QB
Staff of QB
The Bitter Taste
Eilish Forwells
The demon in my gut is trying to escape.
Its slimy form is creeping up my throat, rocking my uvula and slipping between my teeth. It drags a sour taste along on my tongue, stinging the fat flesh of my cheeks.
I want to release the fiend, but instead I find it with calloused fingers. It bites into my flesh. Pushing through the burn, I shove it back into the cavern of my gut, into its prison where it spits with wrath.
Swallowing my bitter pill, I erase: “You’re a fucking idiot Karen.”
—Eilish Forwells
Submit. Submit. Submit.
J.S. Douglas
If women were built to submit, it wouldn’t feel like being asked to cram my fully grown female body into a tiny teacup. American men wouldn’t be flaying women alive one slice at a time until the maternal mortality rate is worse than that of Turkey. They wouldn’t have to get their pet psychiatrists and investment bros and pastors to go on podcasts to tell women only they can solve men’s problems with what’s in between their legs. They wouldn’t have to give women cutesy titles that say, “Wouldn’t it be easier if you spent all day cooking and popping out children without a thought in your head?” They wouldn’t be stripping us with publicly available AI tools. Forcing us to lie down. Spread wide. Submit. Submit. Submit. It wouldn’t feel like furious hands pressing against soft skin, leaving a trail of bruises.
J.S. Douglas is a speculative fiction author living in the Pacific Northwest.
Three Squares
Chaz Osburn
“This time he’s gone too far!”
“What and who are you talking about, dear?”
“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. You know, the guy in charge of Health and Human Services.”
“Oh no, we’re not going to get into another political debate, are we? I mean, I love you and all that but all you’ve done since January 20th is complain, complain, complain about what’s going on in Washington.”
“I’m not complaining, honey. I’m observing. There is a difference. And as my spouse, you should be supporting me.”
“So, what has you so hot and bothered?”
“It’s this crazy thing he’s trying to get Congress to do.”
“Let’s see, he wants fluoride out of public water systems, he says vaccines cause autism, he’s cut funding for research on mRNA shots, he’s placed limits on who can get the COVID vaccine, he’s fired the director of the CDC, he has new guidelines for children’s vaccines and he’s gotten into a flap about circumcision. Is there another that I missed?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me.”
“Now he wants Congress to introduce legislation banning round plates!”
“Round plates?”
“Dinner plates.”
“Why?”
“He says Americans should have three square meals a day.”
Chaz Osburn of Traverse City, MI has had two novels and numerous short stories published.
Haunted
E. Florian Gludovacz
“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.
I Had a Dream About You Last Night
SY POWER
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.