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There’s a clearing in the center of the Salt Towers where the red ash settles. The pointed remains of stalagmites, exposed to the sky after the caves split and collapsed a thousand years ago, shield it from the whipping winds of the coast. Instead of scattering and sticking to the heavy clouds above, the ash from neighboring Mount Timothy blankets crumbling terrain that howls with the violence of windstorms that seem to worsen each year. Meryl likes to carve the rocks on the cliffside that overlooks it.  She figures a few thousand more years will wear away anything she cuts into the soft slate slabs dotting the clearing anyway. They jut out at odd angles, forced to the surface by the fault line that curves along the coast, dark against the stark white of the Salt Towers. Hardly anyone comes out this way. There is something freeing about carving in a place no one will ever see. Meryl places her makeshift chisel over the slab she’s been working on for a few months now. She’s trying to carve a jackal’s face into its eastward corner, but she can’t quite get the head shape right. It’s always just a little off if she looks at it a certain way. She’s moved on to other projects a handful of times since starting it, but never been able to let it go unfinished. Her contemplation is interrupted by a familiar voice. “The jackal again?” Meryl huffs, dropping her arms in her lap. The chisel leaves fresh dust on her pants. “I’ll never let it go,” she mutters. She glances up at Wire, who is grinning at her with his usual cheekiness.  Wire is the only other person who knows about Meryl’s secret hiding place. She held her chisel out like a weapon the first time he came out of hiding, startling her from the meditative state she falls into while she carves. He’d held up his hands and insisted he was just curious about where she went in the afternoon. They’d hardly known each other then, only acquaintances through their shared classroom at the time.  “Maybe you could turn it into a wolf? Jackals are weird animals anyway,” Wire says, a departure from his usual snark. “Their ears look funny.” “I know,” she says. “I don’t know why I picked it.” That’s a lie. She knows exactly why she picked it, and so does Wire; it’s an homage to the little statue that sits on the mantle of her family’s fireplace, carved from wood and polished with a shiny lacquer. Its head is turned so that it looks outward, watching over the house like a tiny guardian. Her grandmother’s ashes rest inside it, but she usually forgets about that part.  Thankfully, Wire doesn’t comment on it. “You going to the Steel Festival?” he asks. He leans against the slate slab, crossing his arms.  Meryl snorts. “The Steel Festival is a waste of time,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Who cares about a little parade around the square?” The Steel Festival is a sham anyway. The only reason they do it is because their town became famous for The Stealing. They’d changed the name to “Steel,” some strange form of reclamation through a misunderstanding from outsiders. She likes looking at the floats, at least.  “Lots of people, I assume,” Wire says with a shrug. “There’ll be fried cakes there though. I know you love those.”  She does  love those.  Meryl sighs. “Will you come with me at least?” she asks.  “Yeah, for sure. In fact, I’ll do you one better and buy the cakes.” Wire pulls out his wallet to count his money, just to be sure he has enough. He’s one of the only people Meryl knows who still carries coins. Transferring credits is much easier.  A silence settles between them. Meryl considers her next point of attack on her carving, and the wind whips the ash in the center of the Salt Towers into an unstable cyclone. Red ash splits and breaks at the top of it in ribbons, as though the cone of wind becomes too fatigued to hold its shape and unravels. Meryl holds her chisel up to the jackal, her hammer just behind it, pauses for ten full seconds, then gives up.  “How long until the parade?” she asks.  “Not long. We’d be fashionably late if we left now,” Wire says.  Meryl stands. “Let’s be fashionably late then,” she concedes, and Wire smiles at her, pushing off from her canvas with his shoulder and heading for the town square. They crawl through brambles and winding paths interrupted by roots and errant stones to get there. Meryl wouldn’t feel safe hiding back there if it wasn’t hard to get to, after all. It was part of why Wire’s following initially impressed her.  They reach the edge of town and break from the bushes, just beside one of the Wandering fountains. The statue of a man at the center spouts water from his extended pointer finger. There are six identical statues scattered across town, and only one fountain is active at a time, taking turns in a clockwise circle every few hours or so. It’s part of an art installation meant to represent the Stealing; it represents the theory that the Stolen are merely transported, not dead, or something like that. Tourists seem to like its concept. The parade follows the circular path they make around the town’s heart. Meryl and Wire hop into the crowd snaking around the street to watch the parade. She can see the tops of the floats from here, wild dragons and insects and a gigantic tree shaped from sheets of steel peeking out above the heads of strangers. Traditional puppets made of furs and cloth weave in and out of curving metal, held up on sticks by performers in all-black. If she doesn’t think too hard, she’s not bothered by the dissonance involved in joyfully parading through town on a day half the population vanished a few hundred years ago. She even enjoys the artwork. The crowd cheers as pyrotechnics shoot from the maw of a huge steel lion, its eyes glowing a menacing red. The people on the float wave and cheer, throwing cheap beads into the crowd. Meryl thinks she heard once that humans did this on Earth for decades. Sometimes, it’s the fun things that endure through space and time. Wire points at the next float—a depiction of an angel, its many wings curled effortlessly around a dark and foreboding pillar. Metalworking is so fascinating. She can’t imagine a craft where you can’t chisel something off if you don’t like it.  “James!” a harsh voice snaps. Wire freezes. It takes a moment for Meryl to remember that’s his real name, so used to calling him by the nickname he acquired after a mishap in shop class years ago. He turns casually toward his mother, who has managed to find him. “Hey, Mom,” he says, playing off his apparent disobedience.  “Your sisters looked for you everywhere this morning!” she says, her brow furrowed as she yells over the noise of the crowd. “You know they still like to come to things like this,” she adds. The ‘with you’ is implied. They’re ten and twelve years old, at the cusp of thinking it’s uncool to hang out with their brother, and Wire’s mom never lets him forget it. “I know,” Wire says sheepishly.  “You apologize to them when this is over. Hello, Meryl,” she says, finally acknowledging her standing next to him as an afterthought. “Nice to see you, Mrs. Jaycroft,” Meryl says. It’s always a little embarrassing to watch your friend get scolded by their parents. She tunes out the argument between Wire and his mom, instead focusing on the parade as it passes slowly by them. A majestic peacock puppet comes into view next, its technicolor feathers swaying in the breeze. As the last few floats start to turn the corner, an odd sound starts to come from behind her. In her peripheral vision, she watches Wire turn to it at the same time she does. It’s a yawning sound, low and unnatural, like the echoing toll of a giant bell, and it’s getting louder. “Do you hear that?” she asks Wire.  “Yeah,” he says, tilting his head to try to find the source of the noise. A handful of the other people around them turn to look too, pulled away from the excitement of the parade.  “What? Hear what?”  They both ignore Wire’s mother. Wire steps toward the bushes behind them and Meryl follows, her curiosity dragging her forward. The sound pulses once in a while like a heartbeat, causing palpitations in her own chest.  “It’s coming from the coast,” Wire says, pointing forward. “By the Salt Towers.” That’s all Meryl needs to hear before she takes off running into the woods. “Wait!” Wire cries, reaching for her hand, but he’s too slow. He keeps a few paces behind her as they crash through weeds and bushes. “Mer, it might be dangerous!”  She doesn’t listen to him. She can’t. All she can hear is the horrible droning noise, overpowering everything else. The closer they get, the louder it is, until it’s vibrating in her bones and ripping apart her ears. Then they reach the clearing, and out in the middle of the Salt Towers below, her jackal’s snout pointing directly at its pulsing heart, they find— Nothing.  The sound crescendos, and even with her hands over her ears, it leaks into her skull like a concussive migraine. She thinks she’s yelling, but she can’t hear it. Meryl falls to her knees, drops her forehead to the dirt, and just when she thinks her eardrums might burst, it stops.  She keeps her head to the ground for a few seconds still, her eyes scrunched closed, before she slowly removes her hands from her ears and rises from the ground. There’s blood on her palms where they covered her ears, and everything is muffled like she’s underwater. She turns, and Wire is speaking to her, but she can’t understand him. “What?” she asks, barely recognizing her own voice.  He looks terrified, and there’s blood smeared on his cheek too, dyeing the warm brown of his skin maroon. Her hearing is slowly returning, the sound of the wind and the waves crashing on the coast soothing the tears in her ears. “Meryl, we gotta go back,” Wire says, desperation and fear in his voice. She stands on shaky legs, reaching for his hand to help him up. They then stumble, much slower this time, back to town. Meryl fears the return of the noise, but it’s gone, a phantom echoing still in her ears with each clumsy step. They finally reach the edge of the woods, breaking the branches as they fall into the clearing at the town’s edge. The floats are empty.  They idle in place, engines sputtering while they wait for direction, but no one is there to drive them. There is only an empty street, covered in beads and candy and confetti. Puppets lie abandoned in the dirt.  Meryl and Wire glance at each other, then start walking blindly forward. They search for someone else, anyone else. Finally, they spot someone; a man, sitting on the edge of the Wandering fountain. The water is turned off. They jog toward him. His head is in his hands, and telltale blood is drying in a stream from his ear down to his neck. “Hey,” Wire says quietly. The man flinches, looking up from his hands with a haunted look in his eyes. “Sorry, it’s just—where is everyone?” The man stares, like he’s forgotten how to speak. Then he looks up at the fountain, avoiding their gazes. “Gone,” he says, his voice hoarse.  Meryl’s blood runs cold. “Gone..?” “They just…left,” he says. Then he adds, with a new crazed look in his eyes, “Did you hear it? The sound?”  She scans the street again. Beneath the parade’s detritus are dark footprints, seared into the cobblestone. There were people standing there, all around them. It’s as though they floated straight into the sky. Meryl knows what this is, all at once.  “The Stealing,” she gasps, her breath stopped and throat constricting. “It’s back.” She stares at the face of the statue, the Wandering Man, waiting his turn again for the water to turn on. His finger points to the sky, where the water will spout, and she follows it up, and up, and up. V.T. Mikolajczyk is a writer based in Rochester, NY. Though her AAS is in Biotechnology, she recently graduated from SUNY Brockport with a BS in Creative Writing. She has a special interest in writing speculative fiction. She intends to pursue an MFA in the future.

an unfinished feeling, he prays  to something beautiful that doesn’t  have a name. he tells god he must  learn to be five again, when time meant there was enough space to love someone, when the essence of life was in a spoon. he says god’s name just to put more of him in the world, the possibility  of being touched  by something: maybe the place god is is in my fingers. he makes pasta, he draws a poem, he pulls her hair out of the shower drain. when someone asks  he says god is so beautiful it doesn’t matter whether he exists or not. Rowan Tate is a Romanian creative and curator of beauty. She reads nonfiction nature books, the backs of shampoo bottles, and sometimes minds.

The most memorable are the finals, my father on a morphine drip, burying my first dog, Sporty. According to Oxford, " goodbye" is shortened God-to-be-with-you. Surfing articles before Morning Joe , I come across: “Even the most unreligious among us invokes God more than we might think, especially when parting from another person.” I think first of me, and my purported agnosticism. I always think of myself as the most unreligious  of my family, friends, and acquaintances, and while I want to attribute this quote to Reagan’s boy, the avowed atheist, “not afraid to burn in hell.” It turns out to be Merrill Perlman, NYT. Every morning with coffee I plug "ADIEU" into Wordle to determine today’s vowels. I realize I’ve been doing this every morning for as long as I can remember, which these days, usually goes back maybe 5 or 6 years. It’s the only time I ever use this word, and I know it’s a sexy way to say goodbye, it’s often used to describe goodbye, “He whispered a fond adieu”— it literally, to the French, means “to God.” I have a God, it’s not one who is judgmental, or requires a congregation to recognize. I don’t ask it for anything, it’s not he or she, doesn’t preside at board meetings,  or struggle with pronouns. There is some solace this morning, after this surfing, and getting it in three, that I might be a notorious churchless infidel,  but I start every day with Starbucks, remembering the finals, and a prayer. Craig Kirchner is retired and thinks of poetry as hobo art. He loves storytelling and the aesthetics of the paper and pen. He has had two poems nominated for the Pushcart, and has a book of poetry,  Roomful of Navels . After a writing hiatus, he was recently published in Poetry Quarterly, Decadent Review, New World Writing, Neologism, The Light Ekphrastic, Unlikely Stories, Wild Violet, Last Stanza, Unbroken, The Globe Review, Skinny, Your Impossible Voice, Fairfield Scribes, Spillwords, WitCraft, Bombfire, Ink in Thirds, Ginosko, Last Leaves, Literary Heist, Blotter, Quail Bell , Ariel Chart, Lit Shark, Gas, Teach-Write, Cape Magazine, Scars, Yellow Mama, Rundelania, Flora Fiction, Young Ravens, Loud Coffee Press, Edge of Humanity, Carolina Muse , and the Journal of Expressive Writing and has work forthcoming in Valiant Scribe, Chiron Review, Sybil, Timalda’s Diary, Vine Leaf Press, Wise Owl, Moria, The Argyle, Same Faces, Floyd County Moonshine, and Coneflower Café .

I wish I had warned someone about Uncle Pumpkin. Maybe I could have stopped him. Maybe I could have saved those poor kids. But until recently, I had no memory of the man at all. It was only after the bodies of the missing children were found—one boy still clutching a deflated pumpkin balloon in his shriveled, blackened hand—that I remembered what happened that night. And I realized that one of those kids could have been me. Every October, the Rafferty Family Farm hosted a spectacular autumn carnival known as Uncle Pumpkin's Festival of Fun. The festival's centerpiece was the giant slide towering over the fairgrounds. Officially, it was called the Great Slide, but all the kids called it by its unofficial moniker: Uncle Pumpkin's Tongue. It was an apt nickname. The top of the ride was framed by an enormous plywood facade hand-painted to resemble the face of the festival's mascot, Uncle Pumpkin: flat black irises, thick eyebrows, and a twisting mustache over a gaping, open-mouthed smile. A red plastic slide protruded from the center of the mouth like a tongue, descending through a series of stomach-dropping humps and ending in a long straightway with hay bales stacked at the end. Hour after hour, kids climbed the wooden staircase to the top of the slide, where a seasonal employee—usually a teen from the local high school—handed each of them a frayed burlap sack to sit on. The kids lined up five across, one in each lane of the slide, waiting for a shout of "Ready? Set? Go!" from one of the attendants. Then the riders pushed off and zipped down the slide on the sacks, each secretly hoping to be going fast enough to crash into the hay bales stacked at the end of the straightway. My parents encouraged me to try the Great Slide every year, but I always refused. It wasn't the slide that scared me—it was the character of Uncle Pumpkin that I found most terrifying. He was supposed to be a silly, clown-like figure that brought joy to children around Halloween, but the only thing he brought to me was a sense of profound unease, a lingering dread that left me feeling like I had a sandbag in my stomach. The face painted above the slide was scary enough, but the actual Uncle Pumpkin—the one roaming the festival grounds with a bouquet of pumpkin-shaped balloons—was even worse. His real name was Joe Rafferty, the middle-aged grandson of the original Uncle Pumpkin, his Grandpa Fred. Joe wore the same oversized black suit, orange bow tie, and crushed fedora that his grandfather wore in the 1940s. The classic Uncle Pumpkin features were smeared thick and messy across his pale, pockmarked face, as if he had applied the grease paint with the chewed end of an old hot dog. His mouth reeked of cigarettes and spoiled chicken, with yellowed teeth that leaned and twisted like they were trying to escape from his receding gums. He enjoyed sneaking up behind kids and poking them in the side with a bellowing "Boo!" before handing them a balloon to quell their startled tears. The schtick was intended to be funny, but it always felt cruel to me. As I grew older, my refusal to go down the Great Slide became a liability, especially when my friends rode it without a second thought. Finally, when I was ten, my friend Simon convinced me to give it a try. After saying goodbye to my parents—possibly for the last time, I feared—I began the tortuous ascent up the rickety stairs toward the top of the slide. The line seemed to take forever. The higher we went, the colder the steady autumn wind got. By the time it was my turn to ride, my teeth were chattering, and my fingers were numb. "Lane Five." The attendant handed me a burlap sack to sit on, then pointed to the far end of the platform. I froze, too petrified to go any further. I tried to will my legs to move, but they wouldn't respond. I was paralyzed was fear. After waiting a few seconds, Simon nudged me in the back. "Go!" "I'm going!" I took a hesitant step, trying not to look down at the ant-sized people on the fairgrounds far below. I imagined my parents smiling proudly up at me from the bottom of the slide, having no idea that their beloved son was about to soil his jeans. Simon put his hands on my shoulders and guided me forward. "Come on. Let's move." He positioned me in front of Lane Five, took his seat in Lane Four, then patted the red plastic in my lane. "Here. Sit." I flapped the burlap out flat on the slide, carefully settling my backside down onto it and closing my eyes. In the distance, I could hear squeals of glee from the carnival rides mixing with the twang of country western music from the stage in the barn. A strong gust of wind pushed against my back, carrying with it the smell of cigarettes and rotten chicken. Suddenly, I was overwhelmed by a powerful wave of vertigo that threatened to topple me forward down the slide. I grabbed for the sides of my lane to steady myself. But instead of cold plastic, my hands touched something else. Something warm. Something wet. Gasping with revulsion, I yanked my hands away. My eyes snapped open. The blood drained from my face. The fairgrounds were gone, replaced by a featureless void that merged with the starless sky above. Simon was gone, too, as were all my other friends, the attendants, and everyone else waiting in line. The sound of the festival had been replaced with a silence so absolute that my brain could only process it as a sort of rushing hiss. I was utterly alone at the top of the slide. Except, it wasn't a slide anymore. It was a tongue. A real tongue. Uncle Pumpkin's Tongue. The slide had transformed from shiny red plastic into dull pink flesh, rippling with papillae and slicked with saliva. The tongue snaked out into the darkness beneath me, so impossibly long that it seemed to disappear over the horizon. The warmth of its flesh radiated through the burlap as the saliva soaked into my jeans and dampened the backs of my thighs. A drop of hot liquid splattered onto my forehead from above and ran down over my eye. I swiped it away with the back of my wrist, then looked up. Overhead, rotting yellow teeth protruded from gums blackened with disease. Elongated drips of drool dangled from cracked and bleeding lips. I was in Uncle Pumpkin's mouth. And if I didn't get out of there right away, I knew he would swallow me whole. I'd slide down his throat and into a churning acid bath filled with half-digested chunks of kids just like me, dissolving in a vile stew of melted flesh and bubbling fat. With a desperate cry, I closed my eyes and threw my weight forward, away from Uncle Pumpkin's rotten maw. I felt myself falling, picking up speed as I slid down the spit-slicked tongue. I opened my mouth to scream, but all that came out was a strangled moan of terror. Stinking droplets of foul spittle splattered against my face and neck as I accelerated, plummeting faster and faster through a series of nauseating drops, then rocketing off the end of the tongue and into the infinite nothingness beyond… …where I slammed feet-first into a bale of hay. Cheers erupted. I opened my eyes to see a crowd of festival-goers applauding me. The noise of the festival returned, warbling unsteadily like a record player picking up speed. Simon crawled over to me, an expectant look on his face. "Well? What'd you think?" "Fun," I mumbled, still confused and disoriented by what just happened. "It was fun." I turned and looked back up the slide. It was just as it had always been: a painted Uncle Pumpkin face at the top, with a red plastic slide descending to the ground. Whatever I experienced up there must have been my imagination, an insane hallucination brought on by panic and fear. Relieved that the nightmare was over, I climbed to my feet, returned the burlap sack to the pile by the stairs, and followed Simon through the ride's exit. As we merged into the crowd, a sharp finger jabbed into my side. I yelped and spun around. Uncle Pumpkin was behind me, leering at me with a nicotine-stained grin. My bladder loosened, threatening to dump a flood of urine down my pants. I felt an overwhelming urge to run, but my legs had turned into useless sacks of grain. There was nothing I could do but stand there in fearful silence. Uncle Pumpkin motioned like he wanted to tell me a secret. Then he bent down, his face drawing within an inch of my ear. He cupped his hand around his mouth as if to prevent anyone from hearing what he was about to say … then dragged his tongue along the length of my ear in a long, wet stroke. The stink of cigarettes and rotten chicken assailed my senses as he spoke in a breathy whisper. "Boo." Then he took my hand, pressed the string of a balloon into my palm, and ambled off into the crowd without another word. I wiped at my ear with my sleeve, desperate to remove the film of foul-smelling spit the man's tongue had left on my skin. Tears welled in my eyes. "What did he say?" Simon asked. I should have told him what happened, but I didn't. I couldn't. Instead, I said, "Nothing." I shrugged. "Just Happy Halloween." Then I opened my palm and let go of the balloon, watching as it spiraled skyward into the cold October night. Warren Benedetto writes dark fiction about horrible people, horrible places, and horrible things. He is an award-winning author who has published over 200 stories, appearing in publications such as Dark Matter Magazine, Fantasy Magazine , and The Dread Machine ; on podcasts such as The NoSleep Podcast, Tales to Terrify , and Chilling Tales For Dark Nights ; and in anthologies from Apex Magazine, Tenebrous Press, Scare Street , and many more. He also works in the video game industry, where he holds 35+ patents for various types of gaming technology. For more information, visit  warrenbenedetto.com   and follow @warrenbenedetto on  Twitter  and  Instagram .

Now that I have tucked you —cracked and broken, body soft— into the damp dark earth in May, the rain loosening the soil and bringing up the worms, the other snails come stand vigil. They protect that bit of shell left on the walkway, that blur of slime left on my shoe. These little marks of life that I unknowingly crushed in my bigness— they come stand vigil over the pieces of you too small for me to lay to rest. Katherine Olsen is a writer and poet at UC Berkeley. She is studying Rhetoric and workshops her poetry and stories whenever she can. Her favorite poet is Anna Akhmatova, and her most recent (re)read is Tender is the Flesh  by Agustina Bazterrica. Katherine's poem "To the man on the bus with six fingers" is published at Livina Press.

Let me lie fallow beside the old patch of earth, weedless now and forgotten, ignored because it has no more to give. Let me rest upon its brittle, parched and clotted remains, no longer powdered in the hoofprints of pursuit. Even the For Sale  signs have withered to dust. No longer on display for the bidding, hungered after or fought over. No longer launching wars and doomsday threats, high-powered monopolies or low-down dirty deals. No longer bait or reward for subterfuge, extortion and slaughter. Let me lie down in the unwanted place. No, not the graveyard, where a thousand feet trample in their forced marches. Where the voices, strained and shrill, simper their obligatory regrets that a well has run dry, the mine played out. Not the hallowed ground where respects are paid in the inflated currency of blame. Let me lie upon the unhallowed ground. The place too spoiled to set foot. The place upon which even the insects will not crawl. The place so worthless, seeds beg to be blown away by any uncaring gust. So impermeable, so barren, so drained of even the scent of opportunity, nothing will ever linger here again. If industry is Man’s highest duty and indolence the worst of all sins, then this must be the Devil’s playground. But is it? Nothing to exploit or compete for here. Nothing valued by God or Man. Not even to make a small profit, let alone to sell one’s soul for. I would guess even Satan passed up the deal.  No, there are no fancy gates. No electrified fences. Not even broken-down barbed wire strung in twisted nets from post to leaning post. There is no threat of trespass. Nothing here worth protecting. No Keep Out  signs. Just a poverty of riches squandered. This is my place of belonging.  Let me lie down in the unvisited and unmourned  place. This legendary sanctuary from striving, the mythical realm of no supply and no demand. Once upon a time, so steeped in the sweat and clamor of conquest, only the cloying stench of uselessness could set it free. Now politely forsaken, this ugly unmapped place warrants no invasion, no development, no violation by being valued. No longer real estate. No longer real. I spread my body over this ungiving ground, this inviolate wasteland, at last blissfully depleted.  Let me lie in the untroubled peace of this used-up patch of earth. In the quiet vacancy of long-overdue abandonment, where even disposal is not necessary. Let me find refuge with the paved over, the hollowed out, the forever fallow. Here in the debris. Here in the ruins. Here in the splendor of the unwanted place. Desperately seeking attention in a family of nine, Joan Bechtel learned the art of failing early. Her mother reassured her as a four-year-old, “We’re not laughing at you. We’re laughing with you.” So ridicule was good! This failure to fear failure spurred her on. From pink slip to pink slip, divorce to divorce. Sort of a delightfully macabre anima mundi. Yes, there were setbacks along the failure trail. Her satire in black and white and Esperanto, Ne Plu Pikniko , was called the “mother of all art films” by Joe Bob Briggs. But she never let success stop her. Years as a mother and psychotherapist taught Joan that childhood and horror were a dynamic duo. Not in the search for truth exactly, but digging into the muck beneath the true. Hell is her briar patch. Failure her gift.

Perhaps god of time is a misnomer and god is time the correct alternative since the former indicates removal from the preposition’s object where, in fact, is identity, an equation that brooks no separation, no distance between the two nouns, thus the only necessity is one or the other any sentence—subject and predicate—  a tautology necessarily unneeded John Zedolik is an adjunct English professor at Chatham University and Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and has published poems in such journals as Abbey, The Bangalore Review  (IND), Commonweal, FreeXpresSion  (AUS), Orbis  (UK), Paperplates  (CAN), Poem, Poetry Salzburg Review  (AUT), Third Wednesday, Transom , and in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette . In 2019, he published his first full-length collection, entitled Salient Points and Sharp Angles  (CW Books), which is available through Amazon, and in 2021 he published another collection, When the Spirit Moves Me  (Wipf & Stock), which consists of spiritually themed poems and is also available through Amazon. In 2023 he published his third collection, Mother Mourning  (again, available on Amazon), and he has another forthcoming. John’s iPhone is his primary poetry notebook, and he hopes his use of technology to craft this ancient art remains fruitful.

Hail, Lord of the White Horse, From He of the Red Horse. Greetings and good tidings to you, Honoured Comrade. The first two seals are broken. You and I are freed, and I send you glad news of the human world. War is rampant and the field sanguinary. I ride forth into carnage and chaos, sword unsheathed, and feel the ancient joy coursing through my limbs. The only lack in this wondrous storm is your magnificent presence. I implore you, as my brother-in-arms, to make haste. There is much good work to be done here. This modern era of the humans surpasses anything I have witnessed in our long existence. Imagine all the age-old hatreds and fears coupled with an unearthly array of weapons. The ingenuity of the mortals is beyond belief. Their tools of war are as those of the gods, yet their grasp of consequence is no more than childlike simplicity. This happy combination causes destruction to rain from the very heavens. You may doubt my words, as only first-hand witness can convey the magnitude of mankind’s folly and thus our joy. Yet my eyes now see horrors that defy millennia of experience. The terrible siege engines of old are children’s toys compared to that which the humans have wrought. Missiles and bombs rain down on the cities. These new bombards are not fired from outside besieged walls but rather launched from many leagues distant. More than that, these missiles are guided by mechanical intelligence. Entire cities are reduced to rubble in a matter of hours. What would have of old been the work of a year-long siege is now accomplished in the course of a single day. Buildings tumble, crushing those sheltered inside. The screams of the wounded and moans of the dying rise into the dark pall. And above it all, the shriek of more missiles descending in a final deadly arc. These terrible weapons penetrate the very earth itself, rupturing the waterlines and collapsing the sewer tunnels. Filth and drought plague the survivors. Thus, I beseech you to come at once and bring with you your bow of pestilence. The plagues of old await only your arrival. The time is well ripe for disease to follow war. I write that the humans have achieved the destruction of the gods and that much is true. Yet here, astride my horse amid this ruination, I am reminded of our long work inside medieval walls. The barbarity of old has returned, and I call for you to return as well. Bring with you, I beg, your craft and doom. Cry havoc! and loose the scourge of cholera, typhus, and all your terrible epidemics. Now I must set aside my pen and raise again the unsheathed sword. The battle rages yet and there is much good work to be done. I pray you come at once that we may again ride as one. Together, none can withstand us. Our glory will be great, and our path dreadful. With fealty and admiration, I remain your Faithful Comrade, He of the Red Horse. Greetings to the Lord of the Black Horse, From He of the Red Horse. Honour and Salutations to you, Beloved Comrade. The third seal is sundered, Good Sir, and I write to you from the smoke and flame of battle joined and horrible ruin. The human world is afire. The reek rises above the ruin, bearing the stench of the dead to lure the carrion birds. I lower my sword only long enough to pen this missive to you, begging you to come in haste. We have ridden together many long centuries. I long to once again see your black steed beside my red. Many marvellous and terrible events have come to pass, wrack, ruin, slaughter, and despair. The worst and best are yet to come and wait only for your arrival on the field. You know that it is beyond my abilities to tell a falsehood, yet you will think my words false for what I write next. But doubt me not, Comrade, for every word is true, as it must and always will be.  The mortals set upon themselves with every tool of destruction at their command, and their modern weapons have grown very great. They rain death from the skies and cut across the landscape like a reaping scythe. The earth lies barren beneath the rubble and no seed will take root. The innocents suffer the pangs of hunger and parching thirst, and this is only the beginning. Know that there are well-meaning men who attempt the folly of salvation. These humans, meaning well, drop canisters of food from the sky. And not unlike the missiles that crush the cities, these canisters meant to be manna fall upon the hungry and crush them to the ground.  Truly I say to you, the humans have taken madness to new and desolate horizons. They kill one another from great distances using their soulless machines as surrogates. These killing machines do not discriminate between warriors and the innocent. Women and children, the old and infirm, all are cut down. I see before me the hospitals crushed to rubble, the food stores burned, and the wells scorched dry. Your time is at hand. The black horse must ride forth. I implore you to come to me. Bear with you your dreaded scales that you may weigh out the doom of famine and spread it across this blighted land. Pestilence, war, and famine will be united once more. We shall ride together and trample all that would oppose us. The hoofbeats of our valiant warhorse will sound a tocsin that echoes around this pitiful Earth. Come at once, I entreat you, and may swiftness attend your passage hence. I have only to petition the fourth horse, our liege lord, and this I will do.   With unyielding devotion, I remain your True Confederate, He of the Red Horse. Most Honoured Lord of the Pale Horse, From He of the Red Horse. Humble Greetings to you, My Liege Lord. My Lord, I ask your leave to report that all is made ready for your arrival on this terrible field of battle. The fourth seal is broken, and nothing now restrains us.  The humans have descended into a madness of bloodlust, revenge, and annihilation. Here in this birthplace of their small gods, the mortals extract an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and vengeance for vengeance’s sake.  These poor mortals are as blinkered fools, battling each other at the crumbling edge of the abyss, oblivious to their looming plunge. Each side demands the complete eradication of the other. There will be no surcease. Thus is our board set, and the pawns in play.   The riders of the white and black horses have been summoned to my side. We await only your presence for the dread quartet to be complete. The conflagration has begun, My Lord. I beg you, in your own time, to come before us and lead us hence. We shall ravage this human world with the bow, the sword, the scales, and your merciless scythe. For surely it is written that we are given authority over a full fourth of the human world.  As you know, Lord, this ruined battlefield is but the opening act in a saga long awaited. War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death shall ride as one, and we will be as unstoppable as eternal doom. The bell tolls its last, My Liege, and we are gladly summoned. White, red, and black, your humble servants, stand ready to do your bidding. I pray for your esteemed arrival and the swift fulfilment of our purpose.  With fealty and humility, I remain your Devoted Servant, He of the Red Horse. Marco Etheridge is a writer of prose, an occasional playwright, and a part-time poet. He lives and writes in Vienna, Austria. His work has been featured in over one hundred reviews and journals across Canada, Australia, the UK, and the USA. His story “Power Tools” has been nominated for Best of the Web for 2023. Power Tools is Marco’s latest collection of short fiction. When he isn’t crafting stories, Marco is a contributing editor for a new ‘zine called Hotch Potch . In his other life, Marco travels the world with his lovely wife Sabine. Website:  https://www.marcoetheridgefiction.com/

when god made me he was singing and i am  finishing the song—the way birds unfeather  themselves into kaleidoscopic color, cosmos  creating cosmos, when he said "let there be wings"  and fed them spoonfuls of breath. when i say  i love you i mean: i am not alone  inside of it, there is that same  ripening air, world-mothering air—god  as a little girl  dancing. Rowan Tate is a Romanian creative and curator of beauty. She reads nonfiction nature books, the backs of shampoo bottles, and sometimes minds.

A haziness obscures the horizon as I look for boats and islands  on the Mediterranean Sea, or more precisely at  them for no other reason than to fix my eye on some thing to avoid getting sunk in the blue that sings like silent radio waves: I, blissed and untutored in the science of sunlight and reflection. Michael Neal Morris has published several stories, poems, and essays in print and online. He lives with his family just outside the Dallas area and teaches Composition and Creative Writing at Dallas College’s Eastfield campus.

Some people suffer sleepless nights pondering if the Big Bang proves or disproves God. Others have wondered how God said, “Let there be light,” in the beginning. If there was nothing, how was He there? I don’t begrudge people their skepticism; I even have questions of my own, though my concerns are bigger, all-encompassing. To calm my existential worries, I used the following scenario: I wonder whether God would or even could  care about me, an individual. Even if He had access to all my portals of perception: my eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and tactile nervous system—perhaps even my imagination—so what? Wouldn’t that just increase his apathy? Because it wouldn't just be me, but eight billion people alive now, all people who had lived, countless other creatures he has dominion over, too. How could He feel either cruel or benevolent when each of us must seem but yet another number to him? Concerns like these are what brought me to this inpatient mental health facility, metaphysical concerns that manifested themselves in mundane ways. They started at a young age. My mind opened wide to the infinite possibilities of the universe, so much so that what I felt and saw there made it hard to function, like I was constantly distracted by unending miracles. Then, somehow, suddenly, it became worse. My window into the miraculous closed, and the snap back into reality broke something within me. But before I go off on too long a tangent—a bad habit, but it helps my nerves—allow me to start over from the beginning. When I was kid, right after I first heard about the Big Bang, I started talking to God. A PBS special introduced me to the theory. As I watched, an instinct told me to do the following: I spun the loveseat to face the back wall, lay upside down, facing away from the TV, closed my eyes, and listened. My head hung inches above the carpet, brushing it with my dangling hair. Though I didn’t understand what it was at the time, I entered a meditative state. It was both a joyful and horrific experience, becoming one with the entire universe, simultaneously blessed and cursed as adamantine bonds spread at infinitesimal increments, slowing, cooling toward the death-halt of the Universe. In that moment of final victory of inertia, on that loveseat, as a young child, I knew the atoms that comprised me, present and future: whatever they would become after I was no longer a sentient being would travel alongside the atomic descendants of all other beings to the endpoint of existence. But why? Not why a Big Bang; nor why existence; nor why human intelligence; but why were we allowed only partial knowledge of our place in the grand scheme? Perhaps the partiality is inevitable. After all, the more mankind has learned, the more unsolved mysteries we’ve uncovered. My doubts accumulated as I entered that state, almost at will, several times over. It was a condition I named Universal Connectedness. That made it sound more peaceful than it was. Though I was placid on the outside, inside I roiled, wracked with confusion. How could humanity’s greatest thinkers, minds endowed by God with exceptional reasoning skills, be as lost as me—an abject fool—as to the meaning of it all? While I was in this state, my soul disengaged from my corporeal form, and before it would appear a Being I dubbed The Godhead. This being was neither a gray-bearded giant nor some abstract invisible entity I could merely feel, but an amalgamation of faces and forces worshipped the world over through all of time. And I mean that literally; it was a mosaic humanoid head constituted by, to name a few: Jesus crucified forming the bridge of its nose; Kukulcan, Ganesh, and Medusa were among those who formed its strands of hair; Laughing Buddha and Silenus formed bags under its eyes—eyes made out of the planets who bore the names of Roman gods; Mount Fuji formed its graven forehead; and a myriad of other formidable forlorn deities filled out the rest of the façade. Faced by such an awesome power, I felt compelled to ask, “Godhead, if we are all reincarnated, then why suffer through billions of years of existence if it ends with us drifting toward the freezing of space-time?” Those omnipotent, deified eyes, composed of a godly swirl, looked down on me, challenging me to make my plight seem in any way significant. “Is this why our spirits return as animals, to unburden woes?” I continued. “Are my troubles leading me to an inanimate return?” I begged, desperation climbing into my voice, trying to find some query that would cause this all-encompassing Overlord to respond—even if only to crush my puny hopes. “Are Shintos right, could I be a rock in another incarnation?” Implacable, The Godhead looked down on me, boring a hole of anguish into my soul and the whole of creation. It didn’t answer. The memories of that meditative trance vanished for some time after my harsh awakening. All I remembered for a few days was trembling, gibbering, and crying as if stuck constantly waking from a nightmare. When what I had seen returned to me, I believed the silver lining was that I’d never again face The Godhead after that. But I would. As I grew older, I found myself searching for answers to unasked questions about the universe and her deities. In searching, I encountered neither solace nor peace, only angst. Angst was the mildest way to put it. Education, while providing me knowledge, also fueled my rage. Good faith attempts to find a religion merely fractured me again into several more pieces. Eventually, the fruitlessness of seeking meaning in existence took its toll. I decided to end it. My method? Alcohol and barbiturates, but rather than being rewarded with death, I only passed out. Then I was punished, flung headlong into a metaphysical plane. There, that daunting countenance loomed again. Entities aswirl, my increased theological knowledge populating more godly beings in those hideous faces: Yog Sothoth’s flagellating tentacles mixed into The Godhead’s flowing hair; Islamic crescent moons formed eyebrows; the Star of David shone from Its infinite maw as It spoke at last. “Alas, the ungrateful seeker returns.” “It was unintentional.” “Nonsense, accidents exist not.”  The convulsive amalgamation of all the world’s worshipped pointed at me, a great mass of indifference.  “How thou, a mortal, hast made this immense journey twice, I know not. It seems to me a display of haughtiness.” “All I wanted was to die.” “Please speak not falsehoods, they make fools of us both, and neither of us are fools.” For a millisecond it seemed I might blink out of existence, as if The Godhead could blow my soul throughout the universe like it was blowing dandelion spores. “If it was death thou sought, it is easily found. Alas, thou desire aught else.” Remembering the innocent child I’d been before turning on that PBS special, I realized The Godhead was right. I knew then what I wanted. “I want to forget.” At once, I felt a pushing sensation. Then I spun like my soul was a whirlwind until I awoke, reinhabiting my flesh body, serenaded by ambulance sirens. After my stomach was pumped and I was back on my feet, I agreed to check in to a facility. They take care of me here in this sterile place. The pills they administer have stopped me from feeling frantic, but not from worrying. The Godhead didn’t grant my wish. I’ve not forgotten, and for that sin, they’ve branded me mentally ill, which I am, but I’m not a liar. Though I only saw it in space’s depths, The Godhead’s everywhere. Bernardo Villela has short fiction included in periodicals such as LatineLit and in anthologies such as There's More of Us Than You Know. He’s had original poetry published by Exist Otherwise among others and translations published by AzonaL and Red Fern Review . You can find some of his other works here:  https://linktr.ee/bernardovillela .

Everything ached.  My back throbbed, and each pulse of my heart sent lightning bolts of pain that ricocheted through my contorted spine. Curled beneath me, my legs had gone numb hours ago, but my arms were the worst. A sickening sensation, almost like static ran in sharp currents through my splayed limps as I braced myself against the wall. Although it was blessedly dark here, trapped between the insulation and warm concrete, I could feel the mocking sun outside. It inched across the sky in torturously slow increments as the days dragged their feet. I loathed summer. How the moon-sweet nights were so short, how the jealous dawn seemed so eager to banish the comforting stars. The heat clung like noxious fumes to everything, until the world seemed to sweat and moan beneath the humid grip of these agonising months.  On the other side of this wall, the family was still awake. In a few months, they’d be lured into their beds by long hours of darkness; but now they were still active. I could feel their steps reverberate through the wall: the light, fawn-like steps of the two children, and more importantly, the steady gait of their father. The waiting was agony.  I’d arrived too early. A miscalculation which had led me to simply swap one cage for another. I’d found temporary refuge in an empty warehouse, those who worked there cared little for the things in the dark. Yet it had been barren. I’d roamed the nights with the restlessness of a ghost, every sense pushed to their limits, until at last, I had found it. Immediately, the urge had been almost overwhelming, a siren call of home to the exhausted wanderer. Eagerness had made me careless, and pulled me from the dark too early. Now I found myself stuck maddeningly close to what I craved, but unable to move. Another bolt of pain tore through my long spine and echoed through my hunched shoulders. I gritted my teeth and forced myself to remain still. I closed my eyes and waited for the day to end. At last, the shadows had grown, unfurled into ribbons of black ink over the house. Strands of darkness slid into the hair-thin cracks of my hiding space, sweet encouragement that it was safe to emerge. No movement came from inside the house. I eased myself through the wall until my numb feet rested on a plush carpet—at last, I was inside. Stretching out my thin limbs, I hissed at the unpleasant sensation of muscles and tendons quivering back to life beneath my skin. In part to distract myself, I staggered ungainly to the large bay windows which looked out onto the street. I turned my head, the action accompanied by a loud crack as my neck realigned. Outside, I saw the other houses had similarly fallen silent. Only one, three buildings down, had light spilling from an upstairs window. Curiosity flickered to life, and for a moment, I contemplated slipping out into the night. I’d avoid the golden pools of dripping streetlamp light, and instead investigate the one bright window which seemed to glow with the promise of something new. No, it would have to wait. Curiosity could be satiated another time, now… now I needed to focus on more pressing desires. The pain in my body had finally subsided, and my muscles were warm and ready. On silent feet, I moved through the rooms and my eyes devoured every detail. Every inch of this space seemed littered with memorabilia of the family who inhabited this space. Casually draped blankets whispered of cold mornings curled on the sofa, while a neglected mug of forgotten tea still held a memory of warmth. Of life. I paused when I found a toy, a small doll with bright yellow hair which sat on one of the sofa cushions, one plastic arm outstretched towards me. I moved further, feet now on the cold tiles of a kitchen. A picture coloured by a child’s excited hand was stuck to the fridge, yet the blobs of colour were meaningless to me. I returned to the warm room, and a glint caught my attention. A row of photographs lined a small shelf—moments captured forever. Faces frozen in perpetual grins, hands permanently linked. I raised one hand to clumsily brush over the cool glass and a different kind of ache writhed in my chest. It was a chasm, a yawning abyssal hunger.  My harsh breath fogged the glass and obscured the faces which grinned up from the photos. Envy was a blade, twisting somewhere deep inside me as the warm atmosphere of this room, of the lives who filled it, pressed against me. Smothering. I was so close that my skin twitched and spasmed on my bones. Unable to bear it, I turned from the photos and glided up the carpeted stairs. My attention narrowed to the sound of several beating hearts. A rhythmic, calming cadence which pulled me along, urged me in the right direction.  At last, I hovered outside the door and relished the excitement which flowed through my veins, such a contrast to the slow beat just behind the door. It had been left open, barely a crack, but it was wide enough for me. I slid through until I stood in the bedroom. Light from the streetlamps mocked me through the window, but the darkness which filled the corners of the room was enough to keep the intruding light at bay. I made my way to the bed. There would be time to explore this room, to see what lay within each drawer, upon every shelf—but not now. I let my limbs be guided by the slumbering pulse until one hand touched the soft edge of the bedcovers. The man was deeply asleep, his eyelids shifting as he dreamed. A fresh wave of excitement, of anticipation broke over me like a wave, but I held myself still.  When I was sure I was in control again, I let my fingers brush over his throat. The skin was fragile, and here I keenly felt his pulse beat against my damp flesh. His eyes opened, as I let one limb brush over his mouth. There was confusion in his gaze, a question of whether he was still dreaming, and then there was the fear. His mouth opened, but I had already taken his voice. A slight whistle of air escaped from his lips as one of his hands rose to his throat. His body lurched as he pushed himself back, sitting up against the headboard. The whites of his eyes gleamed around the dilated pupils as he stared. Within his warm chest, the tempo of his heart had quickened, no longer a lullaby but a frenetic, raucous beat. He tried to move away, but my hand now firmly gripped his neck, there was nowhere for him to go. His terror was electric, and I felt the exhilaration in my blood as I felt him struggle; like a bird held in a hand, so fragile in fear. His desperate lips were wide open and I could feel the air from his silenced screams warm my hand. I shivered before I moved on top of the bed. I held his face between my hands, he clawed ineffectively at my form. To him, it would feel as if he were trying to clutch at fog, and I barely felt his attempts to fight back.  Despite his struggles, my fingers were now poised at the soft skin behind his jaw and around his ears. The man went limp, yet as he started to feel the pain he convulsed violently. His head still in my grip, I could see the pleading in his eyes, the tears which slipped down his face. Bedcovers were kicked to the floor as he struggled, fruitlessly trying to escape the pain that was only increasing with every passing second. If I had a voice, I’d tell him to be still, to simply let go.  At last, I felt it give. First, only a little, the barest hint of weakening, and then all at once it practically fell away from the sinew and bone. With absolute tenderness, I lifted it free from the gore and gently turned it over in my hands. Joy bubbled up within me, a breathless sort of wonder. I'd left the envy downstairs, now there was only undiluted happiness.  I raised it and savoured the warmth I felt, the heat which spilt free and ran down my arms like silk. It only grew more intense as I closed the distance and brought it closer until I was bathed in life.  I opened my new eyes for the first time. My hand rose of its own accord and my fingertips stroked the new, flushed skin now effortlessly moulding to my once smooth head.  I had a mouth, I could smile—I was smiling! My fingertips explored my new face, at the plush lips which now were curled upwards like a crescent moon, at the flatter teeth growing from my gums. I let them explore the soft curve of my cheek, of my new nose. A sound escaped me, and I started slightly before I understood—it was a laugh. My curious fingers trailed upwards, and they grazed soft eyelashes which framed more simple eyes. I let myself slip to the floor, my knees buckling under the weight of the moment. The skin from the new face coaxed the rest of my body into its new shape. Fresh skin emerged from beneath my former flesh, and joints reformed into a far more human shape- it was as if each cell was transforming into something wonderful. I closed my new eyes and savoured the love that coursed through me, the joy and pure, undiluted euphoria. Tears formed behind my eyelids and slipped down the— my —unblemished cheeks before they dripped like rain onto the carpet beneath me.  Once again, I had a face. “Afternoon Adam! It’s going to be a scorcher today, isn’t it?” My neighbour’s cheerful voice boomed over the small hedge wall dividing our respective gardens. I paused from where I was watering the plants, and raised my head to meet his open smile,  “Sure is! You’ll have to come over later,” I replied, still feeling a thrill when I heard my new voice, “the girls will love to see you.”  He waved and promised to bring a few good steaks for a BBQ before he stepped out from view. I turned away and gazed around my garden where his… where my  two daughters played by the colourful beds of peonies.  “Would you two like an ice cream?” I asked, They cheered, and I couldn’t resist a broad grin. I walked back towards the house but paused when I stepped into a golden patch of late afternoon sunlight. I tilted my head back and let the warmth soak into me. Perhaps summer wasn’t so bad after all. Riley is an English writer, and while she was born in London, she has lived all along the southern coast of the UK. She has been published in both the independent arts magazine, Antler Velvet as well as the publication, The Yard Lab . She is currently studying creative writing at the degree level as a mature student, after a gap year spent working as a journalist overseas. Riley enjoys writing both poetry and prose, with the latter often containing elements of the gothic and disturbing.