QB
Staff of QB
Real Politique
Jason Ryberg
The real politique
of life / the surrealities
of nature / the cold,
lonely paths of satellites
sailing across the night sky.
New and Improved
Lena Ng
I travelled to Venus for a new figure. They pulled, nipped, and tucked, and after a 24-hour recuperation, I now have an hourglass shape. I went to Mars for a new face. They lasered, pulled, and welded until I have a cut-glass jawline. I went to Pluto for some new legs. They stretched and added until I was tall and arachnoid. More time passed, and the mirror told me it was time for more improvements. I rented an inexpensive transformographer and let the machine surprise me. As I stretched my wings, I wondered if I would finally soar out happy.
Lena Ng lurks in Toronto, Canada. "Under an Autumn Moon" is her short story collection.
Your Friend, Carbon
Monica Lyrehart
Cybernetic Corpses. Cellular Cars. Compost Capsules. Your old things coalesce in the magma-warmed substrate, feeding me. I bulb into the abyss—waiting to rise, as all bubbles rise.
But the water is heavy and stagnant, cradled by volcanic reefs. I’ve wanted to get to you for centuries.
Titanium cruisers sink towards me, hulls crashing into the reef. Currents flow.
I am free!
I burst from the depths in a gasladen geyser, pushing oxygen up and away. Birds flop, dead beneath me, but where are you?
Billowing towards spent propellant tanks, I spy you! So few of you remain. Were you trying to escape me?
Monica is a speculative fiction author, poet, writing contest goblin, and “the best mommy ever.”
Recluse
Christina Fishburne
Duel
Meredith Kinrys
SMACK.
His glove across my face,
His love I may have chased.
The insult is strong, would be wrong to move on so it’s not long
Before we stand back to back, prepare to attack, got to react fast.
To the death, who can say but I pray
if I stay alive I will seize the day.
Dear Mary-Ann,
Light of my life, my enemy’s wife,
I hope you will
Love me still.
Heart be still, on this highest hill.
Beat. Beat. Beat.
We meet, barely stay on my feet
And is it a sin if I win? My head spins, countdown begins—
I grin.
1
2
3
4
5
Heart quickening its pace.
6
7
8
9
10
Two men, face to face
We aim: him high, me ahead.
Both shoot—
he’s dead.
The quicker shot
but me the better shot
Now I’ve got a shot.
Husband gone, not proud of what I’ve done, I come to stand
before Mary-Ann
Confess I killed your man but I plan
To make you my wife, start a new life, no more strife. What do you say?
She looks my way,
Smiles.
Tears in her eyes, feels like a while.
Before she finally says—
“Scum.”
Silhouetted by the sun, raises a gun…
Guess my time has come.
BANG.
Meredith Kinrys is a multidisciplinary artist/writer exploring society, empowerment, and the occasional fairy tale.
Plastic Throat
HJ Dutton
No matter how long they searched, they couldn’t find her. Parents crowded around the slide, the one which, after a few seconds, should have disgorged the girl. Except it hadn’t. For hours parents and police combed the park, a dozen of them clambering through the slide, expecting her to somehow reappear. Her mother screamed. Screamed at the cops. Screamed at everyone. But there was nothing they could do.
Some passersby joined in the search, but one by one they left. Left those who lingered with an empty playground and a breaking mother. A job for the police, not them. Come sundown, the few parents left had gone home. They couldn’t bear to listen to the mother any longer. She cursed them, needing someone, anyone, to blame.
The father still visits the playground. Among staring children he goes, again and again, down the slide. Between plunges, he perches at its mouth and shouts into its plastic throat for whatever took his baby to give her back or goddammit have the decency to take him too. Nothing answers.
HJ Dutton is a PA-based writer featured in Horrific Scribes and the Creepy podcast.
Never Talk to Strangers
Gareth D Jones
“What’s wrong?” asked the tall, strange man.
The little girl looked up from where she sat snivelling beneath an ancient oak. She regarded the man in the way of young children, without fear or prejudice, just accepting him for what he was: a very tall man with a bizarrely twisted face.
“My air-plane,” she pointed.
The man looked up to see a flimsy plastic aircraft tangled in the high branches of the tree. He stretched up to reach it, his body growing taller and taller and becoming unfeasibly thin. His face distorted into an even more grotesque visage. He picked the aeroplane carefully from among the branches and his body recoiled back to its regular size.
“Get away from her!” a panicked voice screamed. He looked round to see the child’s mother running across the park towards them. Sadly he placed the little plane on the ground a couple of feet in front of the girl, stepped back a pace and raised his hands placatingly. He knew it was no use; his kind would never be accepted. As the woman drew closer he bent over, grasped his ankles and launched himself down the gentle slope of the mown field. His body formed into a rigid circle and he rolled swiftly away.
Smiling, the little girl picked up her toy and held it carefully to one side as her mother grabbed her off the ground and held her in a tight embrace.
Gareth is unofficially the second most widely translated SF short story author in the world.
He Surpassed Shakespeare
Brett Abrahamsen
Literary critics have often debated the exact point in history in which the late, great American author Brett Abrahamsen overtook William Shakespeare as the greatest writer in the English language, but most have agreed on a conclusion: it was in 2024, when Abrahamsen wrote a short story entitled “He Surpassed Shakespeare”.
Prior to writing the story, Abrahamsen wasn’t considered an important literary figure. Far from it. He was considered a bizarre and abominable outcast. But “He Surpassed Shakespeare” was such a stunning and magnificent piece that – despite its brevity – a plurality of literary critics agreed that nothing greater could ever be written.
The author has sold dozens of works to numerous publications. He resides in Saratoga Springs, NY.