The DJ announced the next song would be the last of the night, a final slow number to share with that special someone.
My legs were killing me. I’d only just slid down the wall to rest on our high school gymnasium’s floor. But this was it. Now or never.
I pushed myself up with help from the wall.
Don’t already be dancing with someone, I prayed.
She wasn’t. She sat by herself at a round table, sipping a soda.
Just don’t say no, I prayed as I walked up to her, as I asked her to dance. Just don’t say no.
She turned her pool-blue eyes on me. She smiled slowly, then she started laughing. She laughed and laughed and laughed so hard that I began to worry she might hurt herself. Then she got up and walked over to where a group of her friends were standing around, and struggled to stop laughing long enough to tell them what had happened. Her friends looked at where I was standing, frozen in place. They all broke out into laughter too.
I sat down with my back to them, so she wouldn’t see the smile on my face. She’d laughed at me, sure. But she’d never said no.
Karl El-Koura lives with his family in Ottawa, Canada's capital city, and works a regular job by day while writing fiction at night. To find out more about Karl, visit his website at ootersplace.com.
For Sale: Antique Mechanical Bird Cage
Wind-up singing bird in a gilded cage. Fully functional. Excellent condition, not cursed.
Provenance:
- Ida Strauss - Perished on the Titanic. Cage found floating on debris, bird singing.
- Julia Florence Cavendish - Purchased at auction, died in train crash still holding the cage.
- Ellen Mary Barber - Cavendish’s nanny, gifted the cage. Perished in house fire.
- Anna Parvati - Purchased from Barber’s husband. Died in bus accident. Cage found near the bus.
- Paulina Teodora - Inherited from Aunt Anna. Murdered in her home by her husband. Cage found beside body, bird still singing.
Must sell before it’s too late.
Cristina Cabrera
What do I do if I believe
And I believe I haven’t received
The thing I know I ought to need
The thing I don’t believe I need
But I know I need to believe
That I need to receive this thing?
Mackie P. Notte
oh, you
thin white plastic
furnished-apartment shower curtain
did you cling
with such fervent tenacity
to your last tenant?
Kat Hausler is a translator and author of the novels What I Know About July and Retrograde, as well as many shorter pieces.
after Ray Bradbury
Either way, if all summer were over in a day, I’d like to think that the drowning skies, the wildflowers, and the golden forest would be the only spring I need, where rain turns this planet into a garden, and Venus blesses me as your goddess.
Kelley Tai is a speculative fiction writer and a 2024 CSFFA Aurora Award-nominated poet.
A very brief canticle on depression by the unconscious mind, possibly speaking to itself in romantic strains
Stay with me, love;
don’t listen to them.
You never looked more beautiful
than in my REM.
Michael T. Smith is an Associate Professor of English who teaches both writing and film courses. He has published roughly 300 pieces (poetry and prose) in over 100 different journals.
At night, when the aquarium is empty, the Giant Pacific Octopus is lonely. There are no people to look for her, no faces to marvel at her. In her loneliness, she makes a wish; to be human, so that she can be among them, even just once.
Something listens; one night, her wish comes true.
Bony limbs unspool, naked eyes squeeze shut against salt’s sting. Jointed fingers fumble at the lock that pliable tentacles would solve easily, until she emerges into the oxygen atmosphere, new lungs heaving. She stands on two wobbling legs, adjusting to this new gravity.
She greets the world in clothes swiped from the gift shop; clashing, bright, oversized. Into the city lights she wanders, where humans gather, where she is nothing to marvel at. It is a joyous experience, this new camouflage.
Outside of a nightclub, lights spill onto the pavement. Music pounds in her singular heart. She moves, compelled, as the music wraps itself around her brain. She dances, gangly limbs flailing wildly. Other humans, drawn by infectious exhilaration, join her. Strangers dance together, laughing, drunk on the joy of living.
Hours later she returns to the aquarium, with warm-blood-flushed cheeks and sweat staining her clothes. The morning sun paints the sky pink, and so paints her back into an octopus. Tentacles open her tank with ease, and she slips contently into her water.
When the people gather to watch her this morning, she dances for them, music thumping in all three of her hearts.
Andrew Loria is an author who dabbles in everything, but prefers the extraterrestrial, the romantic, the horrific, and the absurd.