The stars are not as still as they seem,
They pulse and flicker with silent screams.
The night is stitched with unseen eyes,
Glimpses of truths the daylight denies.

A thousand aeons drift like dust,
On cosmic winds of fate unjust.
Planets crumble, gods decay,
Yet something watches far away.

Not bound by flesh, nor locked in time,
It shifts through thought, it warps the mind.
A whisper crawls behind the veil,
A nameless hunger, vast and pale.

What hand first lit the burning sun?
Who carved the orbits one by one?
What madness guides the cosmic tide,
Where all is swallowed, none abide?

The moon is cold, its face untrue,
A mask that cracks to let it through.
Beneath the surface, something stirs,
A shadow writhing, void concurs.

We call it fate, we name it space,
Yet know not what awaits its gaze.
A shrouded maw, a sight unseen,
A beast that dreams beyond the dream.

It whispers secrets, slow and deep,
In riddles carved through time’s asleep.
The past unmade, the future lies,
All things dissolve in hollow skies.

So gaze upon the stars with dread,
For they are tombstones for the dead.
Not gods, not hope, not cosmic grace--
But open mouths in endless space.

And when the silence grips your throat,
When reason drowns, when meaning chokes,
You’ll know the truth the void imparts:
We are but echoes of the dark. 

Emmanuel Komen is an African contemporary poet, philosopher, and thinker based in Nairobi, Kenya. His works explore themes of identity, nature, and the human experience. A passionate motorsport enthusiast, Emmanuel is an avid fan of the safari rally and proudly supports Team Toyota GR.

​

There once was a room where nothing happened.
The floor was covered in plush rugs blanketing the oiled hardwood and the walls held books in a sequence meant to mimic order. Where sounds were absorbed by the thickness of heavy tomes and textiles while the low rumble of distant shrieks approached like thunder, causing the grain of the wood to tremble.
And the key turned in the lock as the handle shook.
 
There once was a room where nothing happened.
The air was warm from the sunlight that dripped through tall windows. Where dust rippled in the light, unsettled by nothing, and landed softly on a potted plant. Shadows shifted over the leaves as tentacles, slick with wet, slid over the window panes while suckers pock pocked their way up the glass, slapping and squelching to blot out the drenching light. And amidst the writhing bodies, a balmy eyelid opened to find the belted curtains suddenly drawn.
 
There once was a room where nothing happened.
Where the softness of a pillow cries for you to come closer, lay your head, and trust the closing of your eyes. Their treaties matched in tone and pitch by the whispering beatific voice that wends through the vent on the floor, sighing in reminiscence of hopelessness and defeat. The murmurs of “why didn’t you?” and “shouldn’t you have?” are sliced by the sliding of the grate into place.
 
There once was a room where nothing happened.
Where the door was bolted and curtains drawn, where sunlight never stretched and sound never echoed. Where all was silent save for the gentle whisper of death slipping love notes under the door.

​Shavauna Munster is a writer and historian living in Salt Lake City. She enjoys weaving the history of medieval physical punishment, medicine, and salvation with her love of creative writing. When she's not working with local history organizations or meeting with her horror writing group, she can be found crocheting with her cats.

When we released the cloud of BumbleBears, everyone cheered. Naysayers and optimists united in delighted wonder, beholding our lab-made magic.

In truth, as we watched them fly free, we didn’t care about saving the planet through scientific hybridization and DNA manipulation. We only wanted to recreate the picture hanging in our childhood bedroom; the one over the dresser the color of old butter our mother bought third-hand.

The picture: a black-and-yellow striped bear, bumblebee wings holding her, impossibly, aloft.
And when those naysayers said (as naysayers always do) that it was impossible. That bumblebees (extinct 2175 CE) and bears (extinct 2273 CE) could not be combined, could not fly. We told them that we had harnessed the energy of our searing, unrelenting sun more efficiently than ever before. That a nickel-phosphorus skeleton was lighter than those of the few-remaining birds. We told them that through science and machinery, through the integration of AI-powered neural systems with muscle and chitin, we had created a cyborg that could endure this inhospitable, heat-ravaged world.

We held out our hands, and BumbleBears alighted on our fingers, nuzzling our lesion-riddled skin. The others copied us; naysayers, optimists, dirt-faced children, and bedraggled officials offering what remained of their skin to our creation’s caresses.

And if the nuzzling turned to biting, if screams soon drowned out cheers as surely as the hungry, rising oceans had swallowed half the known world, what of it?

We had removed the bumblebees’ stingers, but not the bears’ sharp teeth. We gave them wings and made them small, but we didn’t excise their craving for flesh.

And if each bite envenomated, if silence drowned out screams as paralysis seized central nervous systems—well. In the end, all creatures must feast to survive.

We think humanity has ground enough species to dust beneath the merciless boots of progress. And we think the BumbleBears’ lovely, soft fur, their sad, dark eyes, their sheer impossibility given wings—their lab-made magic—is worth the cost.
​
After all, isn’t the price of magic always blood?

Life becomes death becomes life.

I believe.

Life is unending if we choose to make it so. If we believe and understand.

We discard the old. A waste.

We must ingest the old, become the new. We must seek renewal, be reborn in your image.

Ouroboros watch over me.

My body is not what makes me. My soul is pure and my will is strong. I can change. I will change.

#

Yesterday I lay in the sun for an hour. Naked, no shade, no clouds.

Samantha would have scolded me for my foolishness. But she left. She didn’t understand me before and she wouldn’t understand me now.

My skin is pink, and it stings when I move. I wish for the itching to begin, for my skin to peel. Oh, Ouroboros, remake me.

#

Two more nights of aches and itching have passed. The first layer of skin is dead, loose, free. I rub across it, making tiny rolls of skin. I pull at the patches on my arms and legs, my chest and face. They come away in bigger and bigger pieces.

I peel off the old and do what I must to become new.

It tastes of nothing when I place it on my tongue. Some larger pieces have hints of salt. When I swallow there’s an aftertaste of sweetness.

There’s much more to eat. I can’t let any of it go to waste.

Samantha would have thought me disgusting. Maybe a part of her always did. Is that why she always yelled at me? Is that why she left?

It’s her loss. For I will become something better.

In your image.

#

The first layer is gone, but there are many more. The sun burns stronger, my skin reddens more easily. And it peels. It sheds.

I consume it all. I lick my wounds where I begin to blister and bleed. Nothing is wasted.
She thought I would never amount to anything. She thought I didn’t have it in me to change.
I’ll show her.

Samantha will see me when I am reborn.

#

Ouroboros watches over me.

My skin turns hard; scabs become scales. Old becomes new. In your image.

My fingers and toes ache. They thicken, swelling around the nails. The skin splits and bleeds. A nail clatters to the floor. My clumsy fingers can’t pick it up, so I lick it off the ground.

It’s hard. Can’t be chewed. So I swallow it whole. The other nails will fall off soon.
Why wait?

I lift my swollen fingers to my lips and pluck the nails from each with my teeth. Then do the same with my toes.

In with the old. To become the new.

#

My thighs fused overnight. I can no longer walk. I get used to crawling, to eating my shed skin off the floor. Every day I eat, every day I transform.

If Samantha could see me now. Behold me as I was meant to be.

Would she change her mind? Take me back?

Or would she run away screaming, cursing me? Would she hit me again?

It doesn’t matter. Soon I will be something new. I won’t need her anymore. I will be better.

In your image.

#

My teeth wobble and crack. They tumble from my bleeding gums. I don’t let them get far.
Some scrape against my throat as I swallow. Others go down easy.

My forked tongue flicks to the roof of my mouth to dislodge the rest. I can feel new fangs growing in.

#

My arms are one with my torso. My legs, my feet, and my toes are gone. Only a tail remains. My old skin has split down the middle. So much dead skin.

I twist and turn. I slither across the floor out of my old self.

My jaw opens wide. Wider. In with the old. What I was, is no more. I am new. Reborn.

In your image.

#

I no longer need you Samantha. I am better now. I am pure.

My new form slithers through your open window.

My transformation has taught me many things. Most important of all, I was not the problem. I was not bad. Unworthy. Worthless.

Weak, maybe.

But I am strong now.

You're unaware of me as I circle your bed. You only begin to stir when I wrap myself around you. Too late.

I cut off your scream with the thick scales of my tail coiling around your mouth and neck.
I watch the terror in your eyes.

Oh, Samantha. Ouroboros has granted me not only rebirth, but wisdom as well.

You were the problem. You were unhappy and you chose to blame me. I didn’t deserve that.

All this time you should have looked upon yourself. That is the only way to better your life. To change.

Well, there is one other way to change.

My fangs flash in the moonlight and my jaw opens wide.

In with the old. Become the new.
​
In your image.

This story was first published in Welcome to Your Body: Lessons in Evisceration published by Salt Heart Press in 2024.

​Is this the life you longed for?
Your house is in shambles—lonely and forlorn;
your tale a macabre one, a sea of lingering emptiness.
A musty smell wanders behind the creaking door--
imposing but not welcoming, the lock enforced
to keep away the trespassers;
guarded by Hecate, Cerberus, and flesh-eating hounds,
spraying poisonous slobber, plugging minds with slumber.
Food littered on the several decade-old dusty floors,
dotted with clothes, toys, books, and innumerable plastic bags.
Cobwebs scattered everywhere like an estranged mind.
Murmurs heard from the caverns of ones long gone.
You serve as a vassal with skeletons of those
who have crossed the worldly line,
found camaraderie with the long-hushed walls.
On your bed is nestled a clothed corpse of your lover,
covered with a blanket to ward off
the cold that no longer affects her.
At the foot of your bed lies
a heap of bones of the unknown.
Your burning eyes, sunken and cloudy,
have the intensity of a bolide--
expressionless, nonchalant like a funeral pyre.
Your thoughts wander around
the dirty dungeons of your shackled mind;
feelings pale, receded, frozen
like the polar ice, never to thaw again.
Your body is restless as if snakes are writhing along it.
You have consumed water from
the Lethe River of benightedness
to immerse yourself in a state of complete oblivion.
 
Is this the sleep you wished for?
To have exited like a poisoned rat,
blood foaming up at your nostrils, ears, and mouth;
body charred like the interiors of a coal mine;
as if you never existed, unheeded and unseen.
You lie now never to rise again,
never to feel the burgeoning pain
that spurted out within you like molten lava.
Your unvoiced scream is now one amongst
the whispers of the otherworld.

​Sreelekha Chatterjee is a poet from New Delhi, India. Her poems have appeared in Madras Courier, Setu, Verse-Virtual, The Wise Owl, Ghudsavar Literary Magazine, Porch Literary Magazine, Orenaug Mountain Poetry Journal, Poetry Catalog, Creative Flight, Pena Literary Magazine, Everscribe, and in the anthologies--Light & Dark (Bitterleaf Books, UK), Personal Freedom (Orenaug Mountain Publishing, USA), and Christmas-Winter Anthology Volume 4 (Black Bough Poetry, Wales, UK), among others.
​
Facebook: facebook.com/sreelekha.chatterjee.1/, X (formerly Twitter): @sreelekha001,Instagram @sreelekha2023, Bluesky: @sreelekha2024

​Lanson Wells is a librarian with the Cuyahoga County Public Library and the assistant editor of the Journal of the American Viola Society. He holds Bachelor and Master's degrees in music, a Master's degree in Library and Information Science, and a graduate certificate in online learning and teaching. He has had several musicology papers published and has self-published both a book of poetry and book of musicological research on KDP. He is a lifetime lover of horror movies and books and resides in Cleveland, Ohio with his wonderful wife and their beautiful Shetland Sheepdog.

​In the botanist’s garden
A leafy offshoot reaches, like a hand, suppliant
along the wrought iron table where he takes his tea
 
The botanist trails his calloused thumbs
along the folds of her frond.
Nicolle: a testament to his talents, a flash of ferocious fuchsia among the verdant
 
Every night he talks to her,
Every night he thinks
of her leaves uncurling
 
She bleeds bitter essences to make him itch;
builds barricades of barbed thorns.
But he’d put on his stained yellow gloves and
trim
her
back.
 
Nicolle had once been forged of femurs and freckles.
When they met, he envisioned unfurling his muscles into hers.
But she had shot him down, sheared his dreams, so
 
He infused a concoction of his raging rejection into a bouquet.
Nicolle arranged the anonymous blooms, not seeing how
Their chemicals coerced her cells to morph and contort.
 
He found her later,
Bones splintering into stalks
Wet eyes whorling into pristine petals.
 
Now he sits, sipping.
Watching Nicolle’s tendrils unwind toward him
like he had always hoped.
 
The botanist doesn’t see
the trail of insect bodies beneath her drooping leaf,
her toxic tainted shimmer turning toward his tea.

I.
We met when I rolled up to Best Buy,
My favorite part of “Silver Highway” by Lord of Synth was playing at 1:32
                                                  (on my iPhone)
 
Our eyes met in the evening sun.
You were darker
              than in your black and white pic on Scruff.
I loved that
        (my cactus fever.)
 
You said you wanted companionship--
I had no expectations.
 
We drove the valley, waiting for Big Daddy’s pizza,
talking of our Master’s degrees; science fiction lovers you and I.
                                         (Isaac Asimov, Kim Stanley Robinson)
 
You wanted chicken, and it was a pesto sauce
                              (not bad, pretty good)
You paid—our first date, even though you were a foreign visitor--
Colombia’s Bogotá runs in your veins, on the high top of
                                La dama de la montaña brillante
 
We talked and got to know each other.
You smiled—got up, initiated our first kiss.
I sat you on my lap and we explored our lips.
 
I caressed your small tight back, as you pressed your small body
against my big one.
 
The couch was an open friend, supportive to our new romance,
before the bed called us with anticipation.
 
I spent five days with you of seven.
You whispered sweet nothings in my ear.
How you loved the flush in my face when your lips met,
the grey whiskers in my beard,
and the strong hand on your hips.
 
II.
You were the first person to tell me you were HIV positive
after I penetrated you.
                                               
It was the evening of departure, Colombia willing you home.
The shock wave was instant through my body
as I parked before dinner.
 
You then continued you were Undetectable
Of course, I know that means Untransmitable;
The science says U=U.
 
I dated poz guys—slept with them too.
        All that was fine. YOU were fine.
                 But the trust was not mine.
 
Even though I forgot to ask in our mad rush
                            (something I rarely do)
It was you who should have evoked it.
 
I’m so happy you are responsible since the infection 4 years ago
 
You take care,
you take the daily meds,
you ensure you’re not the plague,
or have the “dirty blood”, the clean ignorants say.
 
We didn’t know each other really—acquaintances who had fun.
And you couldn’t tell me before I slung it.
How could I trust U?
 
To urgent care for PeP.
I wasn’t on PrEP
         (like I should have been,)
 
I was stuck four times—my slippery veins,
needled till purple and blue--
JUST IN CASE.
 
Blood consulted, even though the 72-hour window passed—I agreed.
 
III.
A foreign source,
I confronted you on Whatsapp,
and you told me the story.
Doctors. Dates. Testing—how could I tell you that I couldn’t trust you?
 
Yet, I got the fever,
the chills,
the sweats the night you left.
 
But you didn’t know the day before I got the flu shot.
Misery to my concerns:
Is it HIV, or flu viral reaction?
The burden of uncertainty was mine.
 
You are so far away, living your life high in the Andes--
on the southern continent.
Time slides by
as life glides in the North.
 
Tests resolved,
you fade into future days.
A memory loved--
tucked away.

​Daniel is a writer, editor, publisher, avant-garde artist. He holds an MA in English from Weber State University. A career librarian-archivist with an MLS, he is currently living in Salt Lake City, UT-continuing to write and make art.

Website: www.danielcureton.com

Maybe
She fell in love with darkness
And we were not to know.
Secrets sank in tufted hills marbled to the bone while
Carried off, they said. Be careful. Rapuit.
Another pretty girl who drifted, carried away by gods.
 
But maybe she met his sullen gaze
Moments before Mother slipped between--
Offended by his tragic liminal spaces.
Calling him fragrant, bitter, dull, she plied
Her daughter away.
 
But maybe she sensed what spooled from his touch
And her unexpressed contours were moved.
He--witness to women reframed, coerced, cut down--
Received them with grave and tender care,
And grew wiser, more spacious for each.
 
Maybe he listened and she drew closer,
Slipping between her own bars,
Leaving her paintbrush of spring pastels
For swathes of Eleusian gold, indigo pinwheels,
The dove-gray train of incense curls he offered.
 
And maybe she feasted—both at his table and
In his bed—-in ways Mother would never understand;
Ravenous, chaffed, red-lipped--she lied
About eating only six pomegranate seeds.
Laughing--alone--he awaited her return to color his sheets.
 
Maybe she outgrew the porcelain mask of Kore,
Choosing queen and friend--not mother--
To those crushed by living;
To those exhausted from defending themselves.
Wordless, a softened glance is her only admission
Of freedom that blooms in the dark.

​Bram Stoker Award® finalist, L. E. Daniels is an author/poet and the editor of over 140 titles. Lauren’s novel, Serpent’s Wake: A Tale for the Bitten (IP) is a Notable Work with the Horror Writers Association’s Mental Health Initiative. She edited Aiki Flinthart’s Relics, Wrecks and Ruins (CAT) with Geneve Flynn, winning the 2021 Aurealis Award. With Christa Carmen, Lauren edited the Aurealis finalist, We Are Providence (Weird House) and Monsters in the Mills (IP). Recent publications include “Silk” (Hush, Don’t Wake the Monster, Twisted Wing), "Darkness Repeats" (Monsters in the Mills, IP), and “Hangman’s Coming” (Where the Silent Ones Watch, Hippocampus). Her non-fiction, “Spooned by the Dead” appears in Out of Time: True Paranormal Encounters (Timber Ghost). Her poetry appears in This Way Lies Madness (Flame Tree), Cozy Cosmic and More Cozy Cosmic (Underland), and Under Her Eye and Mother Knows Best (Black Spot Books). Her poem, “Night Terrors” (HWA, Of Horror and Hope) was a 2022 Australasian Shadows Award finalist. She directs Brisbane Writers Workshop.
 
Links:
Website: https://www.brisbanewriters.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LEDanielsAuthor
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lauren_elise_daniels/
Bluesky: ledaniels.bsky.social
 

Bears eat their young sometimes, I tell myself, as my lips, my jaws, close around you. This is my excuse. My way of telling myself these thoughts I’m feeling, this act I am committing, are not exclusive to me. That it is not an atrocity, but a way of the natural world. I hold you in my arms, your back to my chest, and I lower my head, my tongue caressing your crown, my mouth widening, lips stretching over you, engulfing you, bringing you into me once again. You’re afraid, but you believe Mommy when she tells you it’s all going to be alright.

With bears, it’s different. It happens because the mother needs to ensure the survival of the species. A mother bear can make more baby bears, but a cub cannot survive without its mother. Although now that I think of it, I don’t know if that’s a fact or one of those things I’ve just heard. Bears eating their cubs. Like lightning never striking twice in the same spot.

I don’t think it matters, because its veracity cannot alter my path. I hold you tighter. My arms around your torso, holding your arms down. My legs around your waist. Holding you tight. Loving you. Showing you the love with the protection of my body as my mouth spreads over your head, and then your shoulders, as I feel my insides stretching against you. I don’t think I’ll be able to hold you at first, but that maternal instinct kicks in, gag reflex is stifled, higher brain pushed away. Like parents pushing cars off babies.

I’ve seen something like this before; parents play-biting their children’s toes, women nibbling on their spouses. You look so cute I could just eat you up. But what if you really could? What if you had to? What if it was the only choice you had as a desperate mother who wanted more than anything to keep her child safe?

Even though I didn’t realize it when it happened, I made this decision when I saw you fall. The first time I had ever seen my child injured. The tricycle in the middle of the street was a fire axe that hacked through my life. The blood on the concrete the clearest sign I’ve ever had; this world is not a safe place for a thing as precious as you. I brought you inside and I patched you up and I knew then, as you looked up at me with tears in your eyes that there was only one place safe for you. The only place you’d ever been truly safe.

So, I open my mouth.

You struggle against me for a moment, unsure of what’s going on. Just as you were unsure of what exactly what happened when you fell, when you smashed your face against the concrete. I tell you it’s okay, but not aloud, because my mouth is full of you. Your head is sliding past my uvula and I’m holding down my gag reflex because this, protecting my child, is the most important thing I’ve done or ever will do. I tell you in the way of wordless connections between mothers and children, and I know you hear it because you stop fighting. You know inside me is safe.

I can feel you sliding down my throat, expanding me, swelling me, and I’m filled with your heat and the warmth of knowledge that the warm, impenetrable wall of motherhood is protecting you from the cold unforgivingness of this world. I use my hands to fold you in, push you by the legs, the feet, down into my throat, feeling each bit of you pass through into different parts of me in a way that doesn’t make sense and yet makes all the sense in the world.

I swallow.
​
You are out of the world. Surrounded only by me. I looked down and see my belly swollen like a cartoon character after a Thanksgiving meal. Ballooned in a way that should not be possible, but then neither should have been my jaw unhinging. Neither should it be that you are safe in there, in Mommy’s belly, where you began. And yet you are. Where nothing will ever hurt you again.