Genre Society
January 2026
Issue 7
The
The Genre Society
Issue 7 January 2026 Published by Whitney Mcclelland Cover art "Parade Route" created by Anthony George
Image Credit: KELLEPICS from pixabay, Josue Velasquez from Pexels, PhotoVision from pixabay, Pezibear from pixabay
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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.
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And suddenly it is 2026! I am writing this during the snow storm here in Texas. The ground is a frozen icy layer. A few inches thick, honestly. I enjoy it. My dog was unsure, but he has come to understand it. My cat does not enjoy it. Perfers not to step on it. He is, in fact, sitting on my lap now as I write this. Work ass canceled for the entire week, except Friday. Ha! I enjoyed being holed up in the house. I needed a moment to myself– to gather myself. January has come to and end. Onward, to February! My birthday month! As for new year resolutions, I have a few. Not that you asked, but I'll tell you anyways. First, the gym. I've started going again. We will see how long that lasts. But for now, it's going well. Also, and while I have not really started this one yet, I would like to get back into reading. I have fallen off. Why? I don't know. I have been tired recently, getting back into work, into routines, into the gym. But those are excuses. I just need to read instead of scroll. I think if more people read books instead of scrolled we would be better off. Our world is becoming much more "Black Mirror" or Fahrenheit 451. I miss teaching that novel. If you haven't read it, put it on your list for this year. But I believe reading is the cure for society. But of course that's what an English teacher would say. Anyway, I hope we all continue with our resolutions. I have many books to read this year. I need to crack them open. I have many novels I want to publish. I need to sit and write them. I have to get myself up and moving at the gym. I cannot let myself down. And neither should you– don't let yourself down, reader dear. When you hear from me again, it will be April. I'm sure my life will be drastically changed or changing. May is usually the precipice of the year for me. Let's see what this year holds. Thank you again for reading and enjoy, Genre Lovers, -Whitney McClelland Editor and Publisher
by author
Letter From the Editor.................................................................................................................................... 5 Poetry Gently ................................................................................................................................................................ 7 Martina Preston The Refrigerator Returns................................................................................................................................... 8 Census of the Unseen.......................................................................................................................................10 David Lee The Vampire in the Basement ........................................................................................................................ 12 William Doreski Unknown Awe ................................................................................................................................................. 13 LindaAnn LoSchiavo Rewards, or The Squire's Complaint............................................................................................................... 14 K. Roberts Fiction Odd Egg .......................................................................................................................................................... 17 Alexander Grass Emi .................................................................................................................................................................. 24 Andrea Tode Jimenez The Patriarch....................................................................................................................................................25 Caitlin Quinn Trailer Park Love Story ................................................................................................................................... 34 Dave Cuzzolina Genesis 2075................................................................................................................................................... 40 Francis Strickler Hand-Me-Down Heart .................................................................................................................................... 47 Kamyn Asher Sound Exterminator ....................................................................................................................................... 54 M.D. Smith My New Lover ................................................................................................................................................. 57 Weaver Melching
Greetings Genre Lovers!
Letter from the Editor
Table of Contents
Gently by Martina Preston
Martina is a cake artist, journalist, and poet from the Pacific Northwest. She writes one poem for each time she is struck by lightning.
Poetry
I am standing on the edge of a swivel chair reaching to replace a shelf and for a blood-clot-destroying catch of my breath I imagine going backwards falling with the chair sliding out from under me and shelving units falling down from above and my head hitting the ground with a sound that I have no frame of reference to imagine but can only smile at the thought of and my teeth ache, and I breathe cold, and I remember this morning's moisturizer and how softly I massaged it into my skin to avoid those yellowing bad-lighting bruises more gently than I've ever been butterfly kisses smelling of campground soap, sounding like nothing at all
poetry by David Lee
The Refrigerator Returns At the back of the neighborhood the alley keeps a cold mouth, opening nightly like a hinge in the world. Someone once abandoned a refrigerator there, and the metal decided to remember us. Each dusk it walks home on rust-bitten legs, its hum a lullaby rewound from childhood static. Inside: a shoebox with a moth embroidered in a veteran’s handwriting, a Polaroid that smells faintly of iron and the lake, a pair of keys warm with someone’s long-ago breath. People gather the way believers gather around a reliquary. Mrs. Harrow lifts a teacup the fridge has thawed from memory: its porcelain speaks in the accent of her mother’s window. A dog that died in April reappears inside with a bark made of Morse. The hum thickens the air with a tenderness we forgot we had. We surrender offerings: tokens of grief, talismans of guilt; and wait to see what the cold gives back. A boy drops in a broken pocketknife; the fridge returns his baby tooth, polished to small moon-brightness. A woman presses her mouth to the gasket; the fridge exhales the lullaby her mother sang the night the power went out in ’87. Once it returned a letter that said simply: I forgave the porch swing. We stood in a ring beneath the streetlamp reading forgiveness aloud like scripture. Someone tried to pick the lock; inside was a jar of preserved lightning, the taste of a first apartment, the fever-dream of a summer we thought was lost. The mayor named the alley a sanctuary. Teenagers light candles and ask the fridge questions: it answers in the voice of tomorrow’s weather report, predicting rain over parts of our lives we refuse to name. I placed my father’s X-ray inside. The refrigerator returned his laugh: warm, rib-shaped, gull-bright. I kept it in my coat pocket until February shrank it to something I could finally carry. When the city ordered its removal: bulldozers lined like teeth– the fridge opened its door and released a streetlamp’s worth of starlings. They folded themselves into windows across the neighborhood as if mapping the way home. We left the fridge where it stood. Some mornings, if the world is quiet enough, you can still hear it walking the alley, its metal knees murmuring, delivering back to us whatever we have forgotten to love.
David A. Lee is a physician, philosopher, and poet whose work explores the intersections of medicine, memory, and the natural world. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Eunoia Review, Unbroken Journal, The New Verse News, and Mobius: The Journal of Social Change.
Census of the unseen 1. We begin with the living: straightforward checkboxes, addresses that smell of laundry steam and old paint. Then the column for the departed. Then the column for those who never stayed gone. 2. The clerk records: 4,192 households, followed by asterisked notes: 12 poltergeists, 3 fog-dwellings, 7 stubborn auras. A boy asks if ghosts pay taxes. The clerk replies, “Only if they file complaints.” 3. Mrs. Liao reports curtains that turn themselves to face the sunrise backward; the clerk writes “reverse dawn.” Mr. Ortega notes footsteps in the pantry; the pantry refuses to comment. 4. We mark doors with CENSUSED stickers. Invisible hands peel them off, delivering them to the wind. We practice speaking bureaucracy to the uncanny: Please state your full name, your last address, your preferred temperature for haunting. 5. A widow lists an empty chair that clears plates after dinner. She touches the ledger; ink blooms beneath her fingers: “He still eats with his elbows on the table.” 6. Children bring shoeboxes containing ghosts drawn in crayon. Volunteers count the stories, not the bones. “What about a ghost that wants to be alive?” someone asks. We file it under pending reincarnation.
7. Night shift: the city counts lamplight that lingers after power cuts, sighs nesting on subway grates, shadows that refuse to be stepped on. A complaint arises about a wraith whistling off-key– resulting in an ordinance: no scales after midnight. 8. Our maps bloom with asterisks– footnotes of grief. We license phantom pets. We mail postcards addressed simply: To the Recently Departed, City Proper. 9. At month’s end, the mayor announces totals. “Unseen does not mean unworthy,” he says, ribboned and solemn. Some clap; others watch the edges of the chamber where the air trembles like a curtain rehearsing its entrance. 10. I sign the ledger in the column for witnesses. My pen shakes where someone once held it steady. Outside, a sudden gust rearranges the stars into a word I almost recognize. A moth the size of a postcard lands on the twine around our ledgers; we count it too– the city asked us to be thorough.
New Yorker LindaAnn LoSchiavo is a member of BFS, HWA, SFPA. 2024 titles: “Always Haunted: Hallowe’en Poems” + “Apprenticed to the Night” + “Felones de Se: Poems about Suicide.” Accolades: Elgin Award for “A Route Obscure and Lonely”; Chrysalis BREW Project’s Excellence Award for “Always Haunted: Hallowe’en Poems."
The vampire in the basement smirks and threatens, his pulpy green visage ornamental as a cabbage. Dennis attempts to confront him with garlic and a silver cross. The vampire eats the garlic and breathes fumes that melt the silver and scorch Dennis's beard, launching him terrified up the stairs. At noon, Wendy decides to stake the beast and drag him into the wilting light, but he grabs the stake and chases her into the sunny back yard and strips her naked and feeds so deeply her veins collapse and her brain shrivels like old fruit. How can we destroy him without arousing the neighbors, who don't seem aware of losing a pint or two of blood every night? We tried the priest, but the vampire's atheist, unimpressed. The police wouldn't face him without a warrant, which our judge, surely a vampire himself, wouldn't issue. I'm sad for Wendy, who looks so pale, her mind reduced to a single affect. I'm sad and angry enough, so I tromp down the stairs and clutch the vampire breast to breast and sink my teeth in his neck and drink and drink until he collapses like a lung, then peel, stretch, and nail his hide to the barn so everyone can watch him gradually tanning to that superhuman perfection imagined when the world was young.
The Vampire in the Basement by William Doreski
William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has taught at several colleges and universities. His most recent book of poetry is Cloud Mountain (2024). He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors. His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in various journals.
Unknown Awe by LindaAnn LoSchiavo
I have to follow where my Knight is sent, First to a battlefield, then to a tournament Where a crowd gives its blessing for his body’s torment; Exhaustion is cheered as entertainment. Bah! –To a bathhouse I’d rather go, Give me a hot soak in a tub. My neck’s a stiff crinet, my frangible chest Sweats through the shirt linen, my shoe’s a mucky mess. Mi’lord in metal clink-plates is a walking tree of shields. Look there, his dented helmet has lost its crest! “Sir, let us have a mercy pass this week,” I begged him. Strong men must win prizes, and honors in verse. Fair lads will court favors from ladies diverse, And heralds seek praise-coins from a rich man’s purse. I say let them have it, I am none the worse. A joust with a wine-jug, that’s what a hero needs, Give me a soak in a good hot bath.
Rewards, or the Squire's Complaint
K. Roberts writes poetry, fiction, essays, book reviews, news articles, song lyrics, theater scripts, and shopping lists. Recent micro-fiction has appeared in 50 Word Stories and 50 Give or Take.
by K. Roberts
Public Domain. Parade Float at a Joust, 1640. From the Nuremberg Turnierbuch, The Album of Tournaments and Parades in Nuremberg. Illustration 88 (page 139). https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/25111
Fiction
There was a man waiting for me on my front porch when I got home from work. He waved at me as I walked to my house from my driveway. I had a strange feeling about him, because he was a strange looking man. There are strangers, and then there are strange strangers, and there’s a world of difference between them. But I waved back. “Good evening,” I said. “And to you,” the man said. His head was shaped like an egg, and it was almost one and one-third times taller than the average man’s. “Can I help you?” I said. “Let me not be rude,” he said, “it’s my pleasure to make your acquaintance. In the way of comity and fellowship, I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Roger.” He held his hand out to shake. I shook his hand, and his fingers were long and cold and bumpy. A strange stranger’s strange head and strange hands. “Roger, I’m Maryellen,” I said. “Let me also not be rude but still be direct. I've had a long day at work, so maybe you could tell me right out what you’re doing here and how I can help you.” Eggheaded Roger nodded like I’d said something true and wise. “I can certainly appreciate that. If there’s something that I can appreciate, it’s directness. That’s what folks are missing these days, directness– that along with a direction. I’m a rather direct man myself,” he said, though he was in the middle of disproving the same, “so let me get right to it.” He bent down and reached into a paper grocery bag and pulled out a carton of eggs. “I’m from the Keystone Co-operative Growers’ Association, and I would like to offer you these eggs. They’re farm-fresh and cruelty-free, and it would be my honor, and the honor of my fellow growers, if you would accept this gift and use these eggs to your own delight.” He held out the carton, and I took the eggs. “Oh. Oh, okay. This is like a– this is a– what is this?” I said. “A carton of eggs, ma’am.” His smile was too wide for his face, and it looked like the gesture might’ve been hurting him. “Yes, I understand that part–” “Good,” he said. “–but why are you giving out free eggs?” “This is just a service we provide to the community. You see, the KCGA– that’s our initialism, for brevity’s sake, you understand– the KCGA’s position is that to enjoy a good egg is to enjoy life. We want the whole world to enjoy their lives, which to some degree means we want them to enjoy our eggs, too!” “Oh.” “Do you know that a god lives inside of our eggs?” “How’s that now?” “The time will come when the god-filled eggs will feed the sick and the poor until the sick and the poor are no more. That time will be the Time of the Egg. Everything unborn will be born and everything dead will be born again. All will fall under the judgment of the many heads.” I stared at him. I said, “Is this a religious thing? I don’t really go to church…” “There will be no more faith when the world’s flags are blooded. The light of sanctification is kept only inside the egg.” “I’ve only ever met one Scientologist. Are you a Scien–” “Well, as I said, it would make all of us at the KCGA just happy as the day is long if you’d only take those eggs and enjoy them for yourself. And with that, I will leave you and wish you a wonderful rest of your evening. Enjoy your eggs, and enjoy your life, ma’am. And if you can, enjoy both at once!” He turned and sprinted toward the woods. I looked down at my new eggs, thinking of L. Ron Hubbard. The KCGA man was half a bubble off plumb, and I was undecided as far as eating lunatic produce. I thought I’d mull it over before frying up the man’s eggs. But maybe I was being mistrustful. I reminded myself to keep in the habit of trusting people until they give me a reason not to. I woke up hungry Saturday morning. Still in my pajamas, I maundered downstairs with the residue of sleep in my eyes. I looked in my refrigerator. There was nothing in there but those KCGA eggs. I picked the egg carton up out of the refrigerator. I put the eggs on the counter next to where the range was built into it. I took the salted butter from the fridge and lobbed a dollop off into the skillet. I clicked the gas on the stovetop. The skillet got crackling. I reached for one of the eggs. I picked up the first egg, nice and cold from the fridge. I could feel the weight of albumen and yolk inside the shell. But when I broke the shell on the edge of the skillet, then cracked it all the way open, there was nothing inside. I had a feeling like one of those rubes a magician calls on stage just to make a fool of. I knew I’d felt something inside that egg. I took the next one, its heft the weight of a shellful of egg. I again split the shell on the skillet. Naught but nothing, the same as before. There I was, starting to get miffed. I went through eleven eggs that way. Every one of them felt like it had a chicken egg inside of it– hell, I know what a full egg feels like. I cracked almost all of them open; empty down to each one. One egg was left. In for a penny, in for a pound: I picked up what I expected to be the last empty egg. Except when I cracked this one, something came out. It wasn't the yolk. A small egg-shaped human head plopped into the skillet out the shell; it had two sets of three little legs, one set coming out each side of the head. I screeched, and when the spidery little head hit the skillet and started sizzling, it was screeching, too. I took the spatula and flipped the thing onto the counter. It moved its spindly little legs like it was hurt. It cried like how a baby cries. A tiny little egg-sized critter, half-fried on my kitchen counter. I turned off the burner. But I did not know what to do next. The six-legged-head made a wheezing sound, then there was a noise like air being let out of a bicycle tire. And then it was dead. I did not shower or brush my teeth or put real clothes on. I poured myself three fingers of whisky, grabbed the pack of cigarettes I’d swore off two months ago, and parked my ass on my front porch steps. I sat there until I’d finished my whisky and smoked a half-dozen Parliaments. I tucked my old-fashioned glass behind my derrière’s stern post when the early risers passed by on their morning stroll. To neighbors who stopped and said they thought I’d quit smoking, I made a gesture of hey-what-can-you-do. After I had some liquid courage to fortify me, so I reentered my house and then my kitchen. The six-legged-head was gone, but there was another egg in its place. This one was about the size of a grapefruit. I figured on driving down the state road to my friend Dustin’s. His daddy was a poultryman, so Dustin knew lots about chickens and lots about eggs and loved talking about both. So much so that I’d previously found him duller than watching paint dry. But it’s not like I ever told him. I put the egg in a little grocery bag and hung it on the wall hooks while I went to get ready to see Dustin. By the time I got cleaned up and dressed, there was someone knocking on my door. I went downstairs and opened it to find my old high school boyfriend, Danny. Danny smiled. I smiled back. “Hi, Maryellen.” “Danny. How’s tricks?” “Well, you know, I’m in town to visit my brother and my new niece. He had a girl this time.” “How is good ol’ Earlybird?” I said. We used to call Danny’s baby brother Earlybird Earl because he was a known fussbudget who’d rather lose a limb than show up at church or school any less than fifteen minutes early. His mother used to say that Earl would make sure to be dead and resurrected twice before anyone else even knew the Rapture had started. “He’s more boring than watching grass grow. Say, I was wondering if you–” “I’ll get my purse.” This was a semi-regular thing. When Danny came back to town, we went out carousing as a matter of course. After trolling roadhouses, we returned to my place to, as I’ve heard it put, “Netflix and chill.” I was out the door not a minute later. The grapefruit-sized egg still hung on my wall hook, but for the moment unseen through the call of my lust. We got dropped off by my friend Jackie, three sheets to the wind, too blitzed to steer the ship but too old to be stupid enough to drunk drive either. Some call that wisdom. Me and Danny stood under the fading yellow porch light as it projected the shadows of moths’ aerial maneuvers. Danny kept grabbing at me (not in a bad way). I needed to concentrate because the lock, as if by magic, kept moving away from my key. “Maryellen, I– you know, I like– I–” I turned around and held my finger to my lips, trying not to laugh, “Shhhh. I got neighbors. They’re late when it sleeps. I mean– Danny, hey, Danny– what do I mean?” “You mean they’re sleeping when you–” Danny stumbled back into my wind chime and jangled it loud. "Shit!” I started laughing hysterically. I finally managed to tell Danny that I thought my neighbors probably moved their bowels during daylight hours, too. He didn’t get it. To be fair, I’m not sure it was a joke. I got the key in the lock and opened the door. Danny grabbed my wrist and stopped me as I was about to walk in. “Hold on, little lady. It’s late at night and the light’s not bright. Lemme check your homestead,” he said and waggled his eyebrows. I laughed and held one arm toward my door like a girl presenting game show prizes. “My hero. You’re sure as shit chivalrous.” Danny walked inside. He suddenly stopped after just a few steps. I heard a gurgling sound. Then a croaking sound, like when you’re in severe pain but don’t have the wind to cry out. Danny just stood there. “Danny,” I said, “what are you doing?” I reached inside and to the left of him and switched on the vestibule light. I saw why Danny was stock-still and what was gurgling. Two foot-and-a-half-long barbs punctured his neck and the side of his head at his temple, respectively. There came a thick, quick slushing sound as the barbs slickly slid out of his throat and skull. Danny convulsed as he fell to the floor. I stared but couldn’t move. A half-dozen legs like seven-foot-long bendable stilts carried forward a massive head the size of a yoga ball. My adrenal glands secreted enough to boot me off my drunk. I put together the sequence in my head: the first egg gave birth to the first tiny head with legs; the first tiny head with legs gave birth to the bigger egg; the bigger egg gave birth to this. The barbs snapped back into the egg-shaped-head’s mouth. The thing’s six legs locomoted like an eight-foot-tall spider crab’s. Its height was all long limbs. I screamed. I turned to run. It caught me on the snare of one of its crustacean spindles. The appendage was no thicker than a garden hose, but the kinetic strength of the other five legs produced an unimpedible force. The six-legged-head flung me like a ragdoll across my living room. I hit headfirst into a wall. Everything went black. I woke up in the corner of my living room. The six-legged-head was gigantic, much bigger than before. A proboscis like a livid blood-red bamboo chute extended from the middle of its forehead, down toward the ground, where it had punctured Danny’s body through the top of his skull. I heard slurping and sucking noises over another noise like a wet/dry shop vacuum. As it sucked out Danny’s brains and guts, the six-legged-head metamorphosed. Bulbs of flesh molded new shapes on its face. Bones broke and reset to alter curvatures. It was a nightmare claymation, a freakish Rob Bottin manufacture. I grasped its metamorphic purpose; it was turning its face into Danny’s. By the time it slurped up the dregs of Danny’s insides, the face had completely changed into his. Its proboscis shucked itself free of the swollen puncture wound in Danny’s skull. My date’s dead body was shrunken, drained of its every wet drop. The six-legged-head noticed me, as if I’d only just appeared. It approached my corner in a mutant hexapod gait. Once beside me, it looked down. I looked up and saw the top of the head almost touch ceiling tiles. “I from KCGA.” The six-legged-head spoke in Danny’s voice. I started crying. “Neighborly is giving eggs,” it said. “You happiness with eggs. You loving eggs?” I covered my mouth to blunt what would soon be hiccupping sobs. I tried not to make noise. It was right there. God, that thing was right there. And Danny’s voice… “I– I–” My voice came from my body but still startled me. I was flooded with existential anxiety– had the six-legged-head penetrated my flesh, too– had it infected my brain– was I only a host dreaming my parasite’s dreams? It spoke louder and chittered. Under Danny’s voice was a noisy, burbling sludge like food through a gassy gut. “You are happiness inside eggs. Are neighboring? HAPPY EGGS?” “Yes. Yes, I am very happy with the eggs,” I managed while bearing down on my weeping. The six-legged-head seemed to think this over for a minute. It spoke: “Eggs is community. Eggs is neighbors and neighborly. Eggs is friendly and are gooding. You will to buying more eggs?” “Yes. Yes, I’ll buy more eggs, I swear.” I looked around for my purse. Did I have cash? Is that what it wanted? I could go to the… (Oh. Oh!) I thought of something. “I just– I have to go to the bank to get money to pay you,” I said. The six-legged-head began processing this. As it worked out my proposal, it spoke its thoughts aloud, “Bank are money. Money are giving KCGA. KCGA god of peoples. Eggs is KCGA. Money is going to for eggs. Ex– ex– ex–” “Exchange?” I said. The six-legged-head blew dumb forced laughter out its mouth, like a grade-schooler guffawing at an incomprehensible joke about political economy. Its laughter stopped with sudden violence. “Eggs are money exchange. Eggs is money, are money is KCGA. Money is god of peoples.” It leaned over me, scrutinizing my face with a stupid but penetrating gaze. “Bank are where?” I pointed toward the door. “In town.” “Money are bank?” I nodded. “Yes. The money is in the bank.” It bent one of its spidery legs and scratched the neckless underside of its head-body. I don’t know if it was thinking or aping a gesture it had seen a thinking creature make. “You go bank?” it said. “Yes. I go bank.” It skittered back a few steps and opened a clear path toward the front door. It turned to look at that point of egress, then turned to look back at me. “Eggs is money and are KCGA, god of all peoples. You are going to bank.” I didn’t know what it wanted me to do. I didn’t move. “GO,” the head said, much louder, with force. I didn’t need any more prompting than that. I got to my feet, careful to make no sudden movements. I tip-toed passed the six-legged-head with as wide a berth as I could give. As soon as I was at my door, I ran. When I came back with the police, there was no evidence of any of the things I claimed had happened. There was no blood on my living room carpet, no six-legged-head, no egg carton in the trash from the KCGA. No Danny’s body. Nothing; all of it, gone. I was warned that I needed to cut back on the sauce. EMS came and checked me out, asked me how many quarters make up a dollar and who the President was. They said that maybe I was a little too drunk, but that I was still lucid. I saw one of the EMTs nod his head at me sideways while he talked to one of the cops. The cop came over and asked me a bunch of questions. They were all roundabout, secondary queries. What he was really asking was: Are you now, or have you ever been, a drunken lunatic spinster? The cop decided the answer was probably yes; I was cited for the misdemeanor crime of “False Alarm or Report”. I sought psychological counseling– you tend not to believe your own eyes when something happens like what I’ve precedingly described. I thought it couldn’t hurt. After a week or so, I got a call from Earl asking if I’d seen Danny. I told him we’d gone out, and I told him that I told the cops, too. And I left it at that. When Earl sees me in the grocery store now, he gets a look on his face like he’s smelling shit. Then he turns and walks the other way. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wanted to kill me. A month later, there was a carton of eggs waiting on my doorstep when I got home from work. There was a note tied to the carton, knotted to it with twine: “Enjoy the latest batch. Please remit payment at your convenience. “-Your Friends at the KCGA”
Alex Grass was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. His recent work has appeared in Maudlin House, Trembling With Fear, Flash Phantoms, and The Gorko Gazette. His last novel, A Boy's Hammer, was one of Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2022.
Odd Egg by Alex Grass
Caitlin A. Quinn's short fiction has appeared in over a dozen online and print publications, including NEW MILLENNIUM FICTION (2024 Fiction Award), THE GHOST STORY (Honorable Mention), TALES TO TERRIFY, ELECTRIC SPEC, and IDENTITY THEORY. She lives in Northern California with two badly behaved Airedale terriers. caitlinaquinnwriter.com.
Andrea Todde is a Spanish-Peruvian novelist and freelance writer. Her short-form work has been featured on The Acentos Review and Defenestration Magazine.
by Andrea Tode Jimenez
The Patriarch by Caitlin A. Quinn
Emi
February was a shit month– cold, ugly, and boring as hell– but it was over now, and Spencer Lawson could finally get away from Candace and the kids. Harlan Addelson had promised Spencer and the other guys a weekend away at his new cabin. Three days drinking craft beers, hiking, and shooting crossbows awaited, and Harlan had set the date for the third weekend in March. “It’ll probably rain. You know how rainy March can be,” Candace said. Or maybe tried to jinx, Spencer considered, pushing past her to get to the fridge and nearly stepping on some child’s abandoned Lego construct. He shrugged. The heavens could piss down an ocean, and he wouldn’t care, so long as he was inside Harlan’s cabin, sitting by the fire, his belly full of Steve McIntyre’s latest homebrewed wonder. He had worked hard all winter, putting in extra hours at the garage, doing his duty by Candace to provide her with this seventh baby that, once born, would promote them from The National Family Program’s “Breeder” level to that of “Matriarch” and “Patriarch.” Untold rewards were ahead! Would he get a hunting cabin like Harlan? Or maybe a new, firetruck-red sportscar? Candace would get things, too: a new set of cookbooks or a crochet kit. Maybe even one of those fancy-ass vacuums they could never fit into their budget. Of course, the outing to Harlan’s cabin wouldn’t be the same without Dave Jacobs. He had been the funniest guy Spencer knew, with endless jokes and the ability to mimic an array of celebrities. Dave had been a laugh a minute, until he got that letter from the Department of Reciprocation. Spencer and the other guys had tried to console Dave. It wouldn’t be that bad. He’d be back on his feet and cracking jokes again in no time. But Dave had never gotten back on his feet. Candace put her hands on her swollen belly. She had been saying for weeks how tired this pregnancy was making her. But maybe that was to be expected, now that she’d turned twenty-nine. Spencer had noted how her federal records had recently changed her designation from “functional female” to “geriatric female.” They had met and married ten years ago, when he had been twenty-five. They had joked how he was “a late starter,” though men were allowed to commence their breeding duties much later than women. He had liked Candace right away. She had beautiful dark hair and an easy smile. She had proven dutiful and pleasant, and rarely complained, unlike his mother. Spencer’s mother and father had been part of the last Selfish Generation, all those parents and grandparents who had been responsible for placing the nation in this crisis. The men who had sought sex free from all procreative responsibility. The hordes of deviant women who had demanded they attend universities and then pursue careers instead of embracing their sanctified role as mothers and caregivers. Worst were the women who eschewed relations with men altogether, choosing either the company of other women or a pet in place of ministering to a man. Was it any surprise then that pet ownership for women had been declared illegal decades ago, and that they were no longer permitted to drive or attend school past the age of twelve? Spencer remembered being a young boy and seeing on the news those hundreds, maybe thousands, of cages containing screeching, hissing cats– the most notorious pet of the Selfish Woman– being dropped into the ocean. He had turned when his mother cried out, “Barbaric! Has this country lost every shred of decency?” His father had shushed her. “Not in front of the boy, Anne.” Thankfully, all that had now changed. Men and women knew how to be true patriots, and the world was a better place for it. A few weeks later, when he was in the kitchen to claim his dinner after working late, overhauling the suspension on a vintage Corolla, Spencer noticed the corner of a green envelope sticking out from among the usual pile of bills and junk mail on the kitchen counter. He lifted the envelope and saw that it was addressed to him in bold typeface. When he saw “The Department of Reciprocation” printed in the upper left-hand corner, something buzzed then shorted in his chest, like a moth hitting a bug zapper. “What is it?” Candace asked, returning to the kitchen after putting the younger children to bed, the older ones now in front of the TV for their required nightly hour of patriotic programming. Spencer could hear the announcer speaking in impassioned tones about the importance of rebuilding a population consisting of “the right kind of people.” Spencer showed Candace the envelope. She made a small sound and flinched. They stood in silence, the national anthem from the television in the other room bleeding into the space between them. Finally, Candace spoke: “Aren’t you going to open it?” Spencer wasn’t sure. If he never opened it, wasn’t that basically the same thing as never having received it? And if he had never received it, how far removed was that from its never having been sent? “Spencer, you have to open it. It’s from our government.” When he made no movement, Candace offered, “What if it’s only blood? I’ll bet it’s just blood.” Could it be that easy? Maybe. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to open the letter and handed it to his wife instead. They locked eyes while Spencer listened to water drip from the kitchen tap. Candace fitted her thumb underneath the envelope flap, tore it open, and removed the waiting letter. Spencer held his breath, watching her eyes move as she read. “It says you need to report to their office in Springfield this Friday, March 21st, at 2 p.m., ‘for debriefing and preparations.’” Spencer gripped the edge of the kitchen counter. It felt as though the bone and muscle in his legs had been replaced with water. Something else hit him: March 21st. The Friday he was to drive up to Harlan’s cabin. “Goddamn it!” His outburst made Candace flinch again, and she put her hands on her belly. Her eyes were glassy. A sour brew of fear, anger, and disappointment settled heavy as a lug wrench in Spencer’s stomach and filled his mouth with an acrid taste. “I’ll let Harlan know I can’t make it this weekend.” “You could go up afterward,” Candace said. “Maybe it would be good for you?” Spencer shook his head. He didn’t want to be like Dave, sobbing into his fists while Harlan and the others tried placating him and, when that didn’t work, telling him he had to “man up” and “be a true patriot.” He remembered the last time he had seen Dave, how pale and thin his friend had become, sitting in that wheelchair in the middle of his living room with an oxygen mask strapped to his face, while Dave’s wife banged pots loudly in their kitchen. “Get out!” Dave had screamed, his face a rictus of pain, his muffled voice nearly unrecognizable to Spencer, pitched at a strange, raspy depth. Spencer had left the bottle of premium ale on the credenza and backed out the front door, which Dave’s wife slammed in his face. Outside, standing on the porch and listening to Dave’s children wailing from within the house, Spencer felt his bowels twist into knots. Every time he tried to close his eyes that night, he saw the hollowed out, ruined thing his friend had become. Even while sitting, Spencer couldn’t stop his legs from shaking. A fresh bolt of anxiety hit him when he saw that there were still remnants of car grease and garage grime under his fingernails despite how hard he had scrubbed them. He curled his fingers into fists and shifted in his chair in a failed attempt to reposition the line of sweat that had snaked down the small of his back and settled in the crack of his ass. It was uncomfortably warm in Room 9A of the Springfield division of the Department of Reciprocation, and Spencer wished he could open the office’s window. It was shut, no doubt, to keep out the sounds of the protestors outside, but even through the thick pane, he could still hear their shouts and chants. He had had to squeeze past them to get inside the building, avoiding making any eye contact, glancing begrudgingly at their signs. “Democracy, Not Dictatorship!” “Fight Facism.” There was always something the over-educated elite were whining about. Always working to subvert the rules, unable to be grateful for what they were given. It was too exhausting to keep track of their never-ending grievances, and Spencer had more pressing things on his mind. Maybe Candace was right, and this would be no big deal. He checked the time. Quarter after two. If he packed quickly and didn’t hit traffic on 97, he could still make it up to Harlan’s cabin in time for dinner. The office door opened, and a woman entered wearing a white lab coat over her clothes. The nametag clipped to her lapel read “R. Clement.” She sat in the chair behind the desk and wordlessly opened the file she had been carrying. Tattooed on her forearm were the large, black letters “NV.” Non-viable. A barren woman who could only hope to serve the nation as a low-level government employee. She smiled, and the confidence and unnatural sense of authority she conveyed made Spencer draw back in his chair. “I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting, Mr. Lawson. Please forgive me. I’m Miss Clement, and I’ll be your Reciprocation technician, assisting you throughout this process.” Spencer hadn’t been angry at being kept waiting, but with Miss Clement’s apology, he felt his spine start to straighten. He cleared his throat. He would be magnanimous. “It’s okay.” “Well, thank you for that. And thank you even more for your patriotism. Not everyone gets the chance to serve in this way. You should feel very proud.” Spencer wanted to tell her he was feeling many things, but proud was not among them. And her fawning was wasting time that he could be spending packing and driving. “Why am I here?” Miss Clement pushed her glasses up on her nose and let out a huff of air. “It’s simple, really. There are three patriots in need of your help. These are young men, just ready to start their breeding service, but– through no fault of their own– one is in need of a liver transplant, the other a kidney, and the third a lung.” A cold spot of panic settled in Spencer’s chest. He opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out. “Your medical records show you are a perfect match for all three, Mr. Lawson. Congratulations!” “This isn’t right,” Spencer choked out. “Our records are all up to date and accurate.” “No, I mean… you can’t take my liver, kidneys, and lungs! That will kill me!” Miss Clement’s smile was back. “Relax, Mr. Lawson. Only one kidney will be taken, and likely no more than sixty-five percent of your liver. Oh, and only the lower lobe of your left lung. There’s nothing to worry about. You’ll be able to live a relatively healthy life after the surgery– with some modifications, of course.” Spencer’s flesh went hot then cold, as he felt the blood drain from his face. His vision grayed and swam, as though he were looking through a staticky television screen. Miss Clement folded her hands on top of the desk. “Of course, you’ll need to make lifestyle changes post-surgery, but all things that will benefit you in the long run. No smoking, a strict low-fat diet, and absolutely no alcohol.” Spencer shook his head, put up his hands to try to stop her, but she barreled on, “The good news is the immediate recovery period won’t take long– only eight to ten months.” His vision cleared and he found his voice, an impotent, tremulous thing. “That’s the good news?” Miss Clement smiled again, and Spencer recoiled at how wide it was. How full of teeth. How unbefitting. “Well, the really good news is the fact that your sacrifice– if you choose to view it through that lens– will be bringing new life into the world. Many new lives, in fact. It’s quite an honor, Mr. Lawson.” That was when Spencer started to hyperventilate. Miss Clement pulled a small paper bag out of a desk drawer, walked over to where he sat with his hands with their dirty fingernails over his eyes. She instructed him to breathe in and out of the bag slowly. “I understand your worry, Mr. Spencer. Truly, I do. But know that should the procedure render you unable to perform your current job duties– or should anything untoward happen during the surgery– your wife will receive a pension to support her and your children. So, really, almost nothing at all for you to fret over.” Spencer broke down in humiliating tears. There was a high-pitched noise, like steam escaping a pipe, that he came to realize was coming from him. “My whole life, I’ve done everything right.” He listed off on his fingers, “I have a job. I pay taxes. I got married. My wife is having baby number seven. I’m going to be a Patriarch, for God’s sake!” He shook his head. “I can’t do this– and you can’t make me!” Miss Clement folded her arms across her chest. “It would be best, Mr. Lawson, if you cooperated fully. Best for everyone involved. Trust me.” She reached behind, took a thick envelope from inside the file, and handed it to him. “This contains your instructions over the next five days. You are to report back here, on Day Six, for your surgery. Our session is now ended, but my card is in the packet. Please email with any questions or concerns.” Spencer couldn’t remember rising from the chair, but he was stumbling toward the office door. His hand was on the doorknob when he heard her say, “If you try to run, Mr. Lawson, or harm yourself in some way to compromise the procedure, know that the consequences will be dire.” In the parking lot, Spencer sat behind the wheel of his truck. He thought about Candace, and all the things they had talked about doing once this new child was grown. Enroll in line dancing lessons. Take those annual Matriarch and Patriarch cruises the government funded to reward people like them who had served their nation. And now his nation was demanding this impossible thing that would ruin his body and life. He saw again Dave Jacobs’ ashen, pain-warped face beneath that oxygen mask, and he wrapped his arms around his shoulders and buried his wet face in their shelter. There had to be some way out of this, someone who could stop it. Years ago, before his father had died, the old man had contacted an ombudsman to fight the Bureau of Education’s decision that Spencer would go to a vocational training school and not one of the national universities. His father’s efforts had gone nowhere, of course, as less than twelve percent of the nation’s male population were admitted to college. Despite his father’s devastation, Spencer hadn’t been disappointed. In fact, he preferred the idea of honest work with his hands to that of reading books and pushing paper in some office. Still, some part of him admired the old man for trying. But where could Spencer go for help now? There were no more ombudsmen left. There was a knock on his driver’s side window, and Spencer jumped and blinked. A man who looked to be somewhere in his twenties, holding a handwritten sign that read “Persist and Resist,” made the signal for him to roll down his window. Spencer groaned, dragged his palms down his face, and hit the button to lower the driver-side window. “Take your bullshit someplace else.” Unabashed, the man leaned into the truck. “So, what is it they want? Eyes? Pancreas?” Spencer angled the visor of his baseball cap down lower over his forehead. He was torn between chasing the kid off and confessing the horror of what he had just been told when Spencer saw he was holding out a torn piece of paper with a phone number scrawled in pencil on it. “There are people at this number who can help,” the young man said. “But only if you want it.” Then he was gone, and Spencer was left staring at the phone number, his pulse hammering in his ears. The next night, Saturday, Spencer stood beneath the west side of the Fulton Bridge overpass, where he had been told to wait. In a small case, he had his passport, wallet, and two days’ worth of clean clothes, exactly as instructed by the voice that had answered the phone when he had dialed the mysterious number that morning. He hadn’t slept at all the night before. Never before had he questioned anything his country requested. He paid his taxes faithfully and honestly, and he had gotten married and fathered seven children—even though he didn’t particularly like children and, truthfully, had never wanted any at all. And though he understood how necessary it was to build up a national population of “the right kind of people” to counteract the previous generations’ refusal to breed sufficiently, as well as their misguided willingness to allow lesser people from lesser countries into his homeland, this demand for his body to be sacrificed to bring more life into the world felt a bridge too far. He was here, alive already, doing all the right things. Wasn’t that more important than some child that hadn’t even been born yet, and who could easily grow up to be some protesting elite? And why was he to be made responsible for the carelessness of others? Let someone who hadn’t followed all the rules have their organs removed and given away. There was a moment after Candace murmured something in her sleep about “formula rebates” when he wondered if he were feeling this way because he had inherited some of his mother’s Selfish blood. But when being faced with such unfairness, did self-preservation really count as selfishness? He had cupped Candace’s face when he kissed her goodbye earlier that night. She laughed when he told her he would miss her. “You’ll forget about me the minute you get to Harlan’s cabin. Plus, you’ll be back tomorrow night.” He had thought about confessing it all to her then. That he didn’t know where he was going but knew he wouldn’t be back. That she had been a good wife, and he wished her happiness as a Matriarch. And that he was sorry he wouldn’t be there to share the future with her. But then he grew afraid she might get angry since, after all, she had never once balked from any of her federally mandated responsibilities. And what if she saw what he was doing as disloyal and reported him for it? Was she even capable of understanding that a nation who saw him not as a person, but only as a collection of body parts, wasn’t worthy of his loyalty? He heard the van approach before he saw it. It pulled up and the side panel door slid open. A voice from inside said, “Get in.” The bench inside the van was hard and cold. It reminded Spencer of the rumble seat that had been part of the old roadster his father had bought from a collector and driven him in on summer weekends to car shows. The car that had made Spencer want to understand how engines and brakes and exhausts worked. He turned to say something about that to the man sitting alongside him in the dark when a foul-smelling wet cloth was pressed over his nose and mouth, and all words and thoughts left him. Spencer was aware of activity around him. People moving, talking, laughing. His eyelids felt like lead. He forced them open, only to be met with a blurry, non-sensical world. He closed them again. He’d go back to sleep, and soon he would wake up over the border. And be safe. A woman was speaking alongside him. The voice was familiar, but he couldn’t place it. “He’s waking up. Let’s wheel him out.” Spencer felt himself moving but knew it wasn’t his legs that were carrying him forward. He sensed wheels spinning beneath him, and he saw in his mind’s eye once more his father’s treasured roadster. How the car’s baby-blue paint job made it look as though you were riding the sky. When he opened his eyes again, Spencer saw people draw near and fall away as he passed by them. Some were well-dressed, standing and holding glasses of wine. Others were naked and strapped to what looked like hospital beds standing upright. A dozen or so men, and two or three women. He was being wheeled toward a set of bright lights. He wanted to speak but his tongue was lazy and heavy in his mouth. He tried to move his arms, and fear ran the length of him when he realized he couldn’t. It was then he looked down and saw his body, naked and buckled into one of those upright beds. His stomach lurched when he saw Miss Clement walking alongside him on the left. He turned his head as far as it would go to the right and saw that the young man wheeling him forward was the protestor from the parking lot. The one who had given him the phone number. A silver-haired man in a tuxedo greeted Miss Clement. “Excellent work, Ruth. The assembly is quite pleased with tonight’s selection.” “Thank you, Senator. I can always spot the runners.” Spencer forced his tongue to move. He shouted, but the sound was muffled. That’s when he realized his mouth had been taped shut. He sucked breath quickly in and out through his nose and felt something warm leak down the inside of his leg. “Here we are, Mr. Lawson,” Miss Clement said, as the young protestor wheeled him around to face an auditorium full of seated people holding large cards with numbers on them. Most of them grey- and white-haired. Some sitting in wheelchairs with well-dressed attendants behind them, their hands on the chairs’ push handles. A few with oxygen masks covering their faces and large silver cannisters in their laps. “Your ultimate sacrifice for the greater good,” Miss Clement said. “Did you think all you have– all you’ve been given– was because you’re so deserving? So exceptional? That you could go through life dribbling out semen that you’d just as soon waste for your own enjoyment and call that patriotism?” Spencer struggled against the tape across his mouth. He shook his head frantically. He had been selfish, arrogant. He understood that now. If he could only be given a second chance, he’d show her– he’d show everyone just how patriotic he could be. He just needed to be given that chance! A man’s voice came over the loudspeakers: “Ladies and gentlemen, presenting Item 16. A 35-year-old male, past prime breeding years, but otherwise in good health. We’ll proceed in descending order: brain, eyes, aural structures, larynx, lungs, heart, all internal organs, reproductive organs and glands– those being for research purposes only– bone marrow, blood, and, finally, skin. Opening bids for the brain start at $100,000. Do I hear $100,000? $100,000 to bidder 854. Do I hear $150,000?” The voice droned on, but Spencer couldn’t hear anything over the sound of his deadened screams and the blood rushing, like a March downpour, in his ears.
Emi is buried in a small wooden casket just as chills begin spasming against the fragile spines of the grass blades around her untimely tomb. The cold traps her shaking arms next to her body. Her eyes widen in horror as she realises the situation, and are promptly frozen in their place. She prays, initially, delusionclogging her mind. Looking up at her casket, Emi begs to see the sky. She is so very afraid she’s out of God’s view. A tree is planted near her tomb– Emi can feel the ground pressing down harder, her casket creaking as it adjusts to the weight. Emi curses the tree, venom spilling between her teeth, and wonders what the breeze feels like between its leaves. As the wind picks up, so does Emi’s rage. How dare they, she thinks, furious and terribly, terribly frightened. It is unfair, she knows, to cast blame– the doctors, the undertaker, this must’ve been a mistake– the worst of their lives, but a mistake all the same. Still, her ire only grows, building in speed and fire until the heat melts it into pain. The hot air, she decides, is worse than the cold. Emi starts the summer banging against unyielding wood and dirt, but the heat and the burn tire her; they make her want to fuse into the coffin. Then come the sprinkles of rain. Their tap tap overhead feels like mockery. Is that how her pleading sounds? Splits and splats of rain? Soon, droplets are slipping through her wooden cage, making Emi choke and gag as they drip into her mouth and bounce off her throat. It feels like drowning, and Emi wonders how she knows such a thing. But oh, she remembers the ocean and its vastness, its ever-constant waves and the sound of the birds that framed its horizon. How jealous she was of its relentlessness. How unlike they were, she and the sea. As the water finally reaches her eyes, Emi see sparks from the corners of the droplets– almost as if they could reflect the sun. How lucky she is, Emi thinks before falling asleep, to see the light again. With a smile, she lets herself be swallowed by the earth.
Trailer Park Love Story by Dave Cuzzolina
Raven explored Vic from head to toe the day he moved himself into the toaster-shaped home in a woodsy Tennessee trailer park not ten feet from the one she shared with brother Carl, snatching hungry glimpses through a furtively parted bedroom window curtain. Sexy black hair tousled by the warm May breeze. Sculpted biceps brown and bulging under the weight of heavy loads hefted from the bed of his old pickup. Sweat on curly black chest hair glistening in the sunlight. “Whatchya lookin’ at, Ravey?” Raven jerked toward Carl’s voice, startled, needed a second to recover. “At him, Carl,” Raven said, nodding out the window. “I ain’t never seen nothin’ like him.” “That’s what you said about Claude,” he reminded her. Stealing one last, lingering look, she said, “He ain’t Claude at all.” Not one to suppress impulses, Raven wasted no time. Welcomed her new neighbor that night. Said yes when he wanted to see more of her. Eventually all of her. Fell quickly for the older man’s easy manner, smooth as his blue satin bed sheets. Then Rose Bender took the toaster-shaped home on the other side of him. All slinky and blond and, Vic informed seventeen year-old Raven coldly, “More mature in her ways.” Carl was twenty-three when Momma died. Incapable of caring for himself, he became his little sister’s responsibility. They needed money. At sixteen, she quit school and went to work because he was unable. He was eight when stepdaddy’s hunting rifle inflicted the damage. Its butt bashed in Carl’s head when he sneezed and scared a twelve-point buck from the man’s crosshairs. Not right since, Momma said. Called his reasoning “thick as molasses.” Stepdaddy said he fell from a tree stand. Carl kept silent. Television became his only friend. His dull eyes watched from the sofa in a space where a collection of colorful knick-knacks lined a shelf on the dark-paneled wall to his left. All dime-store stuff but gold to him because they were Momma’s. When he longed for the comfort of her arms enfolding him, pulling him close, he went to them, touched them, remembered, and her loving embrace once again warmed his insides. Same as everything Momma left behind. It was a month after Vic quit Raven, near ten o’clock one muggy August night, when the flimsy metal door of the trailer banged open and Raven’s urgent voice grabbed Carl’s flimsy attention. “Carl! I’m needin’ your help!” Carl’s thumb pressed the mute button and his buzz-cut head twisted toward the door behind him. “What?” “Just get out here!” Her firm voice sped his usual loping pace. Pulling on a white t-shirt, he slipped bare feet into untied white sneakers and dashed to the running car. Its tires crunched parking-lot shale back to the main road. Raven turned for a lake about four miles away. Carl sat stiff and upright in the passenger seat, safety belt buckled, bony fingers drumming on his thighs, watching trees like tin soldiers glide past his open window. “You kill ’er?” Black bangs didn’t move when she nodded, stuck wet to her forehead by sweat and humid air. “Uh-huh.” “I knew you would by the way you been cussin’ her.” He sat quiet for a minute, his mind working. “How?” “It don’t matter how.” Straining against the seatbelt, he twisted sloped shoulders toward the back seat. “Where is she?” “Had to leave her in the woods by the lake. Trussed her up but couldn’t move her myself.” From the time they were young she sensed her brother’s emotions. “It’s OK, Carl.” “No, it ain’t, Ravey,” he said, eying the tin soldiers again, letting the breeze gush over his troubled face. “Killin’ is wrong, for a fact. Momma said don’t even kill flies.” “Momma wouldn’t have talked against this one, big brother,” she told him, tense eyes stuck on the meandering road. “This was a justice killin’, Carl. I was gonna marry Vic soon as he asked, and he was gonna ask, then she comes along all... mature in her ways.” A desperate longing exploded in her raised voice . “I gotta get him back!” she said, choking back tears. “In spite a everything I still love him. He makes my knees shake, Carl, all weak like they can’t hold me up. Gettin’ him back is the only way to stop me cryin’ over him ev’ry goddamn night.” “I hear ya cryin’, Ravey.” He went silent again, his mind working. “You scared?” “A little.” Thumbing tears from green eyes, Raven played it down. Getting caught meant prison for life, or death, and it gnawed like a rat at every nerve in a body whose quivering she strained to hide from Carl. Her fear would become his, and she hadn’t the strength right now to deal with the wearying agitation it would raise in him. She tensed her grip on the steering wheel to still shaky hands. “Carl?” “What?” “You listenin’?” “Yeah, Ravey, I’m listenin’.” “Look at me.” She glanced to catch his eye, then returned attention to the road. “You know you can’t tell a soul about this, right? You can’t tell no one. Is that clear?” His head bouncing like a lottery ball wasn’t good enough. “Say it!” she demanded. “I can’t tell no one.” “About Rose,” she prodded him. “About Rose.” “Do not be forgettin’ that.” She steered the car onto a dirt lane toward the lake and after about a half-mile of navigating its twists and turns came to an abandoned pier stretching thirty feet or so out into a sprawling body of water shimmering in a half moon’s glow. “OK, big brother,” Raven said, “we gotta move real fast in case anybody comes along. You understand?” Carl nodded. “Say it.” “I understand, Ravey. Move fast.” “Let’s go!” she ordered him. In a second they were out of the car and Raven’s small, shadowy form led him about ten feet into the woods to a bundle wrapped in a blanket tied mummy-tight with clothesline. “Grab here beside me,” Raven ordered after hoisting one end. “We’re gonna drag her to the end of the pier and roll her in.” Carl grasped the parcel. “She’s heavier than she looked,” he said, a labored grunt punctuating each shuffled step backward. “I put in some rocks to keep her down,” Raven said. Emerging from the woods, the pink floral pattern of the body’s wrapper appeared in the moon’s light. Carl let go like his hands were on fire. “Ravey, this blanket’s from my bed.” “Yeah,” Raven said, groaning. “Pick it up!” “But it’s Momma’s blanket, Ravey.” The whiny tone was a fire siren, a warning of an inferno kindling inside her strong-willed, child-like brother. She was stern to head it off. No time or patience for the usual placating with hand-holding and calming words. “Carl! There’s no use gettin’ riled. We gotta do this. Now hush and pick up!” His voice broke. “Can’t we take the blanket off?” “No!” Raven shrieked. “We’d have to undo all the ropes, and nothin’ would hold the rocks, and there’s no time. Now do as I say!” Tears streaking both cheeks, he obeyed. Dragging by short, coordinated tugs, they reached the pier’s end. After releasing their burden to catch their breath, they maneuvered it parallel with the edge and rolled it off into the water. Raven raced for the car, flip-flops flapping. Carl lingered to watch the water soak and swallow the blanket. Raven ran back. “No time for that,” she said, grasping his forearm with both hands and pulling him to the car with all the strength her hundred pounds mustered. She retraced the car’s path and turned onto the good road. Carl rocked back and forth silently against the tightness of the seatbelt. She knew his mind was working. “Carl, forget the blanket.” He didn’t want to forget. He didn’t like being told to. A tearful outburst met his sister’s demand. “I liked havin’ it on my bed, Ravey. It smelt of her, made me feel real close to her. Safe-like. From now on don’t be takin’ nothin’ of Momma’s from the trailer.” Carl didn’t rile easily but a riled Carl was unpredictably volatile. Once, when Claude, Raven’s lover before Vic, snatched the TV remote from his hand and played keep away, Carl cried angry tears before grabbing stepdaddy’s loaded hunting rifle from the closet where they kept it and trained it on Claude, who froze before hurling the remote against a wall in anger. Raven took Carl’s side. Claude ran off. Took the sixteen year-old’s virginity with him, and never returned. “OK, big brother, I’m sorry and I won’t never do it again.” She spoke tenderly, then firmly. “Now forget it.” For two days Raven heard nothing. On the morning of day three it came. At the diner where she worked long hours waiting tables to keep herself and her brother. Through the clanking diner noises she made out a voice on the radio saying police were searching for a missing person named Rose Bender. She needed more. On her break she bought a newspaper from a sidewalk box, found a picture of Rose inside. Intent eyes followed a short, pink fingernail down the lines, consuming the story beneath it. It said she was reported missing by fiancé Victor Cashman. The item gave a detailed description– twenty-eight, blond hair, five-foot-seven, one hundred and ten pounds– and what she wore when she left home for her nightly walk along the abandoned rail bed near their trailer park. She finished her shift distracted by a conflicting mix of apprehension and excitement. Arriving home she dashed to Vic’s still in her white waitress uniform. When he answered her knock, she summoned sympathetic eyes, and mewed her concern for Rose like a sympathetic kitten. Wary at first, he smiled appreciatively in the crooked way she loved, strands of straight black hair falling over luminous blue eyes, and droned in his soft backwoods drawl, “That’s awful nice-a you, considerin’, Ravey.” The sound of his voice saying her name set her insides on fire. Burning eyes widened on a nubile teenage face gaping with desire. She wanted to grab him and kiss him and let him carry her to his bedroom like before. Feel him inside her. But… patience. Soon enough, she told herself, and took her desire home to be satisfied. That night, a gnawing doubt filled her thoughts. She slumped dismally onto the sofa beside Carl. Her head falling backward crushed a waterfall ponytail against fabric as frayed as her spirit. “I’m frettin’, Carl.” “What over, Ravey?” “Maybe we shouldn’ta dumped her in the lake. Maybe we shoulda put her where she’d be found so he’d be knowin’ she was gone for good. I mighta done all this for nothin’. What if he stays in love with her, never gives up hope she’s comin’ back? I heard a people doin’ that.” “Just tell him she ain’t,” Carl replied. Each passing day redoubled Raven’s torment. After two weeks of it she returned home from a morning diner shift, entered the dark trailer and raised her voice over the blare of Carl’s TV. “You got any idea what’s goin’ on at Vic’s? There’s a buncha neighbors gawkin’ and a cop car and just now an ambulance.” Met with silence, she stepped toward the TV room, stumbling when a work sneaker slid through something on the floor wet and slick. Flipping a switch illuminated a bright-red puddle on faded kitchen linoleum, smeared by the sneaker print. She yelled this time. “Carl! Did you hurt yourself?” “What?” “Mute the goddamn TV!” He did. “What’s this blood on the kitchen floor?” Again he ignored the question. His silence and the commotion at Vic’s and the blood on the floor stirred inside her a mortal dread driving quick steps to Carl. Snatching the TV remote from his hand, punching the power button and flinging it against a wall, Raven in her white uniform glared down at him in the sudden calm, her youthful face aging quickly. “Carl, what’s the fuckin’ blood from?” “It’s from Vic. Ain’t he there?” He twisted his thin neck away from her to see into the kitchen and turned back. “Hewasthere.” “Well, he ain’t there now.” Swiping his bare feet from the table in front of him, she dropped her tensed body in their place and stared hard into hollow gray eyes. “What the fuck happened?” The insistence in his sister’s widened eyes and raised voice contorted his face with fear. His damaged brain struggled to assemble the sequence of events from only a short time before. “Well, he came over to tell ya some fishermen found Rose’s body. Said he knew you was concerned. Said he’d like to see ya just like before, after a while.” Raven’s insides stirred against her will. “Yeah?” “So, then I figgered if they found Rose they musta found Momma’s blanket and I asked him if we could please be havin’ it back.” Every muscle in Raven’s body turned rigid as iron, briefly paralyzed. She stared helplessly at her brother, for the fist time in their lives wanting to hurt him. She buried her face in trembling hands before leaping to her feet, pacing the room, strides matching the quickness of her heart. “Oh my Christ, Carl, do ya know what ya done? If he dies, you’ll be guilty of murder! If he lives to say what you told him, I’ll be guilty of murder!” Dread in gawking eyes, Carl spoke rapidly, like an anxious child. “I had to shoot him, Ravey. He got all in a fit, started shoutin’ that he was tellin’ the police and we was goin’ to jail and I got real scared and...” She barely heard him. Her brain said run. Get in the car and drive fast and far and never look back. She hurried to the same window she peeked through the day Vic moved in. Saw two paramedics wheeling him on a stretcher toward the ambulance, a white sheet up to his neck. Eyes open, his lips were moving. An attendant was nodding. Raven’s tear-filled eyes returned to the sneaker print in Vic’s blood, sorry she ever saw him, sorry she ever fell for his sexy drawl and easy-going manner. She knew this wasn’t Carl’s fault. It was hers. A heavy banging rattled the thin trailer door. No time for running. “Police! Open up!”
After careers in journalism and communications, I have made my third career writing fiction. I have published several stories and won honorable mentions for short stories in Lorian Hemingway and Writer’s Digest competitions. I toil like many writers in solitude and obscurity, in Hollidaysburg, Pa.
As his personal craft touched down on the newly softened, terraformed terrain, Clint knew exactly what he was feeling. It was the feeling he’d spent years searching for- in self help books and meditation retreats and Burning Man acid trips. Different names for the same thing. Fulfillment. Purpose. Nirvana. For him, it was Mars. What unfolded before him was the culmination of decades of work and billions of dollars, not to mention the lives of courageous explorers who had crewed the first ill-fated missions. It was, thought Clint, his magnum opus. He had built life-changing machines, revolutionary computer systems, companies valued in the trillions. And now, for his final act, he had built a world. Clint removed his safety harness and pushed himself slowly up from his seat. Upon standing, he heard the timely, automated opening of the craft’s doors, like a deep sigh of satisfaction. As he stepped from the craft, he breathed deeply, noting the success of the artificial ozone layer, the solar magnification devices, the reverse-irrigated-oxygenation system. Each problem was deemed unsolvable just a few decades before. And yet, here he was. Living proof of man’s ability to overcome. It was more than the decreased gravity that gave a lightness to his step. Even his back, arthritic from years of crouching over computer screens, felt better here. The fleet landed on the outskirts of Genesis City, the name given to the first human Martian settlement. It was- as he had specified- spotlessly clean. The wide roads retained their Earthly black-surface/ yellow-line design, though it would likely be years before cars could be developed to drive them. The buildings were designed to seamlessly marry Earth’s finest architecture with elements of the Martian landscape. Tall windows and skylights were framed by red sandstone brick. Twenty years earlier, Clint had purchased the full estate of Frank Lloyd Wright, including all his notes and blueprints, for a sum even he had found excessive. He’d fed it all into the machine models that had designed what now lay before him. The Shawn Carter Performing Arts Center stood to his left. To his right was the City Hall, which he’d resisted the urge to name for himself. After all, it was for the people to decide. As he walked, one person after another approached to thank and compliment him. Some asked for directions to their new homes or apartments. Others simply stared in wonder and disbelief. It was not unlike check-in day at an exclusive resort or newly opened theme park, he thought. People shuffled past, children in tow, while all around them, robots carried luggage, cleaned refuse, and put finishing touches on the remaining buildings. As Clint approached a corner featuring an automated cafe and grocery store, a tall, handsome middle-aged man stopped him, seeming slightly out of breath. ”Excuse me, sir. I am so sorry to bother you.” The man had an accent Clint could not quite place. ”No problem at all, friend,” Clint replied and meant it. “How can I help you?” ”It is… excuse me… I am one of the last ticket buyers. Only a few days ago. I missed many of the… what is the word? Orientation meetings.” ”Quite understandable. Things back on Earth took such a shocking turn for the worse. We sold a number of tickets in the last few days before departure. You’re far from alone there.” ”Yes, yes. Well, my question is: what is to be done about food here? How will we eat?” The man had the air of mild anxiety that Clint had come to recognize in many of the ticket-holders. It was a general affect that said without saying: how could this happen to me? How these people could have lived through the last 50 years on Earth and been so woefully unprepared for what came next astonished him. ”Ah yes. Excellent question. As you can see, in the short term, our stores here are stocked with all the necessary staples. We’ve brought a year’s worth of food with us from Earth, and your family has a weekly ration built into the cost of their tickets.” ”No family. Just me,” he said in response. Clint noticed small beads of sweat on the man’s forehead and made a mental note to adjust the temperature slightly downward when he found a moment. “Very well, then. As you can also see, if you look beyond the city to the… I think it’s East? It’s always hard to say here. There are many, many acres of farmland, each of which is designated for various grains, fruits, and vegetables.” Clint spoke with the cultivated ease of a longtime CEO. What mattered wasn’t certainty. It was confidence. “It’s a quite ingenious system,“ he went on. “Though I can’t take credit for it myself. A team of engineers on Earth designed it. The fields are pumped full of carbon dioxide for the plants, which produce oxygen which is in turn funneled into the city. We are breathing the results right now.” “So there is no oxygen in the fields?” The man looked quizzical. ”Very little.” “Then who will harvest them?” “We have machines for that, of course,” Clint replied with a reassuring smile. “And what about meat?” Finally, the man seemed to relax a bit. “Ahhh… plenty of technology there already. But that is a problem for the next generation to solve,” Clint said with a wink. ”We can’t do everything for them now, can we? They would have nothing to give them purpose.” At this, the man smiled and nodded. Clint patted him on the back, then added “Now, have you located your home yet?” The man pointed down one of the crowded streets and nodded again. He walked away with a row of luggage robots trailing him. Like puppies, Clint thought. No… like ducklings. “A world with a waddling of robot ducklings for all… a thing of beauty,” he chuckled to himself. That night, Clint stood behind a podium in the half-filled auditorium. The Genesis 2075 logo he’d designed himself adorned the screen behind him, as well as the front of the podium. The energy in the crowd was palpable. There was no high like relief, Clint realized. If you want to see people at their happiest, find them in the moments just after they escaped their worst fears. There was a giddiness to them, a near-madness. A belief that almost anything was possible. “My friends,” he began as the crowd quieted. “Today, those of us brave enough and daring enough and ambitious enough to sit in this room…” He paused, letting the energy build, waiting just a moment longer to unleash it. ”…have done nothing short of ensuring the survival of the human race.” The cheers exploded. People stood and hugged their family members, then hugged the unknown people next to them. It was like Woodstock, or the March on Washington, Clint thought. Humanity at its finest. Clint basked in the noise until it subsided, then continued. “Now, let us be clear. Life here will not be easy. Yes, there will be pleasures.” He looked around and smiled. “As we speak, robots are mowing the grass at the Jack Nicklaus Memorial Golf Course, which will open for business next weekend.” A lighter, shorter round of applause. “Our AI-powered crafts are being readied for sunrise and sunset tours of the surrounding Martian landscape.” A little louder this time. ”And one day, our children and our children’s children will fill every seat of this arena and many more. They will enjoy films, sports, theater, music, and perhaps new art forms we cannot yet imagine.” He brought his voice to a crescendo, willing the crowd to follow him. “But…” here, he let them quiet again. “We know it is not only pleasure that brings life meaning. There will also be new and unforeseen challenges for us to overcome. We will soon hold elections to replace the transitional council that serves as our current government. Then, there is still the vast majority of this foreign planet to be explored and put to use. As our population grows, we will need more housing, more schools, more land.” He paused to let the people grasp the gravity of his words. If there was one thing he knew, it was this: to survive, people needed a sense of adventure, a challenge to overcome. Humans needed conquest. This was why he hadn’t expanded the fleet to include more of Earth’s dwindling population, despite the additional profit it could have made him, or lives it could have saved. That was a foolishly short-sighted view. Long time survival depended on a new planet that remained largely untouched, ripe for exploration and expansion. The new natives needed a sense of exclusivity– the belief that nothing short of a God-given calling lay before them. They were the chosen few. ”I would like to pause here for a moment of silence,” he began again. “Many of you, I know, have loved ones still on Earth, facing the worst of the climate catastrophe. Many, I am sure, have lost people already, if not to the droughts, then to the riots or so-called revolutions. Let us remember them fondly and hold them in our hearts.“ Clint held the silence for ten full seconds, broken only by the stray sob or halting exhale. When he began again, it was with a practiced, soft, reflective tone. “I am an old man now, and I believe my life’s work to be complete. After the elections, I will be, for all planet-settling purposes, retired. I will be your friend, your comrade, but nothing more than that. And it will be up to you… each and every one of you… to meet the challenges of this new day… this new planet… this rebirth of humanity itself!” The crowd erupted again, and Clint walked from the stage. His deputies would take it from here. Signing people up for committees, sharing essential information about food distribution, trash pick-up, the other monotonous minutiae of governing. In the meantime, he had work to do. By the time he arrived at the control room, Clint realized he had hardly slept in 48 hours. No matter. Such was the life of the saviors of mankind. Deftly, he toggled the several screens in front of him until he found the code for the Harvesters. Now that the fleet had finally arrived, he could set them in motion to begin monitoring and eventually reaping their various crops. For a moment, he stopped and raised his eyes to the glass ceiling. The sky was a color of black he had never seen before. The stars seemed to form new shapes and patterns. They would name new constellations, he thought, honoring all the brave men and women still on Earth. Those who‘d helped to build a world they would never inhabit. Who had put the survival of the human race above their own. Clint sighed. He’d considered reserving seats on the escape shuttles for the engineers, the architects, the laborers. Perhaps even for their families. But with the worsening state of the planet, demand was too high. He’d had to raise the prices daily for weeks before the departure, topping out at nearly $2,000,000 per ticket. It simply wasn’t plausible. Returning his eyes to the screen, he typed the command. <INITIATE SEQUENCE> In response, the computer chirped out a pleasant “Thank you for calling. Please state your name.” The strangely familiar voice jolted Clint from his sleepiness. Thinking he may have nodded off for a moment, he typed the command again. <INITIATE SEQUENCE> ”Thank you for calling. Please state your name,” it said again. Unsure of what else to do, he typed Clinton. “Thank you. Now… please state the reason for your call today.” His company’s automated phone tree was modeled on the voice of its lead engineer, Martina. He’d hired her as part of a team from the call center to design their fully automated system, though some had left the project after realizing he planned to lay off their former coworkers. People’s naivety never ceased to amaze him. <INITIATE SEQUENCE> he tried again. ”I’m sorry. I didn’t get that. Let’s try again. Please state the reason for your call today.” Clint felt the muscles in his throat begin to tighten. <PROGRAM RESET> “Okay. Just a moment.” He rubbed his eyes. No need to panic. He could always reprogram the system from scratch if necessary. ”Please enter your account number, followed by the pound sign,” came the voice again. ”What the hell?” Clint muttered. The voice continued, unbothered. “I’m sorry, I didn’t get that. Please enter your account number, followed by the pound sign. Or say ‘I don’t know it.’” Clint nearly pounded his fist on the table, then stopped himself. “I don’t know it,” he said, trying to remember some lessons from the meditation retreat. The fleeting nature of emotions, or whatever it was. ”Okay. Let me get you to someone who can help.” With that, smooth jazz came softly from the speakers. Dumbfounded, Clint began typing commands rapidly into the processor. Any command he could think of that his company had ever utilized. <PROGRAM RESET> <EXIT SEQUENCE> <RETURN TO SENDER> <SCRUB DATA- ALL> To his horror, each command did nothing but increase the music’s volume, until it blared through the small control room at a near-deafening intensity. He paced. He fumed. After a full hour, desperate and exhausted, he decided to pull the plug on the whole machine. It would shut down a number of systems. But nothing that would make their new planet unlivable overnight. Suddenly, the music stopped. ”Thank you for your patience. We are experiencing higher than normal call volumes. Please remain on the line. Your call is very important to us.” The music returned, and Clint yelled over the endlessly repeating saxophone solo. He approached the plug, ready to rip it from the wall, when it stopped a second time. “Thank you for calling Genesis Corporation. This is Martina speaking.” Clint recognized the slight shift in the voice’s human quality. “Martina?” He spoke tentatively, sitting back at his desk. Slowly, a face flickered into view. “Hello, Clint. Thanks so much for your patience. How can I help you today?” She looked unwell, thought Clint. Pained, even. The smile on her face like a forced contortion. ”I ummm… I… how are you doing?” he laughed nervously. ”I’m doing well, thank you for asking, and how are you today, sir?” Martina cocked her head just slightly to the side, displaying on her cheek the signs of an increasingly common and severe heat rash Clint knew she’d been struggling with for months. The rash looked much worse than when he’d last seen her, just a week ago. “Ummm… fine I guess. How’s the weath…” Martina shifted back to meet his gaze and the words disappeared from his mouth. “Listen, I… something’s gone wrong with the Harvesters. I can’t activate them. As you know, they are essential to our mission here, and…” Clint felt his confidence grow slightly. After all, this was Martina. Loyal, dependable Martina. He went on. “We need to activate them as soon as possible. It seems like, somehow, they’ve gotten the phone tree software installed in them.” ”How strange.” Martina said flatly. ”Indeed. Do you think there’s anything you can do about it? It’s truly paramount. It will be years before we can send anyone into the fields to harvest, because of the reverse-irrigated-oxygenation system. But of course, you know that. You helped design it.“ He swallowed. “Beautifully, I may add.” “Thank you, Clint. That means a lot.” Martina’s smile was beginning to make him feel uncomfortable. He wanted to end the call. He wanted to never see her again. “So… you can help us?” Suddenly, Martina’s face was joined on the screen by several others. Richard, Ashton, Bella, Manny. He recognized them instantly. His A-Team. They all sat silent, glaring at him as she continued. “I’m afraid not, Clint. You see, it just isn’t plausible.” And then, they laughed. Louder and longer than he had ever known them to. The sound was horrifying. Manny and Ashton raised their middle fingers at him. All Clint could do was stare and stutter. “Wh… What… Why…” “Please stay on the line for a brief customer satisfaction survey. Thank you so much for calling Genesis, and have a wonderful rest of your day.” Martina’s voice faded into silence. The screen went black. Clint stood nearly frozen, a barely noticeable shaking in his legs. On Earth, the former Genesis Corp A Team huddled at their screens to discuss solutions to the planet’s crises. They had nearly finished designs on the carbon release mechanisms they estimated could cool the planet by ten degrees within weeks. Meanwhile on Mars, the Harvesters sat motionless, as the passengers of Genesis 2075 toasted the survival of the human race.
Francis Strickler is a “teacher who writes,” originally from the suburbs of Philadelphia, PA. His work explores themes of masculinity, isolation, and connection. He currently lives in Philadelphia where he works as a Special Education teacher. His work has been published in Hominum and Porcupine Literary.
Genesis 2075 By Francis Strickler
Kamyn Asher is a creative writer, poet, medical editor, and astrologer living in Amsterdam. She enjoys playing in the liminal space of the imagination. Her work has been published in small online magazines.
“And what are these?” “These aren’t finished.” His shoulders are very straight as he stares at my wall of hanging thoughts. Most people keep their thoughts tucked away in a closet or basement or attic. But I always believed that it was a disservice to keep the thoughts hidden. They need to breathe, need light and fresh air, to see the sun and the moon and the seasons. “There’s not much space to live amidst all of these,” he gestures at the barely furnished room. “I have a lot of thoughts.” “Clearly.” He turns away from the wall and looks down at me. He’s a head taller, at least, the side of his face reflecting the array of colors that shine from my thoughts. “Some of them look like they’ve been hanging around for some time.” I nod. “And they don’t go rancid?” “That’s just a myth. Thoughts don’t go bad. They just dull.” “My mother used to make me do a spring cleaning. Tossed them all away each year.” “That’s sad.” He just shrugs. “Said if they didn’t bring me joy I should let them go.” I can’t help my grunt, “since when are thoughts supposed to bring you joy?” “It’s better than suffering.” “Who says I’m suffering?” He looks around the room as if that confirms it. “You ordered me, didn’t you?” “I– I did, but I’m not lonely.” “I didn’t say you were.” “No– you said I’m suffering.” “Exactly.” I’m not quite sure what to do next. He returns to his bag, which he’s left neatly a few paces from the door. From inside he pulls a file. “You aren’t due for a few more years.” His tone shift from friendly to formal is abrupt but not unwarranted. “I know.” “So why now?” I didn’t think I’d have to explain myself. At least not so soon. So instead of answering him I skirt around behind and fetch the five-year old thought that’s hanging in the corner. It’s almost weightless, most of the substance evaporated over time. It’s hard to keep nourishing them all, giving them the time and attention they deserve to thrive to completion. It’s delicate, lacey, slippery. In truth, I’d almost forgotten about it. “How did you get my contact?” He takes a sip of water. I watch the place where his mouth contacts the glass. I’m not sure what to do with the thought in my hands so I place it down on the ground as I sit on one of the floor cushions– I’ve already sold all my chairs. “Isabel.” “Ah, Isabel.” He’s looking down at me and now I wish I hadn’t sat so soon. Being underneath someone’s gaze makes me uncomfortable. “Can I ask you something?” “Sure.” He doesn’t hesitate. “Why do you do this?” “It’s my calling.” “You believe in callings?” “I do.” “And how many people have you…” I don’t have the stomach to finish the sentence. “337.” “You keep count?” “One has to. If you’re in my business.” My gut squeezes. I’ve never even met that many people. And he’s… “You’re having second thoughts.” “Is it that obvious?” “I’ve been doing this long enough to read the subtleties of my clients.” Right. I’m his client. This is business. “So tell me, why now? Most people wait until the very last minute.” His questions are starting to agitate me. “I don’t know.” “You do know.” “I– I just want to be done with it. The waiting. The knowing that it’s coming eventually. It takes a toll.” He looks down at the limp thought in front of me and then his gaze settles somewhere above my eyes. “There are no returns.” “I know.” “Don’t you want to finish some of those?” He gestures to my wall of unfinished thoughts, which now just feel imposing, overwhelming. I want to escape from their pressure. “No.” He takes a seat across from me and crosses his legs. It’s such a simple movement but it makes me feel as though we’ve known each other for years. “Do you have The Portfolio?” “Oh, yes.” In my haste to stand I almost tread on the thought, but sidestep just in time. From the top shelf of the bookcase, the last remaining piece of furniture, I bring back a box and retake my seat. I slide it over to him. He lifts the lid carefully but not too delicately, which I like, and takes out the blue leather volume. Heart 62,347 is inscribed on the front and down the spine. He flips it open. Pages upon pages of names and places run in neat rows, each hand a different imprint, dating back hundreds of years. I once read the whole thing, memorizing some of the more captivating names. At the end, my name, my place and date of birth, and the empty column, waiting. “You know, I’ve only had two early birds in all these years, including you.” He pauses looking at my name. “Oh, why did the other one want to– you know…” “He’d fallen in love with a heart much older than his. It was her time, and he didn’t want to be around without her.” “That’s beautiful.” “Or stupid. He only had a few years left on his term; may as well live the remainder of it if you ask me.” “You think I’m being stupid?” “You don’t pay me for my opinions.” “Clearly you don’t mind giving them for free.” He presses his lips together and his face momentarily looks tired. “Sorry. I’ve been told it’s not my best quality.” “It’s ok. I can imagine this is a hard job. No matter the calling.” He looks at me then, for the first time, really looks at me. “It is.” “I’m sorry.” It’s the only thing I can think of to say. “The postholiday months are particularly hard; they’re always the busiest. I don’t know why they don’t stagger the start of terms more evenly throughout the year.” He flips to a page of my file. “Is there anyone you want to be at the Placing Ceremony?” I shake my head. “Anyone you want me to deliver any last sentiments to?” I shake my head again. I don’t like that he looks at me with a sudden pained tenderness, like my answers reveal personal details about how I’ve lived my life. “Ok, well you will need to sign and date.” He gestures to the empty column next to my name. He has no more questions for me. “Actually, I was wondering if–” it’s almost too hard to say but if I don’t say it now I’ll lose my chance. “If you’d share a thought with me.” The practice of sharing thoughts is common nowadays; it provides intimacy in the form of immediate gratification. Fast food intimacy. Normally I’m morally against the idea, just like I’ve never eaten at McDonald's. But I don’t have time to wait for the roast to be ready. “That’s not really part of the package.” “I know– I know it’s a long shot, it’s just…” “I thought you said you weren’t lonely.” “I’m not! I just, well, it’s been a long time since I’ve felt it– you know– and before you take it, I want to feel it again.” He eyes me with a fair amount of skepticism. “I’m married.” “It’s not like I’m trying to steal you. I won’t be here after today anyways.” He runs his hands over the volume in his lap, his eyes darting around the room until they settle on the space just above my eyes. Those eyes. They are overactive, expressive in the way they try to hide what he is feeling. “I don’t know. It’s awfully… intimate.” “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked. I just thought that since Isabel recommended you…” His eyes snap to mine. “What’s that supposed to mean?” “Nothing, oh nothing.” “What did Isabel tell you?” “Nothing!” I have the feeling that he’s going to refuse my business, which wouldn’t be the end of the world, only I’d have to find someone else and it’s very hard to find non-government sanctioned employed Servicers these days. Most want the benefits the government provides– extra years added to their term. His lips have crept back into a hard line and the curiosity has leaked from his eyes. Then he lets out a sigh, and all the hard edges soften. “It was just once. With Isabel. The night that we Serviced her partner.” I wait for more. But that seems to be the extent of the admission. “Why do you do this?” I ask again. “I already told you.” “But there must be something deeper. Something more. Why are you an independent contractor?” “And do you have a deeper desire to be Serviced sooner than your term?” I prickle at the way he’s thrown back my question. “Do you treat all your clients like this?” “No, but they’re usually not in the business of throwing their lives away.” I bristle and stretch my legs. “That’s a free opinion,” I say. “Can I know who will be getting my heart next?” I want to change the subject before he decides the extravagant sum of money I’m paying him isn’t worth the bother I am. “I don’t know that. It’s decided by the system. And since yours is being returned early it sets things a little out of order. There will have to be some reshuffling.” “Don’t you ever wonder?” “Not really. Plus, those wondering thoughts all get cleared out at spring cleaning.” I nod, yet this makes me sad. To not keep one’s wonderings feels like a slight against the little humanity we have left. “Are you ready?” He presents the book to me with a fountain pen. I take it, almost dropping it onto the thought that still lays flaccid on the ground between us. It’s a shame really, that I won’t get to finish it or any of the thoughts that hang yearning for my attention. I’m the only one that cares for them or about them. And I’m leaving. Because I’m too tired of trying to complete anything. At least I get to complete my life on my own terms. “Your heart’s probably only good for a few more rotations. It’s getting old.” I instinctively put my hand to my chest. It’s beat consistently for me for 23 years. Steady. No issues, which is rare with the older ones. I think about all the chests it’s been in, all the lives it’s lived. The stories it could tell if only we could share them like thoughts. I sign my name in the column marked “Serviced Out.” My hand is shaking against my will. I’m sure he notices as I pass the signed volume back, careful to avoid brushing fingertips. “It won’t hurt.” He says this while looking down at my signature, unable to meet my gaze, which I try not to take personally but do anyway. I figure it’s the last time I’ll get to take anything personally. “And your will?” “It’s uploaded. But I don’t have much and no one to give it to anyways.” Satisfied he nods and straightens. “Why couldn’t you finish it?” He gestures at the thought. It’s starting to bleed into the rug. “The timing was never right.” It looks like he wants to ask more but fears the response. “Now what?” I ask. He opens his bag and pulls out some tools. “We’ll do the procedure and the department of health will be around later to pick up the organic materials.” I nod. The sight of the tools makes this all the more real. My heart quickens, like it’s trying to beat out its remaining years with me in the course of a few minutes. “And that’s that.” “That’s that.” “How many years do you have left?” I can’t help myself. The question just slips. He pauses in the middle of setting out the pliers. “Fifteen.” “Fifteen!” He looks around my age, which means he’s somehow garnered an exorbitantly long life without selling out his soul to the government. Not that I’d want fifteen more years, I can’t even take two more. “How?” Instead of answering he asks, “so what is the content of this thought anyways. It looks rather... depressing.” I look at the fading filaments. I can see the fragments of the thought swirl. “I honestly don’t remember anymore. It’s been hanging for so long…” He unscrews an orange pill bottle and sets two small blue tablets in a tiny dish. I can feel the end like it’s a third body in the room. It dawns on me in that slow unfolding way new thoughts do, that the problem with life is that it’s just a compilation of waiting, unless you’re like this man in front of me who discards anything unfinished in service to completion. The thought tugs lightly, wanting to find a way out into the open air. I’ll get a headache soon if I don’t let it out, but at that point I’ll probably just be a pile of organic matter on the floor. I don’t want to give anything else up. Not this close to giving everything up. But my heart never belonged to me in the same way that my thoughts did. They were exclusively mine and seeing them externalized, hanging in in plain view of anyone who comes into this room after I’m gone feels cruel. I don’t want these bits of myself exposed without my protection. On instinct I jump up and start ripping the talismans from the walls, feeling their shimmering beauty once and ripping them apart. They break easily; thoughts are made up of nothing but intention and desire and will. Those are easy to break. I feel released from their prisons as they start to tumble around me. I will be nothing soon, no trace of me left except my name in that blue portfolio. And even then I’ll be forgotten once my heart is retired, the index of its lives placed in some storage room. He stops me just as I’m about to grab the fraying thought on the floor. His hand is cold, his grip strong. “Wait,” he says. I take a breath. One of my last breaths, and look at him. He has a crease in between his eyebrows. “You asked me why I do this.” I’m transfixed by the crease that moves slightly as he speaks in an otherwise impassive visage. “I don’t think it’s right to leave no trace of the ones before us, nothing but these names in books that hold nothing of the true character of someone’s life. I always keep something from my clients. Some part of them that can continue to live on in this life, even after they are gone, after I’m gone. I always ask my client right before they take the pills, so they don’t have time to fret over the decision. Let me keep this thought of yours.” My fingers twitch, my face hardens. What he’s doing is illegal. If he’s caught… but then again, the only people that know his secret have been reduced to biodegradable fuel. I withdraw my hand from his grasp but his hand remains hovering protectively over the last remnant of me that will be left. He rummages in his bag and takes out a small glass jar and gently coaxes the thought into the container. A pang of longing hits me hard. I wonder if he’ll ever venture inside it, wander the pathways of my forgotten fragments with his partner. Or maybe it will just sit gathering dust amidst his other trophies. “It’s time.” I sit back down, he hands me the pills. Right before I take them I’m overcome by the desire to say so many things. I want to share my heart with someone else while it’s still inside my chest. I hope the next recipient of it is braver than I was. They say the heart does not make the person, that we’re all unique despite sharing the life-giving organ; But how do we truly know that? Maybe every name in that enormous portfolio has been just like me. So many questions form as I swallow the blue pills that will freeze my heart long enough for it to be removed and placed inside a new body. A new life. I don’t even have time to finish my final thought as…
Hand-Me-Down Heart
by Kamyn Asher
Freddie Foster ran an exclusive little enterprise called Sound Exterminators, a business stitched together from equal parts ingenuity, desperation, and the peculiar curse of his childhood. He didn’t use poisons or smoke, nor did he set out metal traps that snapped like angry jaws– No, Freddie wielded sound as though it were a broom for sweeping vermin straight out of the world. His notoriety had begun early. As a boy, he had approached the violin with the hopeful heart of a budding prodigy, but the instrument responded as if insulted by his touch. Each screech from the strings was a shrill, wounded howl, like a banshee trapped in a tin can. His teacher had clutched his ears and sobbed. His parents fled the house whenever he practiced. Even the family cat once leapt out of a window during one of his sessions. But pests, fleas, spiders, and cockroaches fled faster than anything human. When Freddie discovered this, he found his calling. He wore industrial-grade ear protectors during every job, the giant padded muffs making him look like a moon-walker armed with a violin instead of a toolbelt. Then came the TV reporter, whose microphone imploded like a popped balloon while attempting to record Freddie’s “performance.” After that, the phone rang with a stranger’s voice and an unusual request. Mr. and Mrs. Robertson had just moved into Eboncrest Manor, a sour-mouthed Gothic pile crouching at the edge of town like a gargoyle guarding its own misery. Every Saturday night, a vengeful apparition they dubbed Horrible Hagen, rose from the house’s bones and tormented the family, sending them fleeing to a motel until sunrise. They wanted the ghost gone. Permanently. And they would pay triple for the otherworldly service. Freddie, baffled but game, arrived at dusk with the creeping confidence of a man who had never failed against anything with a pulse. Spirits? Why shouldn’t sound work on them, too? Mr. Robertson handed him the keys and a thick envelope containing a modest down payment. Then he peeled away in his Mercedes as though the driveway were on fire. Inside, Freddie set up the way a soldier might prepare a foxhole. He placed his violin, a chipped, battered relic from his childhood, on the den sofa beside him like a loyal dog. He ate his pizza, watched late-night TV, and drifted off to sleep. The house woke him first. A cold seeped from the plaster, threading over his skin like icy fingers seeking places to grip. The lights dimmed and swelled, breathing in erratic lungfuls of terror. The air thickened until it tasted like the underside of an old tombstone. Then he appeared. The ghost ducked through the doorway as though the room were too small for his monstrous shape. He was a patchwork of rot and moonlight– green as stagnant ponds, brown as grave-mud. When he opened his mouth, a chorus of shark-like teeth gleamed, and an odor poured out like the breath of the deepest sewer. Freddie pressed himself against the wall. His heart rattled like loose change. Still, courage nudged him. Or stubbornness. He shoved earplugs deep into his ears, hoisted his violin, and whispered, “Let’s see how you handle my music.” The ghost growled with a low, subsonic rumble that made the lamps twitch and dance like nervous fireflies. Freddie drew the bow. The sound that burst forth was catastrophic. A screech so sharp it seemed to carve lines in the air. A wail that could have peeled paint off a church door. A shriek like metal raked across the bones of the earth. Outside, neighbors saw the mansion blaze with white light, then wink into darkness, then flare again as if swallowing lightning. The ground shuddered. Birds exploded from trees. And then… Silence. The next day, when the Robertsons returned, everything appeared normal outside, and they had every expectation of paying the fee for money well spent. But inside, they found their home ravaged. Furniture overturned. Curtains shredded. Portraits hung at malicious angles. In the den lay Freddie’s violin. Not broken. Obliterated. Splintered beyond recognition, as though chewed by a creature made of storms, who spit out the twisted strings like a cat coughing up bones of a songbird. But no Freddie. No trace. No note. Only the cold. Sound, it seemed, could chase away pests. But against a ghost born of fury and midnight, Freddie Foster’s music had met its match. The Robertsons fled Eboncrest Manor for good, selling it at a loss to the next set of thrill-seeking fools. And every Saturday night, the lights inside still flicker, as though someone is trying, and failing, to draw a bow across a violin string.
Sound Exterminator By M.D. Smith
M.D. Smith of Huntsville, AL, writer of 150 non-fiction short stories for Old Huntsville Magazine, and over 300 short fiction stories. He’s published three romance novels and three flash fiction collections. https://mdsmithiv.com/
My New Lover By Weaver Melching
Weaver Melching is a horror and comedy writer from Southern California. They have previously had work published in The Dark Corner, New Word Order, and others.
I stare at the ceiling. It sweats in the heat, even after nightfall, sagging and cracking under the weight of simply existing. The spiders too seem to be leaking dew in the absence of rainfall, their spattered webs speckled with the stuff as they spin webs and hang down. I can feel it trickling down my forehead and joining the pool that connects myself and My New Lover beside me. They’re sleeping soundly or at least pretending to. There’s no way to tell at this point of night, no way to tell at any time. It hardly makes a difference. Their skin is mucky against my own. I’ve been trying to figure this out for days now– how does our skin go so poorly together? Is theirs too heavy for me, or vice versa? Do they wonder too how I manage to sweat with such an oppressive viscosity at all hours of the day? They have to, at some point. I’ve stopped showering since the ridiculousness of it dawned. No need to push off the old water with new water that will just become stale as well in due time. It made more sense in the Old House in the Mountains, where the sweat could fade and leave space for skin to mould, but not here. It would feel dishonest. I catch myself thinking about the Old House for just a moment too long. It is broken by My New Lover turning over, their sunken eyes twitching but not fluttering, none of the typical signs of rapid eye movement. I sigh. “You don’t have to pretend to sleep.” They sit up and stare at me with deep greens, asking what other option there is. I have about five hundred ideas, but they’ve all been exhausted in the last two weeks. I suggest picking the spiderwebs off the ceiling. It takes two minutes. Then we do as Lovers do. I sleepwalk into the sunlit kitchen somewhere around 9 a.m. Probably. There are no clocks in this house, no way to tell the time, save the desert sun. I am sweating under the blanket I carry as my sole garment, but I still crave the comfort of not being alone, not being surrounded. It’s been ages since I’ve been held. It’s been 26 days. A cup of coffee joins the blanket and I in a rocking chair on the porch. We stare out at the dunes and the cacti, the only colour beside the sky. They should bloom in summer. It’s late October. There was a garden at the old house, full of poppies and peonies, all dancing in the sloping wind. I used to spend hours there, taking clippings, watering roots, laying down fertilizer until She and I could sit on our little bench and take in the colours, arms intertwined like vines on a trellis, as She told stories about today, yesterday, and every other time there’d ever been while I sat and listened, nodding and smiling. The memory breaks as My New Lover comments on the grin and sits on the porch beside me, eyeing the blanket. “Old thoughts,” I say. I take the blanket off. I feel exposed, but I know logically that there is nothing and nobody to see me out here. Just sand. I don’t notice when my smile fades. I ask My New Lover how they slept. They say good. I ask if we’ve any plans for today. They say no. I ask if they’d like to go for a walk in the dunes. They say no but follow when I stand up. The walking path is almost always the same. Not intentionally, because we can’t leave footprints, but nothing ever changes, no matter where we walk. There are mountains, far away, but they never seem to get closer. “Have you ever been to the mountains?” I ask. They say on the way in, and their voice cracks as they speak. I suppose I also passed them on the way in, when I really think about it. My skin is exposed on all fronts, and I will have a nasty burn later, but it’s okay, She’s got ointment for that. She has ointments for everything. Had. I decide to try to walk to the mountains. If My New Lover realizes what I am doing, they do not say. The sand gets hotter by the hour, but our feet do not notice the gradual increase. Frogs in a pot. The cacti we pass are bare. “Why do you think cacti grow to be sharp?” I ask. My New Lover walks idly over to one and pricks their thumb on it. They say that some things grow spikes to protect themselves, and others do it to see the blood of those who’d come near them. “Which one do you think it is?” They suck on the pricked finger and point at the scratch marks on their back from this morning, the night before, one of our impassioned tussles. They say it’s the same outcome either way. I feel a light tingle in the cowboy scar around my neck. I suck my thumb in sympathy. We keep walking until we reach the base of the mountain. I look up. It’s the first time in a while I’ve seen a colour different than the yellow of sand. It’s still only a reddish, greyish brown from the crag, but it’s got bits of bush and bramble jutting out of its sides, and silver rocks speckled about. It might as well be a rainbow, paired with the infinite blue sky. Best of all, though– I can see an autumn-yellowed tree poking out past the peak of the mountain, dancing in a wind I don’t feel A great warmth is born in my chest, and I am suddenly dreaming of apples, pears, any fruit. I can taste Her Mountain Garden as a memory, and I am suddenly aware of just how ravenous I am. We eat in the desert house, but only cereals and potatoes. Just enough to stay alive, just enough to fuck. I claw at the dirt and try to pull myself up, but am stopped by a damp touch on my shoulder. My New Lover stares blankly at me, says there’s another path, and starts walking away. I take pause from my fervour and find the humility to follow. Dust between my toes is arguably a worse feeling than sand, but I’m still grateful for something, anything new. My New Lover tucks their hair behind their ears and moves with precision, taking a series of strange turns to make the sharp incline of the mountain into simple steps. “You’ve done this before?” This gives them the first pause they’ve shown since I asked if I could stay with them for a while. “What’s wrong?” They tell me again that they passed the mountain on the way to the house. They tell me that the mountain is what has been guarding the desert from everything outside. They tell me that scaling the mountain was the second greatest choice they’d ever made, right after coming down immediately. I ask why, and they look past me. I ask again, and they say that the mountain presented them with an offer they could not have the strength to accept, a failure for which they still thank whatever higher power there is. I ask for more details. My wish is not granted. The climb is, however, easy, and we reach the top of the mountain as the sun begins to set, and I am met with the tree once again, leaning out over the mountain’s edge, its falling leaves silhouetted against the setting sun. My New Lover stops at the edge of the peak. I ask why. They say they just want to admire from afar. I hear the lie but do not call it. I walk to the tree, and realize now just what was so lovely about it– it’s a perfect clone of the one that acted as a centrepiece to the Mountain Garden, the one where I failed to keep Her. It was so normal that I almost never noticed it during the cool evenings on the bench, but it’s unmistakeable in its perfect ichor. I am drawn closer, closer, until I am right at the trunk and extending my arm to the golden canopy. “Don’t.” My New Lover is right behind me, arms crossed with tears beginning to well in their eyes. They touch my back gently. “I’m not planning on falling,” I say. I never fall without something to catch me. “Don’t worry.” They shake their head and mutter something. I say I can’t hear. They look directly at me. “I don’t think you can face yourself.” I gaze into their eyes as the dry air whips our hair against our cheeks. They meet it wholeheartedly, and I imagine my head against the sun, backdropped by golden leaves. The hour is perfectly warm, and in a way, it makes perfect sense when our lips meet and, for the first time, it isn’t cold and distant. For the first time, we’re frozen here, our bodies not aching for anything more, our heads not dulled at the monotony of something so pedestrian as a kiss. It becomes an embrace out of obligation more than anything, high on the peak, ourselves and the tree the only living beings on the horizon. Our skin touches and it isn’t gross, isn’t overwhelming, isn’t lost in the sweat. And for the first time, I’m back in the Garden, it’s summer, and She’s pushing me into the bushes, holding me at the edge of the woods, bringing me back to… back to the house. Her hands are shaking as she holds my waist in one hand and my neck in the other. The leaves are falling early, still green this year. Her eyes are distant as I cry, wondering if this time I really got Her. The frayed edge of rope still hangs from the branches, the shears tucked into Her front pocket. A beautiful day for a bit of gardening, and She brings me inside, lays me down, and says it doesn’t work like that. The snare is disarmed. It's two months. Three months. A year ago. Things are different, I don’t speak and I don’t need to. It’s ten years ago and I’m tucking a resilient need to be held down so tight that it boils up and becomes outbursts that make people realize the rot within me. I’m normal, the average amount of human pain boiled into a ball, and you won’t let me go. Fifteen. Seventeen. Twenty years ago and I’m home. Three months ago and I’m home. It’s then and I’m happy. It’s then and I’m holding myself in. It’s then and she’s close, our lips locked in something eternal, unbreakable, ineffable, its– It’s right now, and it’s somebody else. I push back and am overwhelmed by the image of the mountain, of the dust, the dirt, the sand– goddammit! There’s NOTHING! How did anyone ever decide to live out here? I stare at My New Lover and cannot fathom their stupidity, the hubris to think that they could ever be greater than the human need for life, for connection, and I compress these thoughts into a string of swear words and insults that I forget the second they leave my lips. I expect My New Lover to shift back to their everyday face of disinterest, but their face contorts first into something like sadness, confusion, betrayal. I keep yelling and flailing, desperate for the disinterested stare that does not come until I collapse and go quiet, and they finally have the space to speak: “You were warm.” Then, the disinterest comes flooding in, and they walk back to the edge of the clearing. I am cold, and I detest something, but I can’t tell if it’s them or the way they killed my happy memory. It doesn’t matter, in the end. All borne of the same mouth. I am alone with the tree as it drops more leaves to be carried off as shadows into the sun, and I do the only thing there is to do. The trunk is not solid, but I am not afraid as I crawl along it, do not consider the distance to ground as I stand up in the mess of leaves and dig through, looking for fruit until I emerge from the top of the canopy and am greeted by the night sky and the moon staring back at me, casting a faint light on my face. The moon asks me if I can hear. I gently reply that I can. The moon tells me it can grant my wildest dreams, give me exactly what I want. I think of the Garden, think of Her, and the moon smirks. It calls me a hopeless romantic. I smile back and thank it. The moon asks again if I would like my wish granted. I take a bushel of golden leaves in my hand and let them go on the wind, floating off to the sands below. Dressed in the gentle glow, I smile a genuine, uninhibited smile and say yes, I’d like nothing more. The moon takes a deep breath and blows a stream of stars down upon me to rain against the grey of the cliff, paint the world in brilliant light. I am weightless in the brush and I spread my arms out wide, waiting to be taken to my happy place. A star dances out from the sky, picks me up, and carries me away. I stare at the ceiling covered in dewy cobwebs that could fall in at any minute. It’s hot, and my skin is so mucky that I can’t let my arms touch my chest, so I extend them without problem. I am alone in the bed, alone in the house, alone in the desert. I spend my days waiting for cacti to bloom.
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