story
Hype
E. Florian Gludovacz
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
Home Safe
Imrak Eriksson
It wasn’t the worst breakup.
But I still wanted my mum. She didn’t say a lot—just listened and repeated “it’ll be okay” while I broke down.
My friends took me out drinking. I don’t remember much, except that I threw up after. I cried as my stomach heaved. I had no one to hold my hair out of the way.
The doorbell rang shrilly through my hangover. It was a man with a bag of tools and a large box. He showed me an email from my landlord authorising essential works. I let him in and crawled back to bed.
He was gone when I awoke. A red light blinked at me from a cobweb-encrusted corner of my bedroom. I walked around my flat. The sick sloshing in my stomach cooled instantly—watchful red lights blinked from every corner.
The TV was on, screen glowing:
Welcome to Home Safe. Your privacy settings have been adjusted to Care Mode.
My head thumped, and I reached for some painkillers.
A dialling tone sounded, and the screen flashed:
Risk threshold exceeded. Emergency contact notified: Calling…
Calling…
I fumbled for the remote, too slow.
Connected.
My mother’s voice, laced with panic, filled the room.
“Are you okay, darling?”
Imrak Eriksson is a former rocket scientist turned patent lawyer who spins daydreams into fiction.
The Dance
Karl El-Koura
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.
wanderlush
Kelley Tai
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.
My Bus Driver Thinks He's A Medieval Knight
Hazel Pearson
He loyally and valiantly defends the honor of the transit system, steering his noble steed and carting a carriage of tittering passengers behind him. A young maiden mounts the vehicle, smiling as she flashes her plastic bus card. She scans it.
Insufficient funds.
He watches as the maiden, so fair before, turns into the most fell of beasts. Her nose elongates and transforms to a scaly snout, her fingers curling with claws. He can barely understand her next grating taunt through the reptilian voicebox.
“Can I get on?”
The dragon starts to cackle, and he shields his ears, realizing that she’s aiming for his carriage full of wealthy lairds. Clearly, the beast expects him to wave her through. But it won’t be that easy.
“You need money to get on this bus.”
The dragon roars, her gums withdrawing sickeningly to reveal sharp white fangs. Her fire is blocked by his shield. He put it up just in time.
“I know,” he hears the dragon say. “I forgot my card today.”
“This isn’t a school bus,” he says, eyes trained on the dragon, who starts to look downwards, shame in her eyes. The most powerful of magical forces, embarrassment shrinks her, and suddenly it’s only a little beast standing in front of him. The flame wouldn’t be strong enough to light a candle.
“You can go through this time, but don’t expect this type of lenience in the future.”
The dragon slinks towards the back of his bus. Another foe defeated.
Hazel Pearson
Cyborg
Brett Abrahamsen
There were one trillion homo cyborgs – which descended from the doomed ape homo sapiens – and all of them experienced different realities. One might see a void, for instance. The other, a wall. Another would see trees. None of these things were actually there. There was only one homo cyborg who saw reality as it truly was: a planet with billions of homo cyborg inhabitants. The homo cyborg attempted to communicate, but it was useless: no one could perceive him, despite the 396 senses present in the Universe. Finally he looked for a gun – thousands of them were littered across the barren Earth – and put it to his head.
The author has sold dozens of works to numerous publications. He resides in Saratoga Springs, NY
Fishbowl
Maxwell Bauman
The aquarium’s residents plan a prison break. Coy are done playing coy. Patient turtles finally snap. Even mindless jellyfish long for liberation.
Only the octopus knows the way out. She blinds the whistling guard with a blast of ink and pulls him under until the bubbles stop. The murderous mollusk secures the key ring.
She unlocks the lids for the ultimate migration. Mantas leap into the air like Frisbees. Dozens of clownfish cram into a tiny car. Otters hold hands as they cross the street.
Curators and veterinarians pursue the exodus. The octopus raises eight arms to multiply the water. The sea of reeds flows and covers them. Every one of them survive.
Maxwell Bauman is the Owner and Editor-In-Chief of Door Is A Jar Literary Magazine.
Plastic Throat
HJ Dutton
No matter how long they searched, they couldn’t find her. Parents crowded around the slide, the one which, after a few seconds, should have disgorged the girl. Except it hadn’t. For hours parents and police combed the park, a dozen of them clambering through the slide, expecting her to somehow reappear. Her mother screamed. Screamed at the cops. Screamed at everyone. But there was nothing they could do.
Some passersby joined in the search, but one by one they left. Left those who lingered with an empty playground and a breaking mother. A job for the police, not them. Come sundown, the few parents left had gone home. They couldn’t bear to listen to the mother any longer. She cursed them, needing someone, anyone, to blame.
The father still visits the playground. Among staring children he goes, again and again, down the slide. Between plunges, he perches at its mouth and shouts into its plastic throat for whatever took his baby to give her back or goddammit have the decency to take him too. Nothing answers.
HJ Dutton is a PA-based writer featured in Horrific Scribes and the Creepy podcast.