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The steps to the basement are dark. The basement itself is even darker. Something scurries across the damp floor. Most likely a rat. At least, that’s what I’m hoping. The kitchen is bright enough. But, as a creature slips in and out of the cranny under the stove, I see only its shadow. I thought I saw a tail. If only I’d seen the whole thing, my mind would not be racing with such possibilities. The walls of my bedroom are hollow. My attempts at sleep are filled with much scampering. More rats. At least, I pray they’re rodents. On this cold night, the bed is warm. But I’m not alone beneath the sheets. Something is in here with me, darting up and down my leg. Gnaw on my toes, if you must. I’ve got ten. But I have just the one soul. And there are beings extant that will take liberties John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, Santa Fe Literary Review, and Lost Pilots. Latest books, Between Two Fires, Covert and Memory Outside The Head are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Seventh Quarry, La Presa and California Quarterly.

She was angry with her mother. The boys were going to Big Creek to swim and she wasn’t allowed. She was ten. It wasn’t fair. The only thing her mother would say was that someone had written on the bridge supports “I want to pet your pussy” and it wasn’t safe. So there was a cat down there. She wasn’t afraid of cats. She liked cats. Pouting, she flung herself down on the front porch swing hard enough to make it fly backward into the siding under the porch window. If granddad had been around he would have come out and made her cut her own switch so he could leave red stripes on her calves. But, he wasn’t, so she pushed with sandaled toes against the concrete floor of the porch looking at nothing and hitting the siding again and again. Behind closed eyes she could picture Big Creek with the almost smooth river stones cutting into her city-soft bare feet, the dragonflies strafing the water, frogs making summer noises and the water striders whose feet barely touched the surface of the creek. The porch swing had a cushion and if she stretched out end to end, she fit perfectly. One leg hung over the side of the swing and meant she could make it go with a nice creaking sound. The heat and somnolence of Des Arc in summer stifled. The paper bag tied up and hung from the porch ceiling to look like a hornet’s nest wasn’t moving at all. She wondered if it really frightened away the wasps from making nests. A lot of things were like that. People said something was supposed to help, but could you really tell? The fake owl on the front porch was supposed to keep away snakes, but how could you tell? Grandma said there weren’t any snakes, so it was working. But, she wondered even more about what the boys were doing now. She wanted to run where they were and do things that broke the rules. She settled for picking loose the stitching on the porch swing cushion, at least until she could find a better rule to break. Her mother called her to lunch at the big table on the screened in back porch. Her grandma and mother talked over the top of her head. One of the local boys had shot his eye out by looking down the barrel of his BB gun. She wondered what it looked like. Even with a shot-out eye, he was probably at the creek. She was still being ignored for being difficult about wanting to go swimming without an adult so it wasn’t a good idea to press them about whether the hole went all the way through his head. She had made short work of her lunch and was beginning to eye her mother’s. As she cooled her face with one of the cardboard fans with a face of Jesus on it – taken from the church, and walked back every Sunday – she noticed movement of a noodle on her mother’s plate. The two women didn’t seem to notice that it had horns, or that it moved on its own. They were still engrossed over whether the boy that looked down the barrel of a BB gun would have to wear an eye-patch for life. The noodle looked at her. A mouth appeared smiling and it said, “I’m Satan. If you let your mother eat me you will be damned forever. Do you know what that means?” She didn’t, but she wasn’t thinking fondly of her mother just now. She was thinking of the boys moving their limbs through the silky smooth water of Big Creek. She said nothing as the noodle with the mouth smiled and her mother’s fork scooped it up and swallowed it down. She jumped up so quickly her chair flew over backward hitting the floor and calling down the wrath of her mother and grandmother. She ran out the back door making sure it slammed shut hard. “Stupid girl! Stay in the yard!” followed her out the door. She was headed on flying feet to the creek. With burning lungs she went as fast as her legs could pump. She was soon scrambling down the gravel access road that led to the creek. But, where were the boys? She couldn’t see or hear them. Just her luck, they were off having some other kind of fun that she wouldn’t have been allowed to do either. Her sandals slipped but she quickly made it to the water’s edge kicking them off and going in clothes and all. Shorts and a cotton shirt weren’t much different than a swimming suit. Looking back, she could see the words that offended her mother scrawled on the bridge supports. The figure of a young man came out from behind a pillar. “Hey, there,” he said, walking toward her. “Hey, there,” she said back. She squinted at him trying to see if he was one of the boys she had gone down the slide with at the school playground. Nope, he was taller. “Where’s the cat?” she asked. He was getting closer. His response was, “You’re the only little pussy I see down here.” That didn’t feel right. She felt like she needed to get away and she looked behind her to the main channel of Big Creek. This time of year it really was just a big creek but it had a little channel in it about six feet deep. A black snake was gliding across the top of the water there, between her and a brush covered bank she knew was too steep to climb. She looked back at the young man smiling at her, waving, saying “Here kitty, kitty.” She moved toward the snake and away from the boy. The water moccasin opened its white mouth, came incredibly fast toward her and bit her hard on the face. “Stupid girl,” it said and smiled with its wide, pale mouth. She was screaming and clawing as the blood ran down her cheek. She felt like her face had been placed against a hot skillet and then someone had hammered a nail into it. The young man gasped, turned and ran, never looking back. Neither did the snake as it undulated away over the top of the water. She struggled but was unable to find the bottom, getting weaker, going into shock, sinking lower until only a stream of bubbles marked where she had gone under carried by the current gently downstream. Then it was quiet again and the striders were lightly touching the clear water. Peggy Nalls was formerly a copywriter and technical writer. She is now trying to find her voice in the middle of Missouri.

His one kidney failing my friend each night saw visions, unknown creatures, forms half human, ghosts, circle his bed as always tiny soldiers worked with tools inside the clock’s green face to take off the emerald hour and minute hand. Glowing still now they’ve fallen to the darkened floor. Nels Hanson has worked as a farmer, teacher and editor. His fiction received the James D. Phelan award from the San Francisco Foundation, and his poetry the Prospero Prize from Sharkpack Review.

‘Yo no creo en brujas, pero que las hay, las hay’ (Galicia’s cruel saying) There was a thief that a bad luck set him on the way to your house; a rapist that someone drove his madness’ eyes and his insane desire to that dear friend of yours, or, who knows, the weight of evil, even to your beloved daughter. A runaway truck that went around, didn’t catch you, but wrecked a car with your friend’s sister, also destroying her life and her family’s. An irate driver who picked you up in traffic, for, without any motive or reason, to overflow all his hatred towards this world we live in. That drug dealer who once saw at your son a certain hopelessness of youth and guided him, without pity or hesitation and with all wickedness, on the sordid path of addiction. That one you thought your friend but directed you, with false truths and promise of great gains, for a business he never had money or courage to. That stranger (maybe even a friend), who, hidden from you and from due respect, set eyes of malice and sin in your wife. That sullen and unpredictable man, let loose on the streets, instead of locked up in a bughouse, who can, on the outbreak of the moment, just take your life. So are some ways generated by witches you never knew, nor had never wished to know, who, for free and pleasure of wrongdoing, also for envy, collide daily with your brothers and sisters, and are always looking for you too. Edilson Afonso Ferreira, 80 years, is a Brazilian poet who writes in English rather than in Portuguese. Widely published in international literary journals, he began writing at age 67, after his retirement from a bank. Since then, he counts 190 poems published, in 300 different publications. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and his first Poetry Collection – Lonely Sailor – was launched in London in 2018. His second, Joie de Vivre, has been launched in April 2022. He is always updating his works at www.edilsonmeloferreira.com.

We make him dress up, hooded cloak, scythe and skull, the Grim Reaper, put a name to it sinister slapstick to cover the skeleton he is. Furtive footsteps, heard but not seen in the wooly uncertain night, in the darkened hospital ward, in your last agony; he's always eager for our passing to sate him, bate the restless life around him; his petty noise in your delirium, the ghost of sound, echoing against old men’s ears, against the baby's tiny shell of an ear, against the nightingale's sweet voice, captivating; all these and others competing for your last glimmer of attention on your way out. When he comes, when he comes, the soft schuss of a shot skier, making his lone descent. These sounds and your last movements, pure and simple as moonlight and the trees bending in the wind come together, foretell the end, one way or another peaceful, resigned, painful, brutal, in our midst, death, like clockwork, regular and familiar as the morning sun. Even in the last extreme hardly ever do we say "enough!" and mean it, grasping for one more day, one more blink of an eye, one more good green spring, we continue to hope, until cut to the quick, stopped cold, we hear his voice say come and away we go, leaving all we know behind, departing for whatever eternity holds of emptiness, of death, of nothing, of even less than nothing. Limitless, hidden beyond horizons the gape of the unknown; at the end of the road undisclosed forever what fate that fearsome spectre, voluminously berobed, that everlasting mystery holds for all of us in his bony emphatic hand. Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, The Comstock Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Typishly Literary Magazine, The Antioch Review, The Piedmont Poetry Journal and elsewhere. The author has been a Pushcart nominee and over the years has been published in a few anthologies. The author has been writing poetry since he was sixteen and lives in a small town near Albany, New York. He is retired from doing whatever he was doing before he retired.

7th-Circle Pyrite is a fledgling journal whose first round of publication is slated for November 18, 2023. If you are a writer or artist who is interested in having your work appear in our journal, we encourage you to visit our "Submissions" page for submission guidelines. If you are a reader who enjoys content detailing the themes our journal supports, be sure to check back soon!