QB
Staff of QB
Excrescence
R. F. DANIELS
It began as an itch in the back of my throat. Indistinguishable from the first hint of a cough, nothing that I would have paid attention to at the time. We were all coughing back in those days, with the acrid smoke from burning cities blanketing us day and night, and what few respirators we had being set aside for the Scavengers.
We all coughed back then. And when my cough moved into my lungs, taking up residence with nothing but a tickle to announce itself, I would have been hard-pressed to distinguish that from our new normal. Everyone had their own ways of coping in those days; I tried not to think about the damage being done to my body, mirroring the damage done to the planet in the decades prior. Keep looking forward, I told myself, focus on what you can control.
Maybe if I had paid a little more attention, I would have realized what was happening while there was still time to stop it. But I hadn’t, and one amber-bright September morning, when I opened my mouth to speak and instead fungal blooms spilled out like so much pastel vomit, I knew it was too late.
R. F. Daniels is a queer nonbinary writer of speculative fiction based in Helsinki and found online at rfdaniels.com.
fruit
STEPHEN GROUND
if pineapples breathed,
if they walked & talked & fucked,
I would still eat them
Stephen Ground is a writer and filmmaker based in Treaty Six Territory [Edmonton, Alberta, Canada].
Your Sacred Resting Place
MOIRA RICHARDSON
The mountain air sends my breath aloft as my footsteps crunch icily over the morning’s path. I’d come for pine-scented solitude, but instead, I found you.
Perhaps you’d hiked the selfsame path, enchanted by this deep forest. Now, you’ve rested here quietly for years. All that remains are your bones, mossy with abandonment and neglect.
As the forest reclaims you with this youthful pine growing through your ribcage, I have to wonder: Who were you before you fell, forgotten? Where have you gone?
I crouch beside you, whispering your last rites, and lay a gathered pine cone at your feet.
Moira writes weird stories and pretends to be a rat on the internet. @moirariom.bsky.social www.ohmoira.com
Gone With the Window
GARETH D JONES
Through the window Calum could see the pleasant grass lawn studded with brilliant buttercups, the trickling stream that bordered the garden and beyond that the soft, rolling hills that stretched into the distance. It was a vista of pure joy and relaxation that he never grew tired of.
“You’re doing it again!” The shrill, whining voice interrupted Calum’s reverie. He blinked and looked away from the window, briefly, at his haggard looking wife. “Why can’t you pay me half the attention you pay that, that window?!”
Calum shrugged slightly and turned back to the window.
“It’s all we have left,” he murmured, “all there is of Earth.”
A thin screech was all the warning he got as his wife advanced with a heavy saucepan and swung it with all her strength. The pan collided against the window with a sharp crack and the view disappeared in a haze of static and a spider web of cracks. A quiet electrical fizz was all that broke the stunned silence.
“What have you done?” Calum looked aghast at his wife, who stood there panting, pan held limply in one hand. “Now there’s nothing left. It’s all gone.”
Outside, through several feet of solid rock, the toxic wind howled across the barren landscape, blasted rock showing no sign that life had ever had a hold there.
Gareth is unofficially the second most widely translated SF short story author in the world.
Dementia
ANGEL T. DIONNE
Emilia is a bag of glass. She’s a fractured humerus. Snapped ulna. Fingernails peeled from their beds. She tries to piece herself back together, slathers porridge on her broken bits like salve, waits for it to dry. The doctors say it’s useless. Accept the inevitable. The inescapable decomposition of a childhood memory, putrefying on the windowsill until mice gnaw at its pulpy rot. Her husband’s name goes sour in the refrigerator next to the spinach. Her own face goes missing, and her head is all mycelia.
Angel T. Dionne is a surrealist professor. She likes her coffee black and her fish tinned.
Auld Lang Syne
NATALIE BUCSKO
The descending ball sparkles on TV. I navigate the potted trees, looking for the right guy.
FIVE!
The excited crowd drowns out the revelers twenty stories below.
FOUR!
He’s in a corner by himself, peering over the protective-perimeter of plants. A chill races up my spine when he turns my way.
THREE!
My mouth is dry. I lick my lips in anticipation. Only one thing can sate my thirst.
TWO!
I press my hands to his chest. Hard.
ONE!
His scream is swallowed by the fireworks’ roar as he falls. I join the crowd, singing, “Should old acquaintance be forgot…”
Natalie dislikes being perceived on the material plane. Check out her work at https://nataliewriteson.com/
What Do You Feel When You Think About Meerkats
ELENA SHAKHNOVSKY
humans surpass meerkats
in monogamy
but fall short of beavers,
she read in the news and felt
that somehow
she’d let the meerkats down
Elena Shakhnovsky is a writer and poet, living Hemingway’s dream.
A Strange Day in Hell
ETHAN LUCE
The day I died and went to Hell, I was shocked. I wasn’t supposed to go here! I marched through the brimstone bogs and burning fields until I reached Lucifer himself. The Devil was a colossal snake with red eyes aglow.
“I can’t be in Hell, that makes no sense.”
“That’s what they all say,” He chuckled maliciously. “You know what you did.”
“No, not like- I mean it makes no sense because I’m Jewish.”
“Hmm… Are you sure you’re not just a wee bit Christian?”
“No. I’ve never even eaten pork.”
Lucifer paused.
“You know what, you’re right, it really doesn’t. We’ve never even gotten a Buddhist before. This is a first.”
And so Lucifer sent me on my way to my proper afterlife. He’s really a nice fellow once you get to know him. I don’t know why he gets such a bad rap.
Ethan Luce is an author. He has been published in Dear Human and Borderline Tales.