story

The day I died and went to Hell, I was shocked. I wasn’t supposed to go here! I marched through the brimstone bogs and burning fields until I reached Lucifer himself. The Devil was a colossal snake with red eyes aglow.

“I can’t be in Hell, that makes no sense.”

“That’s what they all say,” He chuckled maliciously. “You know what you did.”

“No, not like- I mean it makes no sense because I’m Jewish.”

“Hmm… Are you sure you’re not just a wee bit Christian?”

“No. I’ve never even eaten pork.”

Lucifer paused.

“You know what, you’re right, it really doesn’t. We’ve never even gotten a Buddhist before. This is a first.”

And so Lucifer sent me on my way to my proper afterlife. He’s really a nice fellow once you get to know him. I don’t know why he gets such a bad rap.

Ethan Luce is an author. He has been published in Dear Human and Borderline Tales.

September sun ignites snow, blinding a thawed penguin in the polar dawn. It stumbles and flails atop blue-gray glacier. A quintet of explorers laugh. You've got to appreciate the little things, pratfalls included. The penguin rights itself and waddles through their wispy, spectral forms, plunging into six months of day.

Nicholas De Marino is a neurodivergent rhyparographer. More at nicholasdemarino.blogspot.com.

There’s something crawling around. It’s in the walls. I usually hear it at night time. It moves in a hurried pace. It’s looking for something, or maybe it’s running from something. I can’t even tell. It’s been like this for the past two weeks. It’s scurrying inside the walls. It’s shifting as I sleep, or try to sleep. It’s moving like an animal. I can’t even tell how large it is, because it changes in size. Sometimes it’s like a roach. Sometimes it’s like a squirrel. It doesn’t even make a noise otherwise. It’s nocturnal. In the day it seems to be away. I think I need to tape up my vents, and all the cracks in the walls. Now that I mention it, there’s a lot of cracks in the walls, and they’re different sizes too.

Rickey Rivers Jr was raised in Alabama. Tree House can be found on Amazon.

The last thing to divide was a bottle of Shiraz, a wedding gift meant to be shared on our twenty-fifth anniversary. Neither of us wanted the reminder. Nor to be wasteful. Two last things in common.

“Let’s share it, as we sign?”

You opened. I poured.

“Too dry.” Like our bedroom.

“Wasn’t sweet enough to age.” We hadn’t been kind.

“Not enough acidity.” We never fought to preserve our relationship’s thrill.

This marriage was never meant to last six years. Let alone twenty-five.

“At least it’s not bitter.”

We weren’t.

We knew not to linger; to enjoy a smooth finish.

Alethea pretends to be profound with purple prose, puns and alliteration.

“Is it even worth it?” Dorothy stared ahead at the supermarket shelf, thinking hard.

The shelves here shuffled the stuff you were likely to buy right in front of your face according to the height on your biometric tag. She’d been about to grab her usual choice when this high end goodie was shoved in front of her nose instead.

Max leaned on the shopping cart, drumming her fingers along the handle. Advertisements scrolled in holograms under her hands. “I mean it’s not a necessity but—“

“So we shouldn’t get it.” Dorothy looked down at the price tag again. It flashed happily, not understanding she couldn’t afford what it offered.

Max sighed. “You know what? I’ll get some extra hours at work. Put it in the cart.”

Dorothy perked up. “Really?”

“Sure. It’s my apartment too.”

Dorothy mentally promised to cover takeout the next three times her and Max ordered in. She hefted the container into the cart, careful not to squish the grapes.

‘Quality air! Ultra filtered’, the label promised. The company said this stuff came from actual living trees, but Dorothy knew that was probably just a marketing gimmick.

“It’s nice to have a little luxury,” she sighed, and adjusted the straps on her respirator.

Adrienne Rex is a writer, a Texan, and a weirdo. Find her here: https://adrienne-rex-writes.carrd.co/

Waiting for the chrysalis to open offered its own form of madness, an insanity which inspired William to go further and further into his worst nightmares.

Time seemed to conspire with the prison cell, slowly torturing William with its strange shadows and distant sounds, causing his thoughts to completely consume him.

A telepathic shiver reached Williams’s mind, as the cell compartment opened and a large creature slid into the room.

A huge tentacle slowly reached the chrysalis, piercing the mucus membrane, allowing a hand to become free, then slowly breaking the exterior of the pod, enabling William to push his way out of the chrysalis.

There had been a time when the creature lived in memory, a psychic torment that allowed it to feed off its prey, it knew the power and the terror of the mind held in judgement.

The creature suddenly gave a violent scream, retreating to the edge of the chamber, its death sentence had finally been revealed, justice by the tormented thoughts of a mad man.

Chris was raised in Sydney Australia, devoting his spare time to writing and illustration.