 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
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 “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. Arvee Fantilagan was raised in the Philippines, lives in Japan, and can be found at sites.google.com/view/arveef. He hopes to write a better bio someday.
 We were cleaning out Grandfather’s house, wading through boxes and heaps of dirt. Neighbors say in life he was a necromancer, reanimating things that should have stayed inert. Until we’d found the bird in a rusted pen, we had paid the rumors no heed. But the poor thing was festering, shreds of flesh decaying ‘round its bony beak. The creature was still alive, halfway ambulant in its cramped cage; a revenant stomping and hopping in seething rage. It stopped to sing a mournful tune with the flicking of its purple tongue. Wheezing shrill whistles from perforated lungs. Its hollowed orbitals met our gaze, a timid, woeful glare. We tried to pry our eyes but couldn’t help but stare. We unlatched its door and futilely, it flapped its featherless wings. Even in death, freedom denied; a bird cursed to forever rot and sing.  Pedro Iniguez is a horror and science-fiction writer from Los Angeles, California. He is a Rhysling Award finalist and a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee.
His fiction and poetry has appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Never Wake: An Anthology of Dream Horror, Shadows Over Main Street Volume 3, and Qualia Nous Vol. 2, among others. His upcoming horror fiction collection, FEVER DREAMS OF A PARASITE, is slated for a 2025 release from publisher Raw Dog Screaming Press. He can be found online at www.pedroiniguezauthor.com.  Whoever claimed that killers had sweet dreams, never met Connie. She woke in her grandparents’ living room, sprawled on wet carpet. The bogeyman that chased her in a nightmare wasn’t as terrifying as her heart-thumping reality. She’d helped Grandma kill Grandpa. Connie had drifted to dreamland for only sixteen minutes. Her hands stung, rubbed raw from scrubbing bloodstains. She’d watched enough CSI to know she should’ve used bleach, but it would’ve faded the chocolate brown shag. Premeditation and conspiracy made the murder first degree, but cops couldn’t arrest Grandma for swinging the bat. Mortals couldn’t confine a ghost. Trembling, Connie swaddled the stiff in towels and a tarp, wrapped the leaking cocoon in duct tape. Weeping, she dragged Grandpa’s corpse to the garage and stuffed him into the Buick Regal’s trunk. She climbed into the driver’s seat and cranked the key. The engine rumbled reassuringly. “You think God believes in an eye for an eye?” Connie asked. “Don’t worry dear,” Grandma replied. 4:15 AM, too early for rush hour traffic. Connie squeezed the steering wheel in a white-knuckle grip, drove under the speed limit, west on Division Street, south on Lawndale Avenue, until they reached Humboldt Park. “You sure you want to leave him here?” Connie asked. “It’s where he left me,” Grandma replied. Robins and wrens serenading the rising sun quit chirping when the ghost shoved the body into the lagoon. It bobbed before it sank. Invisible arms wrapped Connie in an embrace. Grandma exhaled ectoplasm that smelled like spring rain.  Alicia Hilton is an author, editor, arbitrator, professor, and former FBI Special Agent. Her poems have been nominated for the Rhysling Award and the Dwarf Stars Award. Her work has appeared in Back 2 OmniPark, Creepy Podcast, Dreams & Nightmares, Eastern Iowa Review, Egaeus Press, Litro, Modern Haiku, Mslexia, Neon, NonBinary Review, Not One of Us, Space and Time, Stoneboat Literary Journal, Vastarien, World Haiku Review, Year’s Best Hardcore Horror Volumes 4, 5 & 6, and elsewhere. Her website is https://aliciahilton.com. Follow her on Twitter @aliciahilton01 and Bluesky @aliciahilton.bsky.social.
 Darkness wraps around him, he wears it like a cape striding like a king down empty midnight streets, a crown of stars above his head and bodies at his feet. Greg Schwartz lives in Maryland with his wife and children. Some of his poems have appeared in Talebones, Space & Time, Horror Carousel, and Writers' Journal. He was fortunate to win a Dwarf Stars Award in 2015. In a pre-fatherhood life he was the staff cartoonist for SP Quill Magazine and a book reviewer for Whispers of Wickedness.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/freginold_JS Website: https://haiku-and-horror.blogspot.com/  when i suspect that i am rotting i decide i ought to check, nails slipping into sponge that molds to softness ‘tween my ribs, and— slow-- peel back what fetid flesh conceals the compost heaped up just-below old organs, here; emotions older tissues used and damp and torn; my soiled hands dig until i find what writhes, worming within the warm of layers, strata, deadened selves there’s lichen scabs that texturize my time-worn, fear-bleached bone, while fairy rings of feedback loop in endless, nerve-branched loam since nectarous secretions reek of corpses more than flowers, i realize i indeed must say: i am mottled with decay but that will soon enrich the way; as fertilizer feeds the weeds, growth is growth in my small plot and there is beauty in the rot  LB Waltz (@balmroomdance) has been publishing creative works for over 20 years under various pseudonyms. They enjoy taking walks, biblically accurate depictions of angels, and reading about botanical folklore.
 Even now, with her bones thinning more every day and her memories leaking out the base of her skull, Lucille’s hands dance. She’s playing along with the music she hears, music that gifted her a career as a virtuoso violinist decades ago when women hardly ever did such things. It’s louder out here in the oak woodland behind her home. Her hands falter on her imagined Stradivarius as she forgets again. How did she get outside? She doesn’t remember coming outside. Her cotton nightgown is too thin for the night air, and her diaper feels heavy and wet against her skin. Why is she wearing a diaper? And why do her joints ache? She’s a young woman in her early twenties. She looks at her fingers and is surprised by the crepe-paper skin, the joints thick with arthritis, and the nails yellowed and too long. Panic begins to well up in her. Her heart beatbeat beatbeats in her chest, like her aortic valve might rupture at any moment and bleed out into her chest. What has happened to her body? Has she been cursed by the faeries her mother used to warn her about? She used to dream about meeting real faeries, wondering what magical gifts they might give her. Is that why she’s out in the woods? Is she here to beg for a gift? For mercy? The music grows louder, a haunting and driving dance. Almost like a Chopin waltz but with a jazz undercurrent, reminiscent of Gershwin or Cole Porter. She lifts her hands to play along on a violin that isn’t there, the way she always does when one of these compositions pop into her head. She’ll play along to develop muscle memory and write it down when she gets home, and then she’ll release a new vinyl, and it’ll sell spectacularly, and won’t she be adored? She walks as she plays, following the melody deeper into the trees, crushing common violets and bloodroot underfoot. She trips on her nightgown, forgetting the music for a moment. She looks around herself, confused and cold. How did she get outside? She doesn’t remember coming outside. The music gets louder. She must remember this composition! She lifts her hands and plays. She follows the music deep into the woodlands. Sharp branches catch her papyrus skin as she walks, and it tears into delicate tatters. Her blood flows too thinly from these wounds, thanks to the aspirin she takes to reduce the stress on her heart. When she stumbles, her fragile veins break, and bruises bloom across her silken flesh. She plays on. It sounds like there are lyrics. Strange lyrics, these. Lyrics lacking verse or chorus, lyrics she forgets as soon as she hears them. They are like talking with an old friend. She hardly even pays attention. She already knows what they’re going to say. An eye for an eye A tooth for a tooth A gift for a gift A noose for a noose A deal for a dream A world for a wife A dance for a song An end for a life The moonlight grows stronger. Lucille’s hands grow more certain. Her fingers dance in time with the bodhran drum beat, the goat hide’s oily surface thrumming a driving pulse. She approaches the clearing she’s been returning to all along but can’t quite seem to remember visiting before, and there’s nothing inside other than clover and deep green grass and a ring of tawny mushrooms on the outskirts. She steps over the mushroom border, and she can see them. The faeries are tall and sinewy as they dance. They fly, though they don’t have wings. Rather, as their feet strike the soil in time with the bodhran, they lift and float in concentric circles, clasping hands with one another and weaving under and over and in between and outside arms. A handsome fae with knifelike cheekbones, jawbones, and collarbones spins off to invite Lucille to the dance. She steps backwards, finding an invisible, impenetrable wall has appeared just behind the mushroom ring. The handsome fae laughs. “Come now, human,” they chide with a voice that rings like bluebells, “You made your deal, a dance for a song. The time is nigh.” “No,” she refuses, and scrabbles at the wall behind her back with her feeble fingernails. They would dance her until she died; that’s what her mother always said. “No?” the handsome fae stares at her for a moment. Their pupils slowly expand until the entirety of their eyeballs are a yawning abyss. They pull back their lips, flashing mandible teeth that part in six directions to reveal a straw-like maw designed to suck life from mortals. “I don’t remember making any deal,” she cries out in desperation. “You don’t remember?” the fae’s pupils shrink back to normal size, and the mandibles and lips close, and they are handsome again. “Listen. Do you remember the song?” She listens. The music is a waltz, ethereal and rich. She raises her hands to mime playing along on her violin, so she’ll remember it later. How did she get outside? The handsome fae snaps their fingers, and a violin made of frost and gold leaf materializes in her grip. She plays perfectly, a virtuoso, as was the deal. She dances as she plays, enjoying the rhythm and the company of the other dancers. Even once she grows weary, she dances. Even once her brittle bones snap (first the tibia, then the patella, then the femur, and up, and up), she dances. It’s only when her heart beatbeat beatbeat beatbeats so hard that it bursts, a great wine stain bruise leaking across her chest, that she falls. The faeries close in with clicking mandible mouths to suck the spirit from her corpse. When they rise, her body has already decomposed. The mushroom ring has spread a little further.  Grace Daly (she/her) is an author with multiple invisible chronic illnesses. In her writing, she often explores the experience of living with disability through horror, romance, and low fantasy. Her work can be found in anthologies by Ghost Orchid Press and Sliced Up Press as well as in JMWW Journal and MIDLVLMAG. She lives near Chicago, Illinois and spends most of her time with her dog, who is a very good boy. She can be found at www.GraceDalyAuthor.com, or @GraceDalyAuthor for Twitter and Instagram.
 There’s a little ghost that swings under a tree. In my backyard, every night when the sun goes down. I put that tire swing up for my kids. When they outgrew it, I left it to remember, Their youth and those days that I’ll never get back. On a night when I couldn’t fall asleep The creak and the groan of old rope called me to my window. I pushed aside the curtain, a flutter of material hitching my breath. A little ghost was swinging under my tree. A little child pumping its legs and smiling with glee. I wanted to go down and ask who they were. I wanted to go sit and watch them awhile. Instead, I remained and offered a wave, The little ghost saw and offered one back. They’ve come to swing under my tree for years, As long as I’m alive I’ll leave that swing there. For there’s a little ghost who once died, their life over too soon, If my swing can bring them joy, then that’s what I’ll do.  A 2X Splatterpunk-Nominated Author, Steve Stred lives in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, with his
wife, son and their staffy, Cocoa. His work has been described as haunting, bleak and is frequently set in the woods near where he grew up. He’s been fortunate to appear in numerous anthologies with some truly amazing authors. He is an Active Member of the HWA. Follow Steve below: Website: stevestredauthor.ca Twitter: @stevestred Instagram: @stevestred Tik Tok: @stevestredauthor Universal Book Link: author.to/stevestred  The final three miles of the ride, that part when you drop down into the Cliff Creek drainage, is mostly alpine meadows. In early summer the grasses wave and the birds sing except for one stretch where the forest has taken over, pine and fir from creek bottom to cliffside. When you come to it you know you’re finally getting close to camp and it’s where in late summer the evergreens offer cool dark respite from the sun and the heat and the dust but it’s late fall now and late fall here in the high country might as well be middle of winter in the lowlands. Trouble with the pack string has me running behind running late past sundown and still facing an hour on the trail thank god for the full moon on the crusty snow-- the world is drained of color, all blacks and whites and greys in-between-- but it’s enough that I can keep an eye on the string behind me and watch that the packs are riding true. We hit that stretch of pines, though, and everything is different; the trees eat all the moonlight, drink all the sound and swallow us up. I’ve traveled this path more times than I can count, I’d thought it a familiar friend but now I’m desperate to be done with it, to be gone from here. The darkness has weight and mass and form from which I might never emerge. Dry mouth and pounding heart. Reins slack in my hands, I leave it to my saddlehorse to lead us onward outward he plods, unconcerned, no thoughts beyond the feed bucket waiting at the end of the trek. When he and the rest of the string have been unsaddled and fed And I’m in the cook tent at the stove warm and dry and tired I laugh at myself to be so shook at a little bit of darkness. There was never anything going to reach out at me from the shadows there was nothing in the forest or the fields turning its attention to my passage. Years away and miles later, I think I understand why my thoughts return to that night. I think I’ve come to realize that a country breeze can seem a loving caress, a storm may appear to be all anger and fury, but to the wind, to the trees, the rocks, the wilds, it’s really none of it to do with me; we flatter ourselves that nature notices us but it’s all playacting on someone’s part. Plants grow and waters flow; where the sunbeams and moonbeams fall, there is light and where they don’t, there is not. With me or without. That night, I glimpsed the indifference that is the truth of the wilderness.  RK Rugg is a non-Native native of the American West, a Jewish cowboy who spent most of his life wrangling both horses and words in the Montana Rockies and the Great Basin of Nevada. He currently lives in New England where he teaches middle-school writing by day and writes genre fiction, nonfiction and poetry by night. His work has appeared in Utopia, Illumen and Asimov's, among others, and he regularly presents at academic conferences on the topic of identity in speculative fiction. He can be found online at www.raymondkrugg.com.
 Photo by Elford Alley. No flowers grow there, just glass eyes Glaring out of the dirt The tops of their porcelain heads peeking Through Babydoll submarines Mouths full of mud Limbs woven with weeds Tiny fingers Tiny toes Untouched What secrets planted there? What suffering Can be inflicted On ones so small and still? No little hearts to stop. No graves Save For rocks and stones Spilled like milk Gone sour in a swollen breast Untouched Little babies Little lambs Little dolls. The dog has defecated here The headstones have been disturbed Defiled The sacred ground made profane. Nothing will grow. Nine months Then nine months Then nine months Ripped from the earth Torn out and cast aside. Whose secrets do you, dear ones, Hide?  Melissa Pleckham is a Los Angeles-based writer, actor, and musician. Her work has been featured in or is forthcoming from Rooster Republic Press, Flame Tree Fiction, Luna Luna, Mind's Eye Publications' The Vampiricon, Head Shot Press’ Bang! An Anthology of Noir Fiction, and more. She is a member of the Horror Writers Association. She also plays bass and sings for the garage-goth duo Black Lullabies. Find her online at melissapleckham.com or on social media at @mpleckham.
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