The funeral parlor smells of potpourri and faux beauty. There's itchy chairs with floral upholstery that almost match the wallpaper and green carpet. The body of Our Father lays in a cherry wood casket at the front of the main room. We're all wearing our ceremonial cloaks to honor Him who left before His time. Brother Coleford stands by the casket with a lit candelabra, whispering and begging Him to give us words of wisdom from beyond the grave. Brother James asks the funeral manager if he could step outside and give us a few minutes alone with the one we lost. The manager is hesitant at first. I can tell by the way he studies Brother James’ face, but he agrees to give us a little time. A little time is all we need. Brother James and I walk him out. I prop one of the chairs under the handle of the door and turn the deadbolt while Brother James shades the windows with the blinds and chintzy curtains. Some of the other Brothers pull jars of sacramental oil from their cloaks, and we all circle around the casket to hear the final words Brother Coleford has to say about the Great Man Himself. Without Him, we Brothers are lost. Without His leadership, the meaning of life, our existence, and who we are is dismantled. He was great for His ideals. Great for everything He did for us, for mankind. He left before His time, so not many in this terrible world heard the pure words or message He tried to spread. Not many followed Him. But those of us who did, we know the truth. We believe His message. We know what it will take to cleanse the world of its disease. We’re ready to begin. The funeral manager must’ve changed his mind about letting us be here alone. He tries the door, and when he finds it won’t open, he starts beating on it, his shouting muffled by the thick oak doors. We ignore the distraction. Brother Coleford reads a passage from Our Father’s own diary. A message about the Great Cleansing of the world. About peace. We bow our heads while we listen and repeat The Cantos as a group. The wicks in Brother Coleford’s candles are diminishing. We’re almost out of time. The Brothers with sacramental oil pass the jars around the circle. We each take turns spreading some of the oil on our cloaks. It’s putrid but potent. It won’t take much for the flames to lick and take. We douse the ugly carpet around us, the casket, and Our Father Himself. We loved this man. We loved His wisdom, His teachings. And we know that death will have no hold on us. We know we will rise again, stronger. Equipped to cleanse the world of its souls. To be the hand of damnation to unite the living with the dead. We are Brothers of the Sacred Order. And so we have no fear when Brother Coleford starts the flames to our cloaks. We will return. Eric Fomley’s work has appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Galaxy’s Edge, and Inferno! Volume 6: Tales from the Worlds of Warhammer. You can read more of his stories on his website ericfomley.com, follow him on Twitter @PrinceGrimdark, or support him on patreon.com/Fomley. Jo had been suffering from a dull ache behind her left eye most of the day, but driving home from work had made it considerably worse. Every sound seemed to be magnified to an excruciating level, whether it be road works or car horns or police sirens. Everything caused pain. Twice she pulled over because of the gnawing she felt in her brain, and the journey wasn't more than fifteen minutes. By the time she parked the car outside of her home, the dull ache had become a full-on pounding, as though war drums were being played inside her skull. She sat in the car, eyes closed with her head on the steering wheel, and breathed trying to black out the outside world. No avail. That night brought no rest, no solace. Jo had taken a handful of painkillers and placed a damp cloth over her eyes, and laid down in a totally dark room. If anything, the lack of distraction just made the pain worse as it was all she could focus on. Sitting up, she told herself that she was going to the doctor first thing in the morning and get this sorted out, whatever it was. Naturally, Jo thought of the absolute worst, that it might be a tumour of some sort. But she pushed those thoughts away as soon as they came, or at least tried to. Jo was up and moving about, albeit very slowly, as soon as the sun was, due largely to having been awake all night. She showered, got dressed, finished off the painkillers that she had despite them not making any difference, and headed out. Deciding driving probably wasn't the best idea, she took a taxi, only hoping that the driver didn't want to have a conversation with her because talking was certainly not an option. Luckily Jo was able to walk right in to see the doctor as the 9 am appointment hadn't shown up. The doctor was a slender man with a complete lack of people skills, but he knew his profession well. He asked perfunctory questions: Have you taken any medication? Yes. What? Painkillers? How many? All of them. As he began his examination. He stuck a light in Jo's ears. He pulled her lids down and shone a light in her eyes. ”I can't find anything wrong with you,” the doctor said, scribbling notes. ”Well there is,” Jo protested, the anguish clear on her face. ”I believe you,” the doctor replied, putting his pen down. “I'm going to send you for a-” Jo screamed out in terrible pain; it was a howl of agony. Her hands clawed at her skull, the nails causing rivulets of blood to trickle down her face. Her eyes were clenched tightly closed, feeling as though they were going to explode from their sockets. The left eye was slowly pried open from the inside, revealing a small yellow worm crawling, wiggling, thrashing about in the open air. Jo's eyelids sprang apart, revealing the worm had drilled its way dead-centre through the pupil. The front of her head exploded then, revealing several longer, bigger yellow worms crawling over each other in a lazy orgy. Blood poured from the open wound, as it did, revealing tiny white-yellow buds. The doctor immediately knew these were unborn babies. Jo stood there, her mouth hung open like a stupid, wide cavern. Her eyes were wide open, the one still in-tact glassy like a marble and slicked in blood. She twitched once, then fell to the floor, dead. The worms continued to spill out from the head wound. The doctor stood back, watching on in horror-induced numbness. He carefully stepped around the twitching, fresh corpse with the worms slithering over each other, now bathed in blood, and exited the office. The waiting room was filled with people holding their heads in pain. James has been writing for the past 20 years. His professional writing career includes feature-length and short screenplays, novels, short stories, and lyrics. Away from writing, he owns and runs a successful self-defence club, Reality Based Urban Defence (rbud.co.uk), is a director of the production company Happy Buzz Entertainment Ltd, and is currently studying for his degree in Marketing. He considers Stephen King a personal idol. “Houston!” the astronaut said, but he failed to complete the well-worn cliché. The on-board cameras, however, were unambiguous in showing the world what unfolded next. The crew of the resupply vessel appeared to shimmer, became translucent, fragmented into ashen dust, and dissolved into nothingness. The spacecraft, now minus a human component to direct its course, continued its trajectory into the infinity of deep space. Meantime, on the International Space Station, where the personnel had been expecting the crew of the resupply vessel to replace them so they could return to Earth, every man and woman aboard also vanished. Alien abduction? Sabotage? Abnormal sunspot radiation? Pundits and laymen alike took their pick of the abundant conjectures and conspiracy theories concerning the astronauts’ disappearance. Across the globe, the launching of manned spacecraft was indefinitely put on pause until more was known about the unprecedented phenomenon that had occurred. Then, a month later, aircraft started dropping out of the skies. “There are no corpses or body parts amongst the wreckage,” a rescue team reported from a debris-strewn field in Western Australia, and in doing so, reignited theories of alien abduction. At international airports across the world, all commercial airliners were grounded, while private jets were consigned by law to their hangars until further notice. Soon after the cessation of airline transportation, a Filipina mountaineer radioed to base camp from the heights of Mount Everest. “I can’t see any of the other climbers in my party,” she said, her voice quavering. “They were a little ways ahead of me. I can see clearly all the way to the summit, but there’s no one there—no one.” That was the climber’s final communication. End-of-the-Worlders and alien abduction conspiracists vied for the attention of an increasingly frightened global audience. In the Rockies, the Alps, the Himalayas, climbers willingly ascended the tallest mountains, never again to be seen, trekking upwards in hopes of a religious resurrection or of a meeting of minds with extraterrestrials. As the diurnal revolution of the earth continued, and as life tried to go on as normal in spite of the growing fear, a radio sports commentator broadcast an international football match live from La Paz. “The half-time score is Bolivia two, Argentina nil,” he announced excitedly to soccer-mad South America, from the loftiest football pitch on earth. No second-half commentary was ever heard, though. The players, spectators and commentator went silent and were neither seen nor heard of again. No one bothered attempting to make their way to La Paz to find out why. With a mentality approaching denial and a forlorn hope that everything would miraculously return to normal, mankind carried on with its humdrum, day-to-day existence until an event occurred in the USA that was impossible to ignore. During a televised basketball game, the arena erupted with cheering as the Utah Jazz’s point guard made a flying slam dunk. In mid-air, however, his physical form blurred, broke into a million pieces, and was no more. Seconds afterwards, the gawping spectators and the players on the court and on the benches likewise vanished. On TV a few days later, a world-renowned zoologist announced an until then unobserved anomaly. “Pets and livestock, no longer under the domination of mankind, are wandering down from higher elevations, bleating and mewling with hunger. They are otherwise unaffected by this deadly anomaly that’s sweeping the upper reaches of our planet and depleting it of its people.” “We’re being exterminated for the sins we’ve perpetrated against Nature,” vegan anarchists asserted. “We’re being rounded up by aliens as a food source because of our overabundance on Earth,” advocates of population control countered. In a panic across the globe, folk fled to the planet’s lower-lying regions until, congregating on beaches, the survivors of ever-depleted humanity shimmered, fragmented, and were gone. Those who surged into the sea and dived under the waves lasted only a few seconds longer until the necessity to breathe forced them back to the surface, at which point they too disintegrated. Beneath the ocean, on board a mutinous British nuclear submarine that had refused to complement its crew with cabinet ministers and members of the royal family, the radio operator attempted to contact Faslane Naval Base in Scotland. While his captain stood on the platform at the periscope, disconsolately following the erratic course of a crewless cargo ship, the radio operator gave up attempting to contact anyone at their base. He sat back in his chair and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Captain. There’s just no reply.” “Captain?” Paul A. Freeman is the author of Rumours of Ophir, a crime novel which was taught at ‘O’ level in Zimbabwean high schools and has been translated into German. In addition to having two novels, a children’s book and an 18,000-word narrative poem (Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie Killers!) commercially published, Paul is the author of hundreds of published short stories, poems and articles. He resides in Abu Dhabi. Trudging through the field behind his house, eight-year-old Harry Cole was as mad as he had ever been. It had happened again, and now he was going to get a whooping. The sun shining on his face and the chirping birds didn’t cheer him in the least. He never had these problems when he was an only child. He approached the tree, venting out loud and stomping his feet against the scraggly grass. “Darn Tommy!” he bellowed. “He starts the fight, and now I have to go cut a switch so I can get a licking.” He ran his right hand over the familiar tree’s rough bark. “It isn’t fair!” “You’re right,” he heard a woman’s sweet voice say. “It’s not fair.” Alarmed, he looked around. “Who said that?” The echoing voice, accented by a sound like muted windchimes, was coming from the tree. “I did,” it said. Harry quickly circled the tree, expecting to find Helen Potts, that joker from school, pranking him. She wasn’t there. No one was. The boy stood tall, trying unsuccessfully to look imposing. “But you’re a tree,” he stated. “Trees can’t talk.” “We’re quiet most of the time,” the voice went on, “but if we really need to talk, we can—and I need to talk… to you.” “Me?” the boy asked, tempted to run away. “What did I do?” The tree was astounded. “What did you...” it began, waving some threadbare limbs about. “Look at me.” Harry did as he was told. Many of the tree’s branches were broken and frayed. “Yeah?” the boy asked. “I’m a mess, and it’s your doing.” “That’s because I had to get switches for Mom to spank my behind.” “Couldn’t you use a different tree from time to time?” “I tried that once,” Harry said, pointing at some oaks a few yards away. “I remember that day,” the tree replied wistfully. “What happened?” “Mom got even madder. She thought I was trying to put off my punishment. ‘Taking my sweet time,’ she said. The whipping I got was even worse than usual!” “I see,” the tree replied, dejected. “That’s why I keep coming to you. You’re closest to the house.” “You have to lay off of my limbs for a while. The other trees are starting to laugh.” “Trees can laugh?” “Oh sure,” the female voice told him. “We’re all connected by our roots. We know what’s going on with every other tree.” Harry couldn’t be sure, but he thought the tree leaned toward him. “Can you please leave me alone for a while,” it asked, “so I can heal?” “But I have to get a switch.” “There’s an alternative.” “What?” Harry eagerly asked. “You could behave.” “Huh?” “Don’t make your mother angry. That way, you won’t get punished, and I can recuperate.” “That’s so hard to do!” the boy complained. “It’s hard to behave?” “My little brother causes most of the trouble.” “That toddler?” the surprised tree inquired. “You know Tommy?” “You had a picnic under me the other day.” “Oh yeah,” Harry went on. “Anyway, he causes the trouble, and I get blamed. Then it’s switch time.” “Your brother’s only a little boy. He doesn’t know any better.” “He makes me so angry!” “When my brothers and I were saplings, they made me angry too. We’re great friends now.” “Yeah, but…” “You could do without the whippings, right?” “I sure could.” “Then behave,” the voice implored him. “C’mon. It’ll be good for both of us.” Harry leaned against the tree, turning the idea over in his brain. “I… can’t,” he finally said. “What?” “Sometimes, I don’t know what makes Mom mad. She just gets mad. I can’t behave if I don’t know what not to do.” “But my limbs–” the tree began, sounding on the verge of green tears. “You’ll be OK,” Harry said matter-of-factly, reaching for a switch. There was a loud crack as a branch above him broke off and hit the eight-year-old squarely on the head. He dropped to the dirt, unconscious. An odd whirring noise grew from nothing. It grew very loud. A brisk wind came on, stirring the fallen leaves all around the prostate boy. Less than a minute later, the sound and the wind stopped together, their work done. Harry stood, rubbing the bump on his head. He spoke and was surprised to hear that his voice now had the same echo and windchime sound of the tree. He felt himself slipping away, oozing out of his crowded body and onto—and then into—the tree. “You had your chance,” his voice said. “It was you or me.” The voice called to the oaks. “You’ll see that he behaves, my brothers?” The wind picked up again. The oaks’ limbs happily moved about more than the breeze stirred them. “Maybe your time will come soon? There are other family members.” The wind briefly blew even stronger. The brothers were delighted at the idea. Harry’s body dusted itself off, appreciating its new, young form. “I’d better get back to the house,” it said. “One spanking for what the boy did won’t be so bad.” Through a knothole in the bark, Harry’s spirit saw his body take a couple of steps away and then turn suddenly. “I almost forgot!” it said, plucking a switch from the tree which Harry painfully felt. “This one shouldn’t hurt too much.” It chuckled, noticing that the echo and chimes in its voice had faded completely away. “Yes,” it said, admiring the piece of its former self, “I can live with this… switch. Mike has had over 150 audio plays produced in the U.S. and overseas. He’s won The Columbine Award and a dozen Moondance International Film Festival awards in their TV pilot, audio play, short screenplay, and short story categories. His prose work has appeared in several magazines and anthologies. In 2020, his screenplay, Die Laughing, was a semi-finalist in the Unique Voices Screenplay Competition from Creative Screenwriting magazine. The following year, his TV pilot script, “The Bullying Squad” was a quarter-finalist in the Emerging Writers Genre Screenplay Competition. Mike is the writer of two short films, Dark Chocolate and Hotline. In 2013, he won the inaugural Marion Thauer Brown Audio Drama Scriptwriting Competition. In 2020, he came in second. For several of the in-between years, he served as a judge. Mike keeps a blog at audioauthor.blogspot.com. What... that? That's my crystal ball. Like it? Nice looking thing, isn't it. Got it three years ago, off Amazon. I keep it on the window sill there so it catches the light in the afternoons. As you're not from round here, I can let you in on a little secret. Promise not to tell? Crystal, my arse! It's plastic resin, that. Convincing, eh? You'd never know—well, unless you touched it with your fingers of course—and I make sure the punters never do, so that's the illusion intact. I do the fortune telling tent, you see. Church fête, every summer. Been at it for four years now. Took over from Mrs Horniman when she passed. Not that I was particularly gasping for the job, but that's the thing with village life: you get volunteered for stuff. Everyone's expected to muck in; get involved; do their bit—and it's always for a good cause, so... let's just say refusal isn't really an option. I put my foot down on one thing, though. Mrs H—lovely old dear, bless 'er—she did it as "Gypsy Rose". Dressed the part, y'know: all bells and charms. Really hammed it up. Cod Mittel-european accent, the works. It's pretty dingy in that little tent, but y'know, I swear she even darkened her skin with something too. God, when I think about it now... Anyway, I was having none of that. I'll be as mysterious as you like, I said—wear a black veil and all sorts—but you're not calling me "Gypsy" anything. I don’t have a drop of Roma blood in me, and I don’t feel comfortable trading in racial stereotypes, no matter how good the cause. They didn't like it, of course. "Not a proper fête without the Gypsy" they said. "What would Mrs Horniman say? No Gypsy, indeed! It's not traditional." Cardinal sin round here, that is: not sticking to tradition. You could slaughter babies in the street here and nobody would bat an eyelid so long as there was a tradition of baby-slaughtering. I know... that's daft. But you get my gist. I stood my ground, though. I'm an incomer, see—only been here 20 years—and I've got a bit of a reputation. The village snowflake. Too metropolitan for this lot, anyway. Mind you, it's not hard to get a reputation round here. Pop into the shop, ask Maureen if she could order you in some Fair Trade Tea, and that's you: marked for life. Dangerously woke! So anyway... I took on the fortune telling. Mrs H used to read palms, so that's what I did to begin with, just that first year. Just the once. I switched things up after that: got the fake crystal and haven't looked back since. Well... tried not to. You can't see my face at all behind the veil, but it's not like anybody's fooled. It's only locals come to the fête, anyway. They all know it's me and they all know it's bollocks—just a bit of nonsense. "Cross my palm with silver" (actually we've got a card reader now—there's progress!) and I give 'em the flim-flam. You know the kind of thing: big on mystery, low on detail, preferably with a whiff of a positive outcome. Keep it coming and keep it vague, that's my style. Even my tall dark strangers are conveniently gender non-specific nowadays. That's the reason I changed to the crystal ball. To make all of that easier. That first year, after Mrs H went, when I was doing the palms... well, it was difficult. Saying the right things. Keeping it vague, like I said. It was a struggle. I struggled. I hadn't been expecting it, you see. That's why I had the seizure. I told everyone it was the heat in the tent—hadn't drunk enough water, silly me!—but it wasn't. I thought changing over to the crystal ball would solve it, but it didn't. Nothing could. By then it was too late. I'd handled them, you see—their hands. Everybody's hands. The whole bloody parish. That's why I'm selling up. I can't take it any more. I just can't. Can you imagine, even for one minute, what it's like, being me? To have to live here, knowing what I know? Having to smile at your neighbours, make small-talk with them in the shop, the street, the pub, all the time knowing exactly when every single one of them is going to die? ...and how that death will happen. In detail. The whole thing, running like a projector inside your skull. 3D. Hi-definition. Maureen behind the counter, so looking forward to grand-children: she'll never see fifty. That new young couple who've renovated Lower Farm Cottage: he doesn't know half as much about electrics as he makes out. And little Gemma. Oh sweet Jesus Christ, little Gemma... Sorry. Sorry! Dear me—what am I doing? You'll have to forgive me. I have these moments now and then. Where were we? Oh yes: been viewing the house, haven't you? What do you think, then? Ooh, I'm not supposed to ask that, am I? Bad form. Not supposed to put potential buyers on the spot. Make you feel awkward. Seen everything you want to, though, have you? Right you are. Thank you so much for coming. You'll leave some feedback through the agent, won't you? Good. Yes, it's been lovely to meet you, too. Erm... sorry—I'm not being rude, but... would you mind awfully if we didn't shake hands? Retired actor Ken Cumberlidge was born in Birkenhead, UK and cut his performance teeth on the Liverpool pub poetry scene of the 1970s. These days Ken is based in Norwich, but can be lured out of cover by the promise of good company and an open mic. This has led him to become an habitué of the slam/spoken word scene. He has twice won a place as finalist at the Hammer+Tongue Cambridge regional slam championships, 2018 and 2019. Ken writes about love, sex, nature, loss, personal identity and queerness, with an occasional foray into the eerie and macabre. Poke him with a sharp enough stick and he may even wake up long enough to get shouty about politics. Ken's work can be found variously in print and online (Algebra of Owls / Allegro / As Above So Below / The Fiction Pool / Fragmented Voices / Impspired / Ink Sweat & Tears / Message In A Bottle / The Open Mouse / Picaroon / Pulsar / Rat's Ass Review / Runcible Spoon / Songs of Eretz / Spilling Cocoa over Martin Amis / Strange Poetry / Snakeskin / Talking Soup ...and now Timber Ghost Press) and performances of his material can be found on YouTube and Soundcloud, via his linktree: https://linktr.ee/kencumberlidge The clock chimes down the hall at the first stroke of midnight, and my eyes bolt open. The sound of footsteps echoing begins. They’re coming... I barely have time to register that thought as the door bursts open. I cover my face, attempting to pull the covers over to protect myself, but I know it’s no use. They pull the blankets off the bed, leaving me exposed in my nightgown only. Their icy hands grip my wrists and ankles, pulling my limbs to the four posts to tie to as I wriggle and writhe. “No, please. Not tonight. Please. I’m so tired. Please…” I beg and whimper, but they do not stop. The room is mostly dark except for the flicker of their shadows on the white walls. Cold, leather straps tighten around my wrists and ankles, spreading my body open. Snickering filling the room. The belts squeak against the posts as they’re stretched. My blood flow, restricted by the taut leather, is causing my heartbeat to thump loudly through my hands and feet. “You know the drill. Strip her and cover her mouth,” one of them shouts. Stiff fingers rip at the seams of fabric in the nightgown. I’ve lost count now that they have destroyed how many. I always wake up with a fresh one each day, ready to go. The laughter and rip echo loudly as the tears water as their hard fingers pull at my skin. The smell of sterile alcohol hits my nose, and I unsuccessfully fight and wriggle away. Cold, hard fabric is rubbing my body down. There’s no care given as they scrub my skin against the marks from previous restraints, scratches, and bruises I’ve received from trying to fight them off. “Why do you keep fighting us?” the lead one says, “You know it’s hopeless. We always come for you. You can’t escape us. No matter what you try… it’s been how many days, months, years of this? How long can you last?” I grit my teeth, seething. This one’s voice is always the one that sets me off. Always knowing precisely what to say to push the buttons that get my rage up. I stare unflinchingly as the rest of them finish wiping me down. “Just shut up,” I reply, spitting in his direction, “Leave me alone.” “Now, now, that’s not very nice. Whatever happened to the nice little girl we used to know? The one who was always so obedient? Following directions and trying to please everyone?” “She’s tired of playing that game. That got her nowhere. That got her nothing and NO ONE. She was just a stupid child who thought she could prove that people should love her,” I scream, pulling at my restraints, “She had to learn that you can’t make people love you!” “Tsk, Tsk.” he replies, “Shut her up... let’s remind her of her place.” A slimy, cold cloth drapes over my face as the sound of running water starts. I’m flailing my head back and forth to get it off, but it’s no use. The first splash of liquid hits, and my skin prickles in shock and goosebumps. The water is freezing, and it hits my lungs like a hot poker. “You’re worthless. No one will ever come and rescue you. You aren’t worth saving,” their voices say as the water rushes over my face again. “How could anyone ever love anything like you? It’s why they always leave. They get close enough, and they see what we see. You’re disgusting. Dirty. Deranged.” My heart is pounding in my ears, and my chest heaves for air. The tightness constricts around my throat, causing my mouth to produce garbled wheezing. My vision is blurring as stars twinkle under the cloth. “You were born wrong. It’s why they couldn’t love you. They could see you were evil, different, from the moment they placed you with them. No matter what you do, no matter what you try, you will always be that unlovable thing.” Gasping and coughing are the last things I remember as I pass out. Blackness envelops me but offers no reprieve. I don’t know how much time passes, but I know a sharp, hot blade glides along my ribs, creating small tears into my skin as one of them pounces on my stomach. The force pushes the water from my belly, contracting acidic, putrid water to burn up my esophagus out onto the bed. A still silence waits as I catch my breath, hoping somehow we’re done until the cloth goes back on my face, and it starts again. “Worthless. Useless. Better off dead. Alone. Forever alone. Unloved. Unlovable. Evil.” The chorus goes on as the cycle continues: icy water dumping on my face until I pass out and am woken again. It’s non-stop for hours, it seems, until suddenly a bright fluorescent light flashes in front of my eyes. “Miss! Miss!” A voice calls to me, waving a hand slowly in front of my face. I look around as the bedsheets are wrapped and tangled around me like a python squeezing its meal. My arms and legs are untied, and I follow the vision of the hand waving to a nurse in blue scrubs, hand on her hip, tapping her foot. “Miss West,” she says, “we’ve talked about this. You need to breathe. In. Out. C’mon, do it with me.” Slowly, I follow her words, inhale and exhale, inhale, exhale. “You know, you’re here for a reason. Few get a chance to face their demons with medical help. Many people get embarrassed about depression and anxiety, Miss West, but that is no reason for you to keep suffering at night from panic attacks alone. I told you if you feel them coming on, you need to just press the button, and we can give you the medication the doctor prescribed.” I know she’s right. I lost last night’s battle. But that doesn’t matter. I’m here to learn how to win the war. Victory Witherkeigh is a female Filipino author originally from Los Angeles, CA, and currently living in the Las Vegas area. Victory was a finalist for Killer Nashville’s 2020 Claymore Award, an Honoree for Cinnamon Press’s 2020 Literature Award, and Wingless Dreamer’s 2020 Overcoming Fear Short Story award. Her work has appeared in both online and print literary magazines and genre fiction publications of horror and dark fantasy. She has her print publications in a horror anthology, Supernatural Drabbles of Dread, and a literary short story in Overcoming Fear, through Macabre Ladies Publishing and Wingless Dreamers. https://teikitu.com/people/victory-witherkeigh/ Who saw the Farmer’s Wife fall facedown on her bedroom floor, crushing her Sunday hat? Who watched her shake and bubble up like skillet bacon? Who then saw Farmer McKidd himself approach his fallen wife, like she was some ornery goat, the way she kicked out at him with her hind legs and her gurgling wheeze, which sounded so very barnyard. Farmer McKidd got kicked several times by his wife that day, until he finally retreated into the kitchen to figure out how to fix his wife. He opened the fridge and didn’t find any answers in there. Just a little leftover ham. He ate some to help his thinking. He stood in that kitchen, chewing that ham and listened to his wife kick over her lamp and then trample her prayer stool. He tried not to listen to all her foul language, but it was hard. She was so articulate. He stared out the kitchen window for strength, just in time to see his newborn calf fall dead in the field. The heat was getting everyone. Farmer McKidd rushed out, leaving his wife to curse God and cook up to a fever of one hundred and eight. Who saw beyond the farmer’s field, in the forest, a herd of deer standing in a perfect circle, communicating their thoughts telepathically? The deer, though shy at first, were finally able to express to one another their true horror of being caught in the glare of headlights, and the keen yearning they had for their now-dead mothers. Then they wondered about what it was about them that made people shoot them. Their ability to talk to each other this way was a gift, but they weren’t used to it, and it tired them out and then they all drifted apart out of telepathic range. Could anyone have seen further in the forest, they would have seen a man in a suit made of mylar and polymers, now burnt and frayed. Who witnessed the appearance of this man on the forest floor, a man changed by centuries of travel performed in an Earth’s instant? A man lying there, rippling with stories of the cosmos; those stories told by viruses and bacteria that colonized distant worlds and then destroyed them? Who could see that the man was neither dead nor alive, but was warm with the blood of the thousand worlds he had visited? A tick. A tick saw all this happen. The tick that made its way to the spaceman and pulled out the blood. Then moved onto the deer. Then finally to the Farmer’s Wife where it now sat, bulging with blood, in the nest of her hairline. The Farmer’s Wife was getting the benefit of telepathy too, and suddenly knew all her husband’s thoughts that he’d never dared speak aloud. But she was also tasting the fall of Europa. First comes the kicking and the squealing. Then her flesh will peel off and wander away and attach itself to the nearest rock or tree. The tick would climb off the farmer’s wife before that happened. It would find a nice warm cow or the neck of a sheep dog, and would pass along the messages from those strangers in the cosmos. Mary Crosbie howls from Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in Gross and Unlikeable, Blood Bath LitZine and Space Squid. Follow her on Twitter or her website: Www.marycrosbie.com To start with, the TV people were excited about Mars being the closest that it had ever been to earth. Now, mom says I don’t have to go to school so long as I don’t turn on the TV or look out the window. She makes me play games like boarding up the doors. She says it’s fun, but it is not. Neither are the screams outside. I miss the sun’s heat on my face and the cooling rain, but I made a promise—I will not look outside. Even when I recognise neighbors' voices begging for help. Sometimes there are gunshots, or the screaming goes on throughout the night. Mom says they are dreams—all good boys have them, but now I’m starting to think the closeness of Mars is driving mom crazy since the food is running out. I said I didn’t mind going to the store. However, Mom laughed and told me there was more than enough food. The cooked meat tasted like chicken, but when I tried to find my cat, Argo, I couldn’t. Mom says he must have run away, but he’d never do that. Not after I found his collar in the trash can. Now all mom does is cry when she thinks I’m not looking. I wish I knew what to do. I wish that I could help her or look out the window and see Mars’ beauty. Before the TV went off, they said it would be a once-in-a-lifetime thing. That the populace devoured too many trash movies—now was the time to look up to the heavens. But mom won’t let me go outside. She says only naughty children look at Mars. Things are getting so bad that I’m ready to return to school. Staying indoors 24/7 is making me crazy. But when I tell her that, mom just cries more. To pass the time, I pick at forgotten books; some are history, some describe this war God Mars who gave his name to the red planet. I have yet to find ONE nice story about his terrible fury. Everything he threw his crimson light at he destroyed, and I wonder what could be so beautiful about the little red planet now it’s so close to earth. Even though I promised mom not to peek, sometimes I wonder about that a lot. Matthew Wilson has been published in Star*Line, Night to Dawn magazine, Zimbell House publishing and many more. He is currently editing his first novel and can be found on Twitter. This place… It reminds me of home when the roads used to freeze over. Solid ice. Days when snow was predicted were the only ones I woke up early. I’d set my alarm the night before, wake up without even feeling tired, turn on the TV and watch the local news. My eyes fixed to that scrawling list at the bottom of the screen with the names of all the school districts that had cancelled their classes. Snow days. I remember snow days. How could I forget? They only canceled school when the ice was so thick that even the plow trucks couldn’t break through. Except for that one day. My parents were surprised, weren’t they? School was open, though they delayed the start of classes by two hours. Two hours. Yes, it was two hours. I remember standing at the bus stop. It was later than usual. The sun was out, the wind was harsh. My sister was there. Wasn’t she? Miranda… Miranda, can you hear me? I remember the bus, the harsh wind blowing down on us, and the bus coming around the bend. It was heading towards us—sun glistening off that polished steel, yellow on orange combining to make green: the color of the covered grass; brown once the snow thaws—and it’s driving across the ice-covered road. I can’t see the driver’s face. The sun is reflecting off the windshield. It’s all I can see: the sun. Oh, the sun! It’s reflecting off of everything! The snow, the bus, my sister’s glasses: and it’s shining in my eyes. I can’t see anything. The bus. Wait, there’s the bus. It’s coming this way across the ice. It slips, then-- Where am I? This place… It reminds me of home when the roads used to freeze over. Solid ice. Ethan S. Berry (February 20th, 1996) was raised in West Virginia hollers and has been writing since he was seven years old. Now he lives in San Antonio, Texas with his supporting wife and their two cats: Romeo & Pablo. While he can't help but obsess over the act of writing, he is also a student of psychology and in 2019 he was officially recognized for his contributions as an undergraduate to the field of psychology by the Southwestern Chapter of the American Psychological Association (APA). When Ethan’s not writing, he is either spending time with his wife and cats, getting wrapped up in collaborative art projects (whether it be a producing podcast or a recording sound for a short film), attending classes at the University of Texas in San Antonio, or lounged out somewhere reading a good book with a mug of coffee at his side.
Follow Ethan on Facebook and Instagram Something drips. Interminably slow, heavy, and monotonous, it is a beat at the very edge of consciousness, lulling him slowly back to awareness. There is no other point of reference, the darkness about him absolute, though he can feel the roughness of the stone wall against his back and the smooth coldness of the metal bonds that hold his wrists and ankles tight against it. Flexing his toes, he feels water lap around them. The damp infects his bones. Straining his senses, he searches the cold black air, though he has no idea for what. He has no memory of what has happened, no memory of anything that has gone before, yet he knows that he is waiting, waiting for... something. Then, suddenly, there it is a change in the sound, the drip accelerating until it becomes a trickle, then a cascade. The rising water reaches his knees, his waist, his chest. The coldness of it makes him gasp, presses against his ribcage, forces his lungs to fight for breath. Through his panic, a thought surfaces: there are so very many ways to die–perhaps drowning is not the worst. The water splashes his face. It has reached his chin and will soon be in his mouth, in his nostrils, in his throat. He wonders how long he could hold his breath, or if it might not be better to breathe the deadly liquid in, a swift conclusion to this life that he cannot quite call to mind. Then, as if some faraway valve has been shut down, the gushing water stops. It drips for a moment, then silence returns. Something brushes his leg in the darkness, and in that instant, the sluice gates of his memory burst apart, and he remembers. He remembers the terror in the eyes of his son and the bargain that was struck. He remembers the oozing, milk-white eyes of the beast and the yellowed stumps of teeth that spewed saliva as it shook its awful head in triumph. He remembers his last sight of the boy, running for all he was worth, running because his life depended on it. And he remembers submitting to the fetid embrace of the worm; a living sacrifice, a lamb to the slaughter. A sound disturbs the darkness, a sound as soft and chill as the flick of a serpent’s tongue—a gentle movement of the water, sending saltwater ripples to lap against his lips. The sweet, stagnant smell of decay fills the chamber, announcing the arrival of his host as surely as a fanfare of trumpets. The beast is on the move. Its huge, elongated body cuts effortlessly through the water, scarcely disturbing the surface. His fists clench, a futile act of resistance. There can be no going back, no change to the terms of the contract. In the stinking blackness, he turns his head to the wall and steels himself for what is to come. The water seethes as the creature rises before him, its rank, hot breath burning his cheek. He tries to scream, but it is useless; his voice was taken long ago. He will do what he has always done; take the pain inside himself and await oblivion. Tomorrow he will wake and have no recollection until the dripping starts again. KB Willson is a British author, specialising in SF, Fantasy, and Horror. As his ‘day job’ requires him to be professionally jolly – he has spent his working life as a performer, everything from theatre to circus via magic and fire-eating – writing enables him to indulge his darker side! He lives beside the sea in Dorset with his wife and dachshund dog, one of whom likes to sit on his lap while he is writing. For more information visit www.kbwillson.com or follow him on Twitter at @kbwillsonauthor. |
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