QB
Staff of QB
Again
MONICA WENZEL
“Wait!” Someone shouted at Noah. Someone who sounded like him.
Someone who looked like him, too, except for his bandaged wrist and dirty clothes.
“Don’t do that.”
Noah stopped with his hand on the time machine door. “Are you me?”
“From the future. I came back to stop you.”
“Wait, it worked!”
“Not exactly.”
“But it worked. I gotta warn them.”
“They won’t listen. Save us the trouble. Don’t go.”
“I have to try.”
Noah entered the machine before he could stop himself. Another dirtier Noah ran up to the time machine. They looked at themselves.
“We didn’t listen?”
“Again.”
Monica lives in Minnesota with her family and cats. She teaches high school Spanish.
The Clockmaker’s Last Minute
ETTA WYNN
The village clock refused to strike thirteen. Every night, Ezra wound it, hoping for a crack in time, a whisper from tomorrow.
Neighbors complained. “It’s just a clock,” they said. But Ezra knew better. He had seen the shadows of moments yet to come, stretching like fingers across his walls.
One evening, a woman in violet shoes appeared at his door. She held a watch that ticked backward. “I’m late,” she said. “Or maybe too early.”
Ezra took it, felt the tick slip under his skin. He wound his clock, listened, and the walls of the room softened into something liquid.
The thirteenth chime arrived—silent, soft as a sigh. Outside, the villagers moved like marionettes, repeating yesterday in reverse. Ezra stepped out.
He felt the wind rearrange his hair, his thoughts, even the order of his memories.
When the woman left, the backward watch vanished. But the village still hummed to the thirteenth chime, and Ezra smiled. Time, after all, had grown curious.
—Etta Wynn
Whose Sword Once Served
GABRIELLE BLEU
I was a horologist before I was a diver. Once I maintained the guardian automaton; now I search for her pieces.
With her great golden gladius, the towering automaton protected our coastal city. Her internal gears whirred above murmuring waves.
Until the day those traitorous waves bore forth a conquering armada and their war kraken. Tentacles wrenched the guardian apart, her fragments falling into the ocean.
Always the caretaker, I dive. Again and again, until I find the central gear, that whirring heart.
Tenderly, I hook it with tackle and pull it to the surface. My guardian will live again.
Gabrielle Bleu writes luminous science fiction and fantasy. Find more of Bleu's work at gabriellebleu.com.
The Ancest—ahhh!
RIO LOMBANA
In the parking lot, next to a Subaru bearing a faded “I Believe” sticker, he sank a large footprint deep into soft dirt. A gift, for a longtime fan.
He bent low to peer through the retreat center’s bead-curtain door. Candles flickered over drums, teacups, and suspicious plants. Sunburnt humans, their pupils blown wide, lounged on cushions and dilapidated couches.
His core ached with an appetite long unfulfilled.
“We’re grateful for, uh, Salish land,” intoned a person-sized pile of shawls. “Wait. I mean we acknowledge it. Sorry. We are on stolen land. And we’re grateful for...”
He leaned in. Oh, yes. They would do.
“...the Universe, the Grandmother.” This from a young woman with dirty-blond braids, strumming a sitar. “And the Ancest—ahhh!” Bracelets clacked as she flung out her arm, one accusing finger pointing at him.
Startled, he stumbled through the bead curtain into their midst and smacked his shaggy head on the eight-foot ceilings.
Silence fell. “I knew it,” whispered one.
Sasquatch settled on a cushion, his lonely heart hoping for acceptance. He reached for a drum and tapped out a faltering rhythm with a clawed hand, trying to smile without showing his teeth.
“...and we give thanks for our new spirit guide!” The sitar player joined in, and somebody passed the plants.
Rio Lombana resides on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the Coast Salish people. Find Rio @ https://riolombana.com/ and https://bsky.app/profile/riolombana.bsky.social
A World Big Enough to Hold Me
MEREDITH KINRYS
A small village, and me with big ideas. I don’t belong, but expectations trap me.
Fate intervenes; a beloved father lost, an enchanted castle found. A giant, snarling beast. Illusions hide beauty within, but I only use my eyes to see. I flee, and wolves come—giant and snarling.
I am rescued by the beast, unexpectedly. I soften and bend, unexpectedly.
So does he.
But a gentle beast doesn’t belong, doesn’t fit expectations. Small men come, beautiful outsides hiding snarling monsters within.
They kill the beast.
I fall with him. Expectations flee with our last breath, and the world finally opens up.
Death sets us free.
Meredith Kinrys is a multidisciplinary artist/writer exploring society, empowerment, and the occasional fairy tale.
thanks
KEN KAKAREKA
the poem
has been
good
to me
in times
of need.
my little
fix.
in between
novels
or
short stories
when
i don’t
know
what
the hell
to write
about.
the poem
lands
on me
like
bird shit—
good luck
they say
it is
and i
believe
that every
unannounced
poem
that’s ever
graced
my
door step
time
& time
again
like women
on bukowski’s
stoop
has saved
my life.
Ken Kakareka is an American writer nominated twice for Best of the Net.
Man or Mouse
MIKE MURPHY
Lt. Bonner knew the starcraft needed repairs and that he – a mere cook – couldn’t fix it. Shortly, the vessel would crash onto the planet below.
He’d have to try the genetic accelerator again, though it hadn’t been reliable. He had emerged from its chamber as a janitor and a florist, among other things, even though he believed he’d set the dials to engineer.
He walked into the booth. After the orange glow ended, he emerged. . . a lobster. The crash was imminent now.
He chuckled a “lobstery” chuckle, thinking about confused future archeologists wondering how crustaceans got into space.
Mike has had over 150 audio plays dramatized, won many awards, and had two short film scripts produced.
Rollercoaster
NADIA SHARP
“Are you out of your mind?” Mandy yelled at Jim.
They were an old couple, used to that type of bickering day in, day out. But Jim would not let go of the crazy idea.
“Do you want to go to Canada Wonderland?” Mandy went on. “After all these years? We’ve been nestling here for almost two hundred years, and now, out of the blue, you want to jump off a roller coaster?”
Jim chewed on his tobacco leaves—his only sin in this nice place in the afterlife—and muttered, “I would’ve gone there eons ago, but I was just trying to be mindful of… of…”
Exasperated, Mandy huffed. Her thin rosy lips tightened. She was about to say an obscenity but refrained at the last minute. “I’m not setting foot in Canada Wonderland again…”
Her voice broke, but she held her head up high. Jim felt sorry for her. Even though she got on his nerves with her meticulous cleaning habits and fanatic organizational skills, he still loved her. But he was determined to jump off that huge, snaky track from the highest peak into the void. What a feeling that would be!
He looked at his wife for a while. She was as beautiful as she had been on that fateful day, although half her face was a little flattened because of that three-hundred-foot fall.
He got an idea. “You can ride in one of those enclosed cars—yeah, why not?”
Mandy shook her head. “Unbelievable!”
Nadia Sharp is a Canadian writer. Her work blends the speculative, paranormal, and fantastical with the real.
nadiasharpauthor.com