fiction
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.”
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.
Fumes
MARIO SENZALE
The contractor who was supposed to install my kitchen hood died.
He shouldn't be resting in peace; he should be installing my hood.
The Collection of Sunlight
BETTY STANTON
I was hired to collect what was left of the light.
At first it was too fragile. I didn’t understand the way it clung to shards of old glass and drifted through dust like lost scriptures. Eventually I learned how to handle it, and now I keep it in jars labelled with years that no longer mean anything.
When the others sleep, I open them. The light moves, restless, as if it remembers the fields and faces it is meant for. I’m the only one of us who can hear the way it hums, who can understand it. It sings that bodies still want to be seen in the light.
I send my findings into the dark.
Results may vary
IAN STEWART
“Hang on!” I shouted. Joey was still in the other room and making an absolute mess of it. I winced as something shattered.
My fingers stuck to the pages of the user guide and I had to pry them off as I flipped through, leaving behind smudgy fingerprints. It wasn’t my blood, but that didn’t make me feel much better.
“‘Welcome to your new life of adventure,’” I read aloud. “‘Getting Started, Lunar Calendars, Jewelry to Avoid…’” I heard Joey scream, inhuman and not a bit reassuring. “Yeah, I hear you buddy—ah! Found it! ‘Troubleshooting: We hope you are satisfied.” Another crash shook the walls. It sounded like a door falling off its hinges. “‘However, shapeshifting can be unsettling and results may vary. If you are unsatisfied with your decision, you have options.’ Great! Hear that, Joey? Options!”
Something crashed down the hallway, slamming from wall to wall like the world’s scariest game of Pong.
“‘You may consider relocating to a planet with a different or smaller moon.’ What?” I flipped to the last page, which was blank aside from the company’s mocking, toothy logo. “Well. That’s not helpful at all.” Something heavy slammed against the door. “Wait wait wait—there’s a number! It says to call if we’re still unsatisfied. We’re unsatisfied, right?” Another sickening thud and a splintered crack. “Let’s call.” The door exploded inward, replaced with a grotesque mass of bloodied fur and sharp ends. “Hey Joey,” I whimpered. “Haven’t seen my phone, have you?”
Odd
DAVID M. BRADDOCK
‘Odd,’ he thought, as the particle disintegrator split his body into a million atoms and spread them irretrievable across the known universe…