QB
Staff of QB
They whisper about it now, but we used to have magic. That state of newness that only water can provide, that was real, honest magic. Magic came from water. We ruined it. Magic doesn’t exist anymore. End of story. It should have been the end. But there are whispers.
Large bodies of water go through a process called turnover, I explain to a lecture hall full of overwhelmed freshmen. It makes the water different temperatures, rising and falling within the lake.
The middle zone is thermocline, I valiantly impart on them, the middle zone is change incarnate.
Fresh snow crunches under my feet as I trudge towards West Lake Okoboji. It’s beautiful in winter, frozen solid with ice fishermen spotting the surface. It’s also, just barely, deep enough to test my hypothesis.
The thing about turnover is that it only goes so deep. Under the thermocline is the hypolimnion, the under-lake. The water doesn’t shift, doesn’t cycle up to the surface, and doesn’t change like the water of the epilimnion does.
I pay an ice fisherman $25 to let me use his shack for an hour. He makes me promise to call him if he gets any bites. I wait for him to disappear before I attach the amulet to the fishing line and drop it into the water. It hisses as it disappears into the depths.
The fishing line goes taut right before the ice fractures and the earth begins to quake. Some things never change.
A bump in the nose, inside reflection, outside looking up to the sky, I’m kind of high. I hope that’s okay. I jump from cloud to cloud, girl to girl. It’s my world at the end of the day. Hey, I’m just being honest, no reason to lie. My last relationship ended with a punch to the face. I know what you’re thinking, it wasn’t me. I swear I was sinking into calamity. I’m often in the pits of hell. I yell to myself from inside my space mind prison cell. Well, there’s no reason for details. I’m away from the past. It’s time to move on from the last. Still, my face hurts from the punch. There’s an indentation in me, and I can feel it deeply. There’s pain, but I seal it away, steal it away. I don’t care if you’re buying or not. I’m trying a lot. I’m tying what’s left of me into cloud shaped knots. My heart is a pot and it’s boiling over. I go over so much in my mind. It’s hard to find a person these days, but I’m diligent. I promise I try. I cry myself into pool, and drift on the drool.
This month...
Contributions from...
Alice Dillon, Anatoly Loginov, B.G. Smith, Bee Hawthorne, Betty Stanton, Brett Abrahamsen, Chyina Powell, E. Florian Gludovacz, E.J. LeRoy, Joshua Mannix, Katara J. Z., Kevin Hopson, Kurt Newton, Len Slatest, Lilian D. Vercauteren, Lisa Timpf, Lisa Verdekal, M.D. Berry, Marc Watson, Michael Smith, Michaela El-Ters, Natalia Plos, Natalie Bucsko, Nicholas De Marino, Rickey Rivers Jr, Sara Szatmary, Sascha Reinhard, Spencer Salokar, Tessa Were, William Shaw
Cover art
featuring photograph by Vruyr Martirosyan
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I hope you
find yourself at the bottom of a bottle of red wine
look in the mirror and do not hate what you see
swatch purple on your eyes without regard for others
are haunted by morning memories of me
try the spicy foods that used to scare you
lick your stubborn glass plate clean
bury your wounds in an unmarked grave
confine yourself to only burning cities
kiss the sky and then the ground again
clean the gravel from your scraped up knees
lighten the load that lives on your shoulders
know you are always the devil to me
Savannah S. Miller
- My son’s foot when he was born was about half the size of my finger. He weighed less than 3 lbs. He spent six weeks in the NICU.
- Waking up in Adelaide, South Australia to magpies and lorikeets calling and I’d go have coffee on a picnic table and smell the ocean from my back porch.
- Wanting to be a traveler, tramp, vagabond, vagrant, hobo who rides the rails or lives out of a van.
- The moment my heart broke, when I finally realized she’d never love me in the way I needed her to love me.
- The feeling of riding a bike through the morning Irish mist on the Aran Island of Inshimore.
- The way my wife will never see how beautiful she truly is.
- Being in a relationship where you’re no good for one another, but you just can’t quit each other.
- The weight of my friend’s casket when I was 17.
- The morning I walked through the empty streets and closes of Edinburgh, Scotland. Gathering flowers in Princes Street Gardens, and taking the tram to meet my one true love.
- How time stops when driving out to Edisto Island, South Carolina and how every person should find a place where time doesn’t exist.
M.D. Berry
“Baal Hammon demands five lives to quell his anger.” The priest’s gaze sweeps over us. I dare not meet his eyes. I know it is necessary; our crops lie dead in the field, the river dried to a trickle, the sun scorches skin and earth alike. But I’m weak. I shudder to pay the price.
Hanno rises without a hint of hesitation. Two more, with less eagerness. Another. Then nothing. One more death, to bring new life to our people.
With a heavy heart, I stand.
The priest nods. “Very well. Deliver your lastborn daughters to the temple by nightfall.”
Sascha Reinhard
Francis adjusted his VR goggles and loaded the boss fight of “Brain+Crash” in hard mode. The reviews had piqued his interest, calling it the most extreme game of the year.
“The sudden death feature makes this game stand out!”
“Unforgettable!”
“A once in a lifetime experience!”
He wasn’t a proficient gamer, but he really wanted to try it. The game started and he found himself in the combat area. Before he could react, the final boss crushed him to death.
Flexible steel filaments shot from the VR goggles, punched through his skull’s orbital fissure and into his brain.
Sudden death!
Florian writes stories, likes cheese, and is a friend to dogs and pandas everywhere. @ndbag.bsky.social
The blood is never mine, but I wear the crimson stains dripping from my skin, smothering the handles of each tool as I saw bone and sew skin. Remove one limb and give to another. The body must be perfect where humanity is not. Skin enclosing the superior botanical system thriving within.
A final puzzle piece, the heart thrums in my grip, lifeless and yet life-giving. I place it within the ribs and allow the vines snaking through the chest to grab hold. They wrap the organ and squeeze once, twice, red saturating green as the body quakes into being.
A.J. McCrae