QB
Staff of QB
iSpy My Childhood Secrets
JAINA CIPRIANO
The Torture Effect
BRETT ABRAHAMSEN
After centuries of speculation on the matter, there was now a definitive answer regarding the fate of an individual’s consciousness after death.
The sentence: fifty trillion years of torture, followed by an eternity of happiness and bliss.
God—actually a super-intelligent alien from Alpha Centauri – had devised the sentence as a means of testing the effect of long term torture
on creatures of limited intelligence—Earthlings. He had felt guilty about this, and appended a blissful eternity as some sort of reward.
A man named Lemming sat dying in a hospital bed. He was the first dying person to know what his fate would be.
Lemming addressed the doctor who was tending to him.
“Suppose—after, say, several trillion years – something kills the omnipotent alien. I’m tortured for several trillion years, and then at the mercy of some other super-intelligent creature.”
“The alien is immortal,”the doctor said. “You have nothing to complain about. A more interesting torture experiment would involve the subject being tortured for fifty trillion years, given a minute of extreme happiness, tortured again for another fifty trillion years, and so on.”
He died and the torture began. Every individual which had ever existed was being tortured with him, though some—those which had died in the distant past—were closer to the eternal reward than others.
When the reward came it was no longer recognizable to him. It felt like torture.
The author has sold dozens of works to numerous publications. He resides in Saratoga Springs, NY.
No Time Like the Present
MIKE MURPHY
Taking a deep, hopeful breath, Barnaby exited the humming time machine into the same garage he left not long ago. Damn it. This could be a good sign, but it was unlikely.
His hope vanished when he heard them: His shrewish wife calling for him to stop his tinkering, come outside now, and help her; their two foul-mouthed, bratty kids; and that yippy dog whose goal was to pee in the house at least once a day.
Still?
How could his carefully calculated, happy hours of gleefully messing with the timestream have not changed one iota of his miserable life?
Mike has had over 150 audio plays dramatized, won many awards, and had two short film scripts produced.
Bug
RICKEY RIVERS JR.
There’s something crawling around. It’s in the walls. I usually hear it at night time. It moves in a hurried pace. It’s looking for something, or maybe it’s running from something. I can’t even tell. It’s been like this for the past two weeks. It’s scurrying inside the walls. It’s shifting as I sleep, or try to sleep. It’s moving like an animal. I can’t even tell how large it is, because it changes in size. Sometimes it’s like a roach. Sometimes it’s like a squirrel. It doesn’t even make a noise otherwise. It’s nocturnal. In the day it seems to be away. I think I need to tape up my vents, and all the cracks in the walls. Now that I mention it, there’s a lot of cracks in the walls, and they’re different sizes too.
Rickey Rivers Jr was raised in Alabama. Tree House can be found on Amazon.
Trapped
BARB DEMONEY
I haven't left the house in weeks. The changes occurred gradually. Isolated by my mom's passing, my absentee father, no siblings, and few friends. No one noticed.
My hands shook as I scrawled, “Help me. I'm trapped.” I shoved it into an envelope.
Josh whispered to me at our wedding, "I’ll love you forever." My heart melted, now I'm terrified to my core.
Josh stormed into the living room and yelled, “Tricia, get the fuck over here!”
I cowered behind the couch. Afraid to make the wrong move. Did he know I called?
The doorbell rang, interrupting my thoughts. Josh opened the door. The man handed him the pizza and said it's paid for. As Josh slammed the door and went to set the food down, I saw my opportunity. I slid the envelope under the door and prayed the delivery guy would see it. Did Josh notice?
Josh flung the pie down, then lunged at me. Cornering me, spit flew in my face as he shrieked, “I'm going to kill you!”
He choked me as I desperately tried to squirm away, staring at the door. Would help arrive in time? My heart raced as time ticked away.
We struggled as the door flung open, the delivery guy swung full-force at Josh, who turned. He pivoted as a fist went straight into his temple. Josh slumped to the floor.
I collapsed on the couch, crying, as the man called 911. The police arrested Josh, and I finally felt free again.
Barb DeMoney is a flash fiction writer whose work blends drama, comedy and horror.
Mind
JAN CRONOS
Emergent from complexity
it is feral as an urban tom
that crawls out from underneath
a parked Toyota’s rusty belly
to gnaw an unsuspecting rodent.
It's uncontrollable as a headstrong mustang
whose scaly tongue defies the iron bit
and drags us where we would not go
or disobeys our most direct commands
until our thinking is a feckless gallop.
Its logic often is illogic,
its ideas tangential or like a toddler defiant
and the times we would most rely on it,
it slips away and we can’t find it.
Author writes prose and poetry in NYC USA under the pen name Jan Cronos.
Mama ain’t mama
MOIRA RICHARDSON
Still got the same golden-butter hair, same as mine, her eyes a matching blue, but her mouth ain’t right. My mama smiles like summer, but this mama ain’t cracked even one since she come outta old Flander’s windmill.
Her hands on me feel salamander cold. She steers me towards the dusty dark what smells of dead things.
“See what’s inside, sweetie?” she says.
This mama’s voice is dull as rocks, not alive with laughter like it’s supposed to be.
“I ain’t going in there,” I tell this mama, but she won’t stop pushing.
This mama’s stronger, too.
Moira writes weird stories and pretends to be a rat on the internet. @moirariom.bsky.social www.ohmoira.com
clean break
KEN KAKAREKA
another yr.
of working
in private
education
which i
fell into
at 21.
i’m 38
now.
the tribulations
of an
english major—
ask
john mulaney.
every yr.
i pep-talk
myself
into
getting out.
open
that bar
or some
kind
of business
that excites
you.
the writing
hasn’t
panned out
yet.
but i
latch onto
this poem
and every
other thing
i write
like it’s
my final
night
that will
deliver
a clean break
in
the morning.
Ken Kakareka is an American writer nominated twice for Best of the Net.