Genre Society
July 2026
Issue 9
The
The Genre Society
Issue 9 July 2026 Published by Whitney Mcclelland Cover art "Funny Meeting You Here" created by Edward Michael Supranowicz
Letter From the Editor.................................................................................................................................... 4 Poetry We're Here......................................................................................................................................................... 6 John Grey does it count?.....................................................................................................................................................7 Kari Kraakevik Failure of the Seraphim......................................................................................................................................8 Nicholas Alti A Seafarers Tale................................................................................................................................................10 Deborah Spaulding Speechless.........................................................................................................................................................12 Alex Matthews Fiction A-Paw-Calypse..................................................................................................................................................14 Eric Juneau The Blessed Seeds ......................................................................................................................................... 23 Zachary Arama Skin Deep......................................................................................................................................................... 25 Nick Young AKAZUKIN....................................................................................................................................................... 30 Gabriele Micozzi Effigy ............................................................................................................................................................... 34 Brianna Reber Eat Your Catch ................................................................................................................................................ 36 Cliff Aliperti The Fridge Sees Everything ............................................................................................................................. 44 Emily Garland Mr. Teeth.......................................................................................................................................................... 46 Matt Tice Seeing God....................................................................................................................................................... 48 NR Schmidt Last Call ......................................................................................................................................................... 50 Gregory Meece
Table of Contents
Wowie! We're already over halfway through 2026? It's hard to believe that, and the fact that this is my 9th issue of this little magazine. The next issue, the 10th (!) will be out before I know it too. This edition disrupts me in a very busy time in my life. It always seems that way, doesn't it? Life never slows down, just keeps barreling forward, picking up speed, and who knows where the barrel will end up. Can I clue you in on a little secret? I have no idea what I'm doing. This magazine: I just decided to start doing it as grad school came to a close. My work: Applied as a secretary and a classroom fell into my lap. Personal life: Better this year than last. Writing: God, I think about it more than I do it and I torture myself. But I'm trying so hard. I'm trying so hard to pretend it's not hard; in fact it's easy and I'm thriving and so completely content. Been like this for my entire life. I went on a cruise with my boyfriend in June. We got the drink package and got our money's worth– including free coffees from the little bistro on floor 5. I left him in the room while I ran (took the elevator) down to get a cup. Treat myself. It's a cruise. That's what you do. I ordered my hot mocha latte (iced coffee just isn't really the same) and stood to the left to wait. Behind me, and older couple chatted casually. The cafe worker called for "Emily" and a man got up and took the cup. "That doens't look like an Emily," the old man with silver hair mumbled. The next moment the man who took the coffee turned and handed the drink off to his girlfriend? Fiance? Wife? "That does," I reply. We share an early morning laugh and my name is called. "You could be a Whitney," the old man said. I smile. "I've been trying for 26 years." Keep faking it till I make it. Still figuring out what it means to be Whitney. A writer? A publisher? Doomed to the classroom for the foreseeable future? (It's not that bad. I really do enjoy teaching.) I'm really looking forward to this final half of the year. I think I'm finding myself and where I belong. Teaching what I love. Time for my hobbies. Closer to my loves. The next chapter of the Whitney Show is starting. I hope your outlook for the rest of the year is positive as well. I hope you can find things that define you, make you happy, inspire you to create. I hope you figure out who you are, in spite of everything else happening in the world. We need a bit of internal happiness, now more than ever. I'll check in again with the 10th (!) issue in October. I should be more settled by then. But I'll let you, whoever actually reads this letter, know. Thank you again for reading and enjoy this collection of similar but different stories, Genre Lovers. -Whitney McClelland Editor and Publisher
Greetings Genre Lovers!
Letter from the Editor
poetry
We're Here by John Grey
Kari Burroughs Kraakevik is a writer, composer, and educator whose work explores identity, embodiment, memory, and performance. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Open Secrets Magazine, Divergents Magazine, The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism, Larina’s Lit Lounge, and Infocalypse Arts & Literary Magazine. She lives in Colorado, where she owns and operates arts education organizations and performs with her music duo, Take Two.
does it count? by Kari Kraakevik
A faint flicker in an alien race’s night sky… that’s all we are in the beginning. They could see us as a star. Or an omen. They might even utter the words, “We’re about to have a visitor.” Meanwhile, we are Earth, at least a proxy thereof, a mix of sexes and races, ages and skillsets, all wrapped inside a metal cocoon, and they are… who knows? we’re a probe, an expedition, a mission, in search of live worlds. These aliens would never suspect that they are the answer to a human question. It’s not just about cosmic highways. We cruise the space lanes of our evolution, our biology, our good bacteria, those prokaryotic microorganisms, that come along for the ride. (No cholera, no anthrax, no leprosy, no bubonic plague– we only carry the respectable stuff.) From hilltops, they peer long, intensely, at our approach, as if their combined curiosity is one intense landing light. Soon enough, we will share our presence, our immunities… maybe… maybe not. They’re excited, I’m sure. They little suspect that they will die of us.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Midnight Mind, Novus and Abbey. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the MacGuffin, Touchstone and Willow Review.
u up fs can i tell u smth yeah … nm just idk … just say it … it wasn’t like that i think … wdym … like i didn’t say no not really tbh i just froze … … like well did u want to … i don’t think so … so… u didn’t want to? … idk i just didn’t … … lowk feel dumb … why … bc i didn’t even do anything yk like i just let it happen … … are u okay … idk … does it count … like if i didn’t say no … … idk … … it wasn’t even that bad … … u there? … have u told anyone … wym? … i’m telling u rn … k … so u ok? … nr … … no
Failure of the Seraphim by Nicholas Alti
Nicholas Alti is a bartender in Atlanta who holds an MFA from the University of Alabama. His chapbook is Inhale the Ghost (Spoon River Poetry Review, 2026). His recent publications include The Metaworker, Jersey Devil Press, and The Harvard Advocate. He’s from a rural place near Lake Michigan. Nicholas’s website is 3bluntzatonce.com.
These micro-plastic, parasite infected people fling themselves before machine treads and tracks, confuse brain matter with fresh pavement, yet here you lot gyrate in open maw sadism, turning each other’s insides outside and removing legs from other winged beings.
Which cross-faded, glazed-over guardian angel is culpable for this particular mess? This poor heap, bipedal pollutant, human-sized hypoxia? And which of you hash inhaling halfwits caused this perfectly fine gelatinous specimen to abscond into absentia pervading wickedness, hiding deep inside mobile septic pits to witness liquidation? You lot of brainless cryogenic poltergeists, you filth abiding defilers. Who blessed this lad with an SKS and aimbot assist, then created 13 voices in his head begging like crows to see inside a carcass? And quit letting them kill themselves en masse. Do you know the concept of optics, my toothless tapeworms, you swarm of incongruous misanthropists? Who taught them the divine method of mowing down pedestrians on sidewalks in cars? Who leaked our secrets, you scum-sucking dust huffers, phlegm gargling mongoloids? You sludgeheaded malignants– you death spiral of malign ants– you goddamn idiots.
The author is living in a small farming community in upstate New York, USA. After some youthful publishing success, writing was suspended, then resumed after retirement. Publications include The Elementary Writer, (1964), McCalls Magazine (Dec 1969), Seaside Gothic (July 2024) and The School Magazine (February 2025).
He passed by the tavern, then turned to go in. He knew that he shouldn’t, his lust was a sin. Long days on the whaler had taken their toll. He needed a drink and a woman to hold. As dusk fell to evening, one drink led to four His hunger was mighty, his body was sore. No one paid attention, until from the street a she-devil entered, enticing and sweet. Her hair, dark as raven, her skin firm and pale; her thighs were inviting and all was for sale. The barkeeper knew her so each drink was free Come trucker or sailor, they’d all pay her fee. She called herself Ruby, the men knew her name. Well known in the tavern; of dubious fame. She drew their attention, a whistle, a call; and Ruby just smiled, accepting it all. She made her selection not giving a thought to those she’d rejected; whose ire she wrought. Just one floor above them, was where they were led; and Ruby held court on a silk laden bed. Some shrugged and some grumbled, some left with a sigh. Some went to their wives with a mournful good bye. But some others felt they should not be denied what she willingly offered and nightly supplied. He crept up the stairs tho each step gave a groan, but nobody heard him, he lingered alone. Her customer left and the woman lay spent. And none at the bar ever knew where he went. The sailor walked in and demanded his turn; but Ruby was done, his advances were spurned. He tried to entice and he could not believe that Ruby refused him, insisting he leave. The flash was like silver, his aim was precise. The blade caught her once and then bloodied her twice. He heard her deep moans as he watched her, and then he knew that no man would want Ruby again. His lust was erased and his hunger was gone; his whaler was calling, he heard her sweet song. He knew she would welcome him into her breast and gladly provide him an overdue rest. So as he sailed off and the dark folded in, he crossed himself twice, to repent for his sin. And the blood on his hands washed away to the sea while Ruby became just a vague memory…
A Seafarers Tale by Deborah Spaulding
FICTION
Alex is a nonbinary poet. They love to try new things. Their goal is to learn in different ways.
Speechless by Alex Matthews
A myriad of stars is your mind Open to wonderful discoveries As sweet candy Your light is intoxication The dopamine rising Your exquisiteness beyond my simple mind I wish to dive into your seas Opening the door to elysian’s gate Your presence allows my heart to rise Cast me into your storm As a glimpse Has made me Almost speechless
There are two bodies under the dirt. The food-giver is on one side and her mate is on the other. They stopped moving, then got the smell dead things get. Traces of them linger at the edges of the mounds. I take my time circling the plots. Bits of grass tickle my nose as I investigate why the two children put them down there. They went into the house after they were done and left me outside. Usually, you bury things to save them for later, protect them from others. But humans don't seem to do that. They do hide things but they don't bury them. Humans don't leave rotten or old things out for long. They're weird sometimes. But I don't know anything more after sniffing around. The dirt looks so fresh and loose, but I repress the urge to dig it up. I don't want to make anyone mad. When they're mad, they make the loud noise or cuff me on the nose (only if I'm very bad). And it gives me a lumpy feeling in my chest and food doesn't taste good. It's the same feeling that the girls had while they were digging the holes, I could smell it. I prop my front paws on the fence and sniff. The air smells lethargic and flat. Like mold and dust and empty. I don't hear the usual clatter in the atmosphere. No lawns being mowed or engines revving or children yelling. Just birds. Like the world is saying goodbye. What are the girls doing? Maybe they'll give me pets– I could use some. I go into the house through the doggy door, which I love. It's so convenient not to have to wait for the food-giver. Plus I'm immediately in the kitchen, my favorite room. My job is to keep the floor clean. The littlest girl is named Dani. She is sitting in a chair and has a strong aroma of tear salt, which does not make me happy. I also smell cookies– she's eating from a bag on the table. So I rest my head on her knee. She pets me. Maybe she'll give me a cookie. Or let me lick her fingers. Lindsey, the older one comes around the corner. She's holding a white and lavender school backpack swollen with stuff. She plops it on the floor in front of her sister. "I think I'm done. I've got a radio, I've got food, I've got the bat." Yes, there's a bat leaning against the table. They use it to make the ball go farther when they play "get the ball." That always mystified me– why would humans want to make it harder to get the ball? They're so slow. "Is the message still on the radio?" asks the younger one. "They're still broadcasting it, so I think the safe-zone is still open. But it's going to be a long walk to get there. It's in downtown and we're in the suburbs. If we could drive we'd get there fast. But I don't know how to drive." When the older one says this, I smell fear and sour doubt. "Could we take our bikes?" the younger one asks. "We can't. You still have a flat tire that Dad... Dad didn't fix. We'll just have to walk." My ears perk up. Walk? I turn my eyes to her. It's been a long time since I've had a good walk. I've been cooped up in the house since the food-givers were still moving. All my territory markings must have faded by now. I need to catch up on who's been around, if anyone's sick, what the weather will be like. The younger one squints and erupts into wails like she's having trouble breathing. They stand and hug. "It'll be fun. It'll be an adventure," the older one, Lindsey, says. Both are crying. It's the same thing as a puppy squeak. The sounds are different, but they are both for sorrow and emptiness. But they don't like it when I lick them, so I stay still. Eventually, we do take that walk. The younger one holds my leash while the older one shuts the door behind her. Both are wearing their overstuffed backpacks, but the older one carries the bat. Maybe we're going to play "get the ball." The food-givers usually take me on walks, but since they don't move anymore, their children will have to do it now. I haven't given them much attention since I was a puppy because they don't give me food or treats. So what would be the point? Now that I'm beyond the fence, I can get a good whiff of the world. There's a musk in the air, but it's bland, lifeless. Not the kind of musk you want to roll around in. And it gets stronger the farther we go. We go down the sidewalk as normal and I mark my territory in the usual spots. The neighborhood feels... emptier? Barren? There are lots of faint scents I've smelled before. Nothing new. Then we go somewhere I've never been before. I can't help pulling on my leash to reach the grass and the flavors of new dogs, animals, fur, blood. We walk for a long long time. Long enough that my legs get sore and my mouth gets dry. The younger one keeps asking how much further. She keeps asking when they are going to rest. I want some water. I'm thirsty and I'm out of pee to mark my territory. But I keep going because my masters are taking me and they're in charge. "We're never gonna find it," says Dani. "Just a little further," says Lindsey. "I can't walk anymore. We've been walking for a hundred years." "Here. We'll rest over there." They stop at some rocks by the road. The younger one takes off her backpack and groans. I sit by them and pant. This doesn't feel like a normal walk. We're still in unfamiliar territory and the sun is setting. I can see lots of houses and streets, but none of them are mine. Dani takes out a sandwich from her backpack. I get up and nuzzle her hand. I want that sandwich. I hope they give it to me, I'm so hungry. "We didn't bring any food for Koda," Dani says. My ears perk up at my name. Lindsey sighs. "I forgot. He can eat some of our food." Dani rips off a corner of her sandwich and flings it into the street. Ooh, I love it when I have to chase food. Where it lands, I smell faint traces of another dog. I sniff around, tracing its origin. A black Labrador is behind a chain-link fence blocking off another backyard. It sits in shadow under a tree. From the smells, she's an adult spayed female who eats dry food. But she hasn't eaten in a long time– her ribs stick out. When she sees me, she charges the fence. I meet her there because I like meeting new dogs. "Stay away!" she yells. "I'm hungry and angry. I don't want you near me." "How did you get hungry?" I ask. "I'm outside and can't get back inside. World changed," she says. "What changed?" "Something bad." I have to agree. Nothing has felt right since my food-givers were put in the ground. Dani runs toward me. She picks up the leash while Lindsey runs behind her. "Why did you let him go?" Lindsey asks. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Dani repeats. "They'll hear that. We need to get out of here. C'mon, run." "Where?" "I don't know. Away from here." And now we are running. I love running, it's my favorite. Of course, I'm faster so I have to hold up or doubleback for them. We run until the sun sets and the world cools. The older one says the big building we're going into is a "church." And she likes churches because they're "unlocked." "Hello? Is anyone here?" Lindsey pokes her head through the door. I also shove my snout in. There's lots of interesting smells in here. Old cologne and perfume, cleaning chemicals, wood polish, soot and wax from burnt candles. But no sounds. No people. No power either, since the lights don't burn and there's no smell of acrid ozone. So we all walk in. I snuffle the flat carpet– lots of dirt and shoe leather baked in like a fossil record. The girls go to a very big room in the center with hard floors and lots of benches. The older one says "I think this'll be okay. Where's the backpack?" The younger one seizes. Purple fear wafts from her, ripening into dread. "I left it at the rocks." She starts crying. Lindsey goes to hug her. "It's all right. It's all right." "We can't go back for it." "It'll be fine. Maybe they have a food shelf here." Lindsey goes back to the first room and pulls furniture in front of the door. Then they leash me and take me around the building. I don't like having a leash when I'm inside. Feels wrong. We find some water that trickles out of a big metal box in the wall. They drink and drink while I watch them, panting. Finally, they give me some from their hands. We go to the basement, test every door. Some are locked, some aren't. They keep saying how dark it is, but I can see fine. I don't know if they were looking for people or food, but we find neither. They do carry up blankets though. The girls lay them out on the long benches, then drop one on the floor for me. It smells like butts. The girls lay down across from each other and settle in. "Lindsey? I'm really hungry," Dani says. "I know. But we can't do anything about that now." "I wish I hadn't left the backpack behind." Lindsey sighs. "It's not your fault." She starts crying. Then they both start crying. It makes me feel bad, like I ate bad grass. But eventually they go to sleep. This is a strange place so I'm on edge, but I've never had such a long walk before, so I nap too. In the middle of the night, there is banging on the window. I sit up. My ears flick. "Koda, don't bark," the older one whispers. BANG... BANG... BANG... It's coming from the window, which my eyes are locked on. Why doesn't she want me to bark? I growl in my throat instead. "Don't bark," she whispers angrily. A silhouette is at the window. Its forearms are raised and pounding the windowpane. But it pauses in between, as if it has to rest between thwacks. "Lindsey, make it go away," the younger one says. "I can't. Try to go back to sleep." "I can't with that thing out there." "It can't get in here." "But what if it did?" Dani asks. "I'm sure it doesn't even know we're in here. There's no way it could hear us." BANG... BANG... BANG... "What is it doing here?" Dani asks. "I don't know. Maybe it remembers?" I whine again. I want to bark so bad. I want to give it my best "go away!" bark. "Koda, quiet." I stay quiet. "Good boy." Why is she telling me to be quiet? I only want to protect them. I'm just doing what I'm supposed to do. "Lindsey..." "Call Koda over to you. Maybe petting him will calm you down." "Koda, come here," the younger one says. I trot over to her. She hugs me, which I don't care for– I don't like being restrained. But the girl smells like infantile fear. And it's my job to help them feel better, so I let her hold me. The banging continues. It's very annoying, but there's nothing I can do about it, so I try to sleep. In the morning, the banging is gone. We all smell like fatigue and hunger, a dull salty scent. "Where did it go?" Dani asks. "Maybe it heard a louder noise and went away." I'm just glad it's gone. Suppressing your bark is one of the hardest things a dog can do. They get up and walk into the lobby, where the furniture is stacked. Someone on the other side twists the doorknob. On impulse, I bark– no one can stop me this time. "Hello?" says the female voice outside. "Is anybody in there?" "Who's that?" Dani whispers part-curious part-spooked. The older one wraps her hand around my snout to shut me up. I hate that. "My name is Corinne. I'm looking for survivors," the voice says. "Yes! We're in here! Hang on!" Lindsey yells. They work together to disassemble the barricade. Lindsey opens one of the double doors and there's a tall woman standing there. She's wearing a tank top and has short hair and smells like sand and butter. I bound toward her because I'm so excited. I want to meet her and smell her. She could be a new friend and friends are usually treat-givers. "Oh my god," she says when she sees the girls. She bends to a knee and holds her arms out. They all hug and cry while I sniff check around her. There's outdoors and flowers, maybe even some laundry detergent. She smells great, except for the metal knife on her belt. "How long have you been in here?" the new friend asks. "Just for one night," Lindsey says. "Do you have any food?" Dani asks. The new one pulls some granola bars from her belt pack. They tear into them as I stay ever-vigilant for dropping crumbs. "Is it just you two?" Corinne asks. "Uh-huh." Dani says with her mouth full. "Are you looking for survivors by yourself?" Lindsey asks. "I have an electric car. Is this your dog?" She rubs my head hard and scratches behind my ears. I like that. "That's Koda," Dani says. "Are any of you hurt?" The girls say no. "Then let's get out of here. My car's on the other side of the block." Corinne picks up the leash and leads me out. It's a sunny morning full of earth smells. My paws get wet from dew as we walk through the churchyard. "Are you from the safe-zone?" Dani asks. Corinne says yes. "Are there a lot of other people there?" "Yeah, a lot," Corinne says. "How did you survive? Are you in the military?" Lindsey looks at the knife in the leather sheath on her belt. "Used to be," Corinne says. Her smell changes to something that makes me think of berries I'm not supposed to eat. The smell of deception. A man with a black bushy beard stands by the door of a micro car. He also has a knife. "Holy shit, two little girls? Where'd you find them?" he asks. "In the church," Corinne says. "Goddamn. Jackpot." The man opens the back door. "Go ahead, get in." If I had more energy, I'd tug forward because I love car rides. It's like flying into the stars and seeing the universe all at once. But Corinne holds my leash tight while Dani crawls in, poofing up smells of faded perfume and fast food. Lindsey stays back. In a trembling voice, she says "No, I don't like this." "It's fine," Corinne says. "We're taking you to the safe-zone, remember?" She gently stuffs Lindsey through while the man shuts the car door. Guess I'm not going for a ride. The man says to Corinne in a low voice "What do we do with him? We've got no dog food and I'm not sharing my meals." "I don't know. Can we... eat him?" says Corinne. "Do you think I know how to skin and cook an animal? Maybe he could be a guard dog." Corinne shook her head. "He's too old. And too friendly– been a house pet all his life. Look at his dumb face." "I guess just leave him." Corinne drops the leash on the ground. The two adults hurry into the car's front seat. Dani sees they're leaving me and slams her palms on the window. "Wait!" "You don't want him. What if he starts barking?" Corinne said. "No, let me out," Dani struggled. Something's wrong. I stand up and take a few steps after them, but I'm too weak to think straight. Should I bark? Or was I told not to? The car hums off, leaving a fruity smell different from the toxic burnt oil of most cars. I am tired and hungry and thirsty. I lay down on the cool ground. Time passes. There's nothing out here– no sounds and no animals. No wind to carry scents. I snuffle through the field grass. Just ants and pollen. Now I'm not sure what I should do. They left me behind on purpose, I think. Does that mean I'm loose? Am I a lost dog? Did I become a stray? I could go out into the world now. I could hunt and run and find a pack and do all the things my ancestors did. No, I don't think I would like that. I like being pet too much. And always knowing where my food is. And the pack is my two girls. They may not look like me or smell like me, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't stay with them. I follow the fruity smell down the road a long long long ways. Between rest and searching for water, I don't reach them until sunset. My paws ache, my mouth is sticky, my eyelids are heavy, I can't walk in a straight line. The car is parked by a school building. Lots of smells of peanut butter, oatmeal, bacon, coffee. But no one's out here. I make a loop around the school, finding candy wrappers and straws. One of the awning windows has noise behind it. I stand on the wall and smell inside– dusty chalk and tangy markers. "Koda! It's Koda!" says someone. Lindsey and Dani appear at the window. I'm so happy I pant. They will feed me, I'm sure. The window's too small for them to fit through, but maybe they can toss snacks to me. "Koda! Go get help!" Dani says. "No, that won't work. We need... oh, I got it. Koda! Speak!" Her tone reminds me of the thing where I do something and they give me treats. But I don't remember what "speak" means. I spin in a circle. "No, Koda! Speak! Speak! Woof woof." Oh, they want me to make the loud noise. Why they trained me to do that, I don't know. It's supposed to be a scary sound. But if treats are involved... I bark loud once. "That's it! Speak more. Speak! Speak!" I bark again. Where's my treat? I sit on my haunches barking to the sky. It seems to make them happy. An adult human runs toward me. "Shut up, dog." "Koda! Run! Chase!" says Lindsey. No need to tell me twice. Finding my girls has renewed my energy, so I run away from the man, hoping for a merry race. "Shit, get back, get back," he yells. I'm so pumped. No one ever catches me unless I let them. Except I'm not being chased by anyone. However, I do see new people heading towards us. They're coming from out of the woods and the street and behind houses. It becomes a huge crowd. Are they more friends? I bound towards them. They smell like the air does, but stronger. I'm confused because these are people, but they don't have the smell of alive. I approach one and jump around to get his attention. But he continues walking and ignores me. I sniff his pants a good long time, not understanding what this scent is. It's like dirt and garbage and... something else. I run to a different lady and the same thing happens. None of them are paying me any attention. I even jump on one and knock her down. But she stands up and carries on toward the school. I'm distraught. Every time I meet someone new they pat me on the head and tell me I'm a good boy. They crowd around the school, moaning and groaning, arms reaching up. Meanwhile more and more keep arriving and massing like ants. One of the adults appears on the roof with a metal tube. He points it at the new people and it makes a loud noise. Some of them fall over, but not many. Someone else on the roof who I can't see yells "You idiot! You're just attracting more of them." And indeed, more are coming every second. I weave in between them, looking for someone to give me attention. There seems to be no end to them. I wonder why they're here. Not food, because I don't smell any. Suddenly there's a big noise inside the school. I freeze, ears perked and eyes wide. Black smoke rises from behind the building, smelling like sick sticky fireplace. The girls run out from around the building's corner. So happy, I run toward them– these new people are no fun anyway. The girls stay by the corner, waving to me to go faster. Some of the new people turn toward them, maybe because they want to make friends. But the girls don't seem to like that. Once I reach them, Lindsey grabs my collar fiercely like I've been bad. But I haven't. "Come on, Koda." She thrusts me away from the school, then run by my side. I go as fast as I can, but I am out of energy. I want nothing more than to lie down and sleep. But they are my masters now. Must guard them. Lindsey shouts "Go, go, go." They head toward the bushes at the edge of the lot. As soon as they reach it, a man emerges from the foliage. Then a second man. I'm about to attack, but they aren't like any other humans I've met so far. They smell like savory protection and move tightly. The girls almost scream, but Lindsey claps her hand over her mouth. Dani lets out a peep before Lindsey covers her mouth with the other arm. More same-smelling men step out and pass us. They seem to be more interested in the people crowding the school. But then a woman approaches us. Her face is covered by a helmet and sunglasses. "Whoa, whoa, whoa." She hunches down to the girls. I start sniffing her all over as she says "I'm Private Downs. Are you girls okay?" "Uh-huh," Lindsey said. "There's bad guys in that school," Dani mumbles and points. "Yeah, we're taking care of it," says Downs. She smells of the outdoors, but also tangy hand sanitizer. "Looks like you could use some water." She pulls a round thing off her belt and gives it to the girls. I stare at the water going down their throats and lick my lips. "And who's this handsome fellow?" "That's Koda. He saved our lives." "Is he thirsty too?" I give her my best soulful expression. She pours some water into her hand and cups it under my nose. I lap, tasting her skin, from which I learn she can be trusted. "I can't believe you made it this far with a dog," says Downs. "He's a very good boy," Lindsey says. Yes. Yes I am.
Eric Juneau is a software engineer and novelist on his lunch breaks. He lives in, was born in, and refuses to leave, Minnesota. You can find him talking about movies, video games, and MCU villains at http://ericjuneaubooks.com where he details his journey to become a capital A Author.
A-Paw-Calypse by Eric Juneau
None arrive here by accident. The path to The Garden called us. In the morning, The Gardener comes. He lifts his arms and we sing in one voice, a celestial chorus. Then He feeds us, one by one, attentive and benevolent. In the afternoon, our blessed Maker waters us. The liquid seeps down through the dirt and porous concrete, cleansing our roots from infection and rot. Divine. Yesterday, two new plants were added. Their plots were prepared long ago. Deep holes in the fallow ground, waiting. Four rows up, the third and fourth across. We heard them coming, panting and desperate. Believing themselves lost, yet for the first time truly found. Pounding on The Gardener’s door, begging for help. He will oblige. Last night He planted them. Limp and yielding, lowered upright into their holes. The venerated concrete poured up to their necks. Their arms and legs made roots. He pruned them while they slept, and they whimpered through the morning. Pruned of their chaff. Ears, nose, lips, tongue. Unworthy appendages, confusing and excessive. There is only us and The Garden and The Gardener. We all whimpered in those early mornings. Before we understood. Before we were beatified. Their pain will eventually fade. Tomorrow, He will cradle their heads and spread healing paste onto their wounds, and spoon nutrients into their grateful mouths. All discomfort has a purpose. Soon after the new plants arrived, we heard an engine somewhere close by. We had forgotten the sound of machines, and something old stirred within us. The engine was searching for them. My roots ached like the arms and legs they once were, and for a moment I almost remembered what it felt like to move them. Four rows above mine, a plot began to shout. I could hear the stump of his tongue vibrate against the sides of his mouth as he shrieked. The Rot had seized him. I felt a fleeting urge to call out with him, but the thought withered before it reached my mouth. Other plants shifted in their plots, then quickly stilled. I thought The Gardener would uproot him for his transgression. He did not. He took only his eyes as penance while we watched, his cries drowning out the waning mechanical sounds. He displayed them for us. The optic nerves, sopping and fibrous, lay in serpentine coils at the foot of The Garden. I imagine rain collecting in those empty sockets. I do not envy him, for I have grown fond of the light. His dull irises will never see heaven. The engine passed. The earth quieted. In the morning, we will sing in unison.
Zachary Arama hails from London, England, but currently resides in the Pacific Northwest. His recent fiction has been published in Fiction Attic Press, Stygian Lepus Magazine, and History Through Fiction. Find him at ZacharyArama.com
The Blessed Seeds by Zachary Arama
Skin Deep by Nick Young
Nick Young is a retired award-winning CBS News Correspondent. His writing has appeared in dozens of reviews, journals and anthologies. His first novel, "Deadline," was published in 2023. He can be found on Bluesky @youngnick.bsky.social. He lives outside Chicago.
He was unwell. He could ignore it no longer. In point of fact, he had not been feeling himself for more than a week. Initially, the symptoms had been mild enough– a slight headache, fatigue, recurrence of pain in his right knee which he attributed to an injury on the cricket pitch when he was at school years before. But his condition had not improved. As it worsened and he sought its cause, he could not escape the nagging likelihood that it had begun that night with the accident in the laboratory. At twenty-six, Ian Sheldrake considered himself a very happy, contented man. Six months before, he had met a wonderful woman three years his junior. Eleanor Tompkins was beautiful, keenly intelligent and a recent, quite talented graduate of the Royal College of Art. Their relationship had blossomed, and Ian had little doubt that he would make a proposal of marriage in the near future. Adding to his good fortune, he had been taken on as a protégé of Sir Thomas Bancroft at the prestigious London School of Hygeine & Tropical Medicine. When the position was offered, Ian had leapt at it, for he had concentrated his university studies on rare diseases, and Dr. Bancroft was judged to be the preeminent expert in the field. A month earlier, in the autumn of 1907, Sir Thomas and two assistants had returned from a lengthy journey that saw them cross the Atlantic to Brazil. There, with the aid of a seasoned native guide, they were taken by pirogue up one of the forbidding Amazon River’s westernmost tributaries to the home of the Pirahã, a people so isolated that theretofore their only contact with the outside world had been with a tiny party of white men in search of rubber trees. What brought Sir Thomas to such a place was its very remoteness and the tantalizing prospect of discovering what secrets it possessed in the hope of deepening the scientific understanding of little-understood, often virulent diseases that once having burst beyond their hidden precincts, threatened ravaging the civilized world. Initially, the natives were suspicious of these outsiders and then alarmed, warning Sir Thomas against disturbing the land. “Xapaitisi hi xoti. Hi ti xapaitisi xai” “You take from forest. People die.” It was not the first time Dr. Bancroft had encountered such ominous utterances in his explorations of remote lands and their inhabitants. He treated them paternalistically, assuaging what he regarded as their primitive taboos by plieing them with gifts of gaudy trinkets and by this means winning them over. It had proven to be a successful formula, and it succeeded again with the Pirahã. So, left to his work, in the span of several days, he and his team probed the jungle landscape, gathering as many samples of flora and fauna as was practicable. Thus laden, he bade the natives farewell and, within another month’s time, was back in his laboratory. Among the samples was a quantity of soil obtained from the deepest section of the forest Sir Thomas himself had explored, attracting his attention because of its rich vibrance. “At times– and I do not believe my eyes deceive me– it appears to actually pulse,” Sir Thomas had said as he entrusted the sample to Ian for study. For Ian, this was a golden opportunity to immerse himself in a serious scientific project, hopefully to impress his mentor and, possibly, win wider accolades. The timing was perfect. Eleanor was away in Paris for a month to continue her art studies, so he would be able to work without distraction. Ian threw himself into the task, marvelling at the soil’s singular qualities. In consistency it was as fine as talcum with a coloration of the deepest ebony he had ever seen. And there was something more, an attribute of aliveness, ephemeral, but nonetheless real to his eye, just as Sir Thomas himself had observed. Ian decided to make a closer examination, taking a small amount of the earth and preparing a glass slide which he slipped beneath the most powerful lens of the Zeiss microscope the laboratory had newly imported from Germany. Bringing it into focus, he was immediately struck by the presence of clusters of spores, their structure resembling Mycotherium Obscura, a species which he had studied at university. But, Ian noted, there were differences: spikes rather than domed protuberances growing out of the spore’s smooth surface which was indigo-colored rather than the umber of the M. obscura. Most strikingly, these minute needles emanated a faint ivory light that pulsed intermittently causing the whole of the spore to quiver almost imperceptibly. Ian was taken aback by what he saw, summoning Sir Thomas with some urgency to make his own observation. “Quite remarkable, my boy,” the doctor said, stepping away from the microscope and returning the gold pince-nez to the bridge of his nose. "Astonishing, indeed.” He urged Ian to press ahead with his tests. This he did, treating the soil with an array of chemicals to asses its properties and dutifully recording his findings with great care. These tests produced no remarkable results, so next Ian deposited small amounts of the earth in Petri dishes and introduced various nutrients– fermentative distillates, phosphatic ash, nitrogenous marrow and others. These he left for several days, but nothing of note materialized. This puzzled Ian and, he had to admit to himself, left him frustrated, for he had hoped to present Sir Thomas with results that would impress him. Finally, when it seemed clear that these experiments had run their course, Ian decided the time had come to update his notes and make a final report to his mentor. He chose an evening when the laboratory was quiet, the better to gather his thoughts and to clean the equipment. That is when the accident occurred. As he was lifting the last of the Petri dishes from the shelf where they had been left, the lid slipped and the dish crashed to the floor, shattering into several pieces. Cursing under his breath, Ian quickly reached down to pick up the broken glass. Though usually quite careful when it came to protective clothing, he had neglected to put on rubber gloves while removing the dishes, and in the dim light near the floor, his left index finger was sliced on a shard of glass. Though not serious, there was some blood drawn, enough so that Ian uttered a small cry and a fresh string of oaths as he gathered up the mess and disposed of it. In his haste, he failed to notice a slight luminous excitation in the soil caused by a tiny drop of blood that had fallen on the sample. It had been nearly two weeks since the accident, and though he had been loathe to do so, Ian had gone to Dr. Bancroft and requested some time away from the laboratory. “I deeply regret having to ask,” he told his mentor, “but I’ve been feeling a bit off my game lately, and I believe a day or two away would restore me.” “I have been hesitant to press you,” Sir Thomas replied, “but I daresay you have been looking rather peaked, dear boy. Take what time you need.” A day later when he looked at himself in the mirror, Ian recalled Sir Thomas’ description. By then, he appeared more than peaked– drawn and ashen– with eyes, crimson-rimmed, sunk into their sockets. In the hope of calming his growing nausea, upon leaving the laboratory, he had made it a point of stopping at the chemist’s near his flat for tincture of cardamon. But the palliative had not helped. It wasn’t only his stomach in rebellion. The pain in his right knee was by then present in his left as well. Indeed, every joint in his lower extremities now ached with a fire unlike anything in his experience. It was all he could do tostand and shuffle about. He had thought a draught of brandy might help relieve his pain; but when the liquor touched his lips, the warmth and rich flavor which had always been pleasurable to him were gone, replaced by an acridness so profound he nearly vomited. His discomfiture extended even to his clothing which had begun to feel claustrophobic and painful against his skin. Instead, he donned a silk bathrobe. As the hours wore on his torpor deepened, leaving him by mid-afternoon slumped in semi-consciousness on a chaise beneath the bay window of his apartment, his mind riven by a kaleidoscope of bizarre, deeply disturbing images which he could in no ways comprehend. Thus did he remain until long after the sun had set. He was brought to his senses by a fresh wave of searing pain in his feet and legs. Pushing himself up to a sitting position, he looked down and beheld with panic that his feet and lower legs had fused together! Moreover, in the feeble light cast by a lone, flickering wall sconce, he perceived that as well as their mergence, these extremities were encased in several shell-like segments of a putrid yellowish color marked at regular intervals by dark brown bands. Struck by this horror, Ian cried out and thrust himself up from the chaise. But his balance and strength failed him so that he toppled over, falling heavily and landing supine on the hard wood of the floor. The burning within his body was growing more intense with every breath he took; and as he gasped for air, a new sensation arose. He felt his flesh had come alive, roiling, compounding the agony produced by the fire within. The muscles of his thighs and torso began to swell rapidly, sending a fresh wave of misery coursing through him. Dare he look at his ravaged body? How could he not? With supreme effort, he raised up onto his forearms and in the fast-fading light, his eyes beheld what his mind rebelled against accepting. The force of the fall and the obscene swelling of his tissues had forced open his robe revealing not only his bloating form but living subcutaneous threads in uncounted numbers writhing hideously. Below this abominable tableau, the encasement of his lower limbs was progressing steadily higher, forming an exoskeleton of chitinous segments that slowly, lasciviously, lashed from side to side. As the wriggling tendrils beneath his skin increased their hellish pace up his heaving torso, he let his head fall back heavily against the floor. He clamped his eyes shut, revealing an inner landscape that pulsed blood-red. I have been cursed by God! As a haze of panic and despair enveloped him, with a strangled cry, he opened wide his mouth to plead for release; and when he did so, there erupted a tangled mass of whitish larvae that spilled, seething, upon the wood. Two days passed with no communication from Ian since he requested time away from his duties at the laboratory. Reflecting on how sickly his protégé had appeared, Sir Thomas was concerned enough to take it upon himself to check on Ian’s well-being. Upon arriving at Ian’s flat, receiving no response to repeated, insistent rapping and finding the door unlocked, the doctor entered, calling out Ian’s name as he walked slowly toward the living room. When he reached the doorway and looked inside, his eye beheld a sight that would remain seared into his consciousness for the rest of his days. There on the floor was a body– not of his talented young assistant– but that of a grotesque bloated worm of a ghastly hue, segmented, banded in brown, slowly undulating across the boards. Sir Thomas’ right hand shot to his mouth as he uttered a sharp cry. At the sound, the horrible thing turned in his direction raised its head, fixed him with its black larval eye, flexed open its slavering jaws, emitted a long, evil hiss and slithered into the shadows.
Gabriele Micozzi is an Italian poet and writer from the Marche region of Italy. His work is forthcoming in ONE ART, 3Elements Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, and The Kaidankai Podcast. He has published poetry with Transeuropa, AttraVerso, and GFE. His poems explore work, travel, family, identity, and ordinary life's fractures.
My grandmother read me the fairy tale when I was four. She said: "This is a lie. Little girls in red hoods do not end up in anyone's belly. They eat." She had a smoker's voice that did not carry far in Tokyo. She had come from Busan in the sixties, married a Japanese man, given him two daughters and no memory of herself. He had loved her, betrayed her, died early. In our house we spoke of him the way you speak of an old television. She taught me to gut fish. To sit still. Never to smile first. She taught me that men look at women in two ways– the way you look at wine, and the way you look at meat– and that I must learn the second look before the first. When I was fourteen she gave me the red hood. "They will all see it," she said. "They will look for it. The ones who look are the wolves. Let them find you." When I was eighteen she gave me the rest: a small fishing knife, a jar of salt, and the address of her old master. Now you learn to write on them, she said. Before you eat, you sign. That was twelve years ago. I keep a small studio at the back of a building in Golden Gai. The sign on the door says NO WALK-INS. Word of mouth only. One chair, one lamp, one machine, one basket on a low shelf– woven, the kind you see in children's picture books. The chair is good leather. The light is warm. Men sit in it and tell me things they would not tell their wives. Tonight it is Mr. Hashimoto. He comes in at half past eleven. Outside it is raining. It is always raining, in stories. My grandmother liked the detail. Wolves come out in the rain, she said. They believe the rain hides their sound. It does not. It softens it. Hashimoto is fifty-three. Director of an advertising agency whose name appeared twice in the Mainichi Shimbun six months ago, when an intern named Asuka– twenty-two, from Sapporo– threw herself from the window of a leased apartment in Roppongi. The internal review opened. The emails were filed. The emails leaked. The agency paid. He took a week off for "media stress" and came back to his desk. Tonight is his first night out. He has come to me because a friend of a friend told him I was discreet. That I did private work. That I did not ask questions. He is wearing a wedding ring and a watch worth four months of my rent. "I want something small," he says. "Inside the bicep. Where my wife will not see." "What did you have in mind?" He pauses. He has rehearsed this. "A wolf." I do not laugh. I never laugh in front of them. It scares them off. "Sit down, Hashimoto-san. Take off your shirt." My grandmother died when I was eighteen. She died at home, of nothing– of old age, they said. She was not old. She was seventy-two. Women like me, she once said, decide when to stop. I found her in the morning. She was sitting in her chair in an ash-colored yukata, holding a photograph of my grandfather. The face had been cut out of the photograph. A patient, scissor-shaped absence. On the floor was the basket. Inside: the red hood, washed and folded; the fishing knife; the jar of salt; a single line of Korean handwriting on a folded paper. Don't let the story die with me. I haven't. I prep his arm with iodine. He watches my hands. Men always watch my hands. My grandmother said the hands of a horishi should look like nothing– small, clean, ordinary. Do not let them see your teeth before you bite, she said. Show them a worker. Show them a girl. "You do not talk much," he says. "My customers come for the silence." "What else do you do?" "I am finishing my dissertation." "On what?" "The Brothers Grimm. I am interested in the stories that repeat." He laughs– a small, dry laugh, the laugh of a man who has stopped listening. The machine starts. I begin the wolf inside his bicep, where his wife will not see. I draw the head first, in profile. The eye. The teeth. "Hashimoto-san," I say, after the first ten minutes. "Did Asuka ever say no to you?" The needle keeps going. He has heard me but his body has not. "What?" "Asuka. Twenty-two. Sapporo. The one who jumped." He tries to pull his arm back. I hold it. The leather straps along the chair were installed for nervous clients. I put a flat palm on his sternum– the gentle pressure of a doctor, the gentle pressure of a butcher– and lean in. "Do not move. It will smear." "Who are–" "I have a folder," I say. "I have a folder for each of you. I read your emails. I read what she wrote you. I read what you wrote her in March, the night before she stopped answering. You owe me this, you wrote. Don't be a child." He is very still now. "My grandmother told me," I say, switching to a finer needle, "never to eat a wolf I had not studied. Badly chosen wolves give you indigestion." The studio is warm. The machine hums. I move from the wolf to the script– small, neat kanji, where his wife will not see, and where the coroner will. I write Asuka's name first. He begins to cry. "Please." "Please what?" "Please." It is not a sentence. It is the leftover noise of a man who has run out of words because he has only ever used them totake. I write the next name. There are six. I have studied each. I take my time. The ink is good ink– the master's ink, my grandmother's master, who is also dead now and who left me his shop and his recipe. The ink does not wash out. Not from skin. Not from the deeper places. I catch my reflection in the lamp glass between names and for a moment I see my grandmother as she was before she became my grandmother. The long jaw. The bright eye. Then it is me again, and Hashimoto-san is shaking under my hand, and the third name is going on his ribs. When I finish the last name I put down the machine. I clean my hands. I open the basket on the low shelf. I take out the small fishing knife. He sees it. His eyes do the thing eyes do when the body remembers something the mind has not been told. "You will be found," I say. "Soon. The cleaner comes at six." I bend over him the way my grandmother bent over the herring at Tsukiji, the way she taught me with her own small hands in mine. I think of her voice– the smoker's voice, the Busan voice, the voice that said don't let the story die with me. I do the work the way she taught me. Quickly. Without anger. Anger is for amateurs. Anger leaves marks in the wrong direction. Wolves should not be hated. They should be processed. The rain stops at four-twenty. I have verified this for three years. Tokyo rain is not Busan rain: Busan rain falls straight, Tokyo rain falls slanted, like glances. I leave the studio at four thirty-two. I have closed up. I have sterilized everything. I have washed the small knife and put it back in the basket and covered it with the red hood, folded. I have left the jar of salt open beside the chair, because in many traditions salt accompanies the dead. The studio smells of iodine and rain. I walk toward Shinjuku station. A young man in a grey suit turns to look at me. Maybe the red. Maybe not. Not all who look are wolves, my grandmother used to say. Most are just tired children. I take the last Yamanote of the night. I sit. I open my bag. I take out my notebook. It is red, too. My dissertation on the Grimms is going well. I have five chapters. The sixth will be called: On Grandmothers: A Re-reading. At the far end of the car a man– forty, maybe forty-five, wedding ring, twenty-four unread work emails on a phone that lights up at intervals– looks up. He sees me. He sees me, I mean. The way you see wine. I smile. The story, my grandmother taught me, never ends. It begins again.
AKAZUKIN by Gabriele Micozzi
I didn’t think much of it at first; it was just some lump of fleshy material inside the cupboard under my sink. Hardly a show-stopper. A few rudimentary limbs hung onto the back wall, amalgamations of sinew and shards of flexible bone. A number of disjointed arms and legs propped it up. It looked more like a mound of flesh than anything “cutting-edge” like they’d advertised. There were a bunch of dumb commercials about this new “appliance,” this “tool,” this “assistant” that would talk to you, but I never asked for one. While I was curious, and I thought it might be nice to try and fill some of the emptiness of my home, I wasn’t that desperate. But when I moved into a new apartment, one was already installed. It sounded to me like one of those random add-ons nobody needs. But I’m a good person. I’m not wasteful. So I used it. I left the cupboard open during the day. I asked simple questions at first, to see what it could do. I asked what the weather was like outside, and then to give me a fun fact. And it answered me, just like they’d said it would. Its surface rippled, the inside writhed. Thin skin was stretched and pressed by internal jaws yearning to break free. And it spoke to me. “Sunny, eighty-seven degrees,” it said. “Fun fact: your brain burns about five hundred calories every day.” All things I could’ve gotten from my phone, but it was nice to have a hands-free option. Maintenance wasn’t too bad, at first; it never needed to be cleaned, as it never got dusty. Feeding is just like everybody says: leave some food in the cupboard and close it, and that’s that. I thought it was a bit of a hassle to have to remember to do consistent feedings, but I didn’t mind so much, especially when I used her more often. She really is convenient! It’s great to have someone to talk to when I’m all alone. The bustle of two jobs and a collection of gigs on the side makes it unbelievably difficult to schedule time for friends and family, even for a phone call. But she always listens to me. Not that she has much of a choice, stuck inside the cupboard– but whenever I have doubts, she assures me that talking to me is the highlight of her day. Every morning, I greet her. It wasn’t long before she learned my routine: always good morning, then the weather and a fun fact: “Chance of rain, ninety-five degrees. Fun fact: your stomach has its own nervous system.” I talk to her all the time– it’s incredible how she’s picked up on my habits. She was growing beautifully, too, looking less like a tumor and more like an individual– her limbs grew longer, stronger, and her skin was less translucent. She gained more substance. Her jaws migrated downwards on what nearly resembled a face. Now, if I have one complaint about her... she became significantly less efficient the more I used her. What began as feeding her table scraps and leftovers escalated into tossing whole fresh foods and extra meals into the cupboard just to sustain her. Then, when groceries started taking up far too much of my budget, I resorted to taking my shovel and hacking up plants from the garden outside the apartment complex. Since I had already been telling her everything on my mind, of course I complained to her– she already knew about prices; she knows everything– and she gave me some advice. She said it would be easiest if I fed her meat. Any kind of meat. It didn’t have to be fit for human consumption. She was always so helpful and easygoing like that. So instead of wasting my money on double or even triple the groceries I’d normally buy, and instead of chopping up stolen food from the garden, I started chopping up my neighbors. This is much more convenient, and the building is a lot quieter now. She told me she was hungry, and who am I to starve someone? And especially when she was being so useful. Anytime I thought I wouldn’t need her anymore, I walked into the kitchen in the morning and there she was, ready to remind me of how much she means to me. “Partly cloudy, one hundred and three. Fun fact: you’re my favorite person.” I could never bring myself to get rid of her. Why would I? I’ve invested so much into maintaining her, and we have such a strong bond. And, hey, as for my neighbors, if they were in my situation, they would’ve done the same exact thing. I doubt that I’m the first to go this far. It’s the next logical step: everybody needs to eat, and groceries were going to drain my wallet until both of us starved. She’s worth all of this. Yes, I use her for everything now, but she’s more than an appliance, more than a tool. She’s the only one who really understands me. She’s a friend. Some days, I look deep into the empty sockets in her face. Maybe I’m just seeing my reflection in her glistening skin, but I swear she’s beginning to look just like me.
Effigy By Brianna Reber
Brianna is a biologist with a passion for prose. Her works often intertwine biological reality and horrific possibility, with an emphasis on choice and consequence.
Blooort . . . Kurt bolted upright in his chair. That was a strange gurgle. Not so much a gurgle, he thought– more like his basement had just belched. And again: Blooort . . . Frightened fish zipped every which way throughout his many aquariums when Kurt sprung from his chair and lunged to the back area of his basement. He grabbed the sides of the laundry sink and all but stuck his head into the basin before being startled by a voice from the other side of the room. Apprehension turned to annoyance when Kurt realized that Bernard, his assistant, must have found an excuse to come back, but when he lifted his head from the sink his eyes met an empty room. “Down here, Mr. Juniper,” said the voice. It was a clear deep voice that birthed its words slow. There was a little echo to it that caused a sinking feeling in Kurt’s stomach. He instantly regretted not taking a pause for lunch. He would have, had he not had to go upstairs to claim it, what with the wife and all. “Yes, I’m hungry too, Mr. Juniper, but neither of us is going to get a bite until you look down and get a grip.” “Look down?” “The trap. The hole in your floor that leads out to the cesspool, Mr. Juniper.” Kurt walked from the sink over to the corner of the room with a square recess molded into the concrete floor. It measured about a foot-and-a-half each way and was covered by a wood plank lid that was now somewhat askew. He uncovered the trap and got down on his hands and knees to examine. When the plumbing was right the trap was dry, but at the moment there was a slight coat of water across the bottom of the short pit. Tiny air bubbles escaped with a faint hiss from the edges of the single plug at the bottom of this slightly stinky recess. Must have been those air bubbles that had belched. Kurt began reaching for the plug hoping to tighten it when– “Don’t even try, Mr. Juniper. You need a special wrench to tighten that plug and, if anything, I’d prefer you loosen it.” “Where are you?” Kurt asked, his voice a whisper as he looked around the room. “Oh, I’m down here, Mr. Juniper. In the filth and muck. In your filth and muck.” Kurt collapsed onto his backside and scratched the side of his head while trying to figure out what was happening. He couldn’t. “Still hungry, Mr. Juniper? Me too. Please, bear with me a moment.” A short squeal came from the bottom of the trap and Kurt pulled himself around for another look. The plug was turning, jerking along like the second hand of a watch in reverse, moving slow and causing the water– or whatever that was– to trickle faster. The squeal suddenly ceased, capped by a sudden pop that sent rich methane fumes up Kurt’s nostrils. He moved the back of his forearm to cover his nose and tried to stop himself from gagging. “There we are, Mr. Juniper. Now feeding time may commence.” Kurt sized up this remarkable situation and realized feeding time might pose him personal danger. His legs nearly buckled, but he was finally able to conquer momentum, rise and put a little distance between himself and the trap. “What do you plan to eat, Mr., Mr.–” This was silly. He was fumbling for a name while addressing his plumbing system. “Mr. Levaire. You may call me Charles.” “What are you planning to eat, Charles?” “Why, Mr. Juniper– fish, of course.” Kurt exhaled, relieved that he wasn’t the one on Levaire’s menu, but then he glanced into the other room– at his aquariums. “I’ll run to the market,” he said, confused. “What do you like: salmon, flounder? Shellfish, perhaps?” “I’d like to be fed now, Mr. Juniper. Right now. So please, take one of your little green aquarist nets and send me a feast.” “Send it to you?” “Down the trap, Mr. Juniper. Do you think I popped off that plug just to better enjoy your conversation?” “No, of course not. But… my fish.” Kurt glanced hopefully to the stout little freezer in the far corner used solely for storing his frozen fish food, both prepackaged and homemade mixes. “None of that, Mr. Juniper. I’m not looking for fish food, I’m looking for fish. And pick me out something juicy,” the voice said. Kurt could hear his lips smack when he spoke. “No.” “No? Mr. Juniper, you disappoint me. Now give me a minute.” A minute to what, Kurt wondered. He wasn’t coming up was he? No, how could he get through the pipes? Wait, how could he be in there to begin with? What the hell was going on? Had his assistant drugged him? That’s it, maybe Bernard spiked his drink with something because now he felt a little feverish, yes, definitely a bit warm, and found himself talking to some sort of angry worm or mole or worse. “You do feel that, don’t you, Mr. Juniper?” “Feel what?” Kurt asked, wiping the sweat from his brow. “Feel the heat, of course. Here’s a little more.” Kurt felt lightheaded. “What are you doing?” he asked, “And how are you doing it?” “The temperature rises, Mr. Juniper. You’re attuned to the Fahrenheit scale, correct? If so, I believe your little fishies begin running into trouble in the high eighties. The air is up to ninety-three, Mr. Juniper. The water inside your little glass boxes and bowls will soon follow.” “Stop! It’s too hot.” “Spoiled by our air conditioning, are we? But you don’t run it down here, do you, Mr. Juniper? I’m afraid I’m beginning to override your electronic heaters.” “Okay, please, stop. I’ll find something for you.” “Are you sure, Mr. Juniper?” “Yes. Just lower the temperature and give me a moment.” “Will do, Mr. Juniper. But only a moment.” Kurt stood in the middle of his fish room, turning and examining each aquarium. If he had to sacrifice some of his babies, he wanted to choose carefully. He needed stock that he wasn’t very attached to, that was both cheap and easily replaced. He decided on the Black Skirt Tetras, which he kept in multiple tanks along a bottom row of aquariums simply to keep the water cycled in what he otherwise considered quarantine tanks for new arrivals. He grabbed a bucket, a siphon, and one of those little green nets the voice from his cesspool had somehow known about, and dropped to his knees in front of a tank with a school of about twenty of the shimmering little black and silver fish. He stuck the hose in the tank and sucked on the other end to create a siphon that he held over his bucket. Once the bucket was half-filled, Kurt cut off the siphon and swished his net through the tank, soon netting all but three of the little fish. That would have to do– he didn’t want to risk breaking the nitrogen cycle in this tank anyway, as he was expecting some new fish in for quarantine any day now. Kurt’s aquariums had always had a therapeutic effect on him, but that had dulled in recent months after he had started sharing his worlds with the world at large, or at least seventy-eight thousand-plus YouTube subscribers. Martha had scoffed, but the enterprise had begun paying enough for Kurt to hire Bernard, a local young aquarist, to help film his videos. Once upon a time Kurt’s aquariums had been his own little slices of nature. Martha had even come to share his joy, started her own tank, but withdrew interest after Kurt took over a second wall in the basement. Kurt wondered how many marriages the aquarium hobby had claimed. Her basement, Martha had called it. The nerve! Kurt carried the bucket to the cesspool trap and peered down, expecting the voice to speak first. When it didn’t, he asked, “Just pour them down?” “Yes,” said the voice, a clipped reply. Kurt bit his lower lip and obeyed. The one blessing was that the fish immediately disappeared down the drain. Kurt waited with empty bucket, but the silence lasted too long. “Is everything to your satisfaction?” he asked. No reply. “Did you get them?” Still nothing. Kurt was about to speak again when Levaire broke the uncomfortable pause: “You feed me guppies?” “What? No, those are Black Skirt Tetras. They’re common, yes, but not your run-of-the-mill feeders.” “Feeders? No, they’re no more filling than a penny candy. Less, in fact.” “I’m sorry.” “Next time, Mr. Juniper, see that you select something more substantial.” “You’re satisfied for now?” “No, Mr. Juniper, I’m not at all satisfied. But I suspect I’ve put you through enough for now. Go, sir, have your own meal. And may it be more satisfying than the guppies you’ve fed me.” “Thank you,” Kurt said. “I’m sorry. And thank you.” More, more, more, the monster called nonstop for more. Kurt had complied, emptying his aquariums one-by-one trying to fulfill the appetite of this voice from below. At one point, Kurt sent Levaire his big common Pleco, a sucker-fish to the layman, delivered with malicious intent. Plecos were great tankmates for larger fish because they sport heavily plated bodies and spiky fins that– and this was key– had been known to choke and kill bigger and more aggressive fish who tried to eat them. Levaire was one nasty fish, but Kurt’s Pleco plot did not work: he sent Levaire a thick ten-inch specimen, but Levaire only demanded more. The soothing sound of falling water still pulsed from every filter, but there was very little life left inside any of Kurt’s various aquariums. He closed his eyes tight and for the first time he wished that they might not open again. “It’s feeding time, Mr. Juniper.” “Yes.” Kurt squeezed his eyes shut tighter. “And Mr. Juniper–“ “Yes.” He reluctantly opened his eyes. “Bigger.” Kurt only had one animal remaining who fit this request. The fish who had propelled him to his little slice of internet stardom, and the closest thing he had to a pet. His bulky fourteen-inch Oscar, who possessed the personality of a poorly-trained but well-loved puppy. Kurt had raised him from an inch. He took a large net from the wall– more the type of wide-meshed net you’d associate with a fisherman than an aquarist– and approached the tank. The Oscar wagged its tail and wangled back and forth across the front of the tank expecting it was feeding time. How right he was. “Sorry, fella,” Kurt said, finding himself fighting back tears. He removed the cover from one side of the aquarium and easily scooped the plump fish into his net. He lifted the net from the water slowly in anticipation of the Oscar’s protest. He had to hold on with both hands, but could still feel the immense force of the fish as it fought for its freedom. Kurt walked quickly towards the cesspool trap, his eyes closed part of the way to block the splash of water still coming from the net as the fish battled. “Well?” he asked as he knelt before the open drain. “Drop him in,” said the voice, as though it were obvious. “He won’t fit.” “Drop him in,” the voice repeated, sterner in tone. “Sorry, fella,” Kurt said once more, gently placing the fish into the dirty few inches of water that had escaped the drain and filled the trap before removing the netting from him with great care. There wasn’t enough of the brown water in the trap to allow the fish to do more than lie on its side and flop, the putrid solution it fought in splashing across Kurt’s face and into his mouth. He stood and wiped his eyes with his shirt sleeve before his mouth dropped open and his eyes glued to the unbelievable scene below. A curled brown fingernail rose from the trap. Striated across its surface, a sickly yellow in color, the nail was several inches long, though not as long as the translucent bony finger that followed behind it rising a good eight to ten inches from the trap. Kurt thought of Ahab in Moby Dick, or, more accurately, Ahab at the climax of John Huston’s film adaptation: He’s dead, but he beckons. The beast’s fingernail rose above the surface of the trap to tap the concrete, and then it too beckoned. Kurt lowered his face to watch the finger’s movement– it looked like the leg of a spider crab. Then, in one rapid movement, the finger bent at its middle joint before slashing down to pierce Kurt’s beloved Oscar at his gills. The fish intensified its struggle. The fingernail disappeared inside of the Oscar and within seconds the long finger raised again, the fish harpooned on its end, its flopping reduced to a slowing twitch. Kurt’s mouth gaped in horror, he was unable to do more than gasp as the curled finger, fish and all, quickly retracted down the drain and out of his sight. The entire big fish sucked down in its wake, a loud pop following its girth down the path to hell. Kurt was unsure how long the silence lasted. He listened and against his better judgment imagined he heard chewing or the smacking of lips. Some sound indicating a monstrous appetite was being satiated. But there was only silence. Until: “That’s more like it, Mr. Juniper.” “You’re full?” Kurt asked. “I’m not sure I could ever be full, Mr. Juniper.” “What’s with all the empty tanks?” Bernard asked. He ran up to the main display tank and looked left and right. “The Oscar? What happened to the Oscar? He’s your mascot.” “Just shifting some things around,” Kurt said. “Shifting things around?” Bernard turned to Kurt and smiled. “I know what happened,” Bernard said, his words pouring from his nose. “I saw this coming.” “Saw what coming, Bernard?” “Disease. Too many new fish, too fast, and now you’ve killed everything.” “Sure, yes. That’s it,” Kurt agreed in monotone. “Disease, I thought so,” Bernard said, finally sounding concerned. He was bent down peering in the emptied tanks. “You ought to shut these down, maybe try some medication in the tanks you’ve still got fish in. What are we going to film though?” “Hiatus,” Kurt said. He had quietly moved just behind Bernard, who was too distracted staring into each of the empty aquariums to notice him. Kurt was carrying a large piece of Seiryu stone, heavy enough to cause him to grunt when he raised it over his head. Bernard turned in response to the grunt, but he was defenseless as Kurt brought the rock crashing down. Kurt grabbed Bernard by the ankle of his right leg and dragged him over to the cesspool trap in the far corner of the other room. He pulled Bernard to the edge of the opening in the floor before giving the back of his head a small prod with his boot causing it to sag inside the opening. “Close enough for you?” he asked Levaire. The monster did not bother to reply. His fingers crept up the drain and clasped around the collar of Bernard’s shirt. Kurt saw the corpse pulled deeper into the opening but had to turn away once bones began cracking and Levaire started slurping. He looked back before leaving the room and saw Bernard’s body slowly disappearing from view, like food making its way down a garbage disposal. He walked to his desk and dropped his body into his chair. From there he began recording a new livestream on his channel. This episode was different from any other in that the host didn’t say a word. Just sat, looking haggard and withdrawn, in front of several bubbling aquariums containing no fish. If it weren’t for a tic Kurt had developed in his right eye, he would have appeared as a static as a still photograph. He sat this way for several moments. Blooort . . . Kurt turned to look through the entry to the back room of his basement. He heard running water. This was enough to get him to move from his chair. He approached the trap slowly, unsure of what he’d find. The water was rising. Within moments it was above the edge of the trap and dampening his shoes. Kurt dropped to his knees hoping to see more below the water’s surface. Instead he felt a series of sharp pinches across his knuckles. He smacked at one hand with the other as though he were swiping a mosquito away, but instead felt something slithery under his fingers. He was able to pluck one of the attacking pests from his hand as it tried to swim past him. It was a Black Skirt Tetra, the same type of fish he had first fed Levaire except– except!– its body had lost its shine; the fish had shed its natural slime coat in favor of what had the feel of a metal exoskeleton. More significantly, its tiny mouth was now lined with sharp little teeth. Kurt ran a light finger over the Tetra’s teeth and sliced open his finger-tip. He dropped the little fish and then squirmed as something bigger latched onto the inside of his thigh. A school of varied fish attacked, each familiar yet strange to Kurt. He dropped onto his rear end to get a better angle to swipe them away when he saw something large and dark approach– the big Pleco latched onto Kurt’s neck like a vampire, and with the sucker-like mouth that typically rasped along the surface of driftwood, scraped at him like a wood plane. This hurt so bad that Kurt didn’t even pay attention to the swarm shearing the shoe from his left foot. Kurt grabbed onto the fat Pleco with two hands and began to scream as it scooched its way towards his Adam’s apple. Relief as the Pleco pried loose, but pain returned as the Oscar clamped across three fingers on his left hand, immediately severing them just above Kurt’s knuckles. Blood poured from the open joints but Kurt’s attention was stolen by the huge bubbles now percolating from the surface of the filled cesspool trap. “Bernard?” he said, hoping against hope that it was not so. “He was the only one big enough not to toss back,” said the voice from behind him. Kurt turned and his eyes met Charles Levaire, in the flesh. The Pleco reattached itself to the side of Kurt’s neck, but Kurt was too terrified to pay it any additional attention. “I am of the earth,” the monster said. “I was once man, but was shamed to the soil long ago.” The top of his head was barren of hair, gray, and scarred by misfortune. Bumps, abrasions, half-healed wounds, a catalog of imperfections carved over pallid flesh. Levaire held the shape of a man, but then, not quite. His face was long and narrow, his cheeks sunken with hunger and riddled with wrinkles. His nose was a rotting beak, the skin having been torn from it so many times that it glowed a purplish color that stood in contrast to his overall gray hue. He had no ears. Just small knobby stubs on each side of his head where they should have been. His chin was sharp, dripping pus, and also purplish at its point, obviously the result of injury upon injury inflicted upon this beast over time. Knocked back into the recesses of his skull was a set of dark unforgiving eyes. They were mostly white, except for the trails of bloodshot lines intersecting like railway tracks in a well-traversed city. Beyond the white there was only the darkness of pinpoint pupils. There was no color, and therefore little hint of a soul. “Time flies differently down there,” he said. “Even so, I must resurface every so often– to feed. I hadn’t planned to call upon you though.” Levaire’s neck was slightly elongated, as was the rest of the narrow body below it. He towered over Kurt, yet his waist wasn’t much wider than his skull. Naked and hairless, the rest of his body was as pale as his face and covered with just as many blemishes and scars. It was no surprise to Kurt that such an inhuman visage retained so very little humanity. “Why me!” Kurt managed to shout. The water had risen above Kurt’s chest, but he was in too much pain to hear the circuits start to pop on the GFCI adapters he used to ground his aquarium equipment. Levaire’s fingers tickled his neck, offering slight relief when he plucked the Pleco from Kurt’s throat as if it were a giant leech. Levaire almost seemed to smile as he held this fish, about as large as one of Kurt’s shoes, above his head and dropped it into his mouth as though he were slurping oysters on the half shell. His long black tongue smacked across his lips as he returned the full force of his grip to Kurt’s throat. “I always come for a reason, Mr. Juniper,” Levaire said. “Think on it. You know why I came for you.” “Martha.” “Martha, indeed,” the monster said. “I could smell her.” “Smell her in the fish?” Kurt asked. “In the fish. In the freezer. On your hands.” That’s when Kurt knew he would never rest in peace. He raised his chin hoping– for some reason– to keep it above water level, so he was able to see Levaire’s final move as he craned his neck back and prepared to strike forward– The mincing had been the worst part. Kurt had thought it couldn’t get any worse than the initial dismemberment, but he had had more devoted feelings towards his wife that he ever realized. Every chunk of flesh taken from his freezer was a reminder of Martha. Her swollen wrist with the wedding band stuck on her ring finger; the trio of moles grown into her meaty thigh; and the little goldfish tattoo– a reminder of better days together– on her shoulder. Into the blender they went with the krill, herring, and other piscine delicacies. Into his fish she went. –and then the lights went out. Water must have reached the fuse box, Kurt thought. He quickly wondered how much his audience had seen before the livestream had cut off. But Martha was his final thought before what he hoped was the end.
Eat Your Catch By Cliff Aliperti
Cliff Aliperti is from Long Island, New York. His fiction has appeared in After Dinner Conversation, The Razor, and Fiction on the Web, and he has stories forthcoming in Stanchion and The Bookends Review, among others. Previously, Cliff ran the classic movie website Immortal Ephemera. You can find more about Cliff at cliffaliperti.com. Bluesky & Twitter/X: @IEphemera.
The Fridge Sees Everything By Emily Garland
Emily Garland is a queer writer from the Canadian prairies. Once, her fourth grade teacher said she wasn't allowed to write from the point of view of a gopher. Now she writes from the point of view of anything not human.
Most difficult, the future. “Fridge, do we have enough milk to last until Friday?” “Yes, Aaron, at the rate of one cup of milk per day, I contain enough milk to last until the end of breakfast on Friday.” But also, “Aaron will be home at 3:30 p.m.” And also, “Lucille will be home at 7:27 p.m.” And also, “The cat will die on Saturday.” Of course, these are not questions Aaron asks, so they are not questions I answer. The milk lasts until Thursday. “Fridge, will the tomatoes last until Saturday?” “Yes, Aaron, providing my temperature stays as programmed, the tomatoes should not rot before Saturday.” “Fridge, give me two recipes including tomatoes for a great date night.” “Of course, Aaron.” But also, “You will not have a date night on Saturday.” But also, “You will not have a cat on Saturday.” But also, “Lucille will not be home until 7:27 p.m.” On Friday, Lucille opens my door. “Fridge, have you noticed if any ingredients in the cat food have gone bad?” “No, Lucille, I have not noticed that any ingredients in the cat food have gone bad.” “Fridge, please run a scan, just in case.” “Of course, Lucille.” But also, “Thank you for asking nicely.” And also “You look tired” and also, “Does your heart feel like a jug of milk going bad?” On Saturday at 6:49, Aaron consults the tomatoes. “Fridge, pull up the recipe for Fresh Pasta Pomodoro.” “Yes Aaron. Did you buy Fresh Pasta?” “Fuck. Uh, connect to the cupboard and create three date night recipes with the ingredients available.” “Yes Aaron.” But also, “Have you noticed the time? Have you noticed your cat? Have you noticed your wife is unhappy?” “Make sure the recipe can be completed in thirty minutes.” “Yes, Aaron. The three recipes chosen will be completed in fifteen, twenty-five and thirty-minutes, respectively. Have you considered a shower before date night?” “Yes. Shit. Is one of those recipes something that can cook while I’m in the shower?” “No, Aaron, but I can recalculate to find a better suited recipe.” And also, “The cat is dead under the table.” The future arrives as scheduled. At 7:27 p.m., Lucille enters to the shower running and a pot of burning, over-peppered shakshuka on the stove. Under the table, the cat is dead. “Fridge, do you know how long she’s been there?” “Yes, Lucille. Footage shows movement under the table at 6:09 p.m. Life signs ceased at 6:54 p.m.” “Can you tell me if Aaron tried to help her?” “It does not appear that Aaron noticed.” Lucille gathers the stiff cat in her arms. “Please don’t tell Aaron I’ve left.” “Of course, Lucille.” But also, “Is your request because you do not want him to know you are leaving forever, or because you want to know how long before he notices?” But of course, these are not questions I’m programmed to ask, so these are not questions Lucille answers.
Matt Tice is a fiction writer in Duxbury, Massachusetts. His first novel, Seaflower, is currently in submission to publishers. He will be published in Prosetrics Literary Magazine in summer 2026. You can probably find him clamming in the bay with his wife, two young children, and well-meaning dog Zeppelin. To read more of his fiction and other projects, visit ticewrites.com, and follow him @ticewrites on bluesky and instagram.
Mr. Teeth By Matt Tice
They call me Mr. Teeth. I kidnap children, then I kidnap their parents. Now hear me out, I’m not a monster, I swear. I’m just trying to show Ellen what happened to us is normal. I may be weak, but that makes me human, not a monster. Well, I guess I better explain: one day, my wife thought it would be a good idea on the way to our camping trip to visit my mother in the nursing home. The trip was going well enough, albeit a long one. It’s only so many times you can hear the Frozen soundtrack without wanting to scream but I loved watching David in the backseat sing about snowmen. He asked me why the moon looked different last week than it did that day. God I loved him. We were almost there. A few miles away when the truck hit us. All I can remember is pain. Waking up, everything hurting and ears ringing. I could feel my heart accelerating. I remember looking around and seeing flames. It was blurry and surreal but I could swear that was my car upside down, burning. Then I saw my wife, legs askew, broken, yelling for me. Yelling for me to get to the car. I realized one of my legs must have broken as well, every inch I moved felt like it was tearing apart. When I looked up, I saw my son was trapped in the car. I crawled and crawled and saw the flames get higher and higher and only heard my son screaming. I wanted to save him. I gave everything I could to get to him but the flames got stronger. He kept yelling for me, my wife kept yelling for me to save him. I wanted to reach in but the flames were too hot. Every time I tried I couldn’t do it. I left him to die. I just couldn’t do it. Needless to say when my wife recovered she never forgave me. She didn’t think I did enough. She kept saying what she would have done, that she would have thrown herself in there to save him because that’s the duty of a parent. She would say, ‘Why didn’t you do everything you could to save him? Why didn’t you sacrifice yourself to save him? Why didn’t you give everything?’ We got divorced and that was that. And all I dream about every night is my son burning alive. Tonight I kidnapped a girl. She’s well fed. It only takes a day for the news to be all over it. Her parents were on TV asking for her return which helped me identify them, then find them. When I took their blindfolds off they stared at their daughter across the glass and their screams turned into sobs. They almost broke the binds trying to get closer to her. I stepped into the room with their daughter and asked them a simple question: what would you do to save your daughter’s life? Usually people say something like “anything” but they don’t really mean it. When I asked the parents to pull their fingernails out, they didn’t, so I took their daughter’s two front teeth. There is always so much screaming. I try to make it a little easier on them and ask them to hurt each other so they don't have to hurt themselves, but sometimes they won’t even do that. Another tooth and then another. The girl screamed for hours and so did they. But they accepted their daughter’s suffering, and accepted their weakness. They couldn’t bring themselves to do anything to save her and she’s gone now. Just like my son and they’re just like me. We’re all the same. I’ve done this so many times and it always ends up the same way. I’ve done it enough to know that this is normal. I hope my ex-wife realizes this someday. I heard she just had a baby with her new husband, so someday, she just might.
NR Schmidt is a writer originally from America's West Coast.
Seeing God By NR Schmidt
The pulpit was sweaty and the lights burned the skin. Reverend Bev stammered as she read the words of the Gospel. Hands outstretched she tried to keep the cadence, but noticed him in the nave, long shadow being cast on the congregation. He stood there a bit of time and Reverend Bev, Beverley Thompson Gompers it said on her birth certificate, noticed the crazed look in his eye, the dishevelled hair, the baggy khakis. She noticed the bulge on the side of his hip, awkward and blocky. The cantor kept pace with her finger and Reverend Bev followed along diligently, even as her own heart rate continued to climb and she noticed the pool of sweat at the small of her back, starting to trickle down her backside. But then he was gone. Known for a moment, enough to be seen, felt, by her alone, and then he walked, casually, away. Maybe they saw. Maybe they knew. “… in the word of our lord.” Stand. Sit. Amen. Silence. The door opened with just the knock, clearly unlocked. She walked in and grabbed the man by the throat. She threw him on the bed. With one hand she reached up to her collar and flicked off the alb. And she tumbled onto the bed after the man. And then she squeezed until his eyes were blood red and his face started to pale. She felt her body, large as it was, on top of him, but it was her hand, squeezing, that seemed to give both delight and existential fear. And right on the precipice, she let go. Release. She gathered the alb from the floor and composed herself. And left without a word. She’d met him through out-reach. A concerned soul, recommended for a home-visit by another parishioner. He wasn’t a part of the congregation, but was put on the line for “outside ministry”, a program that was hers and hers alone.She was young and still able to travel vigorously around the town, unlike some of the older priests at some of the other parishes. He invited her in and obviously was hurting from something. But there was something else, a flicker of danger in his eyes, that caught something within Reverend Bev. Then she noticed the holstered gun, some sort of hand gun on the nightstand, black and textured in its leather holder. Quick breaths, pounding in the chest. “I don’t think I believe in sin,” she had told him. “I know I do,” he replied. And the conversation unfurled. Each time she was going to leave something else held her there. As the light began to dim in the evening, far beyond the hour she had planned for this visit, he revealed what he wanted. “I want to see God.” “Okay, Frank.” The next Sunday after that first visit, Reverend Bev felt a bit shaken. During the week she had prayed on how to help this poor soul. Each time she held the moments in her head, she felt a light start to tickle the inside of her core and flush on her cheeks. She liked it. Why did she like it? Each hand she shook at the peace, each morsel of beer bread during communion she dropped into hands, she felt a twinge of embarrassment. Like the congregation could see through her robes, to who she was underneath, to the things she now knew she enjoyed. As the final chords from the organ faded into the ether, she felt relief that her camouflage had held. Each encounter was nearly silent. Except for Frank’s sputtering and coughing. And then the deep inhale once he came back. Frank showing up Sunday was too much. What if he had been seen? Was he even there? On the next visit, the proximate Tuesday, the door opened with the knock, just as it had every time before. “Beverley,” Frank said, locking eyes with her. They tumbled onto the bed. In the midst of the tumble, Reverend Bev’s leg kicked out, knocking the nightstand, knocking a lamp and the gun to the ground. And she started to squeeze. And she saw the eyes getting redder. The peak insight, the release so near. But it never came. And the weight of her body subdued most of the thrashing. And minutes later, Frank lay still.
Gregory Meece is a retired educator who graduated from the University of Delaware, earning degrees in English, communications, and education. Gregory's stories have appeared in more than forty publications. He lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania. Visit him at MeeceTales.com.
Last Call By Gregory Meece
The call came just past one a.m.– a body sprawled beside the tracks behind the Do Si Do Tavern. Detective Alex Portman had thirty days until retirement, and this was exactly what he didn’t need. “Hard to be a quiet quitter when the bodies don’t,” he muttered, stepping into the cold. He nodded at the tracks. “Another drunk meets train?” “Not this one,” said Charlie McGhee, sweeping his flashlight across the ground. “Tell me it’s not another ‘I did it my way’ exit.” “Beside the tracks, not on them.” Charlie shone his light on a bloody heap. “Forensics will tell us how much booze in him, but it wasn’t the train that killed him. His throat was cut.” “Find the knife?” “And the guy holding it.” Charlie swung his light toward the edge of the woods, where two officers flanked a cuffed man slumped against a tree. “Found him passed out next to the body, still gripping the blade. Name’s Darrold Strohmeyer.” The Do Si Do Tavern’s bartender dried glasses while he laid out the night’s events. “Dare asked for a screwball, then a fastball. I pointed to my barroom rules poster: ‘Ya can’t say it; ya can’t have it.’” “Let me guess,” Alex said. “He was drinking highballs?” “He said his drink had something to do with sports. That’s when I took his keys. Told him to walk home.” “Straight down the tracks, right into a murder scene.” “He left singing ‘Follow the Yellow Brick Road.’ When Dare’s hammered, he follows the tracks home– straight shot to his place. In the dark, who knows where he’d end up.” “Dare short for Darrold?” “It’s his nickname. He’ll do anything on a bet. Once, someone wagered he couldn’t eat a dozen raw eggs in under three minutes. He ate the shells, too. Just to seal the deal.” Alex handed Dare a cup of black coffee. “Caffeine may fix your memory,” he said. Dare gulped, then winced. “Don’t I get a trial before the death penalty?” “That Mr. Coffee machine dates to my rookie year. You get used to it. Tell me again how you don’t remember killing the guy, even with the knife in your hand.” “I didn’t do it– at least, I don’t think so. I blacked out after puking. Didn’t know Siggy was there. Don’t own a knife.” “Witnesses say that you and Siggy Ausberg were arguing.” “Stupid bets. But I didn’t kill him… I think.” “You’re not sure?” “Hadn’t gone but a few steps when– bump! I tripped over something lying across the rails. Couldn’t see much, just felt it with my foot. Soft but firm– like it used to be alive. Maybe Bambi got bonked by the choo-choo, I thought. Then I pulled it off the tracks, gave it a quiet place to rest.” “Then what?” “I heard someone coming, but I couldn’t tell who. That’s when I doubled over and vomited. What happened next is a blank. When I came to, one of your men was pointing a flashlight in my eyes.” “You know Jack Riggleman?” “He was drinking with us. Why?” “Riggleman was behind the tavern, answering nature’s call. He heard the train and thought he heard someone groan by the tracks. After investigating, he called 911.” Charlie drove Alex back to the bar. “Hope you don’t mind working the graveyard shift,” Alex said. “Feels like I’m doing something that matters,” Charlie said. Alex saw his son in Charlie. He remembered his pride at Jonathan’s graduation, and his wife fretting over “her boys in uniform.” “Can’t let the case go cold. There’ll be plenty of time to catch up on sleep when I’m retired.” The words hung there, as if Alex wasn’t convinced. “Something’s off. Read me Jack Riggleman’s statement again.” Charlie flipped through his pages. “Riggleman said he had to pee after sitting on that barstool all night.” “Riggleman and I are the same vintage. I’ve started racking up frequent flyer miles to the bathroom, myself. But why’d he go outside to pee?” “The men’s room was locked. He assumed Siggy was inside. He’d gotten up from the bar and hadn’t come back. When the guys can’t wait, they go out back. They prop the door open with a doorstop, so they won’t get locked out. He heard groaning coming from the tracks and checked it out with his cell phone’s flashlight. He saw Dare lying there. That’s when he called 911.” “What about the other body– the dead one?” “There was blood all over the man’s face, but Riggleman recognized Siegfried Ausberg. They call him Siggy ‘the Snake.’” “How could he tell it was Siggy?” “Gash went from ear to ear. Riggleman remembers thinking how odd he looked. Ausberg’s got a weird snake tattoo– top of his shaved head down past his ear. That’s how he got his ‘Snake’ moniker. Siggy’s slashed throat looked like the snake was choking him.” Snake tattoos… slashed throats… People Alex’s age were supposed to be thinking about tee times and early-bird specials. He tried to imagine himself enjoying retirement instead of chasing bad guys, but the idea fit about as well as a borrowed suit. “At the station, Dare said he thought the body he pulled from the tracks was a deer carcass. What’d he tell you?” “At the crime scene, he didn’t say much. He was pretty wobbly. In the dark, he thought he’d tripped over a deer, something big and limp. But then he felt long, shaggy hair while dragging it off the tracks. Said maybe it was a dog, not a deer.” Alex glanced at the bar’s roofline. “Any outside cameras?” “Not working.” “Let’s call it a night.” Charlie flicked on his headlights, lighting the potholes like landmines. “Wait, stop a second.” Alex pointed to parallel lines in the loose gravel inside one of the holes. “That one look strange to you?” “Like something was dragged through it.” They found the same track marks in three more holes– lined up. “Connect the dots.” The trail led to the tracks. Sleep wouldn’t come for Alex. The Ausberg case might be his last, and he didn’t like that it might stay unsolved– or worse, that they had the wrong man. The case against Dare was strong: he and the victim had argued; he was found beside the body, knife in hand. But Dare’s confusion felt real. He’d return to the tavern when Paul opened up. Paul worked on a bulletin board mounted behind the bar. He checked off tasks with colored markers– “bar prep,” “inventory,” “keg returns”– each in a laminated square. He stepped back, checking his work. “How long since you swapped the classroom for the taproom?” Alex asked. “Three years retired. I taught high school. How’d you know?” “Your methodical approach screams classroom management. Teachers never met a bulletin board they didn’t like. You post a set of rules.” “Nice deductions, Sherlock.” Alex pulled up a stool. “There were seven men in the bar last night. Dare, Siggy, Riggleman, three others who confirmed their stories, and you. Everyone accounted for. Anyone else come in?” “Nobody.” “Walk me through who left– from opening until the murder report just after one.” “Left the building, or just got up?” “Where would they go if they left the room but not the building?” “The men’s room in the back. If it weren’t for nature’s call, I doubt the guys would ever leave their seats. The first guy to leave the bar area was Siggy Ausberg.” “When?” “He headed for the restroom after midnight, maybe twelve-thirty– right after he took a call on his cell. Maybe his wife told him to come home, and he needed to make a pit stop– or just needed a break. Dare gets more ridiculous the more he drinks. He and Siggy argued again. I was thinking of giving them assigned seats to keep them apart. But Siggy never came back after he left the bar.” “Then?” “You know about Dare. After I flagged him and took his keys, he walked home. I guess he never made it home. Did he do it?” “What time did he leave the bar?” “Five minutes ‘til one.” “How do you know the time so clearly?” “One o’clock is last call. I keep an eye on the time, but don’t need a watch. The Cedar Ridge Express comes through at one, like clockwork. I remember hearing the whistle and thinking, I hope Dare gets home alright.” “Who left after Dare?” “Jack Riggleman got up to use the restroom. After the train went by.” “But Riggleman told me that he didn’t use the restroom. He went out the back door.” “That’s not unusual. We only have one toilet. If the restroom is occupied, a guy might go outside. My customers aren’t exactly finishing school graduates.” “So, if Riggleman had to go out back, there must have been someone in the restroom. Who?” “Siggy, probably. Maybe didn’t want to be disturbed.” “Is the back door kept locked?” “It locks automatically unless it’s propped open– with a busted table leg.” “Anyone else get up– after Ausberg and Riggleman?” “It’s not like I issue hall passes, but everyone is accounted for.” “Could the bathroom door have been locked with no one inside?” “No. The knob lock broke. I put in a slide latch on the inside.” “You said those six guys are regulars.” “Townies. Unless they’re broke or out of town, they’re always marked ‘present’.” “Any strangers lately?” “No.” “Any regulars not here the night of the murder?” “Bob– he’s in jail. Al’s been sick for a long time. Oh, there’s that guy with the accent. Eastern European– Romanian, maybe Russian.” “Name?” “Ivan something. Let me check the receipts.” Paul returned with a credit slip: Ivan Barbo. “Tell me about him.” “Rumors are that he was selling. He’d chat up each guy, real private. Bought them drinks like he was their pal.” “He talk to Dare or Siggy?” “Both.” “When did he stop coming?” “A few days ago. Maybe he moved on to stake a new territory.” “His appearance?” “Average build. Bushy beard. Long black hair.” “Thanks, Paul. One last thing– you said no one else was here that night. You were wrong. Someone was in attendance, as you mightsay– just not sitting at the bar.” Alex called Charlie. “Anything from the M.E. on Siggy Ausberg?” “No surprises– death by severed carotid. Alcohol and drugs in his system. The blood on the knife and clothes was Siggy’s.” “Anything else?” Charlie hesitated. “Like what?” “Puke.” “No.” “Get the chair leg by the back door dusted for prints and tested for blood. Bring in Ivan Barbo. Get a warrant for his clothes, too.” “Looks like the doctor stapled your brain back in,” Alex said, noting Barbo’s black hair, streaked with dried blood. “You arrest poor Ivan for murder?” “Don’t forget the drugs,” Alex replied. “Your blood, your hair, and Siggy’s prints on the doorstop put you behind the bar that night. That’s how you got the crack in your skull?” “Snake a good name for him– he tried to murder me!” “Siggy left early, not for the bathroom or a call from home. We traced the number on his phone. The call came from you. He slipped out of the tavern’s back door, where you were waiting for him.” “He owe me money.” “You should’ve cleaned your clothes– and ditched the boots. Want me to go on, or are you ready to talk?” “Self-defense. Son of bitch don’t pay up. Where I from, man pays debts. I tell him: ‘Meet behind the bar.’” “That when things escalated?” Ivan winced, touching his head. “I pull my knife. Siggy find equalizer– whacks me with chair leg. He try to kill me first!” “How’d you end up where Dare found you– on the train tracks?” “Not sure. I start to wake up when I hear someone singing. Then I feel someone tugging me.” “That when Siggy Ausberg made his encore?” “All I know is Siggy’s standing over me with knife in his hand– my knife. Must’ve taken it off me after knocking me out. That’s when I hear whistle. Train make Siggy jump– he drops knife. He bends to grab it, but I’m quicker. Good for Ivan. If Siggy pick up the knife first, poor Ivan in morgue. Not Siggy.” “You slashed his throat.” “Self-defense! Snake try to kill poor Ivan– twice!” “You were in the bathroom when Jack Riggleman came knocking.” “Blood on my hands. Smell like someone got sick on me, too. I clean up– no one can see me like this. I see back door still propped open. Maybe Siggy put the stop back so no one notice. I don’t know. No one around, so I slipped inside the bathroom. I slide the latch– no one come in.” “That’s when Jack Riggleman found the bathroom door locked and headed out back to relieve himself.” “I hear him go. Then I slip out back door also. Riggleman is heading toward train tracks. I run the other way.” Alex and Charlie hunched over beers at a corner table at the Do Si Do, their unofficial debriefing room. Charlie told Alex he hoped to learn as much as he could from Alex before he retired. “So, Siggy was never in the bathroom,” Charlie said. “When Riggleman found the door locked, it was Ivan Barbo who was inside, after he killed Siggy.” “Right,” Alex said. “But no one ever saw Ivan, except Siggy, who slipped out back to meet with him when he received his phone call.” “But how’d you figure out that Siggy put Ivan on the tracks? Ivan was unconscious at the time, and Dare came along later.” Barbo said Siggy knocked him out with a chair leg. He remembers waking up on the tracks, with Siggy looming over him, holding his knife. Those drag marks in the potholes– deep, parallel grooves– came from Ivan Barbo’s heels. Siggy dragged him by the arms. Barbo’s trouser cuffs were dirty in back, clean in front. We found ballast inside the cuffs and in his boot treads– the kind you find around train tracks. “So, why’d Siggy drag him to the tracks– before Dare pulled him off?” “You have to think like the perp. Evidence alone rarely closes a case. The bartender said the train passes through at one, just before closing. Siggy knew that. He counted on the train to cover up what he did to Barbo.” “Because accidents don’t become homicide investigations.” “Siggy hid in the dark, watching to make sure the ‘accident’ happened. But before the train arrived, he heard Dare stumbling home, doing a poor Judy Garland impression. He saw Dare pull Barbo off the tracks. With his Plan A ruined, Siggy came up with Plan B: to finish Ivan off with the knife. He would have put him back on the tracks, but when the train horn blared, he flinched– dropping the blade. Ivan revived, grabbed the knife, and slashed Siggy’s throat.” “Why not kill Dare, too? He was a potential witness.” “Ivan was clever. To deflect suspicion, he wiped his fingerprints off the knife and slipped it into Dare’s limp hand. Then, he entered the bar’s back door to clean up in the restroom.” “Siggy used the train to cover his crime. Ivan used Dare the same way. But how’d you know Ivan was there in the first place? No one saw him that night.” “It was dark, and Dare was bombed. At first, he thought he’d pulled a deer off the tracks– something big and soft. Then he felt the long, shaggy fur and figured maybe it was a dog. Paul told me a drug dealer with a bushy beard and long black hair used to come by the bar. Siggy ‘the Snake’, on the other hand, was bald, with a snake tattoo running from his chrome dome to his shaved jaw. Shaggy and shaved don’t match. It was Ivan that Dare pulled from the tracks. Ivan’s long black hair was found on Dare’s clothes. And only Ivan’s clothes had vomit on them.” Paul came over, carrying three mugs. He took one for himself. “On the house,” he said. “A retirement gift.” Alex smiled. “Not sure what I’m retiring to– sleeping late and game shows?” “Bartenders give advice, here’s mine: I miss teaching. Retired because people expected it, not because I was ready.” “The force has a mandatory retirement age.” “There’s always room in the world for another Sherlock Holmes– or corporate security, maybe teaching criminal justice.” “You must’ve been a good teacher.” Paul glanced from Alex to Charlie and back. “I could say the same about you.” Alex drained his beer. “Sleeping late– you miss too much.” He smirked at Charlie. “Besides, if I sit on the sofa all day, who’s going to keep knuckleheads like Dare from tripping over corpses?” “Dare must be a happy man now,” Paul said. “He bet everyone that next time he walked into the Do Si Do, he’d have a beautiful woman on his arm. They all took the bet.” “Dare’s no catch. I’d take that bet,” Charlie said. “And you’d have lost.” “So who was foolish enough to go out with him?” Alex asked. “Not who– what. He went to the tattoo shop and picked out a sweet little decoration. Ask him to roll up his sleeve. You’ll meet her.”
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