QB
Staff of QB
Your body a garden
LENA NG
The gardeners opened his torso and emptied it of organs. In its centre, they planted tulip bulbs. On his skull, green chia grass grew. His mouth spilled vines like vegetative tentacles. Where his eyes were, daisies sprouted. His legs grew roots and insects squirmed over the skin. Worms crawled in moist ear canals. Friends came for afternoon tea and to admire the blossoming garden.
Tax write-offs for a goblin bounty hunter
EMMIE CHRISTIE
Date: 3/Dying Dusk/10,490
Amount Billed: 130 hexes
Description: Trench coat with flame decals
Category: Intimidation
Date: 18/Dying Dusk/10,490
Amount Billed: 16.4 hexes
Description: squeal-meal box
Category: Business lunch
Date: 9/Dead of Midnight/10,490
Amount Billed: 60.9 hexes
Description: Trench coat alterations, shortened hem by 3 feet
Category: Intimidation
Date: 5/Graven Dawn/10,490
Amount Billed: 4.1 hexes
Description: Cream for ego-burn from 8th grade elves
Category: Miscellaneous
Date: 11/Graven Dawn/10,490
Amount Billed: 3.1 hexes
Description: Drought of motivation to care about anything
Category: Business Supplies
Date: 14/Mist and Misery/10,490
Amount Billed: 30.2 hexes
Description: Fake Scythe
Category: Intimidation
Date: 9/Three Suns' Hot/10,490
Amount Billed: 108 hexes
Description: Paralyzing blow darts
Category: Business Supplies
Date: 17/Three Suns' Hot/10,490
Amount Billed: 30 hexes
Description: Full body ego-burn care
Category: Miscellaneous
Date: 17/Three Suns' Hot/10,490
Amount Billed: 208 hexes
Description: Application to leave region
Category: Management fees
Don't mind her
NICHOLAS DE MARINO
<<Hey!>>
This won't be like the last job. You're going to make a difference.
<<I know you can hear me!>>
And money. You need to make money.
<<You can't ignore me forever!>>
There's no helping her. She's long gone.
BBRRRING-BBRRRING!
Thank Allah-Buddha-Christ.
“9-1-1, what's the address of the emergency?”
That might've been too chipper.
“Uh, yeah, well,” the caller stammers, “my dog got loose.”
“Sir, this is an emergency line. You — <<He sounds cute! Get his number!>> — Animal control.”
“Well, thing is,” the caller stutters. “She's kinda aggro.”
“You think she's a danger to the community?”
“Yeah,” the caller says. “She's a pit bull.”
<<A pit bull!>>
Concentrate.
“Sir, where did the dog get loose?”
<<Like Michael Vick!>>
Deep breath. Hold it. Release.
“500 block — <<It's a dog fighting ring!>> — Street,” the caller says. “Up by Green.”
“You said the 500 block of Green Street?”
<<Send the SWAT team!>>
“No, Birch Street, by Green Street,” the caller says. “Look, I don't —”
Stick to the script.
“Sir — <<Let's get this fucker!>> — I, um, what's your name?”
CLICK.
<<What a jerk!>>
Enough.
“Look, if you shut up at work, you can talk as much as you want at home.”
“Who are you talking to?” asks the dispatcher at the next desk.
“Myself.”
<<Hey, he's kinda cute!>>
Why's it so hard to make a living?
Hose-hand twins
CHRISTY HARTMAN
Sandy shuffled to his parents’ trashcan after work, releasing the day’s sawdust collection from his hose-hand.
“Hey Suck-O-Matic 3000! Finished cleaning Home Depot’s bathrooms?” his twin, Ash, taunted from the stove, filling the pasta pot with his hose-hand.
Sandy dreaded family dinners, his parents beaming over Ash’s talents. As a child, he’d doused the neighbourhood kids on hot days, while Sandy vacuumed the stairs. Ash was destined for firefighting greatness, extinguishing blazes with his 300-psi arm.
Dad popped a meatball into his mouth mid-snicker, tickled by Ash’s taunts. Dustbin Bieber, Lightning McClean, Meryl Sweep—each drawing a bigger laugh.
Dad flailed, eyes bulging. Ash prattled on about puppies and old ladies, oblivious to the distress. Sandy deftly placed his suction-cuff over his dad’s mouth—activating the highest setting. The meatball dislodged, dad gulped air, grateful.
Sandy slapped his dad’s back. “I guess it’s better to suck than be a blow hard.”
Table Talk
MIKE MURPHY
I was sitting at Nicole’s kitchen table when I heard the first of the voices. Male. Definitely not her. “Fuck you!” it said angrily. My old ears perked up. Before my good friend returned to the table with the kettle, two other guys uttered “Screw you” and “Up yours.” I glanced out the open window, expecting to see some foul-mouthed gents passing by.
No one.
Nicole must have noticed my surprise. She spoke as she poured the boiling water into my teacup. “Sorry, Helen,” she began, gesturing at the full sink behind her. “It’s the dishes,” she explained. “They’re dirty.”
Lost: One White Feather
TERRI ROSE
20.08.25
Reward offered.
It first appeared under my pillow twenty years ago, the day after my husband’s death. In the hospice, he promised to send me a sign from the heavens—proof that he’s safe up there, that our love is pure and eternal. I know in my heart he’s waiting.
Mrs Margaret Smyth.
Editor’s note: Obituary records show Mrs Smyth died on 16.01.24. The ad continues to appear mysteriously in print, despite her death.
R.I.P
Volition
LENNY MORGAN
You’re welcomed by the dark as you’re dragged into a deep slumber. You can’t feel your limbs anymore, nor can you see your own face in the mirror. You must have finally collapsed under the weight of reality. But now there’s nothing. Only the flashing lights and the pulsing headache remain to accompany you. You’re falling, and if you don’t wake up soon, you’re gonna fall so far down it’ll get hard to climb back out again. Climb back out of what, you may ask? This tiny chasm you’ve dug in the pits of your heart. You don’t know when you made this hole but it’s yours and it fits you. But you don’t belong there, no one does. So no matter how comforting it looks, don’t fall any deeper. There’s nothing for you down there, nothing that won’t give you pain for remembering the past. You must be wondering now, why would I go back? Well, you've got a point. The world out there is equally as bad, but it needs your presence, it needs your mistakes and your failures. Without it, it's empty and dull. They never said living is easy, but think about how far you've come. That's important.
So get up, you’re not done yet. You've still got a lot more people to disappoint, but it's going to be marvelous.
Promise of death
CATHERINE CHAPPELL
Death had always scared me.
It came to me as a child, moments after entering the world, umbilical cord around neck, starved for oxygen.
"We can be together," it offered.
I would not have remembered if it had not made the offer again and again in my dreams, drowning me. Burying me. Choking me of life. Promising me it would be there when I was ready. I'd wake up, heart racing, gasping for air and lie awake for hours to prevent another reunion.
It wasn't until high school I realized the relief of its promise. I held my grandma’s hand as she stared out the window. She was beautiful and lost. Far, in a way we could not reach. Years before, she had scolded her children for reviving her. It was one of her few lucid moments. Life had taken strength from her bones, memories from her head, and voice from her tongue. It was then I realized that life could strip you from yourself, and, in desire to remain, we would still cling to that which has taken everything.
I held her hand, and death held mine, and it promised it would be there when she was ready.
She claimed it a month later.
I felt guilt for holding her hand with death's, and relief because it was life that had killed her and death that had promised her more.