Issue 5
July 2025
Genre Society
The
The Genre Society
Issue 5 July 2025 Published by Whitney Mcclelland Cover art "The Torture of ZPromethius" created by Edward Michael Supranowicz
Image Credit: KELLEPICS from pixabay, Josue Velasquez from Pexels, PhotoVision from pixabay, Pezibear from pixabay
Body text
The content provided in The Genre Society is intended for literary and entertainment purposes only. The views and opinions expressed in the articles, stories, poems, and other content are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of The Genre Society, its editors, or its staff. All stories, poems, and other creative works published in The Genre Society are works of fiction unless explicitly stated otherwise. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the authors' imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. All content published in The Genre Society is the intellectual property of the respective authors. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from the author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to The Genre Society and the respective authors with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. The Genre Society assumes no responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions in the content of the magazine. The information contained in the magazine is provided on an "as is" basis with no guarantees of completeness, accuracy, usefulness, or timeliness. The Genre Society reserves the right to update or change this disclaimer at any time without prior notice. Any changes will be effective immediately upon posting to the website or magazine. For any questions about this disclaimer or the content in The Genre Society, please contact us at submissions@thegenresociety.com or visit www.thegenresociety.com. All images obtained via Unsplash. Magazine designed and published through Marq.
Some content in The Genre Society may contain mature themes or language that may not be suitable for all readers. Reader discretion is advised.
Table of Contents
As a teacher, I wish I could say my summers are full of relaxation and poolside margaritas. Yet that has not been the case since I started teaching four years ago. Usually, summers involve moving apartments, homes, and in this summer's edition, towns. Last summer was an exception. I traveled to Iceland for a writer's workshop. It was such an amazing experience. Next time I'm able to afford that (I'm not making anything from this little magazine btw) I'd love to go to another workshop. If you're a writer who has never workshopped your pieces, what are you doing?? I graduated with my MA in English and Creative Writing last May and something I will miss most are those workshopping classes. People are forced to read and think about your work and hopefully provide useful feedback. It's not a blind "no" from a lit mag saying your piece isn't what they had in mind. So, while your writing, sipping a frozen margarita by the pool this summer, scrolling through your inbox of rejections, perhaps it is time to send those pieces to a workshop. Get more eyes on your writing. In my personal writing life, which you didn't ask about but I'm going to tell you anyway because this is my letter to you, my dear reader and therefore friend– I have started a new novel. Have I edited my master's thesis and started sending it to agents? No. Did I get a brilliant idea and just hit 20k 30k words after writing for two three months? Yes. While I wait for the rejection from the competition I submitted it to, I will keep typing away. Maybe next summer I will bring it to a workshop and see where I'm going wrong (or right!). Enjoy this issue published by little ol' me, and remember, don't itch those summer mosquito bites... no matter how badly you want to... Thank you again for reading and enjoy, Genre Lovers, -Whitney McClelland Editor and Publisher
by author
Letter From the Editor ......................................................................................................................................... 5 Poetry celsius 39:7.............................................................................................................................................................. 7 Fendy Tulodo Café Neon................................................................................................................................................................ 8 Sarah Samarbaf I am the Mariana Trench Beneath Your Town ...................................................................................................... 10 Garrett Speller We Must Be Seen ................................................................................................................................................... 12 Grady VanWright Fiction Target Goals ........................................................................................................................................................... 17 Deborah Sale-Butler Roadside Stand ..................................................................................................................................................... 18 William Swanger A Coward's Gambit ............................................................................................................................................... 30 J. E. Teitsworth Her Eyes ................................................................................................................................................................ 32 Antheia In Descent ............................................................................................................................................................. 44 Laurel Hanson Itches ..................................................................................................................................................................... 54 R. D. Tyler
Greetings Genre Lovers!
Letter from the Editor
“hang on, son,” someone says. or maybe it was the radio. or the thing inside. when i wake, the fever’s gone, but so is my reflection.
...the nurse said it’s viral. but the fever speaks binary, its numbers not local it lives like code in blood, hiding between coughs and Komodo dreams. mother boiled betel leaves, father smeared minyak tawon on my neck but this... this is deeper like something ancient has re-installed itself in my skin. i bite a towel. and somewhere in the air: clicking. like wires warming up. upstairs the old television, not plugged in since 2008, starts playing– a man in uniform talking backwards his mouth moves but his eyes burn red faster than firecracker guts. i blink. my sweat smells like metal. the dog whines. the floor tiles melt.
Poetry
celsius 39:7 by Fendy Tulodo Fendy is a writer and field worker based in Malang, Indonesia. He blends storytelling with everyday experiences, drawing from his background in sales, history, and culture. His works have appeared in various literary magazines and reflect a deep connection to place, memory, and the unseen details of life.
Café Neon
Rendezvous, at that nameless modern cave, a single word shaped in blue neon light: Café, bleeding ghostly across the glass. Escaping gloomy dullness of life, a self-exiled extra upon that dim plateau. Just for rehearsing breath. Polish chairs, creaking with exhaustion, and the relentless stench of boundless malaise. The air, though, etherized by smoke, music, and the messianic scent of coffee. Still, some untraceable substance was missing. Something like a tip of the tongue phenomenon, stolen from the dawn, embedded in the night– might. What cursed déjà vu –once more– am I caught inside its loop? Nothing but an absurd shrug. The arrhythmia of existential anxiety. Or rather, dark, demonic broken record of daily matters. Adagio spilled over void chatter. I added dead time to my melancho-latte, downing it raw. It tasted dust, ash, and rust. That was I, a doubled decay on the fragile flesh of the chair. Seated across, the gypsy of dreary gone days. Both, got lost in the wilderness of nonsense feelings. Then, encore, Tachycardia, acute sobriety, Adagio: again and again.
by Sarah Samarbaf
Sarah Samarbaf is a poet with a background in historical studies and theater.
I AM THE MARIANA TRENCH BENEATH YOUR TOWN by Garrett Speller
Garrett Speller is a college teacher in Tokyo, Japan and an aspiring author/poet. His creative work has previously been featured in Kyoto Journal, The Bristol Noir, and Neologism Poetry Journal.
I inhale, nostrils flared, drawing deep, an appetizer, savory. Definition in dragon’s breath, sulfur and stardust, I am an existential expulsion, perspective-spawned pragmatism scaled and hatching from bargain-bin eggs, I am mold that grows only on gravestones, yet spreading butterfly wings and rocket-engine nozzles, I glance heavenward, mouthing a godling plea: please; a pantheon pedestal, an eternity enshrined in constellations and cave paintings, that above the smog remains a galaxy, still gloried, myth quiet and campfire-bright… It is gone. Stolen. Consumed. A future, co-opted by pre-necropolis photopollution and wood-chipper pulped into toothpicks, chewing tobacco and super-marketalizable neocorporate jargon; aviation obstruction lights and telecommunications towers slurping on the husks of dead stars, acres of broken glass and contact lens cases, my hands shiver in a palsy past rage, I shake… I ball my fists… I… I earth lightning with a howl dredged from the ashes of martyr’s pyres, sinews glowing propulsion white, wind dancing over the fins of missiles: I am incandescent, malignant and deadly, flesh soured with hereditary hatred finally manifest, avatar of black-rot and tooth decay: purpose written in the teeth of serpents and the meticulous growl of terminal guidance avionics, I bask, golden in the resulting flash, shadows cast wide over the horizon, corpus an umbra of oil-slick thunderheads, volcanic black and sickening; lead-laden, I stretch, jaws aching towards desecrated heavens, coils curling, tensile-tight, I rise, lips pursed, tongue forked, I slurp the solar yolk, cradling coronae between molars, juices over my chin: sweet as gavel-grit, sunspots specks of spice, the aftertaste… gritty. Soot and splinters; softly sour.
We Must Be Seen By Grady VanWright
Grady VanWright is a poet, based in Houston, Texas, he has been writing and reading poetry for over 25 years, drawing inspiration from a lifetime of experiences and historical fascinations. His work has been published in Washington Square Review (2025), The McNeese Review, Oddball Magazine, and numerous online literary journals.
The road though Terlingua bled dust, thick as old velvet, coiling into the wheel wells, whispering, stay, stay. The sky, a blistered wound, cracked open with a sun too bright, too sharp, slicing the horizon into ragged pieces. I slammed the gas– nothing. The tires slurred against the dirt, slow, slow, slower, as if the town itself had clamped its jaws around my engine. Then– A saloon where there had been only rot and silence, doors yawning wide, lined with teeth. Inside, whiskey slithered in tongues from the bottle, curling around the barmaid’s fingers like a lover’s grasp. She grinned, gums black, lips cracking, and the liquor crawled up her arms, burrowing beneath the skin. A gunslinger at the corner table turned his head too slow, his neck stretching like a serpent, vertebrae clicking one by one. His eyes– wrong. Too deep, too black, too filled with something moving. He pointed at me, his fingers charred to the bone, and in a voice that rattled with dry wind, he whispered– "You're late." The street pulsed, shifting, breaking, reforming– horses galloped sideways, their eyes silver dollars spinning, hooves sparking against dirt that reeked of blood and limes. The cattleman, ribs pressing against his skin like a broken cage, tipped his hat, and dust poured from his sleeves like hourglass sand. Behind him, miners swung pickaxes that never landed, caught in the loop of a century-old breath. Then– The whores stepped from the shadows, skirts layered like peeling wallpaper, tattered silk that dripped from their bodies like wet paint. Their lips, too red, too wide, split into grins that didn’t end where they should. They laughed– a sound like cicadas screaming in the heat. One ran a hand down her thigh, her fingers slicing clean through the skin– no blood, just smoke curling from the wound. Another pulled a man close, kissed him deep, and when she pulled away, he had no mouth. Only smooth skin where lips had been. They swayed toward me, arms outstretched, hands skeletal, then whole, then skeletal again. Perfume thick as rot, thick as honey. The tallest one whispered, voice slick and wet– "You always come back." The church bell tolled backward. Each clang sucked the air from the sky, pulling the years in like a tide– faces flickering, clothing shifting, hats appearing, disappearing, saloon, then trading post, then silence, then saloon again. Children ran barefoot, eyes wide with something too knowing, their laughter sharp as broken glass. One held a headless doll. Another cradled a tarantula, its legs stroking her chin in something close to love. A third gripped my wrist. I felt it. Flesh, heat, pressure. Too real. His mouth, too wide, stretched in a smile that did not belong to him. His teeth were milk-white– except for one, silver, glinting. "You remember us." The ground buckled. The sky peeled back. The cattleman split down the middle like a rotted husk. The barmaid’s mouth stretched to her collarbone. The gunslinger rose, too tall now, too much shadow, too much of something waiting. The whores stepped onto the porch of the saloon, watching, smiling, teeth catching the light like broken glass. I slammed the gas. Nothing. The town had its fingers in me, its teeth in my spine. The whiskey turned to kerosene, then to blood, then to dust. The newspapers flickered– gold rush, war, fever, drought, headlines shifting until the ink burned itself out. The child’s grip tightened. His breath against my skin, cold as river stones. "You never left." The car lurched. The town edge– sudden, sharp– and I tore free, the wheels shrieking, dust exploding behind me. The air rushed back, hollow, too clean. I exhaled. In the rearview mirror– ruins. Bones of buildings. Nothing. But then– A schoolhouse, standing where none had stood, windows gaping, children pressed against the glass, their lips moving in unison, voices twisting the wind into something almost human: “You must see us again. We must be seen.”
The first throw bounces off, handle first. She picks up the axe and tries again. Her girlfriends all said how therapeutic it would be. But she’s a perfectionist and won’t really enjoy it until she can hit the target, won’t quit until she’s nailed the bulls-eye. The YouTube tutorials make it look so easy, just a flick of the wrist and the blade should sink right in. The axe bounces again. She rolls her head and shakes out her arms. Probably too angry– too tense. She tells herself he isn’t worth the hate. It’s not like he’s a cheating lover. That, she could forgive. But to show her the contract, set target goals, then move them over and over again, saying she just needed to improve her performance scores a little bit more– until the promotion finally went to Barry. BARRY? Gill teased that raise for a full year. And the patronizing way he said she shouldn’t take it personally, said how Barry’s scores were just better than hers. She throws again. This time it sticks. She does a happy dance. Gill’s scream is stifled by the gag, and the way he wiggles makes the axe fall out. No matter. Her performance is improving.
Deborah Sale-Butler was born on Halloween and loves to play in the dark. Her stories have appeared, or are forthcoming in dozens of publications including "Dead Girls Walking," “Twisting, Turning Timeshifts” and “Three X the Fun” anthologies, “Underside Stories,” “Flash Phantoms,” and “Amazing Stories.” Read more at https://deborah-sale-butler.com
Target Goals by Deborah Sale-Butler
Fiction
The stand wasn’t much more than a shack, six poles corralled at top and bottom by rough crossmembers to keep the seasonal stall upright. Joists supported a tarpaper roof. I didn’t care; the stand could have been made of crumpled cardboard. I was just glad it existed. For me, it offered not just fresh fruit and vegetables, but also premise for a chance encounter, an ideal venue for a supposedly serendipitous rendezvous that might allow me to mend the past. And, maybe, change the future. I reimagined the roadside stand as stage. Two weeks ago, I had felt like a stranger on my first trip to the valley in decades, the landscape unfamiliar as I navigated rural lanes that folded back on themselves. Once-open fields had given way to clusters of ranch houses and occasional colonials, their long driveways and leaded-glass front doors the marks of ownership of local lumber mills. Small businesses had sprung up where once there had been wooded patches. A far-away ridge masqueraded as a black-edged mountain, acres of tires spread across it to await recycling. I was heartened, though, that farms still lined many of the lanes, red barns dwarfing white-sided houses that, with multiple additions, appeared to have been cobbled together piecemeal. Outbuildings littered the landscape. I drove by a pond and immediately realized I had once skated on it with Cheryl. A sense of comforting familiarity grew, the road now more welcoming. I made a turn and there, not far from a mailbox emblazoned with the 2124 numerals I had memorized, stood what I had fervently prayed I might find– a vegetable stand. Cheryl’s roadside stand. My heart pounding, I sped past the unattended stall and begun the drive home, already envisioning my second journey here. Folding tables sagged under the weight of produce: peppers, zucchini, potatoes, and tomatoes stuffed into cardboard boxes staged like soldiers on parade. I picked up a tomato. Green spilled from its stem, streaks stretched taut by an unyielding fullness; it would not be ripe for a few more days. I looked up cautiously. Buying tomatoes, after all, was not why I stood at the roadside stand– nor did I want squash or peppers or potatoes. What I sought wasn’t even in the open stall, but in the farmhouse beyond it. I heard a door creak. Clumsily, I dropped the tomato back into its bin. It thudded, matching the sudden sound of my heart. That damned stick. I hadn’t summoned the nerve yet to look toward the farmhouse, to glimpse who had exited it, and as I stared at the tomatoes, a vision of the stick seized me, as sharp in my mind as it had been in my sight decades before. The oak branch Cheryl had plunged into the ground in woods not far from here. I vividly recalled its length and slight crook where the main stem had tried to bud, as if grasping for a greater future. Cheryl had planted the stick in a mood she refused to discuss. We had gone for a walk in the early evening at her parents’ farm, climbing hills flanking fields ready for planting. Distracted and distant, Cheryl had picked up the branch and jammed it into the soft soil. “Why did you do that?” I said, attempting a smile to break this strange tension. “It’s a symbol, Dan,” she said, looking up. “For us being together.” Countering the chill I felt enveloping us, her words warmed me as I admired the makeshift marker. Apparently, her mood had nothing to do with me. Of course, Cheryl had known that wind or rain would soon topple that token of longevity. I looked up as a woman, familiar yet not, approached the roadside stand. Her stand. “Hello,” she called, still yards away. “Can I help you?” “Yes, I believe you can,” I said, the first words I had spoken to Cheryl in thirty years. There was a slight tremor in my voice and my tone sounded too serious. Cheryl stopped a few feet from me and studied my face. I could see recognition dawning. “I… my wife loves home-grown tomatoes,” I said, turning back to the tables. I hated that I mentioned Gretchen but wanted to stave off silence. “We have a lot to choose from,” Cheryl said, as if she was commenting to just anyone at her stand. “Big Boys, Big Girls, and Roma.” “Yes, they’re very nice.” I picked up a strangely shaped tomato, blood-red and veined with blackish streaks. “Although this is an odd-looking one.” “That’s a new variety,” she said. “It’s called ‘Saudade.’ It reminds me of one my family planted when I was young.” Dressed in jeans and a plaid blouse, Cheryl was shapely, something she had not been when we dated, her almost-boyish figure awkwardly filling the dress she’d worn to my senior prom. The long hair I remembered curling across her shoulders had been shorn, probably long ago. I hadn’t been prepared for her short, slightly graying hair. “Do you know,” I said, smiling, “who I am?” Despite the need to underscore our reunion’s providential nature, I couldn’t contain myself. “Of course.” Cheryl smiled back. “You haven’t changed that much, Dan. How are you?” “I’m fine.” I quickly put a half-dozen tomatoes in a paper bag. “But I’d love to know how you are,” I said, my voice more enthusiastic than I wanted. “I’m so glad it was you who came out here instead of your hus–” Panic gripped me. I was supposed to have appeared shocked at seeing Cheryl, then joy at our fortuitous homecoming, but in my nervousness had shown no surprise, slipping instead into inquisition: “Do you know who I am?” That might not have been a fateful mistake, but I had just betrayed the fact I knew precisely who owned the roadside stand. And that our reunion was premeditated. I entered my stage– and was standing across from Cheryl. But now what? Would my life suddenly change? Would Cheryl’s? Would we rekindle a relationship after a three-decade hiatus? I had known there was slim chance of that, yet I couldn’t help myself. I longed to learn if age had pestered Cheryl the way it had me, making her wish, too, that her life had followed a different path. Undoubtedly, I had faded as quickly in her mind as I had in her life and she had plowed on, carving a course and seldom looking back. I had persevered as well, marrying Gretchen and rarely thinking of Cheryl– until a year ago, when I could no longer pretend I was happy or ignore the bubbling dissolution of my marriage, as if acid had been sprinkled on our bond. Our only child married, Gretchen and I were adrift. My wife talked longingly of eventual grandchildren, as if new life could rekindle the past. I wanted to reanimate the past too, but birth an entirely different one. I craved warmth and there seemed no spark left between Gretchen and me. Occasionally I gathered the courage to try, but no gesture was lovingly returned. And, truthfully, I wasn’t sure I even wanted it any longer– and maybe Gretchen sensed that. Disappointment left me a victim of wistful memories. The strongest remembrances were of Cheryl, who had built a brief but tantalizing relationship with me, awash in affection that flowed naturally from her. The moment we were together, she would clasp my hand, her thumb caressing the top of it, a simple yet intimate gesture that drew me close. During an early visit to her family’s home, we had taken a walk, shedding gloves in light snow to hold hands, the first time she cupped mine in her special way. That endearing touch became an emblem of our growing bond. Yet how could I approach Cheryl after all this time? I’d be just like those fools I’d read about who troll social media in hopes of hooking up with lost loves or, worse, I had succumbed to some type of awful obsession. Worried about the hurt I could easily cause others, I contented myself with my imaginings. Until Gretchen, of all people, provided the answer. “Look! A farm stand!” she had exclaimed, grabbing my arm as we drove to visit friends, unknowingly planting a seed. “Let’s stop to see what they have.” Cheryl had married a man much like her father, a successful farmer who prided himself on his produce, some of which he sold roadside to provide for his neighbors and visitors to the valley. If Cheryl and her husband had followed tradition, they might have a roadside stand too! A place where I could stumble upon Cheryl. My Lord! It’s great to see you. How long has it been? You look wonderful! Traveling for work, I could easily detour past Cheryl’s home to determine if my hoped-for venue existed. Yet how would Gretchen feel if she knew she had accidentally proposed this path to Cheryl? She didn’t know of course, and I was careful to keep my efforts secret. I felt terrible about that, but just as terrible about our growing rift. And I loved the sense of hope reconnecting with Cheryl gave .I even crafted a script for our fortuitous rendezvous, trying out phrases I thought wouldn’t sound demented or send Cheryl scurrying. Besides, I’d convinced myself that what I was planning was so damned innocent. Stopping at a roadside stand to buy vegetables and running into a friend I hadn’t seen in years. That could happen to anyone. And the fact that friend was also a lost love? Certainly unexpected. At least to everyone else. Cheryl had initiated our relationship. For me, whose young life had been filled with awkward pursuits of romance, that fact stirred enduring emotion. Just before Christmas break my senior year, a classmate described a secret admirer a grade below us. As she talked, it was as if someone was lighting a fire to illuminate my life. “You need to get to know Cheryl Hoerner,” my friend Karen said. “Because she really likes you.” How Karen, a neighbor of Cheryl’s, knew this I never asked, but I later suspected Cheryl had sent her forth. Several days later, Cheryl’s bus was delayed and my propitious loitering in the hall gave me opportunity to approach her. Her cheeks flushed as I walked toward her, but by the end of the day I was accompanying her to her classes. Within months, we were dressed in prom finery, posing for obligatory photographs at our respective homes. As we were about to leave Cheryl’s, I asked her parents as politely as I’d been coached by mine what time they wanted their daughter home. “Don’t worry,” Cheryl’s father, Martin, said. “Whenever you get here is fine; we really like and trust you.” His warmth emboldened my growing sense I truly belonged with this family. And with Cheryl. “I’m good,” Cheryl said. “How long has it been?” She paused to do the calculation in her head. “My gosh, 30 years?” “Actually 28,” I said, but immediately realized what my precision revealed. “Because I saw you and your husband at one of the town fairs two years after my high-school graduation. Maybe you don’t remember that.” “No.” How could she have forgotten? She and her husband, Barry, a local farmer’s son, had stood still amid a moving crowd, she pregnant with their first child, watching me as I volunteered in a community group’s food stand. Had she not understood how painful it was for me to see them that way? “It doesn’t matter,” I said. Everything seemed wrong. Our reunion was supposed to have been one of surprise, and then gladness, a time of sharing pleasantries that would give me license to have my say. Instead, my deliberateness had exposed motives hard to defend. Our relationship had ended as suddenly as it began. I met Cheryl at her locker to walk her to her bus. Before I could even greet her, up popped my yarn-wrapped high-school ring, poised precariously between the tips of her thumb and forefinger. “I’d like my ring back, too,” she said. I was dumbfounded. I fumbled in removing her ring from my little finger. “Cheryl–” “I’m sorry,” she whispered, quickly handing me my ring and leaving her hand extended to receive hers, the hand that had so often clasped mine in warmth and belonging. “I’m sorry,” she repeated, “but I don’t think we’re good for each other.” She seemed to weigh whether to say more, but instead turned and walked off down the hall, leaving me shattered. Whatever had been bothering her the weekend before, possessing her to recklessly plant that supposedly forever stick, had blossomed. I made a horrible scene at a restaurant that evening because I was unable to eat. I jumped in our car, leaving my parents stranded, and drove home. I called Cheryl’s house. “Hello?” her voice came, quiet and uncertain. “Cheryl,” I said, “I thought things were going well. Couldn’t we try–” “No,” she said. “There are times I want someone in my life and times I don’t. This is one of those times.” Left with an explanation that explained nothing, I listened as silence replaced our connection. It was the last time I spoke to Cheryl– until this day, standing in her stand. “Is your wife with you?” Cheryl said, bending to peer into my car, parked along the road. “No.” “I thought maybe she was because you said you were buying tomatoes for her.” “I was going to surprise her.” Had Cheryl surmised Gretchen had no idea about this trip? “I didn’t think you still lived in the area,” she said. “Especially after I hadn’t seen your byline in the newspaper for years. Plus, you always talked about moving away after college.” At least she remembered that. “Yeah,” I said. “I guess I had some pretty big dreams.” “So you stayed in the area?” “I live an hour away,” I said, but in hurrying made another mistake. “I drive north twice a week for my job. The company I work for has a facility near the interstate.” “We’re kind of far from there,” Cheryl said, as if in trying to fathom what was going on had decided to put me on the spot. “I wanted to buy fresh tomatoes and knew there were farm stands out this way.” I motioned with my right arm as if to encompass every field for miles around. “You must drive by the big farmers market on Route 15 if you’re headed toward the interstate,” she said. I rubbed my eyes, holding my hands across my face, hoping the gesture might erase me from the landscape. I sighed, dropping my arms. “You’re right,” I said, forcing a smile. “I want to buy tomatoes, but to buy them here… from you… because I wanted to see you again, to tell you something.” Cheryl said nothing but took a step toward me. That was surprising– and comforting– but perhaps she was trying to quiet my voice. “Actually, I’ve thought about this trip for months.” “Really?” “I know it probably seems crazy,” I said, dropping my head. “Hell,” I added, immediately regretting swearing. “I don’t even really know you. I knew you years ago!” “I’m still me,” she said, laughing. “I’m glad of that,” I said, hoping she thought I might still be the me she had once cared for. My banishment had stemmed from the arrogance of youth. I had been critical of Cheryl’s friends, sentiment that understandably soured her on me. Essentially, the high horse I was riding as I prepared for college and career had prompted me to question Cheryl’s friendship with several of her classmates. I can only vaguely recall making such comments, but I had complained to Cheryl about certain friends, laboring under a puerile delusion they would never match the portrait my conceit had painted of life ahead, of my future wife, family, and friends. I learned these transgressions lay behind the breakup from my friend Karen, whom I had pleaded with to gain answers for me. I immediately understood the hubris of my actions, eventually owning up to them as products of immaturity and ego. But I had never had the chance to own up to them to Cheryl. What did such vanity say about the young man she had opened herself to? It said, just as she had told me that final day in the school hall, I was not good for her. Her recognition, I realized later, also meant the inverse. At that point, she was too good for me. “Do you remember prom night?” The promise of that night came to mind as I delayed my recitation, nervous my script was graceless and trivial. “A little,” Cheryl said. “That was a long time ago.” “Last year, when I was cleaning out my parents’ house, I found a pack of photos marked ‘senior prom.’ But the photos were all just of me at our home. I was shocked until I remembered I had thrown out the ones with you in them. I’m sorry I did that. I was excited to see photos of us together, but they were gone–” I can’t say Cheryl seemed hurt, but I got the impression she understood her impact on me had been greater than she knew. That realization may have prompted charity because she seemed to relax her guardedness. “That’s not what you wanted to tell me, is it?” she said. “No. Actually, I came here to offer a belated apology.” “For throwing out my photos?” “No, not that,” I said, laughing. “For what then? Dan, I haven’t seen you in years, and if I remember right I’m the one that broke up with you.” “You remember correctly,” I said, instantly recalling that day’s emotional upheaval. “I learned you ended our relationship because I criticized your friends. For years I’ve wanted to apologize for doing that. I’m sorry I acted that way, caused you hurt.” I paused, awaiting a response. “That’s nice of you to say. And that was partly the reason,” Cheryl said finally. “There was more?” I tried to make my comment a joke, but my voice sounded anxious. “I remember I was angry with you. When you were so critical, you didn’t seem like a nice person. But, also, you were getting ready to go to college and I still had a year of high school, plus you talked so much about moving from the area. I wasn’t sure I wanted that. Everything I’ve ever had is here. My family. My home growing up. Now this home and farm.” “I can understand that,” I said, though I looked beyond the house in search of cows and horses, the extent of my knowledge of farm life. “Although there are days,” she said, “that I wish that was true.” Sudden hopefulness she regretted past choices must have altered my expression because Cheryl hastily added: “I mean about the farming.” “That’s hard to believe,” I said. “Your place looks amazing.” “Thanks, but it’s taken a lot to have our own farm and business. We started out living with my parents because we got married right after high school. Our first years were rough, especially having a child so soon.” “At least things seem to have turned out well for you,” I said. “I’m glad of that.” But was I really? Hadn’t I wanted her to regret her choices? “You know,” I said, “I remember visiting Karen Smyser right after freshman year of college and her first words were: ‘Your former girlfriend’s getting married.’” “Really? Why did she do that?” “I don’t know. Probably because she was the one who first told me you were interested in me.” “I still think it’s odd that’s the first thing she’d say.” I shrugged. “Maybe she wanted to see how I reacted.” “Did you react?” Cheryl asked, studying my face. “I'd started dating Gretchen, so I’m not sure I had feelings about it,” I said, but immediately regretted my response. If I had risked coming here, I needed to be honest. “No, that’s not true. I was still angry about our breakup, so I had this attitude of not caring. But I did care.” I paused, trying to conjure a way to explain my feelings. “It was like having to work while the rest of your family is on vacation– you have things you must do, but also feel you’re missing out on something important– if that makes sense.” “Yeah,” Cheryl said, looking thoughtful. “I remember feeling that way when I saw your name on newspaper articles. Barry and I were still struggling and I wondered what it was like to work for the paper. I thought it must be exciting.” “It was,” I said, heartened by the knowledge she had, at least a few times, thought of me after the breakup. “You know, I once crawled through a cornfield like these,” I motioned to the nearby fields, “to get photos of a house fire when the local police wouldn’t let me in to the scene.” “Now that brings back a memory,” Cheryl said. “Do you remember coming home at 4 in the morning from the post-prom,” I had taken her father’s words at face value, "and we saw that glow in the distance and got my parents out of bed to ask if we could go see what was burning?” “Yeah, it was a barn, wasn’t it?” We settled into the type of conversation I had hoped for. “Speaking of the prom, I didn’t say anything at the time, and then lost the chance to do so, but your parents’ warmth toward me always meant so much. I wish I could've told them that. I’ll never forget what your father said to me that night.” I couldn’t tell if Cheryl remembered his remark, but she didn’t ask about it either. “You no longer work for the newspaper?” she said instead. “No, I left it a few years after college. We moved and I began to work in marketing. It wasn’t as exciting, but paid better.” “That’s important,” Cheryl said, smiling, “especially if you want to buy lots of tomatoes.” I laughed, but her good-naturedness prompted me to give lease to exuberance. “Do you remember those long trips we took upstate?” I asked. “Driving through all those little towns?” “I think so.” “I loved those drives,” I said. “Our times together were wonderful. Coming to your parents’ house after school concerts, enjoying meals with you, and of course the evenings we spent by the creek near my parents’ cottage. I was always excited Saturday nights thinking about being together the next day. I really wish–” Cheryl’s expression grew somber as my voice rose in enthusiasm. “So,” she cut me off, “you drove here to buy tomatoes– but, really, to apologize?” “Yes, I’m sorry for how I acted,” I said, bowing my head. I pondered my next words, but knew I had come too far, taken too many chances, to leave without completing my declaration. “But also to say that the times we spent together were among the best of my life. You made them that way, and I thought you should know that.” She stared at me, seemingly at a loss for words, so I hastily added: “Cheryl, I don’t expect anything from you. I just thought it would be nice for you to know.” But I knew she grasped the underlying truth. I did want something in return. I didn’t just want to tell Cheryl how important she had been to me; I wanted her to say how important I’d been to her. And perhaps could still be. The unsettling reality of having driven here after all this time set in. But I had no idea what to do next but wait, teetering on the edge of a precipice I had hewn out of an otherwise normal day. Her cheeks flushing the same as they had in the school hall decades before, she turned away from me and, in profile, she immediately became the girl I had walked beside so long ago. The long hair might be gone, the face wider, but she was nevertheless that same young woman and I instantly understood I wanted Cheryl, through some miraculous sleight-of-hand or just plain wish-fulfillment, to experience the same visions that had haunted me. To be standing together again, with the future spread before us as wide as the fields on either side. To clasp hands, Cheryl caressing mine with unparalleled openness and love. To sense possibilities so full, poignant and unending that, even now, they might well crush our hearts. But as Cheryl turned back to me, her eyes betraying uncertainty, I knew those thoughts had never crossed her mind. And that, despite anything I’d do or say today, never would. I needed no poignancy to crush my heart. It had already sunk within me, deflated and ashamed. I moved away, grabbing my paper bag. I placed two more tomatoes in it. “They really are nice tomatoes,” I said, trying to make amends, any amends, for this horrible adventure I’d involved her in. “Thank you,” Cheryl said. But then, slowly, unbelievably, a small smile emerged. “I mean that. Thank you.” I was incredulous. “For saying that about your tomatoes?” “No,” she laughed. Her mood seemed to have shifted. Perhaps my haste to depart, her awareness I would soon be gone, had cleared the air, set her back at ease. “Not about the tomatoes,” she said, her voice growing more serious. “As I just thought about what you said, I realized you’re right: It was nice to hear about the effect I had on you, the role I played– so thank you. For your apology and for giving me a… a gift.” “Gift?” “I’m flattered by what you said–” “But I was out of my mind to come here.” “Well,” she said, smiling wryly, “maybe we could debate that, but whatever made you come here took courage, I think. So you should know that what you said was nice to hear and certainly touched me.” She smiled again. “It made me feel good about myself.” “Good,” I said, setting down my bag. “That’s what I hoped.” But of course that was not the full truth. “Well,” Cheryl said, “that’s a special gift– no matter why it’s really given.” I had no time to ponder what lay behind her remark because Cheryl quickly added: “It is nice to know you’ve been important to someone, even so long ago.” “You’re welcome,” I said, bowing my head once more, selfishly wishing that, despite the uncomfortable position I’d put her in, Cheryl might have thought it gracious to return the sentiment, but she remained silent. Abruptly, another thought occurred, crazily prompted by whatever goodwill I seemed to have generated. “Can I ask you something?” “Sure.” I hesitated, but knew there would be no more chances. “Do you remember the first walk we took together?” “It was snowing, wasn’t it?” I smiled; she remembered. “Yes, it was also the first time you took my hand in yours and held it the way you always did when we were together, our special connect–” I stopped, dropping my head as if I were again a foolish teen. “Never mind. Nothing,” I said, waving my hand as if to brush away the moment. What was I thinking? I turned to leave, almost stumbling as I lurched toward my car. “Dan.” I turned back. Cheryl was holding the bag of tomatoes. “You almost forget these.” “Oh, sorry. How much are they?” “Don’t worry,” she said, shaking her head. “One gift deserves another.” As Cheryl gave the paper sack to me, she placed her right hand on top of the bag as I took it and for an instant, she clasped my hand and flicked her thumb across the top of it. Then she dropped both arms to her sides and stepped back. “Thank you,” I said, staring at her, my voice a whisper. “I didn’t want you to forget them,” she said, motioning toward the bag of tomatoes. “After all, your wife really loves them.” “Yes,” I stammered, shocked by what I knew was an ultimate dismissal. “She does.” I looked at Cheryl a final time, resisting an insistent urge for other, more compelling last words, ones that might still convince her she was letting go of her better destiny, but my script had dissolved, and I knew I had gained as much from my quest as I ever would. I got in my car and started it, watching Cheryl in the rearview mirror. She stood still, looking toward me just as she had decades before at the town fair, and then turned back toward the farmhouse. I pulled away from the roadside stand, but stopped only a few feet onto the rural lane I had traveled often in my youth. The road had become utterly unfamiliar, the once-comforting fields surrounding me an endless and foreign landscape. I had no idea which way to turn.
Roadside Stand by William Swanger
William Swanger is an adjunct university professor in communications. He writes fiction and creative nonfiction and recently had “Fairman” published by Peregrine, a literary journal. In addition, years ago he was twice invited to pitch stories to Paramount Pictures writing teams based on his speculative television script submissions.
By day, J.E. Teitsworth works in the casino industry. By night, he crafts stories and essays about life in the Midwest– especially his home state of Iowa. He can be found kayaking and fishing in the lakes, ponds, and rivers near his home. Find out more at jeteitsworth.com
I was waiting for my girlfriend outside of the changing room when the shot went off. The sound was different than I thought it would be. That's why I ran out so fast. Everyone thinks I'm so brave, but that's not true at all. I thought it was car crash. Maybe someone ran into a light pole. No bravery here just a rubber neck. A black minivan ripped out of the parking lot and there he was, bleeding to death on concrete hot enough to blister my bare feet. How do you turn around after something like that? You can't, you can't let everyone know what a coward you are. It just so happened I had the one thing this guy needed to stay alive. I pulled the towel off my shoulder and ran across the blistering parking lot to make the bleeding stop. To be clear I did this for me. I couldn't stand the idea of having to explain to someone later that I let this guy die. Like I keep saying I'm no hero, and I'm tired of people thinking I'm something I'm not. His neck was bloody and he was kind of gasping. His eyes were opened wide like he couldn't believe what was happening. The whites of his eyes contrasted with the black of his skin in a way that emphasized how they were bulging. His pupils were small and his eyes darted around like they were trying to stay focused on a dragonfly zooming around over our heads. I wish I'd seen it. I love dragonflies. I don't know what it is that made me notice all these little details. Maybe this is what people mean when they say that time slows down. Time was marching right along like it always did, I was just hyperaware of more things per second than I thought was possible. People moved and murmured, but nobody else approached. This guy was covered in sweat and blood and I was holding my hand to his neck so hard my muscles ached, but everyone else stood pressed up against the chainlink fence that separated the pool from the parking lot. I admit, I was more alive than I'd ever been. This guy was dying, and they just stood there existing. Waiting passively for some kind of authority to show up and save the day. Watching a man die like it was just a movie. The person who was actually brave here was the lifeguard who was working at the admission counter. This sixteen year old girl put everyone to shame. Even me. Remember, I was only worried what people might think if I didn't help. She organized a group to block the exits. She called 911. She saved his life. I just held a towel. You see that's why you shouldn't kill me. Sure, I saw your black van and I held a towel, but she saved his life. She's the reason he woke up and can testify against you.
A Coward's Gambit by J. E. Teitsworth
Antheia is a queer writer from Eastern Kentucky whose work has been featured in Merion West, Roi Faineant, Down in the Dirt, and more. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing from Mount Saint Mary's University.
“They found another body.” “Another?” There’s a hitch in Rosanne’s breath. “Where?” Holland rakes the three-prong tip of her wooden fork across the top of her yogurt, watching the zen garden lines it leaves in its path as the other girls at the table whisper among themselves. Not true whispers, of course. They’re too desperate for attention for that. No, it is the loud, half-baked stage whispers that invite eavesdroppers– such as Holland herself, poised at the end of the table with no investment in the conversation. “Down by the river,” Amna answers conspiratorially. “The police are over there now, sectioning the whole area off.” Jean, who sits next to Amna scraping her plate for every last crumb, tallies up. “That’s four in the last month…” Four in the last month. Tourists going missing in National Parks isn’t exactly a new phenomenon. Before she’d signed up for the seasonal employee program, Holland did intense research on the risks associated with the position. The NPS does not release an official count of missing people regularly lost in the parks, but there is a reported average of 330 deaths per year. Most are accidents; falls from great heights, irresponsible usage of hiking gear, drowning. Most– but not all. “You’d think people would stop hiking alone after the first body was found,” Rosanne mutters from her seat across from Amna, pushing her tray away. Her gaudy pink press-on nails clack as she taps her fingers against the tabletop. “God. This is so fucking creepy.” “Wanna hear the creepiest part?” Amna leans in closer. “No eyes. Just like the last body.” Rosanne crinkles her nose, “Gross, Amna.” “No, it’s not. It’s cool.” “Cool? We’re talking about victims here.” Amna huffs. “Okay, I’m not clowning on the victims, Rose. I’m just saying that it’s fascinating. From, like, a scientific perspective.” “Scientific perspective?” Rosanne isn’t sold. “Yeah. Native predators? You know, it’s got to be wild animals eating their eyes,” Amna defends. “Right? It has to be.” Jean takes advantage of Rosanne’s discarded tray, pulling it towards herself to stab her fork into the untouched slab of meatloaf. “Or a murderer is on the loose.” Holland considers that. If there was ever a place designated to be a serial killer's playground, it was a state park. Miles of thickly forested area with a small returning population. Rangers patrolled the trails, but if there was no inciting motivation, didn’t stray from them often. Holland knows that firsthand. Her own training was a limited crash-course geared towards quick turnover employees, the bulk of which were in this dining hall now, sharing a communal meal and ignoring the ominous elephant in the room. Four bodies in two months. Every corpse found with blunt-force head trauma and missing eyes. Oh, no. Not a coincidence at all. “No way,” Amna denies, either too ignorant to piece the puzzle together or too optimistic to believe that there could be a killer somewhere in the same Midwestern forest that they currently called home. “The police would tell us if they thought there was a murderer out here.” Rosanne hums in agreement, twirling one lock of bleach-blonde extensions around her finger. “Why do animals always go for the eyes first, anyway? I’ve never understood the whole… scavenger thing…” While Amna and Rosanne devolve into a conversation on scavenger animals and the morbidity of their meal choice, Holland has zeroed in on the criss-crossed lines etched into her yogurt top. She disrupts the design by dipping the fork fully in and watching as it emerges from the parfait red at the tips with strawberry jam. “Holland?” Jean leans across the small table space between them, uninvolved in the other girls’ spiraling talk. “Are you good?” Holland finally looks up, meeting Jean’s concerned gaze. Bright amber eyes, flecked with green throughout and decorated by a worried crease in her dark, furrowed brows. Holland brings her fork to her lips and licks it clean. “Yes.” Jean slides her hand across the table and rests it carefully atop Holland’s own. “Are you still with us?” The leaves crunch loudly underfoot as Holland tracks along the camping trail. This isn’t her typical assignment. She isn’t good enough with people to be sent on a route that features so much guest interaction– but her usual patrol route is currently roped off with police tape, so she’s been understandably reassigned. Holland counts the steps as she takes them to occupy her mind. One, two, three… One, two, three… One, two, three. If she doesn’t keep herself distracted, she’ll think about the bodies. All four of them. The first was discovered two months ago. Another park employee came across their body on the east side of the river, washed up on the muddy shore. It was ruled an accident. The coroner reported the cause of death as head trauma from an unidentifiable object. A rock, likely. It was presumed the hiker had an accident of some sort, though foul play wasn’t ruled out. There was no water in the lungs, implying the hiker had to have gone into the lake post-mortem. Their missing eyes were a minor detail, following all of that. The employee that found them quit after reporting the body. At the time, Holland found the behavior suspicious. Now, though, she sympathizes. A body with no eyes is a sight that can’t be unseen. The next two were found by guests visiting the park. Holland knows less about their discovery, having only heard bits and pieces through the rumor mill that was Amna Iqbal. There are three things that are consistent in their deaths. One: The cause of death is always ruled as head trauma from an unidentifiable object. Holland isn’t aware of whether or not the autopsy reports have confirmed that said object is consistent among the bodies. Two: The bodies are never found in the location that they died in. There’s never any excess blood in the place they’ve been found, indicating that they have been moved. Some park employees suspect that animals are dragging their bodies, but as far as Holland knows, there’s no teeth or claw marks in the corpses. Finally, and most importantly in her opinion, every single body is found with their eyes removed. Holland brings a hand up to rub her thumb at the corner of her own eye, pressing the pad of it against the inner lid and feeling the way the bulbous ball shifts sideways in the socket at the pressure. How easily could she remove her eye, if she tried? What would she need? A spoon? A knife? She turns her thumb until the blunt curve of her nail scrapes across the waterline. It wouldn’t be hard, she decides, slipping her thumbnail under her eyelid. One good push and it would pop right out. “Dude, stop!” The distant exclamation is followed by laughter, cutting through the thicket to Holland’s left. Looking up, Holland sees smoke rising over the treetops. No. That’s not right. She’s half a mile out from the nearest approved campsite. Holland frowns, glancing around in hopes that another ranger will be close enough for her to rely upon and finds herself disappointed to learn that there isn’t. She’s the only one out here for miles and miles… Holland adjusts her hat and takes a risky step off of the dirt trail. The fire is stoked with half-baked fans as the group of men surrounding it trade coughs as the smoke thickens. Ash coats the ground surrounding the makeshift pyre. It’s poorly contained. That’s the first thing Holland notices when she gets a visual of the unapproved campsite. The second thing is that the five men surrounding the campfire seem to be intoxicated, with multiple bottles of beer scattered throughout their circle. Should she radio for assistance? Holland hesitates with her hand on the walkie. She isn’t certain of her exact location. How far from mile marker 5 is she? Which direction did she go when exiting the trail? What would she even say if she did get a hold of someone? “You’re not supposed to be lighting a fire in the woods,” Holland informs the group as she steps from the treeline, stealing her nerves against their reaction. She knows she isn’t much to look like in the way of an authority figure. Nobody would fear a girl her size. But here, with the badge on her jacket, she has authority to exercise. “Please put this fire out and return to the designated campgrounds.” The men are staring at her. All five of them, looking at her with various expressions of confusion. Now that she can see them close up, Holland realizes the men aren’t that much older than her. In their twenties still. College age, maybe. Their confusion shifts. One of them, the boy seated closest to her on the far left of the fire, challenges, “Who the fuck are you?” Holland points to her badge, “Park Employee.” Another boy, across the fire from her, laughs, “Oh shit, guys. It’s the law.” Scattered snickers echo throughout. Holland’s anxiety twists tightly in her gut. She shifts on her feet, unsure of how she’s meant to respond to the jeering. This wasn’t part of her training. No one told her she was going to have to enforce State Park rules against a group of drunk frat boys. Before she can figure out the right thing to say, a third boy chimes in, “Are you going to arrest us, Miss. Park Ranger?” “No,” Holland answers. “But I might have to ask you to leave the park.” There’s only laughter in response. “This open fire is a hazard to the forest. If it spreads, it could cause serious damage. The whole park could burn down.” “Maybe it needs to be burnt down,” The third boy challenges with a faux wizened drawl, “Rebuild something better from the ashes. Have you ever considered that?” Rebuild what? This is a natural forest. Holland wants to ask what he meant, but she doesn’t have the time to do so with how the other boys are collectively ‘ooo’ing his mock philosophical quandary. “Say, Miss. Park Ranger,” The first boy to speak to her begins, rising from his seat by the fire. “I’ve heard that there’s a murderer in these woods.” Holland tenses. “Where did you hear that?” “The news. Police are saying three bodies have turned up in the last month.” Four. There have been four bodies. Holland barely manages to bite her tongue on telling him as much. Instead, she holds her chin a little higher against his poor attempt at intimidation and says, “I don’t know anything about that.” The boy isn’t deterred. He stalks across the ashy ground towards her. Holland takes a small step backwards, suddenly aware of her vulnerability. It’s another half mile until the campgrounds. There’s no one on the trail. How loudly would she have to scream before someone came to find her? Would she still have her eyes when they did? The boy is watching her closely, now, like a predator zeroing in on his prey. “No. But you do know how dangerous it is, don’t you? For a girl like you to be out here in the woods all by yourself…” “I’m supposed to be in these woods… I’m a park employee.” Her feet can’t carry her fast enough as she backtracks to the trail, wiping at the corners of her mouth where bile clings. She can still hear them laughing from their campsite off-path. It was all she could do to put out the fire before she fled. Holland scolds herself for running. They weren’t going to hurt her. They couldn’t. She’s a park employee. They were just some stupid, reckless college boys– “Hey! Girl! Miss. Park Ranger, wait!” One of the boys is yelling through the trees as he chases after her. He gains on her quicker than she wants to admit, reaching a hand out to grab her arm. “Stop!” Holland violently jerks her arm away, “Don’t touch me!” The boy raises both hands up in surrender, “If you’d just wait on me, I wouldn’t have to.” “What do you want?” “I wanted to say I’m sorry. My friends aren’t always such dicks.” “You looked like you found it funny,” Holland accuses, recalling him as the only boy who didn’t speak to her back at the camp. He’d sat the whole time, even when she stomped the fire to death. Though he hadn’t joined in on the teasing, he’d gotten in a laugh or two. The boy drops his hands, “Yeah. I’m sorry. I… I’ve been drinking. But, seriously, it was fucked up of them to do you like that. And for them to be making jokes about the murders. I’m sure that’s hard for you to hear.” Holland glances down at his hands. They’re empty, but twice the size of hers. She looks back up to meet his gaze. “Not really. No one has confirmed that the people were murdered.” “They were found without their eyes, right?” “Eyes are one of the first things scavenger animals eat,” Holland answers, summoning Rosanne and Amna’s conversation from the day prior. “This forest is full of them. It’s an assumed risk when working in a state park.” The boy doesn’t look comforted by this, but he nods. “Still. I hate that we got off on the wrong foot. I want to fix that.” “Why?” “Because I feel bad for upsetting you. And I think you’re pretty.” Holland ignores the latter statement, “I’m not upset.” Awkwardly, the boy rocks back and forth on his heels as if he’s waiting for her to say something else. Maybe he hopes she’ll acknowledge the flattery. She won’t. When he realizes nothing more is going to come, he changes tactics. “Hey. What are you doing tonight?” He doesn’t give her time to answer before plowing on, “Meet me out here? By the mile marker? 9 PM?” “Why?” “I’d like to get to know you better.” “Why?” “Because I think you’re pretty.” The boy's eyes are richly dark, almost black. She’s never seen eyes that color before. Holland wonders if that means he can be trusted. “I’ll think about it.” The boy looks like he’s going to hoot in excitement, so she grounds him with a firm. “That’s not a yes.” “It’s not a no, either,” he retorts, grinning. Holland rolls her eyes and turns to go. Behind her, the boy calls out, “I’m Jacob, by the way!” “Holland,” her answering call, given over her shoulder without a glance back. Holland’s assigned twin bed creaks beneath Jean’s weight as she sits on the end. They’re partnered for a trash clean up near the park entrance for the next day. Holland prefers Jean’s company to others, though that might be because Jean doesn’t ask about Holland’s life outside of the park. Jean respects the sanctity of the position. Holland respects that. They’re deep in discussions of the best time to wake-up to get ahead of the tourist crowd when the door to Holland’s cabin opens and Rosanne enters, looking smug as ever. “Hey, Holland. Shouldn’t you be getting ready for your date?” Rosanne blinks owlishly, hand cocked on her hip.“ Mile marker 5 at 9 PM, right?” Jean butts in before Holland has a chance to process the accusation, “What are you talking about, Rosanne?” “Oh my god,” laughs Rosanne. “Holland didn’t tell you? She met a guy today. A real looker.” Holland straightens against the headboard. “Were you spying on me?” “I was out making my rounds on the trail and overheard you.” “So you decided to eavesdrop instead of minding your own business?” “Wait,” Jean frowns, looking between them. “It’s true?” “Yup,” Rosanne says at the same time Holland answers, “No.” The two girls eye one another up for a moment on enemy territory. Holland refocuses on Jean to explain, “A guy I met on the trail invited me to meet him tonight. That’s all.” Jean’s frown grows, “Are you thinking about going?” “Of course she’s going to go,” Rosanne huffs, dropping down onto her own bed across the cabin. “Who doesn’t want a good dicking in times like this?” “It’s not like that,” Holland defends. “He just invited me to hang out.” “‘Hang out’?” A scoff leaves Rosanne’s glossy lips. “Don’t be stupid, Holland. You know what he wants.” The next morning, Holland rises late. She doubletakes at the digital clock on her nightstand and realizes that she’s overslept by three hours. She was supposed to meet Jean at six. Jerking from bed, Holland is quick to throw on her clothes and exit the cabin. She’s halfway to the camp gate when she hears them– “He didn’t say he was going anywhere.” It’s one of the boys from the day before. Unmistakable, with his frat drawl. Holland slows to a stop at the entrance to the employee campground. Just beyond the gate, two of the boys from the forest stand talking to one of the senior Rangers. They’re frantic. She can see it in their eyes. “Is it possible he could’ve gone home without telling you?” The Ranger asks. “Gone home?” The second boy counters. “Seriously? Without any of his stuff?” The first boy looks around in disbelief, hands up, before his eyes land on Holland. They’re piercing blue. Unavoidable. The longer he looks at her, the more his expression begins to shift from frustration to realization. Those eyes aren’t only accusatory– they’re fearful. Holland turns before he has time to open his lips. She tracks towards the dining hall, no longer concerned about the job she’s tardy for. The door to the dining hall hasn’t had time to shut fully before Holland finds herself backed against it. Rosanne crowds her against the wood, index finger jabbing into Holland’s chest as she mounts the attack. “What did you do?” Though breakfast ended an hour ago, the dining hall is packed. It’s as if every employee living on the park grounds has gathered there. There’s no wonder as to why. Another person has gone missing in these woods. Are they looking for a fifth body now? Conspiratory whispers die down at Rosanne’s outburst. All eyes are on the two of them as Rosanne continues her sharp questioning. “What did you do, you freak!? What did you do?” “Rosanne!” Amna is shouting, “Stop!” “I know it was you,” Rosanne bites out. “What did you do to him?” Holland stares wide eyed at Rosanne. Over the blonde's shoulder, she can see the other employees crowding around. Amna, looking concerned as she tries and fails to pull Rosanne off Holland. Jean, behind Amna, staring at Holland with those amber eyes. Holland opens and closes her mouth, gaping like a fish out of water. “I… I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “That boy! The one from the woods. I heard you leaving last night to go meet him and now he’s missing, Holland.” Rosanne’s voice hitches with emotion. Holland has never seen her so disheveled, “They found his glasses by the mile marker, where he told you he’d be! Did you kill him?” “Rosanne!” Amna scolds. “That’s a horrible accusation.” Holland shakes her head. “I didn’t hurt anybody.” “Liar!” “I went to the bathroom last night, that’s all–” Rosanne pushes Holland forcefully back against the door. “Did you kill all of them?! What did you do with their eyes, you fucking psychopath?!” “Rosanne, enough!” At last, Amna pulls Rosanne away, jerking her towards the table and away from Holland. “You need to calm down.” Holland rubs her chest where the ghost of Rosanne’s pointer lingers. There’ll be a bruise there, she knows. Maybe even a chip of that bright pink polish. As she watches Amna calm Rosanne down, Jean approaches in her peripheral, her presence the only warning Holland gets before a hand is placed upon her shoulder. “Are you okay?” Jean asks quietly. “I’m fine.” “What is she talking about, Holland?” Holland avoids Jean’s gaze, “I don’t know.” There’s a stain on her canvas shoes that won’t come out. A red splatter across the toe. Holland picks at it as she sits on the shower bench, hair still dripping from its wash. She drags her thumb across the edge of the stain. When did that happen? She can’t remember. “Did you hear?” One of the girls gossips around the bathroom corner. “They found a dead employee last night.” “What?” Another girl asks. “Who?” The bath hall was a makeshift addition to the accommodation after enough girls complained about needing more space to get ready. Four shower stalls and an add-on room of sinks and mirrors one exposed wall away. Holland had come in alone that evening, hoping to be out before the crowd of girls came for their post-dinner showers. She was unsuccessful. “I heard it was Rosanne Johns.” “No!” Amna’s voice cracks in horror. “No. You’re lying! I was just with her!” Anything else the girls say is drowned out in volume by Amna’s sobs, but Holland doesn’t need to hear their words to know what they’re telling her. Amna’s reaction is enough. Rosanne is dead. Holland doesn’t realize she’s moving until she’s already turning the bathroom corner, clutching her towel tight to her chest. “Did they find her eyes?” The room goes silent. One of the other seasonal girls, a ginger whose name Holland has never bothered to learn, is the first to speak up when she asks, cautiously. “What?” “Rosanne’s eyes,” Holland clarifies. “Were they missing from her body?’ “I… I don’t know. The police didn’t say.” From her perch on the bathroom sink, Jean asks, “Holland?” Slowly, Amna raises her hand to point one shaking finger at Holland. It’s a quiet accusation. Realization hits the rest of the girls one by one. Mixes of shock, horror, confusion swim across the crowd, as if they’re all reaching the same conclusion as Amna. Holland doesn’t stay to hear what any of them have to say. She grabs her stained shoes and runs. Rosanne’s body was discovered by the utility shed, less than a mile away from camp. Unlike the first four bodies, it appeared she was murdered where she was found. There was blood splattered against the back of the shed. Police couldn’t rule this one as an accident. The open gash on her head wound was the work of an unknown assailant, not some freak slip off a cliff. Park Rangers have enforced a curfew on the seasonal employees in response to the discovery. Holland understands why, of course– who would want to be out there alone after dark with a murderer on the loose? The only question Holland had for them? It was answered before she even asked. The sheet slipped just enough when the coroner had Rosanne’s body removed from the site. Holland saw her there, lying on her back with her head split open, de-clawed hands bloody at the fingertips as if those press-ons had taken her real nails off with them when they’d been ripped from her. Most damning of all– black holes where her eyes should've been. Holland lays on her back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling overhead. She can’t unsee it. Rosanne, her bright blue eyes taken from her. Someone plucked her eyes from her head and– did what? Did they discard them? Did they feed them to wild game? Did they eat them? Or was there someone living within this park who had Rosanne’s eyes still in their possession? “Holland?” A knock comes to the cabin door. Jean. “Can I come in?” Holland considers telling her no, if only because she’s not willing to subject anyone else to Rosanne’s leftover belongings. They’d shared this cabin for nearly three months now. Rosanne’s things used to breach the boundary of Holland’s sacred half, leaving strewn bras and forgotten lipsticks scattered for Holland to find. Rosanne wasn’t the type of girl who gave a damn about pleasing anyone else. But in the end, Holland isn’t comfortable being alone here, still. So she rises from the bed, crosses the room and opens the cabin door. Jean enters as soon as Holland has made enough space for her to do so. “I thought you might want some company. I know how lonely an empty cabin can be.” “You know, I envied you when you were assigned a cabin all to yourself. I hated that you got peace and quiet while I got saddled with Rosanne.” Holland confesses quietly, shutting and locking the door behind Jean. “But this just feels wrong.” “Well, I’m here now,” Jean reaches out to take Holland’s hand in her own. “I promise to help you forget all about your dead roommate.” If it’s meant to be a joke, it falls flat. Holland has never had a winning sense of humor herself, but she knows Jean will understand her lack of attempt now of all times. “Everyone thinks I killed her.” “Yeah…” “Do you think I did it?” Jean doesn’t immediately answer. The hesitation has something acidic turning in Holland’s stomach. She jerks her hand out of Jean’s grasp and starts towards the bed. Jean hurries after her. “No. No, I know you didn’t do it. You’re not a murderer, Holland.” “Maybe I am,” Holland whispers, stopping and turning to face Jean once more. “Maybe I killed Rosanne like I killed that boy.” “We don’t even know that boy’s dead… His body hasn’t been found.” “Maybe you’re in danger being here alone with me, Jean. Maybe you’re my next victim and you don’t even realize it.” Holland takes a slow step towards Jean. Jean, to her credit, stands her ground, even as Holland reaches out and cups her cheeks, pressing her thumbs against the outer corners of Jean’s eyes. “Maybe I want your eyes.” “Then you can have them,” Jean rasps, her hands coming up to cup over Holland’s. She guides Holland’s thumbs to press against the center of her eyelids. “You can have all of me.” Holland pulls her hands back. She starts to step away, but Jean is quicker, reaching out and grabbing hold of the back of her head to drag her in for a sudden kiss. It only takes Holland a second to kiss back, eager and desperate for some distraction. A distraction Jean seems more than willing to provide. Later that night, Holland lays awake on her back, Jean curled up against her with her head on Holland’s bare chest. They breathe in tandem. Holland’s sweat dries slowly on her skin. She traces her fingertips up Jean’s back, feeling every firm knob of her spine before trailing them over the blade of her shoulder. It’s when she reaches her destination of Jean’s upper arm that she pauses. There are fresh scratches in her skin. Holland can’t see them through the dark of the cabin, illuminated only by the moonlight, but she can feel the raised edges of them and the way the upper layer of dermis peels under her touch. “What happened?” “Tree bark,” Jean tells her. “I tripped.” “When?” “Picking up trash the other morning without you.” Holland doesn’t answer that. She remembers that morning. The day the boy went missing. Jacob, wasn’t it? Though his body hasn’t been found, Holland can’t bring herself to think that he could still be alive. It’s only a matter of time before he, too, turns up, eyeless and long-cold. “Holland?” Jean is looking at her now, chin pressed against the center of Holland’s chest. Through the dark, Holland looks down at her. Jean smiles when their gazes meet, “You have such beautiful eyes.” Holland thinks of the first body. The second, the third… The fourth. She thinks of Jacob, with his rich browns, how he looked at her like she was something special. She thinks of Rosanne, lying on that stretcher, empty eye sockets where those beautiful baby blues once were. “I do?” “Yes,” Jean whispers. “You do.” The next morning marks the first rainfall the park has seen in two months. Dirt trails turn to mud. Inexperienced campers load up their sedans and high-tail it out of the park, driven out by the flooding campgrounds if not by the morbidity of the recent losses. Holland’s shift has been called off for the day, with her normal trail no longer accessible. She stands at the gates of the employee grounds, hands in her pockets as she watches the rain splatter the earth, soaking the light clay dirt until it’s blood red and running. Jean crosses past the gate without a word, their shoulders brushing as she exits the site. She spares only one glance back over her shoulder at Holland, those amber eyes shining. The river has risen in the rain, but not enough to wash away the small markers that have been pushed into the earth to signal where the fourth body was found. Police tape crosses the area off, but Jean ducks under it easily. There’s no one there today. Even if the rain did permit law enforcement to continue their investigation, they now have fresher bodies to worry about. Jean stops at the water's edge. She bends down and picks up a rock from the side of the riverbed. It’s covered in mud, which she thumbs off idly to further inspect the jagged edges of the stone’s face. Behind Jean, a branch snaps. She startles, turning halfway to see Holland crossing the police tape. Jean rolls the large rock over in her palm. Holland stops. They examine one another from the short distance between them; Holland with her hands dangling at her sides and Jean with those thick brows furrowed. Holland can hear Jean’s breathing quicken, even through the storm. Jean looks from Holland’s ruined shoes to her empty hands to her face. Holland looks from the jagged rock to Jean’s apprehensive expression. Their eyes meet.
Her Eyes by Antheia
In Descent By Laurel Hanson
Blackbird eases the bowstring back until the sinew strains between her fingers. She has a clear shot through the scrub trees, but her heart is drumming too swiftly within her chest. She closes her eyes, steadying her breath. When she opens them, her prey is bent over the thin stream, presenting a broad back. Breathing out, she relaxes the tension in her fingers. When she releases, the soft note of the arrow in passing is a whisper in her ear, a promise. He roars and falls to his knees, the shaft shuddering high in his back. Blackbird shoulders her bow and snatches up her spear to trot through the dry leaf wrack, her bare feet silent. She levels her weapon at his chest as she approaches. He glares up at her, eyes almost black with rage. “Why’d you shoot me?” He’s older than she’d thought. His clothing is from the Before, threads of another time now little more than tatters. His hair is greyed to ash, his skin like the riverbeds when the rains don’t come. Even so, he is very large, and she knows he will kill her if she isn’t careful. Circling behind him, she eases loose the braided rope of her belt. “Your kind are dangerous,” she says. “What do you mean ‘my’ kind?” With a snap of her wrist, she loops the rope over his head and down, pulling his arms taut to his body. He falls backwards to the hard earth and howls as the shaft of her arrow snaps. The point protrudes just below his shoulder in a flower of red. She spits into the dry earth. “Warlocks.” The warlocks had risen out of the Before to dominate what was left of the world. Gran said they were only the shape of men without the heart of men. But if there’s a chance this man-shape can help her, she should take it. This one must have lived in the Before and might know enough for what she needs. Gran was the only person Blackbird ever knew who was alive then, and Gran knew everything. “Why’d you call me a warlock?” His words are tight with pain. She doesn’t answer. This close, she breathes in his scent of sap and sweat, good smells that conflict with what he is, but she knows deception is used by many other dangerous beasts. Without warning, she pulls the arrow through his shoulder, pleased to see she can reuse the flint head. He grunts and closes his eyes, his face turning pale. He doesn’t struggle as she tears apart the thin material at his shoulder and presses a mullein leaf to the wound, binding it with scraps she rips from his strange garment. He speaks through gritted teeth. “You might as well just kill me.” “We don’t kill what we don’t eat. Unlike your kind.” “Then why shoot me?” “I have need of your skills.” He narrows his eyes at her. She’s seen that same calculating look in the eyes of the wild dogs that roam in packs across the scrubland and abandoned places, ever watching for weakness. Much smaller than he, she is as thin as a skinned rabbit and not yet twenty. She turns away, and the glint of his metal water bottle catches her eye. It’s snagged in the stones of the thin stream where he’d been trying to fill it. She plucks it free and holds it to his lips, waiting while he drinks. Then she stands back, gesturing with her spear for him to move. When he doesn’t, she says, “Get up.” He only shakes his head, his contempt as biting as the acrid scent that rises from the black tires scattered in the cracked roads. It goads her into cruelty. She jabs the butt of her spear into his gaunt belly and is surprised when he sighs and shambles awkwardly to his feet, flicking a glance toward his pack. It’s a ragged bundle of possessions from the Before that Gran would tell her are dangerous. Blackbird shakes her head, prodding him ahead of her. In that way, she herds him up into the mountains. It’s a hard journey, perhaps a day. More, at the pace he moves. His gait is shorter than his long legs should allow, and his steps falter. Blackbird isn’t sure if this is a ploy or if he is as old as Gran, who moved like that in her last years. It still hurts to think of Gran’s passing. When the Before collapsed, Gran led a small band of people into the mountains, even though she’d been large with Blackbird’s mother at the time. They’d gone beyond the reach of the dying world and lived as the land taught them, using only what they could make or grow. The only thing they’d brought with them from the Before was the music, the songs that bound the villagers together. Gran’s voice had flowed like warm honey when she sang, and when death silenced her, the whole village suffered the loss. It was the fault of the dead man in the cabin, Blackbird is sure, and to solve that problem, she needs the warlock’s help. The pair walk in silence as is the preferred way of her people, but he finally breaks it. “Why’d you call me a warlock?” “Your kind live in the shadows of the dead.” Dead, Blackbird thinks, but not gone. Even now, she still finds the bones of those who died when the world they had destroyed took them with it. The warlock staggers and falls to the hard ground. “I can’t go on. I need something to eat.” She reads the pain stitched into his brow. She will have to let him rest. Squatting a safe distance away, she asks, “How old are you?” “Too old.” His voice is as faded as his clothing. She thinks he must be older even than Gran. “Were you alive in the Before?” “Yes.” He closes his eyes. “I remember the Before.” Shiv remembers. It was a time of plenty, for others. His family lived in the shadow-slums outside the gated city where the wealthy spilled their light and noise in a never-ending display of what was beyond his reach. He realizes she has spoken. “Was it a good life?” No, Shiv thinks sourly. Everything about his life then had been shit. Except Ellery. Warm-hearted and generous, strong in her own way, her dreams of a world beyond the shadow-slums had made life bearable. When he was with her, he could almost believe it was possible. His heart constricts at her memory, now slipping into the fog of what he’d lost when the whole world fell apart. The girl is waiting for him to answer. He can feel her presence, though he refuses to open his eyes. She’d shot him as if he were a wild dog. She’s barely human herself yet speaks to him as though he isn’t worth the sound of speech. If only she knew who he was. Had been. Sleep pulls him into darkness, and he wakes when the girl prods his shoulder. Morning is a mere suggestion on the horizon. He blinks, surprised to see she has a fire going. Over the thin fingers of flame, she’s roasting a lizard, and the fat drips hissing from its tail. His mouth waters. When she hands him a glistening hunk, he realizes the rope binding his hands to his waist has been loosened enough for him to eat, which he does, greedily. He hasn’t eaten for days. Hunting has grown difficult. His eyesight isn’t what it was. His hearing isn’t what it was either, or he wouldn’t have been caught out by this little savage. What strength he had is fraying, and even though he’d found a fairly decent pair of boots a while back, his feet feel like broken glass. He knows he can still overpower the girl, but he can’t outrun her. His only escape is through killing her. She covers the fire with nimble fingers, then rises with the quick grace of a deer. He struggles to his feet and says, “I’m Shiv.” The girl doesn’t answer. He offers his name as if he expects Blackbird to give hers in return. Instead, she gestures up the slope. The cool of morning will not last long. “Why do you hate me so much?” he asks. His question stirs the embers inside her. “Warlocks take and take and only leave when they’ve taken their fill.” She bites back the pain caused by the broken pieces of her memories. She’d been young when the warlocks had last come to her village but had never forgotten the way they had waved their guns and their blades as they made their demands. “They ate all the livestock, leaving no breeding pair. They burned the fields, destroying the seed stock.” He juts his chin at his crudely bandaged shoulder, now a crusty brown. “Are you so much better?” She looks away. Her arrow hadn’t killed him, nor had she intended to kill him. It was not at all the same as what the warlocks had done. The embers in her heart flare, and she spits out her words. “My people don’t waste our efforts warring others. We gather, plant, harvest, husband our animals, hunt. We survive.” The pride of it fills her chest. Gran said their kind would live on long after those who clung to the old ways, feasting at the tables of the dead. “You survive like animals,” he rasps. “Look at you. Your weapons are primitive, just stone and bone and wood.” He turns and eyes her tunic. “You’re wearing scraps. You hide in the wilds claiming to be free when all you are is pitiful.” He knows nothing. Gran spun the fibers and wove the tunic he mocked so carelessly. It’s not a scrap; it’s her prized possession. She wonders if she should just drive her spear through this arrogant man-shape, but counsels herself for patience. “Each time warlocks raided our village,” she says instead, “we had to flee and build again. If we are pitiful, it is because the reach of the warlocks makes us so.” He snorts his disdain. She aims her hatred at the place his heart should be and throws her words like stones. “Warlocks killed my mother. Tell me I’m wrong to hate you.” The butt of her spear jabs into his back again, and Shiv wonders if she’s going to finish the job her arrow started. Instead, she falls silent, hatred radiating from her like the heat of a fever. His own hatred had once burned through him the same way. When access to drinking water had been cut off to the shadow-slums, Shiv had syphoned the precious liquid from the city line and been caught. They’d sentenced him to work on a salvage gang in the drowned city, five years spent diving for anything that could be scavenged from the collapsing buildings. Once he’d made it back home, Ellery was gone. Only then had his hatred become a wildfire consuming everything in its path. But by that time, the disease unleashed by the heating climate had ravaged the population of the world. In all that death, Shiv saw the scales tipping in his favor at last. After all, when the world takes away from you, you have a right to take back. Taking first from the dead, then from the living, he’d grown strong while others grew weak. He’d gathered men to him, and they’d mocked the weakness of others, plotting a future where they would be the ones who dominated. But nothing lasts. He should have known that. A broken bone was all it took for him to become one of the weak, and the weak are driven out to wander alone. Now, what’s left of his own future is in the hands of this small barbarian. His feet scream with each step, and though he has tried repeatedly, he cannot lift his injured arm. A deep and abiding fatigue burrows its way into his bones. He knows he’s not long for this world. With a little encouragement, he realizes, she might even send him on his way. The thought is not entirely unwelcome. He stops walking, draws himself to his full height, and looks down at her. “You know, we aren’t warlocks. We’re called warlords. I was a warlord.” She barely glances at him. “Gran told me lords were respected people of noble character. We don’t call you warlords because you don’t have such character. She said you’re locked in only one way of living, so you are warlocks.” She emphasizes the last syllable to be sure he understands the wordplay. Her contempt drives him to defend himself. “People fear us. They respect us.” His words sound brittle in the hot air. She wipes the horizon with a flat hand. From this vantage point, he can see the broken fingers of the drowned city pointing their accusations from an angry sea. A few thin spirals of smoke reveal those camped along its shores, clinging to the edges of the old world. “You built nothing,” she says. “Why would people respect you?” He’s sure he has an answer. It’s there in the indignation she inspires in him. Something about strength, he thinks, watching the distant smoke as if it might offer him a sign. It rises and fades against the pale sky until there’s nothing there at all. “You demand respect,” the girl says, “but you give none.” When he and his men had come upon the little villages carved into the wilderness, they’d found nothing but crude huts surrounded by flimsy spiked fences. Crops were clawed from the earth with handmade tools, and animals milled everywhere, their shit treated like gold. Children, old people, and not enough men left them defenseless, easy pickings. Why would he respect them? They had walked away from all the things he’d once wanted so desperately he’d been willing to kill for them. He opens his parched lips to speak, and his words ride the dry air like ghosts. “At least we didn’t turn our backs on everything humans achieved.” “True,” she says. “You just took everything for yourselves, and now it’s gone.” There isn’t much he can say to that. The girl nudges him with her spear and he shambles forward, his boots scuffing small clouds of dust from the hard, dry earth. Waves of heat shimmer over the land, and his throat feels sandpapered. He’s grateful when she points toward a small cluster of trees offering shade. He eases cautiously to the ground, knees popping. The girl hears it and tips her head. “Do you have children to care for you in your age?” “I don’t think I’ll live all that long.” “No, I don’t think you will. You were big and strong once, but there’s always someone bigger and stronger.” Her eyes are hard and dark, and he wonders if he’ll die at the hands of someone much smaller. She seems to have heard that thought because she looks away and says, “You’ll serve a purpose.” Blackbird is relieved when they arrive at the cabin while the sun still sits over her shoulder. It’s a solitary dwelling from the Before, choked by the tangled growth of fireweed and bittercress that she and Gran used to come harvest. The cabin is stout with fat logs, and stands unchanged, though its roof lets in the sky. She knows it was never found by scavengers. All the wonders this warlock thinks of so highly remain as they had been within, but for the mold and mouse droppings. She directs him inside where the gloom offers a reprieve from the heat. On the bed are the bones of the dead man she and Gran had found, neatly formed into a clever bowl shape surrounded by his strange things. That was Gran’s doing. But it hadn’t been enough to keep this dead man’s spirit from wandering. “Can you find this man’s self?” she asks. The warlock stares at the bones, his expression unreadable. “I don’t understand.” “Gran and me, we couldn’t find the self to put with the bones.” “I still don’t understand.” “It’s a small thing, the size of my hand. You warlocks use things from the Before. Surely you can find it.” “Maybe if I know what you’re talking about.” She wonders if he’s being stupid on purpose, but she needs his help. “Gran taught us to gather the bones of the old ones together like this. She said we must also place their things with them so that their spirits will be at peace.” Her finger circles above the formation on the bed. “But we didn’t find this man’s self. Usually, it’s in their hands or their pockets. You will help me find it.” Gran had told her how, when the old world had fallen and taken the lives of so many, the voices of the selves could be heard calling out. Music and chimes would come from the bodies for days after the people who carried them had died. She said it was like the dead haunting themselves, the saddest music she’d ever heard. Blackbird shivers to think of it. To her, it seemed more like the dead haunting the living. It had given her nightmares, but this dead man’s spirit, lonely and afraid, would surely wander the world forever seeking to hear those voices again. And sure enough, when she and Gran hadn’t found his self to put with his bones in the cabin, Gran had sickened and died soon after. She needs the warlock’s help but struggles to find the words to make him understand. “This dead man’s spirit is wandering because he misses his self. He will sicken more people in the village looking for it. You know about the Before, about the way things were. Surely, you can find it.” His forehead turns into a knot that suddenly unravels. “You aren’t calling them the right thing.” “What are they called?” For a long moment, he doesn’t answer. “It doesn’t matter. Your word is pretty accurate. Has it occurred to you that some of the old ones didn’t have ‘selves’?" This idea bends Blackbird’s thoughts backwards. If this dead man did not have a self, how can she set his spirit to rest? If he can’t be pacified, the village will need to move yet again. She can’t bear the thought of it. Each time they move, they become more pitiful, as the warlock had called them. Frustration bubbles inside her. “I must think on this. If I could speak with Gran, she would have answers.” “Well, free me and you can go see her.” She ignores his tricks. He would just follow her to the village. Though this warlock is very old and much weakened, he may be a scout for others who will come at his direction. If he can’t help her with the dead man’s spirit, she has no use for him, yet even though he’s just a warlock, she isn’t sure she should kill him. She ties him to the bed frame and steps outside so she can think. The nearness of the warlock is scraping raw her memories. She’d been very young the last time she’d seen one but has never forgotten the cruelty etched into his face, as sharp as the metal blade he used to kill her mother. Behind her, the warlock begins to sing. The notes flow out the darkened door, soft and low. It’s a song about a blackbird. It is the sound of melancholy sunlight, haunting and beautiful. Even so, her skin crawls to hear Gran’s favorite song from this unfamiliar voice. She’s spins around, shouting as she enters the cabin, spear first. He stops mid-note. Seated at the table in the darkness, unbound, he holds a short metal blade in his fingers. It must have been in his boot. He sets it on the table and holds up his empty hands. “I won’t harm you.” She keeps her distance, her heart hammering painfully within her. A shaft of sunlight piercing through the roof blazes hot across her face. “I only ever heard Gran sing that song.” He stares at her strangely, as though he had not seen her before. Pain creases his face. His eyes grow softer than his song. He blinks and turns away to look at the window, crusted with soot and dirt, a dark patch of untended time. “What is your Gran’s name?” His voice is small and tight in his chest. She hesitates, not wanting to give him the gift of a name. “Gran Ellery,” she says at last when the silence in the cabin feels like it will smother her. The knob in his throat moves up and down. “Can you take me to her?” She shakes her head. “I cannot. This dead man’s spirit caught Gran’s when she put his bones together. She is no longer with the living.” He doesn’t speak. His breathing becomes ragged. Through the gloom, Blackbird sees the shine of moisture tracking from his eyes. “Ellery was old for this world,” he says. She doesn’t like the sound of Gran’s name on his lips, but she also hears the echo of it having been spoken by him before. “You knew Gran Ellery?” She has to wait a long time before he answers. “I knew her. That was her favorite song.” He loved her. It’s in the softness that smooths out the wrinkles in his voice. As she thinks this, he says, “I loved her.” The knob in his throat jumps again. Blackbird catches her breath. “Gran would never love a warlock,” she hisses. His words are warlock tricks from a man-shape without the heart of a man. The gloom is full of motes that catch the light in sparks. He nods, sending them swirling. “You’re right. She never would have loved a warlock.” The bits of light lift and fall in the silence before he sighs, filling the space between them with regret. “Once, my name was Steven, and I was a man she loved.” Blackbird says nothing since, surely, he is wrong. Instead, she backs out of the cabin and into the clearing where the sun still skims over the scrub trees. She tries to still her breath, to ease the tension in her chest. The warlock has followed and is standing in the doorway, staring down at her. The light picks out features in his face she had not noticed before, and she sees what was there all along, her mother’s face hiding in plain sight. She realizes he’s seen the echo of Gran’s face in her own. The villagers always said how much she looked like Gran. He starts to say something, but his voice breaks into pieces. Clearing his throat, he tries again. “Ellery would have named our child Blackbird.” Her heart squeezes. She leans on her spear, her breath ragged. It is hard to speak. “That was my mother’s name. I took it to honor her when the warlocks killed her.” He slumps and folds himself down in the doorway. The cooling air lies silently over them for a long span. She reads the language of his body, which tells her he will not live long. His bones jut beneath skin as thin as winter leaves. The binding at his shoulder is an unhealthy brown. She knows she has likely hastened his death, wished for it more than once. Yet, if what he said is true, he is a man, not a man-shape. It’s a bitter thing to taste inside her thoughts. Her heart feels as taut as a bowstring. Finally, he speaks. “I’m sorry.” The apology falls to the bittercress flowering at his feet. He holds out his worn hands, an empty offering. “I’m sorry about your mother and your Gran.” She doesn’t say anything. Death does not alter for an apology. Although, her thoughts tell her, maybe life does. There is a stirring among the leaves of the trees, a soft speaking. She listens to it. The certainty of a decision begins to form in her chest. This man belongs to the Before, like the cabin, like the selves, like the tires that lie dying in the roads. But Gran came from the Before too, and the song about a blackbird that sounds like melancholy sunlight. She swallows. “You may live here,” she says cautiously. “Keep the dead man company. Perhaps that will be enough to bring his spirit peace.” He gives her a tired nod. “Our people will not trouble you. I’ll dress your wound before I go. But–” she pauses before feeling her way to an unfamiliar word. “Grandfather. You must promise not to kill me.” His laugh turns into dry coughs of pain. “I won’t kill you, Blackbird,” he says, finally. At his feet, the white blossoms of the bittercress glow in the fading light against the dark, hard earth.
Laurel Hanson is a writer who grew up traveling around the world until finally settling in Maine. She is fascinated by that which occurs at the intersections between worlds, where fantasy becomes science, where reality borders upon unreality, and perhaps most of all, where yesterday transforms into tomorrow.
Itches By R.D. Tyler
You walk down the stairs. It’s dark. There’s a faint buzzing. It’s high pitched and whining and it burrows its way through your ears to vibrate your skull. You take a step, your foot clangs on the metal stair, reverberating in the darkness. That buzzing responds, speeding up hysterically. Hungrily. Like a motorcycle engine revved up, then pitch shifted a few octaves higher. You hesitate, your hand hovering above the handrail. You don’t want to go down there. It started a few weeks ago. You got an offer to be part of a medical drug test, an experiment to test a hopeful new treatment, supposedly a panacea to all sorts of diseases. It was an offer too good to pass up. Both being able to help people, but how much they were going to pay. Three hundred thousand dollars. And that’s just for starting the trial. If you are able to make it all the way through and are able to provide real insight to the development of their product, they would pay one million dollars. One million dollars, for two months of work. You couldn’t believe it. That amount of money, you could finally dig out of that debt. Maybe actually buy a house. Why wouldn’t someone make it through the trial? Why such a bounty for just trying some drugs? Oh, you wouldn’t be trying the drugs, you’d be growing them. The drugs were made from hormones they hadn’t figured out how to synthesize just yet. The hormones were the body’s reaction to a certain proprietary stimulus and were incubated in the body for about two months. From there, they’d extract it and you’d be right as rain, and one million dollars richer. Just think of it like a vaccine, but then you share it with the world. There were some caveats of course. You had to stay at their facility during the duration of the trial, monitored at all times. Both for your health and the security of their product, you understand. You had to sign a pretty long non-disclosure agreement, filled with large words and veiled threats. You got the gist of it though. No speaking of what goes on during the trial. No talking about what you see or learn or what the treatment looks like or any of the Company’s processes. If you say a word, your big payday is forfeit, and they will take your treacherous ass to court for all you’re worth. Probably jail time. Corporate espionage is a serious crime. At the time you didn’t really care though. One million dollars and you didn’t have to go to your job for two whole months. Food and board taken care of. As long as you came out healthy on the other side, and they promised you would, no long term side effects whatsoever, perfectly safe, etcetera, then you wouldn't sweat it. You barely glanced over the waiver regarding injury and damages to health before signing it. Just a legal precaution, you know the drill, nothing to worry about. You signed your waiver, your NDA, and your contract with barely a thought of anything going wrong. Human test subject? Human pioneer in the frontiers of exciting new medicine! You could barely contain your excitement. Then you get to the facility. A nondescript building, could be any office in any city. Until you’re inside. Large men with large guns stood around watching everything through aviator sunglasses. Every door required a keycard, a fingerprint scan, and a number password. People do not get through this building quickly. Leading up to the start of the program, everyone from the Company had been nice, cordial, down right pleasant. That was when they wanted something from you. Now that you’re here and locked in, the façade drops. Everyone is cold, clinical. You are a number. You are a subject, an experiment. The woman leading your test group barks orders; short, crisp, and without patience as she directs you and the rest of the subjects through the building. Your group of twenty is herded through a number of hallways and staircases, a few elevators, and a couple labs before making it to a large lobby surveilled over by what you think of as the nurses’ station. The whole area reminds you of a hospital waiting room– except for the armed guards. One by one, each trial candidate is taken to a connected room, until only you are left in the lobby. No one comes back out of the room. The candidates must proceed to the next step from there. Finally it is your turn. You step in. There’s a painfully bright overhead light. Several people dressed in medical scrubs and lab coats are there, observing you, scrutinizing you. Everyone’s face is covered with surgical masks. A nurse or an orderly steps up to you. She speaks like she would to a dog or child; firm, clear, and with authority. “Take off all your clothes.” You panic for a moment, looking around the room. Then you remember there has to be an examination. They need to know what they’re working with. You can handle a few moments of embarrassment and indignity. The $300k is already in your account. You close your eyes and remove your clothes and force yourself to think about the first thing you’re going to buy when you’re out of here. You try not to feel all the eyes on you, judging your worthiness for their procedure. The nurse speaks again, “Place all of your personal items in the bin to your left. Including your phone. You will get them back again once the trial is complete.” You don’t get to keep your phone? What will you do for two months? But you realize, of course you don’t get your phone in a secure place like this, doing top secret development on a miracle cure. The fear of someone discovering this drug and getting it to market before them must be strong. They complete the rest of the examination methodically. They had done a lot of preliminary work; blood panels, medical history, and the like as part of the contract process before you got here. This was just to cross all the t’s, dot all the i’s. Make sure everything is as it should be. You feel a bit like a cow at market. You are given a pair of blue hospital scrubs. You quickly pull them on while the nurse explains the process to you. “You will be given several shots in the next few minutes. These will begin a chemical reaction in your marrow and white blood cells. This reaction prepares your body. We will monitor you to ensure proper acceptance and reaction. “After that, you will be taken to the main lab. We will expose you to the… stimulus. At this point, it could become mildly uncomfortable. You might have a slight skin reaction, causing itching. Think of it like bug bites. You must not scratch. If you are not able to resist from scratching, you will be restrained. “Your body will create a substance produced from the reaction to the stimulus. This substance will secrete from your skin. You must not scratch or wipe it off. It will be gathered from you in regular intervals, depending on the rate of production. This will continue, until the end of the trial, or you no longer produce enough of the substance to collect. If you are unable to proceed with the trial at any point, you will be paid a prorated amount of the agreed upon sum. “You must. Not. Scratch.” The nurse looks you in the eye to make sure you understand the point. You nod. Your voice seems to have disappeared. This sounds a lot scarier than a few weeks ago. Scarier, and suddenly very real. They begin preparing you for the shots. You just got dressed, but you have to get undressed again. They lay you on a steel medical bed, the thin parchment paper offering no protection from the cold metal surface. You feel like meat, lying naked under the light. They place a blue-green paper blanket over you, not for warmth, but to delineate the injection sites. There’s cutouts in the paper above your chest, your hip, your knees. They tape them down, securing the blanket and leaving a bit of skin exposed. You feel a sudden coldness as they smear a thin jelly over you in each of the open sites. A moment passes. You force yourself to stay still. You can’t see anything other than the overhead light, but you keep looking at it until your eyes water. Finally a series of small pricks, first at your left knee, then your right one. Your hip, your chest. “That’s it?” you let out in relief. “That’s the anesthetic.” Oh. More moments pass. There’s muttering from doctors and nurses hovering out of vision, but you can’t make out what they say. You lie there for what seems like ages. You get bored. Just as you venture a look around, you see one of them approach with the biggest syringe you’ve ever seen. It’s filled with a clear, viscous fluid. The needle is enormous. Your eyes widen. “The injections have to go directly into your marrow,” the nurse answers the unspoken question. “There will be a slight discomfort. Please hold still.” Slight discomfort. You think that is the best euphemism you’ve heard in awhile. It doesn’t exactly hurt, but the pressure of so much liquid entering your bones is a different kind of 'discomfort' altogether. They start with your knees and work their way up. The injection into your chest is the worst. It’s like being crushed and drowning at the same time. There’s a cold chill that passes over you as the temperature of the fluid rises to match your body’s. You shudder and your body aches. They let you dress and take you to a small room to monitor you as your body processes whatever it is they put in you. There’s some magazines and a TV. You ignore them and head straight to the bed. You rest, trying to sleep it all off. They wake you every few hours, testing your blood, your urine, waving strange equipment over you, hooking you up to other devices you’ve never seen before, testing you for something. You’re not sure what. This all feels as if you stepped into a science fiction movie. You think it’s been a full day when they come to move you to the real lab. You’re having trouble keeping track of time. There’s no clocks. There’s no windows. They’ve been giving you lots of sugary foods and drinks, more than you usually eat. It makes you queasy. You’re disoriented. A group of them comes and stands at the door, not saying a word. You get up and come. Obedient. Good patient. Good dog. You have no idea where you are in the building. It seems impossibly big. They take you down another level. You’re at the cold metal stairs, staring into the dark. The buzzing. It’s droning louder and deeper as you make your way into the darkness. Once you reach the bottom of the stairs, small tracking lights come on, illuminating the floor. You’re in a hallway lined with more locked doors, all without windows. As you and your escorts get off the stairs and step into the hallway, the metal stairs pull and fold away and lock against the far wall. Your eyes adjust to the dim lights. You notice now that the hallway opening you just came through is actually on the edge of a giant chasm separating you and the far wall where the stairs now sit out of reach. The exit door high above you looks like a tiny speck of light. There’s no escape now. At the far end of the hallway is the only door with a window. You can’t see into it yet. You start walking towards it. As you walk, you notice that the doors do have windows, they all are just covered with sliding trap shutters to block the view. You think you hear a soft groan coming from behind more than one. They stop you just over halfway down the hallway. Room B323. This is your room. It’s not nice. There’s at least more light than in the hall. There’s a bed, built-in restraints. It looks like the bed rotates into a vertical position. There’s a TV behind a metal cage. A small metal toilet sticks out of the wall. The top of the toilet is actually a sink. It’s more of a prison cell than a hospital room. This is not going to be a great two months. They leave you for the moment to get acclimated to your room. Not that you have any possessions to arrange. They come back to get you in only a few minutes. They’re all dressed in what look like beekeeper’s outfits, mesh hoods, thick padded clothes and gloves. They beckon you. You follow. They take you to the door at the end of the hall. The buzzing gets louder as you approach. You go through the door. They don’t follow. It’s a small room, an airlock, with another door on the other side. A light above it turns red. A light on the door behind you turns red too. A voice on an intercom commands you to stand over a grate. You’re blasted with a fine mist of a sweet smelling spray. It leaves you a little bit tacky. After a moment the light on the door turns green. The intercom voice tells you to enter. You push open the door and step in. It’s dark, darker than even the hallway you just came from, lit only by small lights along the floor and ceiling. As your eyes adjust, you see it’s a huge, open room. There’s so many plants everywhere it looks like a jungle. It feels like a jungle. It’s humid. So humid. The buzzing is overwhelming. Too many frequencies, all at once. There’s a pressure in your head from it. You think you see some of the other test subjects further in the room. Some seem to have been crying. Not together though. They are all standing apart from each other. You start to walk towards them. You stop when you are startled by the sudden static crackle of another intercom voice. “Incubation interval 2 to commence. All test subjects are to stand. No swatting or attempting to damage the specimens. Noncompliance will not be tolerated.” You see the others in the distance stand. A klaxon sounds, almost quiet compared to that infernal buzzing. You hear the scraping of metal. Doors sliding open somewhere in the darkness, maybe? Then the air changes. You are swarmed. Millions of black buzzing things fill the room and fly around you, on you, everywhere. They land on you, crawl on you, almost choking you as they crawl around your mouth and nose. Revulsion shudders down every inch of your core but you don’t move, don’t risk injuring the specimens. You’re paralyzed. You clench every muscle. Your eyes shut and you can’t open them. With a force of will, you force yourself to look. You gaze down at your arm, covered in the things and make yourself see what the special “stimulus” really is. Mosquitos. Really, really big mosquitoes. They’re three to four times bigger than any mosquito you’ve ever seen. They look yellow and purple, but it’s hard to tell in the low light. A sick realization washes over you. You now understand the purpose of the sweet smelling spray in the airlock room. Everywhere there’s exposed skin, these tiny mutants stab you. Hundreds, thousands more try to push in, smelling the sweet residue on your skin, waiting for their turn to feed. It’s a literal feeding frenzy. Millions of needles pierce you. Individually, they’d be nothing more than irritating, all together they’re agony. You bite down on your bottom lip to prevent you from gasping and inhaling a few hundred. Pain locks your body in place. You’re dizzy. You’re going to vomit. You’re going to die. Then, the klaxon sounds again and there’s a flash of blue-green light and it’s over. All the monsters fly back to their hidden retreat. You’re left wobbly. Pinpricks blanket your body, oozing tiny trickles of blood. What the fuck. It starts almost immediately. The itching. It’s burning. It’s a fever under your skin, boiling. You shift and squirm and struggle. You must scratch. You must wash. You must get this off you. You can’t fight the urge. You don’t think about the million dollars, or what is going on, or what kind of sick place this is. You can’t think of anything but nails on skin. Up down back forth back forth back forth. Please make it stop. Make the itching stop. “Test subjects are reminded not to scratch,” the voice above intones. You can’t stop yourself. This is torture. This is inhumane. What kind of monster does this? You scratch. There’s a second of relief where your fingers scrape, but there’s just too much. Too many bites. As soon as you move your fingertips to somewhere else, the tingling, creeping heat comes back. It’s too much. There’s a flash in your eyes, a sharp pain in your back and then blackness. Suddenly you’re on the ground, spasming. There’s dampness in your crotch. A slight smell of something burnt pervades your nostrils. They are tasing you. You can’t move. Orderlies in their beekeeper-meets-gestapo outfits pick you up by the arms and legs. They carry you out, through the airlock room, down the hallway, back to your 'room.' They strap you into your 'bed,' black straps across your chest, hips, legs. Cuffs on your ankles and wrists. No, you were wrong before. THIS is torture. THIS is inhumane. The itching. Every part of your body is itching. They had left you in your urine soaked scrubs when they strapped you in, and now that itches too. There’s a remote for the TV built into the bed, but your cuff is too tight. You can’t maneuver your hand to reach it. There’s nothing to distract you from how much your skin wants to split open and erupt. You start to think, what could possibly be made from this? And what could be worth it? This shit better cure cancer. You wonder if the FDA or whoever would be okay with how this is made if they knew. Is this even going to be a real medicine, or is this some new street drug? Are they going to sell this to poor people and turn around and sell them the cure too? Is this a weapon? Are they going to kill poor people overseas with this? Is this just an experiment to see how much a person can take? Your chest burns. You can’t breathe. Your pulse pounds in your ears and in each one of your millions of bug bites. You gasp. Your gasps turn into panting turns into crying turns into screams. You scream and scream. No one comes. Trapped alone with your out of control thoughts and inconsolable itching, you think you are at the literal, physical brink of capital M Madness. You hope if you go mad, you won’t be aware of the itching anymore. Redness that turns to darkness clouds the edges of your eyes. A moment of sweet oblivion. You awake to the sound of your door opening. It must have been days since you passed out. No. Your pants are still wet. It’s only been an hour or so. A masked nurse comes in to examine you. She doesn’t have a nametag or offer you her name. She speaks to you with a kindness that doesn’t reach her eyes. Her eyes are focused, cold. She lets you know the test sites are looking good. Dinner will be in a few hours. She’ll send someone in to change your clothes. The first day is the roughest. She leaves. Silence. Except for the constant buzzing. You think you can almost hear the heat shimmering as the inflammation of each bite radiates off of your skin. DAMNIT! You should have asked the nurse to adjust the TV remote. You loll your head back and forth, the only thing you can move. Your limbs are restless. Your back is sore. The stillness is almost as bad as the itching. Almost. One pass of your head and your chin touches your chest. Suddenly you can scratch again. You grind your chin across your chest. It’s a poisonous relief. Your skin is irritated and you’ll probably get an infection, but at least you can scratch this one tiny patch. The orderlies that come to change your soiled clothes find you like that, furiously shaking your head like a rabid dog. They find a new strap for your head. They strip off your outfit and give you a sponge bath, only unstrapping you one belt at a time and re-strapping you before undoing the next. They’re not taking any chances with you trying to escape. Or scratch. This new drug has to be like liquid gold for this much effort. This much…suffering. It’s not torture if you’re being paid for it, right? They leave you alone again. You feel slightly better. Only a 9.9 on the agony scale instead of a 10. It doesn’t take long for the boredom to overwhelm you again. Your imagination goes wild. Something about walking away from Omelas? You can’t remember. Something is crawling on you. You’re sure of it. You can feel the weight of each little step as it goes up your leg. Each tiny leg pressing on your calf, then your knee, then your thigh. What is it? Is it a lizard? A cat? A mosquito the size of a squirrel? You strain to move your head, but the strap holds tight. You can’t see anything. It’s on your belly now. It’s on your chest. What is crawling on you? Please get it off. Please, please, please. You’re about to panic again. You try to shake it off, You can’t move. It’s going to bite your face and you can’t do anything about it. You squeeze your eyes shut, waiting for the attack that doesn’t come. There’s nothing. Nothing but the buzzing, the itching, the burning. Even going mad won’t stop those. There’s no safety in insanity. Not here. They come again, feed you a protein shake. It does not taste good. It’s gritty. You think there’s roughly blended veggies in it too. Total nutrition in a slop. Keep the victim alive to torment for longer. The Spanish Inquisition, no one expects them. You are delirious. You are raving. Your kingdom for something to scratch with. That is the first day. Sixty more to go. Your first night is full of nightmares, some awake, some not. Fitful sleep takes you, but cannot hold you long. Your body aches from being still so long. You start to think every pore is oozing pus. Exhaustion and pain blur to make it feel never ending. You know it’s the second day because the light in your room comes on. They feed you, same breakfast as dinner, wet sand claiming to be a protein shake. They offer to let you take a walk if you can control yourself. Where is your cone of shame, you disobedient dog? You can come out now if you promise to behave. They give you something to keep your hands in just in case. It’s a belt with a rod in the center. The rod has two locking loops with thick mittens on them. Combination handcuffs and oven mitts. Designed to let your arms down, but so you can’t scratch. So thoughtful. You’re allowed to walk laps in the jungle room. Closest you’ll get to outdoor time. Even prisoners get to see the sun. At least no feeding today. Today is incubation day. Each of your bites is swollen and puffy, like someone shoved a marble underneath your skin. There’s a dry crust on most of them. Some weep a translucent, but faintly purple fluid. The staff seem excited about how your pustules are coming along. Your body is producing a reaction quicker than expected. They’ll be able to harvest so much from you. You should feel privileged. Their enthusiasm is not contagious. A few days pass. It’s much the same routine. A bit of walking in the jungle room. A bit of TV. You can move around as long as you don’t scratch. If you try to move your elbow into your side or lift your foot to rub your leg, it’s back in 'bed.' Can’t risk disturbing your giant tumors. They double in size each day. The itching subsides but now you feel sluggish and weighed down by each bulbous legion. The fifth day is draining day. They take you to a different room in that long, dark hallway, one that looks as if a medical office had a baby with a dairy farm. They strap you to another medical table, and pull out what looks like a milking machine. They attach giant suction cups with accordion hoses onto your growths. You feel a sharp stab as a lancet pierces the stretched-thin skin. A vacuum clicks on, there’s a sucking sound and fluid whooshes down the tubes, into glass collection vats. It’s a mix of pus and grape Kool-aid, lumpy and liquidy. It makes you queasy to watch, so you turn your head away. You can’t escape the squelching sound from the pumps though. Or the sensation of each blister being sucked empty. You lie there being pumped dry, waiting for it to end. When it finally does end, they can’t believe how much you’ve given. No other subject has provided this much sample. You’ll get a special treat for dinner. Real food. Cheeseburger. You ask for it, without thinking about it. They look like they’re thinking it over, but say yes. You’re pleased. Good little test subject. You get the burger now. You wait all day for it. It’s cheap and cold, probably from the drive-through the furthest away possible from here. It’s the most delicious thing you’ve ever tasted. The next few days, you rest. You have to heal and recover a bit. Your skin is loose and saggy and you have tiny scabs from the bites and lancets, but you are okay. It isn’t that bad. You can do this. The staff actually seem friendly with you, even. You almost forget the horror of the first few days. Then it’s the eighth day. Reality comes crashing back. The reality that yes, you are in hell. And hell is being eaten by genetically modified mosquitoes. Those days of respite, they were just so they could do it all again. There needs to be a break between strikes of the lash for the whipped to feel each of them. The itching returns. The pain. The restraints. The overwhelming madness. You can’t do it. No one can do it. It itches, it itches, it itches. It keeps going until you can’t take it any more and you think you will shatter. The pustules grow. They drain them. A few days to recover. Then it’s feeding day all over. Time loses meaning. You lose count of how many cycles of feeding, growing, draining, recovering you’ve gone through. Every day fades into another, each night a restless, half-awake nightmare. It is endless. You can’t remember a time when there wasn’t constant buzzing. You can’t remember a time when your body wasn’t in agony. All you can feel are the itches. You think it’s been a few months. You think you were only supposed to be here for two months. You can’t remember. You’ve seen some of the other test subjects come and go. Can they do that? How do they leave? Do they die? Everything is a daze. Nothing feels real. It’s just pain. You don’t think your skin will ever be normal. Everything itches. Feeding. Growing. Draining. Itching. Over and over again. It has to be worth it, right? You’ll be rich. You’re helping people. You’re suffering for a good cause. Just keep going. Everything itches. You are James Phipps, first recipient of the first vaccine. You are Laika, the first dog in orbit. You are a pioneer. Your contribution to science and medicine will outlive you. Millions will live because of what they create from your tribulation. Or millions will die. You don’t know. What’s going on? When will this end? Everything itches.
R.D. Tyler is an aspiring dark fantasy writer, currently in Vermont, hoarding maple syrup with his spooky wife and two demonic cats. His short fiction has been previously published or forthcoming in two anthologies from Hellbound Books. His most widely read works are software technical manuals.
Text
www.thegenresociety.com submissions@thegenresociety.com The Genre Society
Next Issue: October 2025 Send your scary stories or Donate to Support this independent magazine
Images obtained via Unsplash through Marq unless otherwise noted
