story
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.
Three Squares
Chaz Osburn
“This time he’s gone too far!”
“What and who are you talking about, dear?”
“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. You know, the guy in charge of Health and Human Services.”
“Oh no, we’re not going to get into another political debate, are we? I mean, I love you and all that but all you’ve done since January 20th is complain, complain, complain about what’s going on in Washington.”
“I’m not complaining, honey. I’m observing. There is a difference. And as my spouse, you should be supporting me.”
“So, what has you so hot and bothered?”
“It’s this crazy thing he’s trying to get Congress to do.”
“Let’s see, he wants fluoride out of public water systems, he says vaccines cause autism, he’s cut funding for research on mRNA shots, he’s placed limits on who can get the COVID vaccine, he’s fired the director of the CDC, he has new guidelines for children’s vaccines and he’s gotten into a flap about circumcision. Is there another that I missed?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me.”
“Now he wants Congress to introduce legislation banning round plates!”
“Round plates?”
“Dinner plates.”
“Why?”
“He says Americans should have three square meals a day.”
Chaz Osburn of Traverse City, MI has had two novels and numerous short stories published.
Haunted
E. Florian Gludovacz
“Booh!” yelled the ghost, jumping out at me.
“Booh, yourself,” I replied.
“You are an intruder in my home. I may be dead, but that doesn’t mean I’ll willingly leave this house.”
“Suit yourself,” I shrugged. “I bought this place fair and square and I’m not going anywhere.”
“That’s a bad decision. I swore to haunt this house and haunt it I will. And I’ll haunt you as long as you stay.”
“Whatever,” I said. “I’m haunted by my bad decisions, my regrets, my insecurities, and my fear of the future. I doubt you can do anything worse to me.”
Florian writes long and short stories, likes cheese, and is a friend to dogs and pandas everywhere. @ndbag.bsky.social
On the day before my mother’s subscription to OkayCupid expired a UFO landed in her teacup. Gleaming and hopeful, it surfaced in a Jasmine Green sea and a tiny sad-eyed man wearing a silver jumpsuit emerged. I didn’t fake my profile, he said. I swear. My mother, without a moment’s hesitation, took another bite of her scone then swallowed her latest visitor whole.
Beth Sherman's stories are in Best Microfiction 2024 and Best Small Fictions 2025 and 2026.
Restless Reality
RACHEL CORDASCO
Welcome to Restless Reality!
We’re so glad you’re staying with us (even if the razor-winged magpies say otherwise; don’t listen to them). As a world-class Alternative Hotel of the Unexpected, we’re brimming with caffeinated carpeting, shapeshifting smorgasbords, boundless beds, savory showers, hand-eating heat pipes, and so much more. Hungry after your travels? Grab a sub from the common area (by grab, we mean you need to actually grab it because it might skitter away on its hundred legs, and by sub we could mean a sandwich or a literal submarine, and by common area, we mean either the space where you might find sofas and chairs or the giant warm-blooded womb of a ginglegormer). Tired from running the grapefruit gauntlet while just trying to enter the hotel? Take a snooze on your comfortable bed (it might be a rectangular structure with a mattress, blankets, and pillows or it might be the maw of a recently-resurrected and fiendishly-hungry dilophosaurus named “Bed.” Good luck!). You’ve come here to be surprised, yes? Wonder at how quickly our lamps morph into Lamborghinis, marvel at how our waiters shift into ‘gators, and delight in how quickly our tables transform into tribbles. You never know what’s going to happen 45from moment to moment, but that’s why you’re paying us the big credits, right?!
And remember, getting eaten, liquified, dessicated, dematerialized, or chopped up into a million tiny pieces does not qualify you for a refund. Enjoy your stay!
Rachel Cordasco is a Wisconsin -based independent scholar and writer.
Noon in the Desert
E.J. LEROY
They say conspiracy theory radio talk shows only play at night. They’re wrong.
Sometimes midday you can hear them. If you drive out of the city into the middle of nowhere. Just listen.
Park and play the radio just right, and you might hear the tales of lizard zombies that crawl out of the Earth’s core following a meteor storm. I almost saw one once; a lizard zombie, I mean.
I know the greys are real. Sometimes, I hear them through the fillings in my teeth, always at high noon. At night, they taunt me with their dreaded Hum.
I use the radio in my old truck and a prepaid burner phone, never a smartphone. You never know who might be listening. But I suspect it’s an organization with jumbled letters. The kind of letters that correspond to numbers that add up to evil.
The people must be warned. Don’t they know the End Times are coming?
I give them a call
“Hello, Friend! You’re on the air!”
And I tell the truth
E.J. LeRoy is a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer with a forthcoming mpreg novella. Curious? Visit http://ejleroy.weebly.com.
Swamp's Son
MONICA LYREHART
Sap crawled out of mother's blackest water—the ichor gluing leaves to his palms as he clawed at summer's sheddings like a babe seeking breast.
Screeching saws had beckoned him. With each step he swelled, 'til mountainous.
Collapsing, he smothered the sparking blades.
He sucked bones, steel, screams—sucked all into soil.
Monica is a speculative fiction author, poet, writing contest goblin, and “the best mommy ever.”
The New Build
PAMELA LOVE
“Let me show you this recently renovated Victorian.” Ms. North started scrolling through photos. “It’s in great condition and priced to sell. You could move in by—”
“I told you, I need a new build.” I shuddered. “My last apartment was haunted by a murdered tenant. The rent was cheap because her ghost still walks through the place, moaning.”
My realtor gasped. “How terrible! I assure you that nobody has been murdered in any house that I list.”
I shook my head. “You can’t know what’s happened behind someone’s closed doors. Now that I can afford it, I’m going to make sure I’ll never be haunted again.”
I wound up buying a lot and ordering a custom home. My builder had the best safety record in the state. His workers muttered and glanced over their shoulders whenever I showed up to watch the construction, which was often. If only they knew that I didn’t want any accidental deaths on my property, either.
Once the paint was dry, I moved in. I went to bed early, feeling secure at last.
Wailing voices woke me from a deep sleep. Frantic, I switched on my lamp. The yellow walls were throbbing. It turns out you can’t know what’s happened behind closed doors in a paint factory, either…
Pamela Love worked as a teacher and in marketing before turning to writing.