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Jessica parked her Tesla in the drive. Planning to meet Mike at Luigi’s for drinks after a quick shower and change, she didn’t bother to open the garage. It had been a long but rewarding day. Two major clients had responded to their annual email reminders with automatic renewals. She had expected a flurry of competitive bids and questions on both.  The renewals were big enough to earn a smile—a wide smile — from her usually glum supervisor. Even at just two percent, her commission would put her into bonus territory, She grabbed her laptop, shoulder bag, and Fiji bottle and marched up the walk to the front door. Extending her hand to punch the four-digit code, her fingertips touched solid wood. The keypad was gone. She ran her fingers up and down the red lacquered door in disbelief. There was only the brass circle of an old Yale lock. Glancing left, she noticed the house numbers 1495 were in black and white ceramic tiles, items she’d replaced with designer gold numerals a dozen years ago. She tapped the spot where the pad should be. This was crazy.  The door opened, and a thirty-ish woman in Capri pants and bouffant hair appeared. “May I help you?” “You live here?” Jessica asked. “Yes. You from Avon?  I know we’re getting a new girl.” A telephone rang loudly in the kitchen. “Jus a sec. I gotta grab this. Probably my husband.” The blonde trotted down the hall to the kitchen, picked up a yellow wall phone, and returned with its bulky receiver followed by a curling yellow cord. “Yes, yes. The TV repair guy fixed it today. And hey, swing by the dry cleaner's.  It’s my good dresses, but there’s a coupon in the glove compartment.  Shouldn’t be more than two dollars.  OK, the Avon girl is here, gotta run.” She smiled at Jessica, “Sorry, you know how men are. So, are you taking over for Janet?” “Look, I don’t understand. You live here?” “Sure. Second family on the block. Wilsons on the corner were first. Bought the model house.  Her kids raise hell with their skateboards, but they’re good people.” Her kids?  “Sybil Wilson?” Jessica asked. “Oh, you know her?” “Yes,” Jessica nodded slowly. Sybil Wilson was eighty-six with middle-aged twins. Skateboards? “Are you OK? You want to come in?” Jessica followed the woman into the Swedish modern living room with orange mobiles and pastel wallpaper. “Are you OK?” the woman asked again. Jessica looked around the room and into the green and yellow Formica kitchen. Where was her furniture? The bay window she had installed last summer? The hardwood floors? What’s with the wall to wall carpet? In the corner a TV in a massive wooden cabinet was showing black and white Soupy Sales. “Look, I’m Jessica Van, and this is my house. I bought it over ten years ago. Who are you and how did you move in?” “Ten years ago? Honey, this house was brand-new in ’62 when we bought it. Do you have the right street? These subdivisions look a lot alike.” “1495 Grandview.” “Right, but honey, this our house. We’re the Callaghans. We live here. Look.” She picked up a handbag from the hall table and fished through her wallet. “Look at this.” She handed Jessica a cardboard New Jersey driver’s license.  “That’s me. Helen Callaghan. This is our address. 1495 Grandview. Look at the date.  License was issued almost three years ago.  August ’65.” Jessica dug in her purse. “Well, look I just got an email about my property tax. I have it on my phone.” “Your phone? You have a telephone in your purse?” “It’s gone. I had it just now when I pulled up.” Helen Callaghan looked over Jessica’s shoulder. “That your car, the blue Falcon?” “I have a Tesla.” “Tessy? Honey, looks like a Ford Falcon to me.” Jessica looked at the sixty-year-old compact sedan in the driveway and nearly dropped her shoulder bag. Across the street a woman who looked like she could be Sybil’s granddaughter was yelling at two boys on skateboards. “Are you OK? You seem in shock. Like you might pass out,” Helen warned. “You’re white.  Maybe you should sit down. My husband’s on his way. He’s a doctor. Let me call the clinic and see if he’s left. I think you need to see someone or get some help, OK? Lemme call and get you a glass of water. You seem lost.”   When Helen returned from the kitchen Jessica Van was gone. As soon as Ted Callaghan came in from the garage, Helen filled him in. “It was so strange. She didn’t seem drunk. She wasn’t acting crazy, but she insisted this was her house and she knew Sybil. But when I asked her about her car, she freaked. I went to call you. And then she was gone.” “You got a good look at her, right? Can you give the police a detailed description? Sounds like a mental case. And she’s driving a blue Falcon?” “She was gone. I looked, and the car was gone, but I didn’t see her drive off.” “Well, she could be a missing person. Let’s call it in. But she was otherwise rational and not violent?” “No. Just like she was in shock. But she said weird things like having a telephone in her purse.” Callaghan picked up the receiver and dialed the police. “Psychosis, no doubt. Or some breakdown. Someone could be looking for her.” Jessica nodded. “It could be anything these days.” Ted noticed the Zap comic his nephew had left on the counter and shook his head. “Everyone is going psycho now.” He dialed the police, gesturing toward the TV showing bearded students burning draft cards. “Sometimes I think the whole world’s on LSD.” Mark Connelly is an English instructor at Milwaukee Area Technical College. His fiction has appeared in Bristol Noir,  Indiana Review, Milwaukee Magazine, Cream City Review, The Ledge, The Great American Literary Magazine, Home Planet News, Change Seven, Light and Dark, 34th Parallel, Mobius Blvd, and  Digital Papercut . In 2005 Texas Review Press published his novella Fifteen Minutes , which received the Clay Reynolds Prize.

The moon casts her milky drape  over stoney gardens—shadowed with crosses stretching the grass. My blistered tongue whispers,  entreats you to visit realms of night where I reside, gloaming and dull under oceans of auburn oak leaves. On a cradle of gentle night air your dead voice reaches me, navigating  through mazes of concrete and ash, undiminished and vital—Godlike. My bouquet weeps its small petals into your gaping maw, phantomic, while the stars cry their icy laments and I lift the veil of my liveliness to join you in your divinity, beyond. Spencer Keene is a writer of poetry and short fiction from Vancouver, British Columbia. He is a member of the Vancouver chapter of the Horror Writers Association. His work has been published in SAD Magazine and will appear in Iron Faerie Publishing’s forthcoming Hallowed anthology.

When my father was teaching me how to ride a bike, he also taught me about sin. We lived in Vienna, just having arrived from Minnesota. My parents were missionaries, hoping to move to Budapest, but that was tricky because Hungary was still behind the Iron Curtain. This was 1980. In those first days my father was mostly gone, taking care of paperwork at the American embassy. My mother brought us to the local grocery store so she could buy ingredients to make us cookies. She misunderstood the label and bought salt instead of sugar. My sister and I ate a few mouthfuls of the cookies anyway. The bike my father purchased for me was a secondhand Gräf & Stift Austrian brand, sturdy with chipped green paint. I was still at the stage where I needed my father to run beside me with his hand on my back. My father came from a family of Swedish immigrants. His parents moved to Minnesota from Sweden in the early 20th century. He inherited a somewhat reserved emotional nature from his father, who looked for ways to turn daily tasks into teachable moments. Hence the bike purchase and the bike lessons. My father had something on his mind that day. After a few rounds of practice, he sat down on a park bench with me and said, “It’s hard to balance, isn’t it?” I nodded. “What makes it easier?” he asked. I smiled. “When you hold me up.” This time he  nodded. “It’s sort of like what God does for us,” he said. “He uses his hand to help keep us from sinning.” “What is sinning?” I asked. He paused, choosing his words carefully. “That’s when you do something that isn’t right. Like lying. Or drinking.” He let me think about it for a moment. “Do you think you could live your whole life without sinning?” I considered it. We made a few more bike runs. “Well, what do you think?” he said. “Yes, I think I probably could.” He paused. “Are you sure?” “What would happen if I sinned?”  “You would be separated from God forever.” “You mean hell?”  He nodded. We went home for supper. The small apartment my parents were renting had only a kitchen and a bedroom. Before bed my mother read to me and my younger sister from the Little House on the Prairie  series about a little girl named Laura. In the story Laura’s family had just moved from Minnesota to Kansas, so I felt like I could understand her. In the book Laura’s ma said, “The Lord helps them that help themselves.” My mother paused her reading and said to us, “That’s not correct. No one can do anything themselves. Ma is wrong.” This frightened me. My family moved to Hungary two weeks later. We traveled there by train. We sat in a train compartment with one bench facing in the direction the train was traveling and the other bench facing backward. Because my sister and I were sitting on the bench facing backward, my father later said that she and I were the first missionaries in our family to enter Hungary because our bodies entered the country first. My father rented us an apartment in one of the working-class districts of Budapest. The building was fifteen stories high, constructed from stacked sections of pre-fabricated cement, every apartment identical. It had distance heating, which was very inefficient. Hot water was piped in from massive factories on the outskirts of the city through pipes hung with torn sheets of asbestos insulation. The pipes occasionally sprung leaks, and where this happened were gathered clumped piles of asbestos that my sister and I would mold into makeshift snowballs…filling the air with poison as we played. My parents started language lessons shortly after we moved from Vienna. The apartment had a tiny, black-and-white television, and my father would switch on the news every evening at 6. My parents sat, staring at the small screen, hungry for any word they could recognize. One day they both recognized the word “no” at the same moment. They laughed and hugged each other. My own language skills began to develop after the first few months. I remember occasionally I would simply know  what the neighborhood kids had just said to me. This realization did not feel like a success, merely a dawning of recognition. One day when the two kids from the neighboring building were preparing for a bike ride with their father, I approached them confidently with my bike and asked if I could go with them. Their father did not allow it. I went home and told my father about what had happened. He seemed more interested in how I had asked them—what sentence I had used—rather than in understanding why I was sad being left at home. When I told him the sentence he pointed out the grammar mistake I made. Initially my father attempted to maintain a business start-up visa which allowed our family to stay in the country for up to a year at a time before taking a trip back to Western Europe to renew the visa. He rented a small, one-room apartment a few blocks from the British embassy, a requirement for anyone with a business visa. He called it “the office.” He spent a few hours there every week to maintain the cover that he was trying to set up business venture opportunities. Whenever he met anyone official who asked why we were in Hungary, he told them that he was in the import/export business, preparing to ship farm equipment from Minnesota to Hungary. During some of those office visits he would bring me with him and we would watch Hungarian football matches on TV while we drank Coca-Cola from small glass bottles and ate Hungarian milk chocolate (five cents a bar). I couldn’t understand the rules of football yet, but I pretended I did. Being invited to the office with him made me feel important. I attended Hungarian school from Grade 1 through 6. The school days when I felt the most like a foreigner were on Hungarian national holidays. These were vacation days, but there was always a school celebration held on the day before vacation. Our class filed into the communal gymnasium with the other grades and sat on ankle-high wooden benches. Our teacher told us to sit still, no rocking. This was hard to do.  The school principal led us in singing through a variety of Soviet-era national songs, designed to encourage Communist solidarity. We all sang together in unison, but I stood out from the crowd in one important way. All of the students wore an official uniform for the Little Drummer Society. I only wore a white shirt with blue jeans. Every Hungarian student was automatically enrolled, from the age of 6, into the Little Drummer Society. This was a Hungarian student’s first step on the road to Communist party membership. The Little Drummers would be followed by the Path Breakers, the league for the older students which began in the 7th grade. The Path Breakers eventually graduated into Communist party membership once school led into a career. The Little Drummer uniform was a white shirt with a blue kerchief. There was a whistle attached to an embroidered rope which hung from a shoulder epaulet. The whistle was stored in the pocket of the white shirt. There was also a belt with a buckle featuring a drum beneath a red communist star with the Hungarian word “ Előre !” (Forward!) written below.  I wanted a Little Drummer uniform, but my parents forbade it. One day, in an attempt to reason with my father, I explained that if I was going to someday be able to share the Gospel with these students I would need to fit into their ranks. By now I understood how much my father’s mind operated around spreading the teachings of Christ, and I felt that if I appealed to this side of his thinking that I might prevail upon him to relent and allow me the uniform.  “If I am dressed like them, they will see me as a comrade.” My reasoning seemed sound to me. “Comrades are friends, and friends are able to talk openly about their beliefs.” My father considered it, and my spirits rose when he didn’t immediately say no. He spoke with my teacher one day after school and came home with a pamphlet that explained the purpose of the Little Drummer Society. Later that afternoon he sat me down by the kitchen table. He said, “The Little Drummers follow six steps. Should you wear this uniform you must agree to these six steps.”  “What are they?” My heart was beating faster with excitement. The uniform seemed within reach. He read through the first five steps. “The Little Drummer is a faithful child of his country. The Little Drummer loves and respects his parents, teachers. The Little Drummer diligently studies and helps his partners. The Little Drummer always says the truth. The Little Drummer is clean, ordered, and punctual.” My father paused. I leaned forward. This seemed easy. How could there be any problem in agreeing to this? “I can do all those things,” I said. My father stared at me. Then he said, “The sixth step is: The Little Drummer lives in such a way as to be worthy to wear the red kerchief of the Path Breaker.” He looked up at me. “You know what Path Breakers believe, don’t you?” I nodded. Even though I didn’t know what Communism was, I knew the conversation was over. It was during 2nd grade that my grandfather died back home in Minnesota. He had been dealing with heart murmurs and my parents wanted to make a phone call back to America to check on him. Most Hungarian households did not have telephones in 1980. The government wait-list to receive a phone was 10 years long. Pay phones were plentiful, but if my parents wished to make or receive an international phone call they could only do so from a government office in downtown Budapest.  The phone center had bright yellow molded plastic chairs. My parents huddled together behind a wall of glass in the small telephone cubicle. My mother suddenly began to cry. My sister and I, desperate to calm her, asked her what was wrong. She told us he had died. We told my mother again and again, “But, we’ll surely see him again in Heaven.” My mother said, “That will be such a long time from now.” I later asked my mother why my father had not cried that night when he heard the news. She assured me that later in the evening, when we were in bed, that he had also cried. I tried to picture it, but I couldn’t. After my grandfather’s death, my father talked about him more than he had in the past. When my father was a young boy he used to see his father drink shots of moonshine behind the barn with his uncles and cousins. My father watched him throw back the liquor into his mouth and exhale a hard burst of air when the alcohol hit his throat. Whenever my grandfather caught my dad watching them he said, “Now, when you get older, you’re not going to do this.” My father nodded, knowing that was what was expected, but he snuck up afterwards and stuck his tongue into the shot glass to taste the drops at the bottom of it. It was shortly after this that my grandfather had a conversion experience and began to go to church. He also stopped drinking.  My father used this story when he taught young Hungarian men certain spiritual lessons. He ended the story by saying, “I never felt tempted to drink after my father stopped drinking.” We went back to Minnesota for my grandfather’s funeral. We stayed with my grandmother in the big empty farm house. She asked my parents how the Hungarian mission was going. My father gestured to me and said, “He can speak Hungarian now.” We lived in Hungary until I was sixteen. When we returned to Minnesota, we moved into the same small town where my parents grew up, and I graduated from the same high school they did. As time passed, the memories of Hungary misted together and the favorable ones stood out most.  After we were married, my wife and I moved to Hungary ourselves to teach. Our two sons attended Hungarian pre-school. One of my proudest memories was seeing my sons begin to speak the language. I taught both boys how to ride bikes and used the same hand-on-the-back method that my father used. I wish I could tell you I chose to raise my sons in a completely different way, but if I said that I’d be lying. And lying is a sin. Zary Fekete grew up in Hungary. He has a debut novella ( Words on the Page ) out with DarkWinter Lit Press and a short story collection ( To Accept the Things I Cannot Change: Writing My Way Out of Addiction ) out with Creative Texts. He enjoys books, podcasts, and many, many, many films. Twitter and Instagram: @ZaryFekete

I live in the house my grandfather built when he was young and strong, and filled with love and dreams. Where I lay me down to sleep was once my mother’s room. She tells me how her father would sit on the edge of her bed and kiss her goodnight on her forehead when she was small like me. Every night, I listen to my grandfather walking the floors beyond my room, dragging his leg with a cane in a  thump-step-scratch  rhythm against  the aged wood boards that creak under his weight. No one else hears him in those late hours pacing the hall and around his room with a  thump-step-scratch  and asking for his deceased wife. My mother doesn’t believe my complaints despite the bruises painted under my tired eyes. She tells me that a man who’s been dead and buried for years higher in number than my age can’t possibly be keeping me from sleeping with a thump-step-scratch pulse . I may never have met my grandfather, but I have become familiar with the  thump-step-scratch  tune of his specter. Tinamarie Cox   lives in an Arizona town with her husband, two children, and rescue felines. Her written and visual work has appeared in many online and print publications under various genres. She has two poetry chapbooks with Bottlecap Press: Self-Destruction in Small Doses  (2023), and A Collection of Morning Hours  (2024). Her full-length debut, Through a Sea Laced with Midnight Hues, releases in February 2025 with Nymeria Publishing. You can explore more of her work at tinamariethinkstoomuch.weebly.com and follow her on Instagram @tinamariethinkstoomuch.

We come to it After a walk Through a field Late afternoon Shadows closing in Sunlight already golden. Old tree, Its beard scraggly Flowing with time The memory of souls Drifting over the land Having left life and bodies Graced with hair, all colors, Caressed, remembered, loved But unwilling to leave Entirely for the other place So strands grab the old limbs To hold on, to stay behind In the blood red sun Shadows crisscrossing Fields, days, other shadows, Even our thoughts as we pass Beneath the tree and on And on. Christopher Woods is a writer and photographer who lives in Texas. His monologue show, Twelve from Texas,  was performed recently in NYC by Equity Library Theatre. His poetry collection, Maybe Birds Would Carry It Away , is published by Kelsay Books. Gallery: https://christopherwoods.zenfolio.com/f861509283

there is more than one way to look at it.  outside the wood gift shop there is the desert, the gray hill  but the scrub shivers like hatching. there is more than just one life. you get off work and your pockets ring your magnet rocks, your change and the girls all wave so nice to you and the blue sky spills out big. but when you walk out in the sagebrush the camel crickets still crowd around you like the sea.  brown thumbs of their bodies long grass of their legs  there is more than one way to look.  the desert shows you things sometimes. yourself in other things. you crouch down til you see it in their black magnet eyes.  their leader beckons you with his sweet finger his back leg and in his change ringing voice he makes his speeches about hatching.  the others know it by then. they split open their brown shells.  their new legs crawl them forward. their new mouthparts take hold. it’s not a bad thing, says their leader. but he says that every time. he splits your shell with his long back leg and there is more than one side: there is the sweet dark of your first life and there is blue milk  gray breast  sun.  i’m not ready, you say.  the laughter rings. it changes  they grip the open skin of you. their leader shakes his head.  he says, there is no ready.  and all at once they jump. Maya is a writer and educator from Michigan. Her work lately focuses on growing up — how the worlds we live in as young people are full of strange delusions and equally strange truths.

Perhaps they too were lonely, Not among themselves so much As among their own kind. Loneliness was a hand reaching Through the darkness to touch, Be touched, Made certain once again. Their sky was populated Vastly, poignantly, Distant as all of space. They believed each star a house, A place to come to. Star clusters were villages, So much like their own. Whoever lived there, across heaven, Were much the same, Building houses close together From need, from want. They too must have known How time propels, arranges, Why all houses fill and empty, How all of them must eventually fall, Draping themselves in darkness as they go.* * Nayarit was (and is) home to several groups of indigenous peoples in Western Mexico. Christopher Woods is a writer and photographer who lives in Texas. His monologue show, Twelve from Texas,  was performed recently in NYC by Equity Library Theatre. His poetry collection, Maybe Birds Would Carry It Away , is published by Kelsay Books. Gallery: https://christopherwoods.zenfolio.com/f861509283

Have you ever taught a lesson over symbolism to a room full of thirty-three teenagers while holding cupped handfuls of your own glistening red bones? I have, more than once. It’s one of the worst recurring nightmares I have: the one where all of my teeth fall out. Sickening suction squelches as the bones detach from their roots and cascade out of my mouth in stacks like blank, bloody dominos. It happens while I’m talking, while I’m teaching, while I’m eating. I’m embarrassed each time—how dare I be so openly vulnerable to onlookers?—so I keep forcing myself to do The Thing I Am Doing, trying to ignore that I am literally falling apart in front of my parents, friends, students, and strangers.  But it is not just  that my teeth fall out—sometimes they break apart in shards too, and I must be careful not to swallow them. Or, there is an after-birth of sorts where thin yet sharp layers of roots and rot slip out of the sockets like glass, making it even harder to keep forcing myself to do The Thing I Am Doing, yet somehow I prevail. Somehow, I always carry on. Sometimes the people around me do not notice. Sometimes they notice and offer only pitying looks. They never try to help, and I never ask for their help. Maybe that’s my fatal flaw.  I have done plenty of research on dream interpretations, flipping through glossaries and indexes for symbols to break down until I get to D: Dental  or T: Teeth . Most interpreters say that losing teeth in dreams is indicative of either impending death, or feeling a loss of control in life decisions.  Death. Loss. I’m all too familiar with both. Sometimes, I do not know which is worse: dying, or having no choice in the matter. Sometimes, I do not know which is worse: falling apart, or knowing people see me falling apart, yet they do nothing to help. Sometimes, I do not know which is worse: that they do not acknowledge my downfall, or that I do  acknowledge it, yet choose to give myself no pause; keep eating…keep teaching…keep disregarding. Keep bleeding and breaking all the same. Mahailey Oliver holds an MA in English and Advanced Pedagogy from Stephen F. Austin State University. Her work has recently appeared in Hearth & Coffin, ForgetMeNot Press , and Spark to Flame . Her soul is made happy with an autumn breeze and camping under starlight. To read more of her work, check out her website here:   sites.google.com/view/mahaileyoliver

such delightful isolation surrounding  as my mind opens up  like a gentle stab velvet car crash chewing on knives  and I’m speechless with red love me  sedate me  drain me  watch me drown leaving nothing behind except an empty chair the deep shadow  of a subterranean death wish and the subtle persistence of fog Marcel Feldmar   grew up in Canada, and then left.  He spent some time in an institution called The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, but ended up living in Los Angeles, where his words get caught in traffic. He has been working on some spoken word / music collaborations, which can be found under the name Blue Discordant Way on Bandcamp. Feldmar has contributed poetry to the Curious Nothing and Rabbit’s Foot Magazine , and his full-length novel, Awkward on the Rocks , is coming soon from Dead Sky Publishing.

Where was he going All that time, Plunging deeper Toward dark water Minutes from the light? He must have known his chances, Hazards of searching down An inward spiral, looking First for a faith in himself, Then the religion of luster. Known he might not return, Struck with spasms, How he might fade away, Roll eternally over shells, Reefs, sea valleys, moon passions. Dead but still dreaming Of the finest shape, weight, A glow that only begins Near the ghost coral towns On the other side. Christopher Woods is a writer and photographer who lives in Texas. His monologue show, Twelve from Texas, was performed recently in NYC by Equity Library Theatre. His poetry collection, Maybe Birds Would Carry It Away , is published by Kelsay Books. Gallery: https://christopherwoods.zenfolio.com/f861509283

The highest activity a human being      can attain is learning for understanding,           because to understand is to be free.    ―  Baruch Spinoza What he believed; he knew. What he knew, was true. This for him was pristine, a church bell in a light snow layering metaphysics. Once replete, the contagious pact with reality reworked, the truth poser rang, pealed the sanctity of doubt. God is substance,  the laws of the universe, and certainly not an individual  entity or creator.  The universe could not have  been produced by any other means  or in any other order. It is not by free will that an infant seeks the breast. God is not looking out and  determining, it is the indifference. With an immoral aroma  of almost rain,  a sickness unto death — with age-defying resolve, sat him down to one riddle at a time. Craig Kirchner is retired, and thinks of poetry as hobo art. He loves the aesthetics of the paper and pen, has had two poems nominated for the Pushcart, and has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels . After a hiatus he was recently published in Decadent Review, Hamilton Stone Review, Wise Owl, Chiron Review, 7th-Circle Pyrite, Dark Winter, Spillwords, Fairfield Scribe, Unlikely Stories, The Main Street Rag and several dozen others.

Historian’s Note :   The following excerpts are from the journal of the nun Floriana de Olmedo as found within the library of St. Joséph’s Convent in Ávila, Spain. De Olmedo’s journal is the only surviving account of the 1568 massacre in the town of Deia by the Spanish Inquisition.  14 July, Year of our Lord 1568,  Today was the Sabbath,   and the spirit of God was with us so strongly during Mass, that I find myself growing weak at the memory of it. When my mother entered the church, she was consumed by holy fire as soon as she crossed the threshold and she fell to the ground in convulsions. I personally do not know the exquisite agony of St. Anthony’s fire, but I understand the way it traces through the body as it burns away the original sin. My father went to go aid her, but his hands are so swollen that it hurt for him to prop her up. He called Alonso and I over, and we held mamá as she spasmed and screamed. Around us, the other parishioners lingered, smiles on their lips as they watched her be rewarded for her piety; for mamá to feel God’s touch as soon as she walked into the church was a blessing upon our family. My papá  waved to them, the blackness of his flaking fingers stark in the light from all the candles that Father Benito had lit in preparation for today’s services. Our flickering shadows danced along the walls like hosts of angels, wings stretching up to the rafters in worship. My head began to pound as God fully entered the Church—it is hard for me to behold Him in all His glory. Father Benito was like a prophet today. His voice kept trailing off during his sermon, his eyes becoming distant and unfocused as he quoted the gospels to us. When he was so overcome by Grace that the words stopped coming, we continued the chants and the calls without him. Old Maria was so eager in her devotion that she vomited several times, and lay curled on the ground of the church, her eyes rolling back in her head as she communed with the Holy Spirit. Just when I felt I might faint, it was time for communion, which always strengthens me.   As we stood shaking and filed up to the altar to receive Christ’s blood and flesh, I saw His spirit in the form of small black dots that danced before my eyes. As the other worshippers took the rye communion into their palms and placed it between their teeth, letting the holy spirit melt upon their tongues. I was so overcome that I fell prostrate to the ground, prayers pouring forth between my lips like water from a well. Father Benito knelt beside me and pressed the bread lovingly between my lips. It turned to flesh, filling my mouth up with blood. Behind me, my younger brother Alonso wept.  We stayed there, on holy ground, until the candles guttered out and the tide of ecstasy had retreated. I am back in my own bed now, next to a snoring Alonso. I can hear mamá weeping in her bed, the thrashing of papá’s limbs as he violently prays, trying to find solace in the temporary absence of God. 16 July, Year of our Lord 1568 Old Maria has gone to be with God. Mamá has not yet recovered from the Sabbath, and one of Father’s hands has burst open, gangrenous sin seeping out of it in the form of pus. His eyes are fevered. The farm work is beginning to go undone. Every night, we stagger to the church to kneel and pray before the altar. 18 July, Year of our Lord 1568 I have been considering traveling to a convent and taking my Holy Orders in service to the Lord. There is a nun I have heard mention of; Teresa of Ávila, who is apparently subject to the same ecstasies as we are. She has founded the Convento de San José. How wonderful it would be to meet her! However, I am afraid to leave this town where every scrap of land and every household has been transitioned to holy ground. Here, people wander down the street in sacred hazes, their eyes fixed unseeing on the face of God as they converse with Him. Even now, I can feel Him writhing underneath my skin, tracing His fingers behind my eyes. I can’t help but shiver endlessly at the feel of His touch, my stomach churning with warmth and excitement. We are God’s chosen people — how could anywhere else ever compare to this? 19 July, Year of our Lord 1568 Today the holy spasms finally blessed me. Father Benito was with me when I came back into myself. He asked me what I had seen. I told him I didn’t remember. He seemed disappointed, but he then invited me to the church. He asked that I aid in the creation of holy communion and make the wafers that would become the body of Christ during the ritual of transubstantiation. I have assisted Father Benito in many ways before — it was he who first noticed my aptitude with the written word — but not like this.  To say it was an honour was an understatement. I ground the rye by hand. I ran my fingers through the grains, removing any remaining chaff. Many of the grains were black and withered, and I picked out as many as I could. Many still remained, and I reminded myself that only God can truly sift and have it be complete. Once I had sufficiently ground the grain until it became flour, I was dismissed. I wish that I could have stayed for the entire process, but to be allowed to touch the holiest of holies, to aid in the creation of communion, is a gift enough. 24 July, Year of Our Lord 1568 A man came to town today. An inquisitor, from the Tribunal of The Holy Office of the Inquisition. Despite the rumors that have spread through Spain about the power they hold and the quickness of their accusations, I am not worried. Father Benito met with the inquisitor and the train of traveling companions he came with, shutting themselves up in the church. I did not have time to attend tonight’s prayers, and inquire further about the inquisitor. Both mamá and papá have weakened considerably. Alonso and I are tending entirely to the farm and it keeps us busy from dawn until dusk.   I have noticed that Alonso’s hands are beginning to tremble. 28 July, Year of Our Lord 1568 The inquisitor attended Mass today. He and his brethren stood in the back of the church, watching us closely with narrowed eyes. Papá’s hands have both burst open now, the over-stretched skin rupturing. I saw several of the inquisitor’s men recoil, and I had to hold in a derisive snort. Mamá walked unaided for now, but her skin was pale, sweat beading on her upper lip, her eyes bright with divinity.  We found our seats, and Father Benito called us to pray. The congregation swayed, several of them collapsing to the ground in holy visions, their limbs flailing as spasms shook them. I lifted my voice in song as dark spots grew in the corners of my eyes.  Father Benito’s sermon was quickly interrupted by a thundering voice, spewing hateful words about demons, devilry, and possession. The inquisitor was enraged, calling us cursed apostates engaged in devilry and blasphemy. There were many raised voices at this, from both the townspeople and the inquisitor's cohort of men. I fell to the ground, my head pounding with the sudden noise. It was as if all the choirs of the angels of heaven and the legions of devil in hell were fighting one another, beating against the inside of my skull. I remember my mother crouching beside me, shoving communion in between my lips. It tasted mustier than usual, but I was glad for it as it strengthened my spirit enough that I was able to rise. Alonso and mamá grabbed me by the arms, and we moved towards the exit. There was a stampede to get out of the church as the inquisitor’s men began to wade into the chaos, their weapons raised. Papá lingered behind us as we were caught up in the current of fleeing people. The last I saw of him, he was screaming at the men, reaching his mangled hands towards them. I saw one of the black robed men raise a club, and I heard the cracking of my papá’s skull before I fell into unconsciousness. I awoke alone in my home, curled in a ball on the hearth before a sputtering fire.  29 July, Year of Our Lord 1568 Papá is dead, his body burned with the others who were caught up in the incident at the church. Men in black cloaks are patrolling the streets, keeping us all inside. I do not know what to do, besides pray. 30 July, Year of Our Lord 1568 Under armed guard, Father Benito has been escorted to the doors of the village and allowed brief entry to each household. When he came, we all held each other for a long moment as Father Benito prayed with us. He spoke with mamá in hushed tones, and I could see her nodding her head emphatically. Afterwards, Father Benito took me aside. He asked if I still wanted to travel and take my Holy Orders. I told him that I had decided to stay and dedicate my life to God within the confines of my own community. He told me that our church was in peril, and that the inquisitor had told him that we were all to be put on trial tomorrow, our church to be burned down regardless of the outcome. We were required to repent of our blasphemy if we wished to live. Benito told us that all of the townsfolk thus far had refused, including mamá; they meant to burn with the church and become martyrs.  Father Benito told me that the previous night he had had a dream in which I was given a holy mission by God Himself. I was to leave tonight, and take the word of God with me to St. Joséph’s, keeping the spirit of our community alive and preserving it for future generations. I begged to stay and burn with them. He said that I could not deny God’s will. He pulled something from deep within his robe and shoved it into my arms, blessed me, and left. I cannot stop weeping. 31 July, Year of Our Lord 1568 It is morning, and they are all dead. I tried to take Alonso with me. He is only eleven, but he refused; he felt called to burn. I waited until the very early hours of the morning, kissed my mamá and brother goodbye, and then slipped out through a hole in our roof, jumping down into the dust below and hurrying away. The town was crawling with the inquisitors' men, and it was only through the grace of God that I wasn’t spotted. I made my way to the woods that edge our borders, and there I sat and waited. If I could not be a martyr, I could at least be a witness. Shortly before dawn, our people trickled out slowly, the villagers assembling in front of the church. Father Benito was at the head of them as they stood awaiting their judgment. The inquisitor ordered them to repent and return to Christendom, instead of the perversion they now served. He would spare the lives of all those who turned back to God and were re-baptized.  The townsfolk shuffled their feet and looked at one another. Alonso looked up at mamá, who lay a blackening hand on his shoulder and squeezed it. As one, the townsfolk turned and shuffled into the church, the strong aiding the weak. They had seen the face of God and had known the ecstasy of His holy fire, and they would not be turned from the truth. Father Benito was the last one in, and he stood in the open door and looked out at the inquisitor and his men. Behind him our people sang a variety of hymns, swaying to their own beats. It was a harmony without harmony, and from my hidden spot I could feel tears begin to flood down my face at the sanctity of it all. How I wish I had been in there with them! There was a long pause, and the inquisitor signaled to his men, and eight of them came forward bearing large barrels of pitch. They surrounded the church and began to paint and pour it on, darkening the building I held so dear. When they were finished, another eight men came forward with torches. There was a stern word from the inquisitor, and the men with the torches touched their flaming ends to the black-covered walls. It ignited almost immediately. It did not take long before the church became a funeral pyre. Screams rang out through the crackle of the flames. Black smoke billowed, and there was a great noise as the roof collapsed down into the blazing inferno. The screaming quickly stopped. I could see the inquisitor and his companions watch as my entire life burned. Their eyes sparked, embers smoldering in their depths. In those eyes I glimpsed hell itself — a parade of demons that leapt from person to person as they danced in victory. I looked away. The church is still smoldering as I sit here, writing, my hands clutching the cross of Father Benito that now hangs around my neck. The sky is finally lightening, the sun painting the sky as red as blood. In my bags are our most holy relics, and several bags worth of communion that are glowing gold and speckled with black. I will take them to Teresa, and give them to her. I will take the words and wishes of our Lord to the convent, and reveal to them the truth that God has given us through the consumption of His Most Holy flesh. This I swear.  Historian’s Note : Based on the physical and psychological symptoms present in the population , it is generally believed in historical circles that the townsfolk of Deia were suffering from severe levels of ergot poisoning. Ergot, a fungus found primarily on rye and transmitted via airborne spore, is known to cause schizophrenic-like delusions, hallucinations, sepsis and body degradation, Furthermore, its effects have been known to cause religious mania when ingested. Some academics have hypothesized that many of those killed during the inquisition and later witch trials were suffering from some form of ergot poisoning. Hannah Birss is a writer and aspiring magpie based out of Ontario, Canada. She lives with her partner, children, and multiple animals. She can usually be found in a nest constructed of books, writing journals, and shiny trinkets. You can follow her on instagram @hannahbirsswrites for news on upcoming and current publications.