to only burning cities
kiss the sky and then the ground again
clean the gravel from your scraped up knees
lighten the load that lives on your shoulders
know you are always the devil to me
Savannah S. Miller
10 Things to write a song about
M.D. Berry
- My son’s foot when he was born was about half the size of my finger. He weighed less than 3 lbs. He spent six weeks in the NICU.
- Waking up in Adelaide, South Australia to magpies and lorikeets calling and I’d go have coffee on a picnic table and smell the ocean from my back porch.
- Wanting to be a traveler, tramp, vagabond, vagrant, hobo who rides the rails or lives out of a van.
- The moment my heart broke, when I finally realized she’d never love me in the way I needed her to love me.
- The feeling of riding a bike through the morning Irish mist on the Aran Island of Inshimore.
- The way my wife will never see how beautiful she truly is.
- Being in a relationship where you’re no good for one another, but you just can’t quit each other.
- The weight of my friend’s casket when I was 17.
- The morning I walked through the empty streets and closes of Edinburgh, Scotland. Gathering flowers in Princes Street Gardens, and taking the tram to meet my one true love.
- How time stops when driving out to Edisto Island, South Carolina and how every person should find a place where time doesn’t exist.
M.D. Berry
Sacrifice
Sascha Reinhard
“Baal Hammon demands five lives to quell his anger.” The priest’s gaze sweeps over us. I dare not meet his eyes. I know it is necessary; our crops lie dead in the field, the river dried to a trickle, the sun scorches skin and earth alike. But I’m weak. I shudder to pay the price.
Hanno rises without a hint of hesitation. Two more, with less eagerness. Another. Then nothing. One more death, to bring new life to our people.
With a heavy heart, I stand.
The priest nods. “Very well. Deliver your lastborn daughters to the temple by nightfall.”
Sascha Reinhard
Hype
E. Florian Gludovacz
Francis adjusted his VR goggles and loaded the boss fight of “Brain+Crash” in hard mode. The reviews had piqued his interest, calling it the most extreme game of the year.
“The sudden death feature makes this game stand out!”
“Unforgettable!”
“A once in a lifetime experience!”
He wasn’t a proficient gamer, but he really wanted to try it. The game started and he found himself in the combat area. Before he could react, the final boss crushed him to death.
Flexible steel filaments shot from the VR goggles, punched through his skull’s orbital fissure and into his brain.
Sudden death!
Florian writes stories, likes cheese, and is a friend to dogs and pandas everywhere. @ndbag.bsky.social
The Heartbeat of Creation
A.J. McCrae
The blood is never mine, but I wear the crimson stains dripping from my skin, smothering the handles of each tool as I saw bone and sew skin. Remove one limb and give to another. The body must be perfect where humanity is not. Skin enclosing the superior botanical system thriving within.
A final puzzle piece, the heart thrums in my grip, lifeless and yet life-giving. I place it within the ribs and allow the vines snaking through the chest to grab hold. They wrap the organ and squeeze once, twice, red saturating green as the body quakes into being.
A.J. McCrae
Home Safe
Imrak Eriksson
It wasn’t the worst breakup.
But I still wanted my mum. She didn’t say a lot—just listened and repeated “it’ll be okay” while I broke down.
My friends took me out drinking. I don’t remember much, except that I threw up after. I cried as my stomach heaved. I had no one to hold my hair out of the way.
The doorbell rang shrilly through my hangover. It was a man with a bag of tools and a large box. He showed me an email from my landlord authorising essential works. I let him in and crawled back to bed.
He was gone when I awoke. A red light blinked at me from a cobweb-encrusted corner of my bedroom. I walked around my flat. The sick sloshing in my stomach cooled instantly—watchful red lights blinked from every corner.
The TV was on, screen glowing:
Welcome to Home Safe. Your privacy settings have been adjusted to Care Mode.
My head thumped, and I reached for some painkillers.
A dialling tone sounded, and the screen flashed:
Risk threshold exceeded. Emergency contact notified: Calling…
Calling…
I fumbled for the remote, too slow.
Connected.
My mother’s voice, laced with panic, filled the room.
“Are you okay, darling?”
Imrak Eriksson is a former rocket scientist turned patent lawyer who spins daydreams into fiction.
The Writer’s Guide to Idea Hunting
Lisa Timpf
Hunting ideas can be hit-and-miss. Either you have so many ideas you are frantic at the thought you will never be able to use them all, or you are visited by too few. Patience in those lean times is required. Don’t be too hard on yourself—hunting ideas is no easy task.
Ideas travel quietly, and cannot be detected by the normal five senses, although sometimes, if you latch onto a really good one, you can hear it reverberate through your soul like a temple gong’s solemn tones.
Ideas love to shelter in the dense thickets of your subconscious, and must be coaxed out with care. If you startle them, they will vanish, never to be seen again.
Ideas are the children of trickster gods. They love to flit into our conscious minds when we are preoccupied with other matters. Beware: the quality of an idea will often be inversely proportional to the convenience of writing it down. Ideas may drop into your head while you’re dog-walking, showering, or mowing the lawn. In such circumstances, it’s best to engrave the idea in your mind (not literally, that would be messy) until you can get your hands on a notepad.
On the bright side, unlike game hunting, idea hunting is always in season, and there no limits on how many you catch.
Which reminds me, I could use a few new ideas. Maybe I should go out and shovel the snow . . .
Lisa Timpf’s speculative writing has appeared in Lorelei Signal, NewMyths.com, Polar Borealis, and other venues.
The Gunslinger’s Go Boat
R.J. Butler
The gunslinger put his revolver in a sack and rented a rowboat.
The lake was flat. It was like a blank piece of paper. He rowed with a seriousness reserved for funerals and card games, every splash sounding like an apology.
The gunslinger admitted to himself that he always wanted to be a seahorse but lacked the correct breathing apparatus. He drifted off into the sunset that holstered the day.
The boat never fired.
It had an alibi.
R.J. Butler