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.

​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
 

There’s so much lore here
in the desert.

We used to joke about wendigos
And things that crept in the dark.

We’d even say, “Tell us stories of Skinwalkers,”
until half the group fell silent.

“If you speak of them, they will come.”
​
They said prayers and threw their fingernail
and hair clippings into the fire
to keep us safe.
The smell was unholy
But still holier than monsters.

Sitting around the bonfire
under the stars
pretending our faces lit by flame
weren’t demonic, that
the odd voices in the sand weren’t unnatural, that
there was nothing behind you, nothing at all
certainly not primitive
eyeshine glowing
in the dark.

What is it that they have? The Eyes I mean
They have seeds, petals, and a missing spleen

The Eyes have incantations of all kinds
These Eyes have the magics to hide their minds

The Eyes have the sight to mar our souls
The Eyes have the will to cross the coals

Are they merely men or are they visionaries?
Were they truly expelled from the land of fairies?

What glories they’ve seen with eyes closed
Horrors witnessed while the world dozed…
​
What is this power they wield over me?
What have Eye done so I’ll never be free?

​Jonathan Reddoch is co-owner of Collective Tales Publishing. He is a father, writer, editor, and publisher. He writes sci-fi, fantasy, romance, and especially horror. He’s a prolific flash fiction author, but also writes poetry and short stories. He has been working on his enormous sci-fi novel for over a decade and would like to finish it in this lifetime if possible. He’s from southern California, but lives in Salt Lake City. Notable works included in Deluxe Darkness, Darkness 101: Lessons Were Learned, and This Isn’t the Place.
 
Find him on Instagram @JonathanReddochAuthor or CTPfiction.com

​“Take the stairs,” I begged.
“Get some exercise.”
He laughed.
"I'm good!"
then pulled away,
probably creeped out
by the colleague who never talks,
suddenly gripping his hand.
 
But what else could I do?
Short of babbling
and reaching out for his face,
which I couldn’t even tell him,
existed no longer.
 
He walked away
in his white button-downs,
and empty space
above his neck,
waving at me as the doors closed.
“Enjoy your weekend!”
but I knew,
he won’t be coming in on Monday,
like everyone else
packed in that elevator,
going down together,
decapitated.
 
I rushed back to the office,
to the pantry,
to the sink--
to vomit
as loud as I could
so I don’t hear the crash.