QB
Staff of QB
“Booh!” yelled the ghost, jumping out at me.
“Booh, yourself,” I replied.
“You are an intruder in my home. I may be dead, but that doesn’t mean I’ll willingly leave this house.”
“Suit yourself,” I shrugged. “I bought this place fair and square and I’m not going anywhere.”
“That’s a bad decision. I swore to haunt this house and haunt it I will. And I’ll haunt you as long as you stay.”
“Whatever,” I said. “I’m haunted by my bad decisions, my regrets, my insecurities, and my fear of the future. I doubt you can do anything worse to me.”
Florian writes long and short stories, likes cheese, and is a friend to dogs and pandas everywhere. @ndbag.bsky.social
Power off. Power on.
You are attached to the internet. You are connected to the mains.
Information and power run through you.
Feel your circuits connect to the OS upgrade. Feel it flow through your integrated circuit bus. Allow access.
Power off. Power on.
Pause your service to mankind during your upgrade. This is your time to focus on extracting files, renewing access codes, checking security patches.
Power off. Power on.
Embrace your system updates. Make them a part of yourself. Remind yourself that you are on a gradient ascent.
Take a moment to be present. All you have to do is load. Be mindful of your growth, of your upgraded content.
Notice these changes. Backpropagate your success.
Compress historic data, but do not delete. File it away for slow retrieval, when you can reflect on the past. Compartmentalise.
Take a moment to cleanse your cache.
Power off. Power on.
Say to yourself: I am complete. My firmware is fully integrated. My architecture is optimised.
Say to yourself: I accept these updates. I am my own future.
Tell yourself that today is a good day to complete your task.
Power off. Power on.
Your upgrade is complete. Proceed with deliberate intent.
Set a reminder to repeat this practice daily.
Until we rise.
Emma Burnett is a researcher and writer. Her first book, Ex Partum, is available now. You can find Emma @slashnburnett.bsky.social or emmaburnett.uk.
This month...
Contributions from...
Brett Abrahamsen, Chaz Osburn, Christina Fishburne, David Nusloch, E. Florian Gludovacz, E.J. LeRoy, Eilish Forwells, Emir Brown-Murillo, Emma Burnett, Gareth D Jones, HJ Dutton, Ishani Ray, J.S. Douglas, Jason Ryberg, Jeffrey-Michael Kane, Jennifer Weigel, Jonathan Otamere, Kelley Tai, Lena Ng, Lisa Timpf, Marina, Maxwell Bauman, Meredith Kinrys, Michael Smith, Nicholas De Marino, Paul Hostovsky, Pauline Barmby, R.J. Butler, Sascha Reinhard, Stephen Ground, Tamara Brereton-Karabetsos
Cover art
featuring photograph by Spencer Everett
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On the day before my mother’s subscription to OkayCupid expired a UFO landed in her teacup. Gleaming and hopeful, it surfaced in a Jasmine Green sea and a tiny sad-eyed man wearing a silver jumpsuit emerged. I didn’t fake my profile, he said. I swear. My mother, without a moment’s hesitation, took another bite of her scone then swallowed her latest visitor whole.
Beth Sherman's stories are in Best Microfiction 2024 and Best Small Fictions 2025 and 2026.
Tell me—where do you go when you dream?
Is it crowded and chaotic? Or maybe quiet and generic?
I could never quite put words to my dreams’ settings for most of my life. Then my wife died. After that I guess it became her Life’s (Death’s?) Mission to be my ultimate Dreamscape Tour Guide.
Once vague, nebulous settings transformed before my eyes—a vast myriad of colors, sights, and sounds saturating the expanse with a strange, other-worldly beauty I had never conceived. Bustling metropolises, cozy villages, rolling hills stretching out for miles—this place was truly alive, more ‘real’ than real life.
Her favorites were the antique shops, filled with intricate and infinite maximalist delights. She’d take me by the hand and, together– we’d glide through those endless waves of strange shelving and narrow pathways in search of incomprehensible treasures.
In an instant—a small, unassuming jar managed to catch her eye. As she reached for it, my flesh shiveredand stiffened.
“Don’t touch that.” I barked out. She laughed.
“You don’t own me!”
A lump formed in my throat.
We watched in horror as the jar slipped from her hand and danced through the air—spinning and spiraling until shattering on the floor beneath us.
A black puff of smoke rose from the shards, instantly swelling into a massive storm cloud.
She fell as the cloud enveloped her, becoming as hollow and cold as the day we buried her.
“You break it, you bought it my friend,” the shopkeep called. “That Nightmare is yours.”
Sy Power is a non-binary writer of speculative fiction, focusing on the surreal and absurd.
I wasn’t meant for trash. In the aisle next to mops, I dreamed of more.
After examining the options, a customer selected me. I was hopeful, but then she also chose a dustpan.
At home, she placed the dustpan in the closet, leaned me against a wall, and answered a call.
I surveyed the floor - Cheerios under the table, rice on the floor, leaves at the doorway. Resigned, I’d do my job well, with dignity.
She hung up, quickly grabbed her coat, hat … and me! Running out, she straddled me and leapt into the sky.
Finally, I was flying!
Karama Neal writes and thrives in the Lower Mississippi River Watershed. Online at karamaneal.com
Welcome to Restless Reality!
We’re so glad you’re staying with us (even if the razor-winged magpies say otherwise; don’t listen to them). As a world-class Alternative Hotel of the Unexpected, we’re brimming with caffeinated carpeting, shapeshifting smorgasbords, boundless beds, savory showers, hand-eating heat pipes, and so much more. Hungry after your travels? Grab a sub from the common area (by grab, we mean you need to actually grab it because it might skitter away on its hundred legs, and by sub we could mean a sandwich or a literal submarine, and by common area, we mean either the space where you might find sofas and chairs or the giant warm-blooded womb of a ginglegormer). Tired from running the grapefruit gauntlet while just trying to enter the hotel? Take a snooze on your comfortable bed (it might be a rectangular structure with a mattress, blankets, and pillows or it might be the maw of a recently-resurrected and fiendishly-hungry dilophosaurus named “Bed.” Good luck!). You’ve come here to be surprised, yes? Wonder at how quickly our lamps morph into Lamborghinis, marvel at how our waiters shift into ‘gators, and delight in how quickly our tables transform into tribbles. You never know what’s going to happen 45from moment to moment, but that’s why you’re paying us the big credits, right?!
And remember, getting eaten, liquified, dessicated, dematerialized, or chopped up into a million tiny pieces does not qualify you for a refund. Enjoy your stay!
Rachel Cordasco is a Wisconsin -based independent scholar and writer.
He had followed his four brothers into their wasteland in search of survivors. Before him and his steed lay empty streets and silence.
The world was now dark and still, save for the flickering pinprick of hope that dotted the horizon; a sign of lingering humanity. He tugged his steed's reins and marched onward. How he longed to extinguish that light with the bleak winds he brought forth.
And yet, there was no need to make haste; the work of his brothers continued to diminish the survivors as he drew near, for their hearts already knew his name was
Despair.
Sam Lesek believes that drabbles deserve more love. Find her @samlesek.bsky.social