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Nobody batted an eye while the man with the carrion-crow mask handed the little girl flowers of violet. Not even the young farmhand, who stood by the dank estuary with a slender torch and makeshift antler horns of wood. Turning away from the tall, strange man in the woods, the farmhand slipped back into the firelight of the village festival of Samhain; the final day of October was setting upon this village, with the moon in a deep shroud behind grey clouds and rousing smog. A shrewd chill caressed the fair skin of many village folk, but the blazing flames and veiled costumes warded off the frigid omen.  In tandem, sultry oranges and fiery reds danced off the slender and depressing beak of the stranger, as he remained on a single knee in front of the little girl. Prominent cracks and shavings of deteriorating birch were beginning to show on the faded white of the bill, and those two eye-holes were merely part of a sunken lake at dusk. Still, the little girl grinned and giggled at the ridiculous mask, bearing her own pair of tiny, wooden antlers.  She asked the silent and dignified man: “Why doesn’t your mask look like the others? It looks dangerous and pointy.” The stranger’s head lowered slightly towards his chest, brushing against the mantle of dead leaves; these crisp and colourful pigments of nature lined the entirety of his neck, acting as a warm pelt one would wear during the winter solstice. Slowly, he reached the backside of his leather-gloved hand to brush down the little girl’s cheek. “Ye are fair, but ye danced around the flame of cattle thrice sunwise.” He spoke softly, as though this voice did not belong to him.  Perhaps it was stolen—his voice. And maybe yet, the little girl knew this, for she now wrapped her arms taut around the nearest fir tree; her village had been blessed with their rich verdants, warding off bitter spirits from entering their tiny village in Meath—a spacious and Holy land of Celtic worship and Pagan practices unto nature, surrounded by a vast woodland and towering spirits of festivity.  “Where would ye like to go, little one?” The carrion-man’s voice was silky, but the hollow of the wooden beak recused its butter-slick tune—muffling the inquiry with a freakish reverberation.  The little girl paused for a moment. “Where do others dance? I think I would like to go there.” The gifted flower stung sharply in her hand, but she held it tightly as she mumbled into the old tree.  And so, the tall man with the carrion-crow mask took her tiny hand in his, sauntering slowly towards the quiet marsh ahead. Craning his head back to the raging flames of the Samhain festival, the carrion-man watched as many humans danced their sweltering flesh around the heaps of offered livestock—many hopping and tripping into loved ones as they hesitantly threw away their spot in the dance. Of course, it was obvious as to why this was; the souls of the living were never ready to face their awaited fates on the night of Samhain.  When the little girl turned her face to stare up at the carrion-man, her golden locks formed their own mantle at the base of her neck. “What is the flower’s name?” “Wolfsbane,” he answered, without so much as a breath to ponder.  The little girl giggled with a childish croak. “Does it nip?”  A curt nod was the only response that left the carrion-man’s rangy stature. Slowly, he took to his knee, dipping two fingers into the murky bog that rested, now, at their feet. There, he mumbled a chant of sorts—one which stole away the little girl’s curiosity as she stood in timid nature behind the man; for before her eyes, a gargantuan monster of shimmering verdant and fallen leaves emerged from the deep water. Upon meeting its beady eyes with the little one, it bowed its head in a plodding manner, paying no mind to the carrion-man.  “Oilliphéist, I require assistance. Imprudent passage across the marsh would prove unbefitting for this young one.”  The water-serpent, known as Oilliphéist, reared its long and slender neck as it glared down upon the carrion-man. “Is the dusk of Samhain arrived yet?” it spoke in its baritone bite. The carrion-man nodded his head as he reached a careful arm around the little girl’s shoulders. “It has, Oilliphéist.” The disquieting crow mask tilted upwards slightly, causing a few leaves to fall from his cloak to the ground below.  Once more, the serpentine creature looked down towards the little one. Then, it sighed.  The carrion-man did not join with Oilliphéist in staring at her. Instead, he continued: “I have met with the one who danced thrice sunwise. Thus, I am to be granted passage across the marsh, for this flower will never bloom in such a dank locus.”  Oilliphéist scowled with a burning grin. “An appraisal of mankind may yet be in order.” Then, it brought its snarling snout and piercing fangs down to the little girl’s height, brushing tenderly against her clothed chest of ebony and white.  The carrion-man cupped his hands together as he gestured for the girl to use his palms as a stepping stone. Giggling, she practically leapt off the makeshift stool, wrapping her arms around Oilliphéist’s viscid neck with a content sigh. “Your turn, mister!” she exclaimed with a rosy tint in her cheeks.  The carrion-man did not appreciate his calling of that honorific, but Oilliphéist seemed to quite enjoy this shroud of discomfort that now clouded its backside. Quickly, the masked man launched himself up onto the thick tail of the creature, holding on with shaky arms as his beak now pointed down towards Oilliphéist’s slippery flesh. The girl laughed at this.  Here, a guttural purring emanated throughout its serpentine stature, nearly knocking the carrion-man off its jagged tail.  “I think it likes us,” the girl chippered. ‘It reminds me of our field kitty. But I’m not sure if Oilliphéist enjoys chasing crickets, or not.’  The carrion-man clicked his tongue, while Oilliphéist craned its neck to bare its fangs and smirk through its slimy snout. “My body is not privy to versatility, but I do enjoy watching little rodents cower and squirm,” it remarked, staring down at the man who was holding on for dear life.  He’d had enough. “Let me up, Oilliphéist, or the wolfsbane will wilt!”  “And let it!” Oilliphéist bellowed.  Not startled by the water-creature’s sudden encroachment, the little one suddenly stretched out her smooth arm, reaching for the carrion-man as she grunted a huff of discomfort. “Take my hand, mister! Oilliphéist’s backside is certainly tricky to stay seated on!”  The serpentine monstrosity laughed with thunderous applause. “Only when a poison lurks near my scales, little one.”  “Oilliphéist,” the carrion-man bit back.  Immediately, Oilliphéist’s scales rattled and peaked, and its flesh grew quickly frigid in the bog. The carrion-man’s cruel slick of his tongue had finally penetrated the creature’s tough scales; here, it hoisted its tail out of the water to allow slippery passage to its backside.  “We will travel across the marsh, to the bed of wolfsbane. There, we will dance until dawn.”  And then, Oilliphéist set off through the murky water, gliding silently downstream as the three passed many sunken trees and odd creatures that cackled and hummed as they all met eyes. But Oilliphéist’s strokes through the bog soon slowed, as a ribcage of rotting trees and fir ancestry depressed inwards. Here, a cascade of violet flowers began to twirl down from their decaying branches; many kissed at the little girl’s cheeks, while they fell furthest from the carrion-man.  She took notice of this immediately, sliding down the hump of Oilliphéist to reach him. There, she fell down against his chest, bracing herself as her arms wrapped around the crisp cloak of the carrion-man.  “Why aren’t the wolfsbane nipping at you, mister?” She looked up at the daunting serenity of his beak.  Quickly, he pulled her close—holding her to his silent chest, as he grabbed a gentle pallet of golden hair. With a whisper, he spoke: “Because they know only life.” Oilliphéist came to a steady halt as the wolfsbane began to fall from the trees in a mere maddening waltz, obscuring the girl’s vision as the carrion-man pulled away from their still embrace. Then, he slid off the creature’s scaly tail, before extending a gloved hand to her. “I think my feet hurt, mister.”  But the carrion-man reached his arms out to take the little girl in his own, being careful as not to drop her into the abyssal stream of the marsh below. Oilliphéist reared its head to look down at the both of them, with a dismaying amount of ashen smoke circulating its gaping nostrils.  “Oilliphéist,” the carrion-man spoke with a slow nod. “I thank thee, as usual. Until the next dance, may we meet.”  Oilliphéist dropped its head to conjoin with the carrion-man’s height, before whispering in its thunderous tone: “Go n-ullamhuighe an diabhal teinne dhuit.” And the serpentine water-creature set off into the dank and dreary marsh, its verdant shine disappearing quickly into the thick mist.  The little girl watched with her hands balled together against her flat chest, nodding farewell to the creature with an uncertain grin.  At this, a reclusive chuckle left the carrion-man’s throat. “Tell me, now,” he whispered gently, “how supple are those soles ye bear?”  And she grinned like a toddler as she pinched the silky hems of her dress and kicked up her feet from the frail mulch.  “I use them to dance,” she exclaimed.  He took her right hand, smoothing over the faint beginnings of youthful veins with his large, leather thumb. “Naturally so, little one. Then, would ye fancy a dance around my glorious pyre?”  “Yes! Oh, yes, mister, I would love that!”  With his hand still in hers, the carrion-man nodded down at the little girl, leading her by the hand as their shadowless figures disappeared into the forest. No birds were present to chortle hopeless birdsong for a dawn that would never come; still, the wolfsbane fell silently in tandem with a ghostly wind, taking on the figures of saintly songbirds in the little girl’s eyes.  Upon sifting through pointed sprigs and mounds of dead leaves, the pair reached the grand, sultry heat of a pyre. Immediately, the little one ran off towards the encroaching heat, which, to her surprise, did not sway the blonde hairs on her arms; because there, prancing around the convivial rocks and logs, were tens of cattle with thick tufts of fur and limbs, all intact. No fire was to be found, but the bleating of cattle filled the air in a much friendlier manner than flame, crackling in the little girl’s ears as she eagerly fell into line behind a stout cattle—while one of gangly stature pranced at her rear.  They didn’t speak. Only hundreds of beady eyes fell upon her, horizontal pupils stretched thinner than a raisin, as they stared into the front and back of her golden locks. Still, they danced in their large circle, now hobbling to their hind legs. The little girl quickly wound her arms around the two cattle beside her, flicking her ankles upwards as she pranced along the soft mulch.  “Those antlers complement those golds just beautifully! O, it is only in my nature to fall envious!” the stout cattle spoke.  The little girl’s eyes widened as she watched the animal’s pale muzzle align perfectly with the chipper, feminine speech.  “Really?” the gangly cattle added. “I thought they were the fangs of some rapacious hog!”  The little one swiftly shook her head, laughing as she caught her breath from the intricate dance. “It is an honour to speak with you both! I’ve always dreamt of talking with such strange creatures.”  Immediately, the gangly cattle reared its head back, bleating loudly with a snort. “What a preposterous accusation, young lady!”  “Strange?” the stout cattle blurted out.  The third voice that followed was from that of a male cattle. “You, too, dance thrice sunwise around the pyre. Do you not?”  “You’re right,” she replied. “You are not strange. Across the marsh, none of you are afraid to dance around the fire. Back home, nobody dances thrice sunwise.” Standing, arms dangling stiffly at his sides, stood the carrion-man with his splintering beak and soulless gaze; for a man with no eyes to look into, nurtured no soul. His cloak rustled against the ground, as countless leaves were whisked away from its virulent drag. Quickly, he fell in line with the cattle dancing opposite of the set sun, to which the little girl’s hand disappeared within the dark leather of his gloves.  “Across the marsh, they aren’t afraid to dance!” she shouted over the bleating.  He looked down at her brittle antlers. “It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” She nodded along. “Oh, yes, mister. I think I quite enjoy it across the marsh.” Carefully, he slipped more wolfsbane behind her ears. “Thank ye for passage, little Niamh,” he whispered.  Then, without a moment to puppeteer her smile any further, she collapsed into his arms.  The first peak of the new dawn began to shine through the twisted and cruel branches of the woodland, causing the cattle to fall out of line and bleat amongst one another. A light grey now seduced Niamh’s fair skin, twisting her youth into rot and decay; but the wolfsbane remained untouched, tucked far behind her ears. The very sight of such a pretty thing nipped bitterly at the carrion-man, and he leaned back in solitude as Niamh’s face grew sunken and dry.  Slowly, he cradled her in his arms, stalking towards the abandoned pyre. Here, he placed her down against the dark mulch, allowing the Earth to taste her fair skin for the first time. The dirt parted for a moment, inching back from the girl in its distaste, before the small wolfsbane fell from her ears to the ground; it was quickly swallowed up by the leaves, to which the ground then took Niamh into its motherly embrace.  The carrion-man, of course, never learned of the little girl's true name; Niamh had been prodding at his throat from the moment he had first handed her the wolfsbane. He suspected that the gold of her hair and the divinity of her youth had placed that name upon his bill; and perhaps learning of her life across the marsh would have sullied the grace of her being. But that was the dutiful call of the wolfsbane, and the carrion-man swiftly shed his deathly mantle, scurrying into the final, remaining shadows of the new dawn.  There, beside the amalgamated twist of branches and leaves, remained the abandoned pyre, wrapped around a bed of youthful wolfsbane; and in the middle of it all, were the slender sprigs of two, makeshift antlers poking out from the mulch.  They complemented the pyre beautifully.  Dani Arieli is a published poet and lover of weird, dark, and archaic literature. She has multiple works published in B222 journal, and two forthcoming publications in Beyond Words and The Familiars magazine. She is currently working towards her Honours Bachelor of Creative Writing and Publishing degree at Sheridan College. During most writing sessions, her black cat sits atop her lap while she fervently taps away at her keyboard; she very much enjoys having a writing partner who can meow. You can visit her website, daniarieli.com for further authorial information.

Some have begun to wear parachutes when they sleep, for fear they’ll join the falling people. Others carry benzodiazepine spray to shoot up their nostrils. Whether that would even work as they reach terminal velocity is at best uncertain. Most just hope they stay hardbound to the earth. There are, of course, those who don’t believe it’s happening at all, that the "world government" is trying to deceive them. There have always been people like that. I know for certain it’s real because my wife was among the fallen. Sometimes, people say they wish a hole would open up in the ground and swallow them. And in a way, that’s precisely what happens except that it reopens somewhere different, a mile or two above the ground. My wife Sandra and I were walking down the North Circular Road, keeping enough distance so our hands would never brush. “What time’ll you be home this evening?” she asked. “I’m not sure,” I replied. “It wasn’t a difficult question.” “You know this is a busy time for me.” “Like always, Matthew. Just like always.” “I’ll get a bite in the office if that’s what you’re asking; don’t worry about making me dinner.” I knew she suspected I had another woman. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her I was on the verge of losing my copywriting job and it was hard to be around her. I had myself braced, ready for the next bitter word. But six or seven paces later and there was only the sound of traffic. I looked to the place where she should have been, fearful she was crying. She was nowhere. It was just around the spot where we parted each weekday morning, often amidst an argument, right at the junction with the Rathdown Road. I began to turn in a slow circle. Perplexed. “Sandra?” I said. Where had she gotten to? A line of cars stutter-stepped by on the North Circular Road as I cast about for a glimpse of her light green rain-jacket and red hair. There was a double-decker bus a hundred yards ahead of me and I wondered if she jumped aboard without me seeing. When I looked closer though, I could see that its rear sign read "out of service." I stepped out into the centre of the Rathdown Road peering down through the canyon of linden trees, a robin ever-so-soft-chittering on a branch above me. A Prius taxi prowled around the corner behind me, its horn startling. “What the fook are you at, you clown?” the cab driver roared through the open window, his cigarette dropping ash to the patchwork road surface. “I’m sorry,” I said, though he was gone too quick to hear me. It never occurred to me that Sandra was, at that moment, tumbling at a velocity of perhaps two hundred and forty kilometres per hour towards a canal-side street in the Castlefield area of Manchester. Just as she thumped the ground, a car veered to avoid her, and crashed into a black cast-iron bollard. The driver was a woman called Amanda Gilchrist. Her nose was streaming blood after she was hit by the airbag of her Volkswagen Golf. She stepped out from the vehicle and saw what remained of Sandra before leaning over and vomiting, so that it ran like liquid in the grooves between the crooked cobblestones. One thousand, four hundred, and seventy-seven people have fallen so far on every continent except Antarctica. The smart people of the world have been unable to find a pattern. The less smart claim they have right up until the point that they are proven wrong. A man vanishes in Canberra and falls in Sacramento. An eight-year-old child disappears from a street outside Gare Montparnasse and comes down three Métro stops away in Denfert-Rochereau. Sandra? She was reconfigured in the sky, 166 miles, more or less, as a herring gull might fly eastward from Dublin. Manchester was a city she never visited. Was that of some significance to her down falling? The questions we ask expecting answers. Several times on the day we parted, I keyed out messages on my iPhone only to delete them without sending. I’d no reason to suspect anything had happened to her; there were fewer than a hundred fallen people at that time. It was only when I got home from work that I began to think something might be amiss. I wondered if I should call her sister Barbara or her mam Anne, but I didn’t want to scare them. And if it was that Sandra had finally left me, she’d hardly want to speak with me. I was drinking a long glass of Baileys, brim-full with ice, the only liquor Sandra allowed in the house, when the doorbell rang. Was I surprised to see two uniformed police officers? Frightened, yes. Surprised, I’m not so sure. “Are you Mr. O’Sullivan?” the female garda asked. “Mr. Matthew O’Sullivan.” “Yes.” “Would it be OK if we came in for a minute?” I’m not sure if they could have handled the situation any better and I wondered if some officers were chosen for this duty because of their manner and sensitivity. I couldn’t think of anything to ask because I knew they had no solutions. They told me a close family member would have to travel to Manchester to identify that which was left. I was never one for airplanes but nothing two milligrams of Valium would not solve. The idea right then though, of ascending into the sky, crossing the water suspended high above the clouds, this profound fear I might fall, or worse again, see someone falling, I nearly shook. “You’re going to take the boat?” the policewoman asked when I explained my plans. “I have a fear of flying.” The two officers looked at one another. As I shut my front door, I could not shake the feeling that handcuffs might yet be produced, that I would be bowing my head as I was ushered into the back seat of their unmarked car, hoping the neighbours were not watching. When a woman dies in odd circumstances, who is usually to blame? When that couple’s relationship is frayed like an old dried-out elastic band; case closed, one might say. But how could you ever close a case that was beyond comprehension? Early the next morning, I boarded the ferry that would take me to the port of Holyhead before the long train journey to Victoria Station. I tried a few times to read but could not concentrate. Mostly, I looked at the sea, thinking of how many times I wished Sandra was gone, but never like this. It’s strange how years can pass, and relationships get so difficult to disentangle. A joint mortgage, an arthritic red setter, three expensive paintings, and a much-loved Chesterfield couch. I remember sitting in the waiting room of the hospital mortuary. It had been tastefully decorated with comfortable sofas and ersatz impressionist pictures, but the clinical undertones could not be painted over. A victim support officer sat at the other end of the couch, sneaking occasional glances at me, renewing that nagging feeling like I was under observation. A medical orderly came through swing doors, approached the officer and whispered to her. “Are you ready, Mr. O’Sullivan?” she said, softening even further her gentle Mancunian voice. “I think so.” “It’s a formality,” she said. “And they have done their best to make things easier.” On the mortuary slab, Sandra lay, everything but her face enclosed in the body bag. It made me think of the Wicklow Mountains, and a night spent camping up there when we used to love each other. Curled up in our sleeping bags, I found it next-to-impossible to sleep, could feel every bump in the ground beneath me. We never did it again; turns out I was a four-star hotel-kind of person. “Mr. O’Sullivan; can you confirm that this is your wife, Sandra Murray?” the coroner said. “Yes,” I said. I don’t know why I expected some interrogation, or why the idea of sudden arrest kept leaping into my mind. “Thank you, Mr. O’Sullivan,” said the coroner. “Would you like to spend some time alone with Sandra?” “Yes,” I said. But I knew I had nothing to say. I moved my lips as if in prayer, but all I did was count to one hundred and one. That felt like it was enough time before I could leave the dead room. There was nobody waiting for me outside and I was grateful for that. Sandra’s father had passed, and her mum Anne had suffered a stroke the previous year—my sister-in-law Barbara stayed home to mind her. Walking back out of the hospital, it was impossible to shake the oddness of being stuck in a place you did not want to be and with nothing to do. I had booked the ferry for the following morning, thinking my gloomy business would take all day. The very idea of going for food, or something to drink, seemed a dishonour to Sandra’s memory. I thought a moment of going back to my hotel to sleep but I knew I’d be examining the ceiling. There was a bus passing headed towards the city centre, so I jumped aboard and tossed a two-pound coin into the fare machine. I got off near Piccadilly Station and walked along the canal. It was a warm Friday afternoon, and the streets of the Gay Village were already abuzz beneath the rainbow bunting. I so envied the crowd’s ease, the frivolity of beer, cocktails, cigarette smoke, perfume and aftershave, a thousand laughs, and the evening’s infinite potential. I kept walking along the towpath, past the old Hacienda and up by Deansgate. The place where Sandra died was nearby—somewhere in between the industrial braid of rusting viaducts and decaying brick bridges—and I could have easily found it if I’d wanted. But I had this dread like I might come across a lost fragment of bone or a tooth that had been missed by the street cleaners. I just kept going and came at last to the Lowry, where I sat worn out on the quay as a single scull rowboat glided by a coupling of swans in the still water. Sandra came home in the hold of an Aer Lingus plane as my ferry sailed past the twin tower chimneys of Poolbeg. There was a removal. A funeral mass. A burial. Sandwiches, tea, beer, cider, and whiskey in the Castleknock Hotel. So many people shook my hand and too many mourners put their arms around me. I dutifully did what I was supposed to, anxiously awaiting the day when people would just leave me alone. For the first time, it gladdened me that we didn’t have children, couldn’t have had children. In the weeks after, panic took a grip on me and metastasised until there was scarcely a bodily or mental function that was untouched. Acid rose in my throat from a gurgling stomach beneath tension headaches that made my skull feel as if it was cinched in a corset. It was impossible to sleep at night and hard to stay awake by day. Each time I stood up from the couch, my head whirled so that I’d have to lean against the wall to regain my equilibrium. I became so sensitised to noise that when a door slammed, or a hammer sounded, I would fully expect to see a broken body nearby. Worse still was any sudden movement, a bird swooping into my eyeline or a helicopter overhead, so that I was certain another person was falling to earth. I found my eyes drawn towards the clouds. I wasn’t the only one and so many others began to look to the sky instead of the screens of their mobile devices. All this talk of multiverses, a tear in space-time, quantum entanglement, string theory, and relativity. I understood none of it, and I don’t want to understand. The only thing we know is it’s happening more often. Is the growth exponential? If it happens ten times a day now, will it be a hundred next week, a thousand by next month? Then came a day that rattled me out of my inertia, when dashcam footage of Sandra’s disappearance was leaked to a newspaper and uploaded to the web. The police had already asked me if I wanted to see it, but I couldn’t bear to. Watching it loop on Twitter, how innocuous it was, like an amateur filmmaker had been experimenting with jump cuts. I let it play back and forth, to scrutinise the moment she passed from sight. But there was only the before and then the after, no dissolution or disintegration, just a cheap sleight of hand. Now you see her, now you don’t. And I began to think maybe it was not such a bad way to glide out from this life, especially if you knew that it was happening. There would be that moment of realisation, the terror, the free fall, and an unquestionably quick death. Was it any worse than lying in a hospice bed with a morphine drip attached to your collapsing veins? My life began to decomplicate. The mortgage of our semi-detached house just off Blackhorse Avenue was cleared. Sandra had far more savings than I’d known, runaway money perhaps, and who could blame her? The boss who weeks before seemed about to fire me was now overly sympathetic, saying I should take a couple of months of bereavement leave. “You don’t need to come back until you are right and ready,” he said in his grating public school English accent. I pretended to be mulling over what he said. “Maybe coming to work’d keep my mind occupied,” I said. “Well, I would like you to take at least a fortnight. And then you see how you feel. No pressure.” Walking out the door of the voguish office on the Burlington Road, knowing I would never walk back in, I felt liberated. I packed a suitcase and, steeled by Diazepam, took a flight to Istanbul, travelling by train back across Europe to London. It took me two months. I had in mind to write that unpublishable novel I’d long thought about but got no further than the third page. All around the world, people kept on falling but I paid little heed to TV, radio, newspapers, or social media. When I arrived in England, I took a short-term let on an apartment in Kennington—unsure if I would ever return to Dublin. “And that I suppose is how I find myself here,” I said as I looked around a small parish hall in South London. “Matthew, thank you so much for your honesty,” said Rebecca, the chair of that evening’s session of the support group for the family, friends, witnesses, and victims of the Falling People. “I can’t lie to myself anymore,” I said. “This is a good step to take.” The heads of the other participants nodded like the hands of a lucky cat in a Chinese restaurant. “I’m sorry for talking for so long.” “Not at all,” Rebecca said. “We can only let go when we open ourselves.” I closed my eyes a moment. And when I opened them, Rebecca’s seat was empty. Ken Foxe is a writer and transparency activist in Ireland. He is the author of two non-fiction books based on his journalism and likes to write short stories of horror, fantasy, SF, and speculative fiction. Previous Stories: www.kenfoxe.com/short-stories/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/kenfoxe Instagram: www.instagram.com/kenfoxe

It’s crushing but slippery, like a birth but better but worse; there are eyes on you, through  you, but you can’t summon any numbers to your mind that make sense. There are too many—for  the daylight—and not enough—for the nightmares.  A brush against the back of your neck, the rise of your hip. It might be a breath, slightly  sour with a metallic glint, and ghostly fingertips that never fully land.  You could fight it. You could turn around and look—but you can’t, can you? You’re not  ready to face this, this monster that refuses to settle into your brain long enough to become a  singular, precise fear. It’s every fear, all the fear, all the cold in your bones and your mother’s  bones and her mother’s bones.  The slick roll of wet, oily shadow across your shoulders brings you out of your mind and  uncomfortably into your body. You fit, but barely; your skin feels smaller, like you’re sharing it  with someone—some thing .  Something else is in there with you. It’s in your finger bones and in your eyes. It smells  like sweat and grease, but a little crisply burnt. You have never smelled this in your life but you  smell it in the back of your throat like it’s coming from inside you. It is, of course.   If it can unravel you by pulling at your edges, it will. You feel the nausea of bile in your  blood, the staccato of your heartbeat, controlled by a thing that has never had one. It was not  alive until it took you, and inch by creeping inch, the parts of you that are you begin to  erode. It devours you, erases you, becomes you.  Breath after breath. Slowly. Slowly. Slower still. You are drowning in air. Your mind is  fading, reduced to the sensation of all the hair on your body standing on end. The powerful  wrongness is eating at your very soul and you know you cannot stop it.  You feel it pull back your lips in a crude, ugly smile. Your teeth are slick, your tongue is  cold. You taste the rank decay this thing carries with it. You can’t scream, not anymore. It’s too  late for that.   It has taken your throat, and it laughs. Kaille Kirkham is a queer American poet living in Tokyo. She is the single mother of a rescue cat and a rude conure. By day, she teaches English literature at a secondary school.

When the velvet greens are washed with rain and dirt,  And the dirt is washed with hands like the surgery of a seed— The child I once hammocked visits me.  In the brief fluttering we have together, I teach her how to throw a softball and never have it thrown back.  To prepare the soil to be cracked open by hoarfrost, anesthesia in the bark.   To love and never understand the heart it came from, to know a child by  The changes instead of the name. To catch the wind and accept where it takes her, The whispers of boys, allowing worries to slip away.  The wolves that teach her how to howl, of having wet consciousness.  Full moons. New moons led by stray light. She inhales sharply, smears goji berries around her lips,  Grabs the world like a biscuit of crab and butter. She exhales, allowing the spreading knife to plump her.  Her limbs unfold despite my greed in keeping her near.   She moves in her chrysalis, becoming a prodigy for the cold.  Her forewings briefly become sticks of calcium stuck in human density, Walking on a borrowed vertebrae.  The round trees stiffen into boxes to capture her taste. A hole in the sky slurps me into the museum–  In this eternity I think I can fly. Nicole F. Kimball is an emerging poet and artist from Salt Lake City, Utah. Her work can be found in Atlanta Review, Mom Egg Review, Lit. 202, and elsewhere. A four-time Best of the Net Nominee, her debut work of fiction is forthcoming in print later this year. Nicole loves to spend time with her husband, and Chihuahua named Tinkerbelle.

Dear Katz, It’s been a month and a half, and I’ve been trying to find a way to tell you how I’m feeling and what I’ve finally decided to do. You know me. You know I can be a little compulsive in my decision making, even with the serious stuff. I know I sometimes jump first and then look. I promise you I’m not gonna do that this time. You’re not going to like what I have to say, but it’s been damn near impossible for me to think about anything besides “the discovery” since they put that girl on the news a year ago.  Did you think we would live to see this? For real though. Harvard, MIT, and Columbia are all opening departments of Parapsychology in the Fall. Imagine that. How many thousands of years have people been swearing that ghosts and spirits and such are real? And for how many centuries have people like me and the people who run Harvard and MIT been laughing at those other people? But now we know. If that girl in that cemetery hadn’t been crazy enough to run toward that thing when she saw it, if she hadn’t been…I don’t know the right word for it… caught up  enough to keep filming the thing, how many more lifetimes would have passed without us knowing for sure that those things are out there? I was reading an article in the Wall Street Journal a few days ago, and how they summed it up is one of the best ways I’ve heard. I know you don’t read the Journal so if you’ll forgive the long quote, it said: Every time I watch the video, a part of me still wants to believe it’s a fake, but if the thing didn’t go away, if the thing is still there to this day,  how can a person not believe it? If Harvard and MIT say the thing is real, that’s good enough for me.  But that’s what scares me. And fascinates me. If ghosts are real, can’t angels and demons also be real? I know. I know. I do still keep up with Scientific American. I know you’re going to point to the same thing my colleagues point to. Quote: “The existence of a heretofore hidden reality, where entities not understood by science are now known to abide, does not guarantee the existence of gods or demons…”   blah blah blah. But Katz, think about it. We believe in science because its tenants are testable, falsifiable. And when we learn new information, we adjust our thinking. For centuries we pushed back against claims of the paranormal because there was no objective, verifiable evidence to support them. Now we have the video of this thing, standing in a graveyard watching a funeral, and it’s not some grainy Bigfoot video. It’s not blurry and out of focus, and half the universities (and damn near every government) on earth has verified that the picture is real, that the damn thing is there! And we have no idea what it’s made of or how it’s even there in the first place. It’s so funny listening to the conspiracy nuts… Yeah, half the people on the fucking planet want to fool somebody’s Uncle. Jesus Christ. And then the religious people going back and forth: is it from God? Is it evil? I get so tired of it sometimes, but at the end of the day, I’m like everybody else; I can’t stop thinking about it.  At this point, you and I are the only people I know who don’t swear they’ve been seeing ghosts all their lives. I still haven’t seen one. Have you seen one yet? Why do you think that is? Is it because we don’t crave attention enough to lie for it? Or because we don’t hop on the bandwagon and co-sign every new trend that pops up? I get so sick of people talking to empty seats on the subway and swearing it’s George Washington or Martin Luther King. Personally, I believe the vast majority of people still don’t see them, no matter how much they lie, and I still think anybody who goes around making a living from talking to them is full of shit. But isn’t it crazy that since the start of the Industrial Revolution, people have complained about how light keeps our brains from truly resting at night, but now most people make sure the lights are on  before they get in the bed and go to sleep? The world has changed so much, and I just can’t get my head around it. The reason I’m writing, like I said, is to let you know I’ve been thinking long and hard about something and I’ve made a decision. You know how those of us who don’t believe in UFOs are the ones who are the most eager to see one? Can you imagine how satisfying it would be to touch an actual skin sample? Or see just the taillight of a flying saucer? To see one scrambled text message from an extraterrestrial intelligence? I guess that’s why  we’re the biggest skeptics. We want it more than most people can imagine. I remember how you laughed when I signed up to join the crew for that billionaire asshole’s Mars colony project. I knew I wouldn’t be picked, but I wanted to go so badly and see what was out there. I think you were able to laugh because you knew I didn’t have a chance. It wasn’t even clear that the guy was serious, and I didn’t even have a master’s degree yet. You knew there wasn’t any real danger I’d wind up sitting in a space capsule headed across the solar system. I suppose I knew it too, but I wanted—I needed— to know. I needed  to know what was out there, and so I signed up. Now this thing…this thing in the graveyard and humanity suddenly finding itself at this crossroads, on the edge of this whole new age of discovery. It won’t leave me alone.  I hope this doesn’t frighten you or creep you out. I just don’t want you to find out from the authorities. Next week, I’ll see my thirtieth birthday. My doctor says a guy like me, if he takes care of himself, can expect to live for 73 years or more. That means I could be hanging around for four more decades, give or take, wondering what’s down that other road. I guess the odds are I will  see a ghost or two in the next forty years. Just because they aren’t showing themselves to me now doesn’t mean they never will. But Katz, I can’t wait forty years to find out what’s out there. I mean, now we know  there’s a whole other plane of existence. And not that I’m qualified to argue with Scientific American, but what if there are gods? What if all the things we were told aren’t real really are? What if, when we die, we just change but don’t end? I wonder if my mom and dad know what my life has been like. I wonder if they’ll know when I’m coming. I wonder if I can find them… Do you remember the time we were in Spain, and you drew a heart on the bathroom mirror while I was in the shower? It was right after things started going sideways with us, and we were trying to get back on track. When you drew that heart on the mirror, something that small and simple, it let me know your heart was still in it, and we could find our way back to being in love like we had been. I never told you, but I almost cried when I saw it. I was so relieved to find out everything wasn’t lost. Well, we did try. We took our teacups, and we tried as hard as we could to dip out that ocean, but, in time, the tide was just too much for us. You can see from this tome I’m sending you, though, that you still are a big part of me. That’s why I wanted to tell you myself what’s ahead for me. I have to go and find out. If I’m wrong, I’ll never know it. But if I’m right…If I’m right Katz, I can’t wait to see what’s on that other side. I can’t imagine how things work over there. Is it a matter of choice where one goes, who one sees? What role does the will play? What role does chance play? I don’t know, but whatever the rules are, I’ll try to make a heart on the mirror for you. If you see one, you’ll know it’s me reaching out. You are not a fearful person, and so I imagine it won’t frighten you if you already know it might be coming. I just know that I’ll want you to know that I’m alright and that I’ll never stop thinking about you no matter where I am or what state I’m in.  The most valuable things I own are my car and the money in my accounts. The car’s not a Lamborghini but it is very nice, and it’ll bring a nice piece of change. I’ve donated most of my clothes and a whole lot of other stuff to the homeless shelter and the thrift store across town. What’s left is mostly books and pictures. I’m sure you’ll get a call, but don’t worry about any of that stuff. I’ll put the account numbers at the end of this page. Don’t be scared, Katz. I’m not scared. I’m almost excited. I’m sorry we couldn’t fix things, but maybe it was for the best all along. Maybe something bigger than us knew this was coming one day. Who would have imagined that the start of the 21st century, the age of the internet and space tourism, would be the time we would finally have definitive proof that ghosts are real? Anything is possible now. And it’s time for me to see it for myself.  I wish you peace and happiness, Katz.  Don’t forget me.  Preston Ford is a teacher and short-story writer. His novel Quarter Moon: A Novel of the American South was published in January. He lives in Maryland.

Lined up like make-believe guests, potted ferns Adorned the entry, their cool shadows dim Switching the parlor—life’s last living room— Where time hesitates and dark furnishings Project inarguable dignity. Bookended by brass casket handles, lids Too heavy to be raised again must sense My presence, those defiant eyes I closed, Who parsed my childish alibis, whose last Wink nicked the priest, who forced death to hold still Till her eyes sent light leaping into mine. Make-up achieved the requisite life-like Illusion, simulating deepest sleep. Anxieties from cancer, agony, Diminishment, decay, helplessness: These were dissolved by death’s majestic wand. No longer glued in sickbed amber, she Exhales departure’s cloudburst, stretches free, Ignores those funeral displays. I feel, Inside pink satin, energy’s astir. Longing embedded in the earth has been Roused, charmed from sleep to welcome her. Except Tomorrow’s pre-dug grave will not confine Zest’s essence—just her perishable corpse. Bright windows fogged. Or was that tears? She’s flown. Native New Yorker and Elgin Award winner, LindaAnn LoSchiavo is a member of the British Fantasy Society, HWA, SFPA, and The Dramatists Guild — and a spooky Scorpio who loves Hallowe'en. Current books:  Messengers of the Macabre: Hallowe’en Poems , Vampire Ventures , Always Haunted: Hallowe’en Poems [Wild Ink, 2024], Apprenticed to the Night [UniVerse Press, 2024], and Felones de Se: Poems about Suicide [Ukiyoto Publishing, 2024].

The Monitor came to me when I was 14 years old. I awoke in my bed. I couldn’t move. My eyelids felt stuck, like the barn doors after a heavy rain had swelled the wood. A weight pressed on my diaphragm.  This paralysis had happened before. The panic encircled my ribcage, crushed my lungs. I heaved my eyes open.  This time was different. A huge black cat sat on my chest. Its circular eyes glowed bright enough to form a halo of red around its head that gradually merged into the humid darkness of my room. Somewhere in that ink, water dripped from the ceiling into a plastic bucket I had placed there yesterday. Plink. Plink. Plink. Panic rammed at the back of my throat. The cat’s fluffy tail swished back and forth in slow motion. Then it began to speak. fear not. i am the monitor. i am here to make a correction. Speaking was not quite what it was doing. Its sexless voice echoed in my skull.  my friend, you have been selected for a task . Its voice had a degraded quality, like a phone with bad signal. I noticed air washing in and out of my lungs, but I had no control over it.  I tried to speak but could only think. Who are you? Apparently, the thought was enough because the cat replied. i am the monitor. this iteration is in danger. we calculate that a correction at this time location will have a high probability of saving many people with minimal interference. To this day, I still wonder whether I was dreaming or not. In the moment, I decided I was in a lucid nightmare. Why not do it yourself? we cannot act directly upon this dimension.  Even though I could not hear the cat’s voice, I felt vibration through its body on my chest. It relaxed me somehow. And you think I can? I’m locked in this room, you know. your father has locked you in this room, but tomorrow at 6:13 seth will unlock the door. exit the room. go to the kitchen and open the window above the sink. I waited, but the thing said nothing else. Just when I felt my jaw unlock and opened my mouth to speak, the cat jumped off my chest with a viscous slowness. The red glow snuffed out. Immediately, the weight suffocating me lifted. I sucked in gulps of air and tumbled off my bed, hands and knees hitting the cold wood—a welcome contrast to the sticky air of the windowless room. I crawled toward the faint string of light outlining my bedroom door, still catching my breath. I grabbed the doorknob and twisted. Locked. I could still see the whites of Dad’s eyes flashing when he caught me last night in the hayloft. I was up there with my flashlight, reading from my stash of books. Most I had gotten from girls at school—old-school fallen angel, vampire, werewolf romance type stuff. I was 14, after all. Even without a computer at home, I found ways to satisfy my curiosities. “You must purify your mind to ascend, Norea,” Dad said as he tossed the books into the fireplace. He had the striking ability to speak in a genteel monotone while his gaunt face bloomed with fury, made even brighter by the contrast of his long white hair. Shortly after Mom died, it had turned white overnight. “Do you want to ascend?”  I said no. Somewhere, Seth was crying. The sound brought tears to my eyes too. Then Dad locked me in my room and ordered me to contemplate his scriptures. The Final Testament of the Second Coming of Christ. Yes, I should have mentioned: Dad believed he was the second coming of Christ.  Not so long after Mom died, but before we moved out to the middle of nowhere, something happened. He stepped out of his bedroom in our tiny Chicago apartment, eyes wide and hair white, speaking alien syllables that slowly reshuffled into English again over the next week.  That’s when the craziness started.  He was constantly scribbling down new mental downloads from the Entirety, new instructions about how to wage spiritual battle against the daimons keeping humanity imprisoned in this dimension, new rituals and codes to hack through their layers of deception. I could never keep up.  I heard a click. I stood quickly. Dad did not usually let me out after only one night.  The door swung upon. Seth stood there. The faint light from the hall backlit his frizzy dark hair. Even though he was already four, he was small for his age. He still sucked his thumb. He clutched a chewed white blankie in his other fist. “G’morning,” he said.  I crouched to his eye level and peered behind him. A few oil sconces along the walls were already lit—that was odd. Dad did not usually get up early.  Dad had long since shut off the electricity in this farmhouse. Only oil lamps and candles. He claimed he could hear the electric hum, and it interrupted his downloads from the Entirety. Another evil scheme. And besides, fire is a purifying element, he would say.  To which I would say, “But Hell is full of fire, and lightning comes from heaven.” “Lightning is from the Demiurge,” he would reply. Sometimes he would laugh after saying this. Sometimes he would not laugh at all. It seems strange to say, but I often got the sense that as much as I came to fear Dad, he came to fear me too. Sometimes, when I entered a room and he looked up at me, I caught a light in his eyes. It was like headlights reflecting off the pupils of a deer in the path of an oncoming semitruck. And then it was gone. My eyes adjusted to the wobbly light. No sign of Dad. Just the foliage of handwritten pages carpeting the floor, alongside empty plastic bottles, various food wrappers, cardboard boxes taped up and stacked along the wall, and manila envelopes stuffed between them. Every day, Dad packed up scriptures to send to his growing register of followers.  “Seth, what’s wrong?” I whispered, stepping forward into the hall. Immediately, my shins hit the rung of a small object, sending it clattering across the floor—Seth’s child-sized stool, painted red, yellow, and green. I froze. The noise wasn’t loud, but in the quiet of the sleeping house, it filled every crevice of my consciousness. Seth must have dragged the stool from his room to reach the bolt on my door—the bolt Dad had installed to lock from the outside.   “Bad dream,” Seth sighed. Images of the previous night flitted across my mind. I had somehow already forgotten the black cat crushing my ribs and issuing strange orders. Its blood-moon eyes rushed back to my mind now, its flickering sexless voice.  you have been selected for a task . “I’m thirsty!” Seth exclaimed. I shushed him. “Where’s daddy?” “Outside.” Maybe he left while I was mid-sleep paralysis. It was not uncommon for him to wander into the woods, sometimes for days at a time. Or maybe he was on his way to the post office. Spewing his spiritual seed into the world.  “Okay, let’s hurry. I’ll get you some water.” I grabbed Seth’s sticky hand and began picking my way through the detritus. “Then you need to lock me back in. Else we’ll get in trouble.” The smell of stale air and mold permeated everything in that house. Seth and I passed Dad’s study on our left—it was the source from which the endless reams of paper and boxes tumbled like foam from a waterfall. The faint smell of rotten eggs—which I knew was sulfur—drifted from the doorway. Inside the study, the hall lights glinted off a huge metal prep table hosting an array of beakers, burners, double boilers, and twisting alchemical labware with no obvious purpose. A fire extinguisher lay on the floor. A big analog clock hung over the table, next to a window that had been papered over with yellowing newsprint. It was 6:15. I kept leading Seth onward, past the living room archway on my right and toward the kitchen straight ahead. Seth began singing to himself, softly at first, then louder. “Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream…merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a—” “Shh!” I pressed a finger to my lips and ushered him into the kitchen ahead of me.  I stopped dead.  Standing before the sink, piled high with dirty dishes, Dad stood with his back to me. He was naked but for a pair of boxers, his long white hair hanging in mats along the knobs of his spine. The light seeping in from the window above the sink gave him an almost angelic glow. The tang of rot wafted to me from the sink. Every kid sees their parent at some point as a human weakling for the first time—sometimes in a moment of childlike rage, or the throes of grief. But sometimes it comes in a quiet moment. This was that moment for me.  His body, frail from fasting, twisted first, his gaze still locked on the window. His head turned next. His eyes came last, meeting mine—dark blue, like Seth’s. They were distant, undefined, clouded by a shroud of tears.  In that moment I saw a flash of the man I saw standing before my mother’s coffin, something breaking in him, or breaking loose in him.  I didn’t feel fear now. I didn’t feel love. I felt pity. Pity and disgust. Dad’s brow furrowed, pupils twitching from me to Seth. Weak sunlight filtered in from the gray miasma outside the window. The nearby mining operations had choked out the sun years ago. Water dripped from the sink. Plink. Plink. Plink.  “Seth was thirsty,” I said at last. It came out a half-whisper. Dad said nothing. He turned to the sink again and plucked out a cup. His hands were shaking. I crossed the room slowly. Takeout bags, crumpled plastic wrap, and more scrawled pages crunched under my feet. I stood next to Dad and grasped the cup in his hands. “I’ll get it, Dad.” I spoke gently, as if to a wild dog.  He let me take the cup. As he stepped back, he placed a spidery hand on my head. I looked up at him. His eyes were hard, but his voice was choked with tears. “I will do anything—anything—to make you ascend with me. That is why I must purify you.” I nodded. Tap water overflowed the cup now.  “Put Seth in his room and come to my laboratory,” he said, and turned away. My heart rate spiked. To this day, I don’t fully understand why I did what I did. I wasn’t operating on the level of conscious thought. I set the cup on the counter, between a sponge and a brown apple core. Then I reached across the sink and unlatched the window. Gray dust coated my fingertips. I hooked them under the sill and yanked. The window squeaked a few inches up its gummy track.  Dad’s footsteps halted. I yanked again. The window squealed halfway open before he was upon me. He reached his long arms over mine and grasped the window. I slithered out from between his body and the sink, then scurried backwards to Seth, who had dropped his blankie. I grabbed his hand again as Dad struggled with the window.  “Unclean, unclean,” he hissed. “Shit!” He jumped back from the sink. A small, oblong object shot through the last gap in the window, screeching. “Birdie!” Seth grinned and stretched out his arms.  A little brown finch rocketed around the room. Dad abandoned the window and lunged after it, cursing the Archons. Instinctively, I ducked and clutched Seth to my stomach as Dad careened past, giving chase into the hallway.  A thud. A crash. Then, a cry. I let go of Seth and jumped to the doorway. It took me a moment to fully comprehend what I was seeing. Dad was standing in the hallway, legs apart, hands at his sides, mouth agape. Blood dribbled down his right arm. On the floor, shards of glass glittered in the orange glow.  Dad and I stood there dumbly. The flame from the shattered oil lamp lapped at the paper on the floor. The oil accelerated its growth. In that eternal moment—probably only a few seconds—the flame jumped to the wall.  I blinked twice and Dad was upon me again. He must have jumped around the fire because his eyebrows were singed. He grabbed my arm with one hand while simultaneously reaching behind me to grab Seth. He shoved us both into the hall and toward the living room doorway. “Go to the McNams,” he said, voice calm as if we were going out to play.   I didn’t have time to feel afraid. I took Seth’s hand and crossed the living room to the front door, jostling the knob, almost forgetting to slide open the multiple deadbolts before shouldering the door wide.  I plunged into the gray morning. I didn’t bother looking back. I knew Dad wasn’t following us. I knew he was going back to save the lab.  Seth stumbled behind me and I picked him up, wrapping both arms around his skinny body. I ran.  The gravel driveway gave way to crabgrass. It sliced at my bare feet. I noticed the pain abstractly. A small object flew over my shoulder and into the sky, chirruping. I didn’t stop, not even when the smell of sulfur prickled my nose hairs. I felt the explosion before I heard it. The wave of heat shoved me to my knees. I scrambled upright, Seth squirming in my arms. I didn’t look back. Seth was screaming words I couldn’t understand. I just kept running. The neighbor’s farmhouse got closer and closer.  The total blankness I felt in that moment has never quite left me—an unbearable lightness. Even now, it threatens to lift me away from this world.  I know if I ask myself too many questions about that day, I will tumble so deep into the possibilities that I may never claw my way out. I don’t know who I saved or doomed, or if I did nothing at all but follow the inevitability of a collapsing wave form. Either way, I don’t allow myself to feel guilty for what a 14-year-old did. After all, I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t do anything at all.  My life continued. So did Seth’s. We spent the rest of our childhood with our maternal grandparents back in Chicago, the strange years with Dad fading away like chemtrails in the eternal gray sky. The fear was over. That’s all that matters. I waited, meditated, and even prayed for it, but I never saw the Monitor again. Nicole Kurlich is a writer, editor, and amateur seamstress living in Chicago with her two cats, Toast and Jelly. Her work has appeared in literary journals including Poet Lore, Contrary Magazine, Gravel, and more. Her debut chapbook, girls are figs , was published by Milk and Cake Press.

I. Camellian She was made in the image of Camellia. Her lips boasted a cherry blossom, carved carmine cheeks dripped into her yellow eyes, lean and sharp as a prowling cat. Camellia, keen and defined by her crimson kisses, her leaves wide and striped with emerald green drew in her own creation. This image, fleeting and sprinkled with dew, was forgotten in the imagined seas of Miryoung, grasping at the petals of her sweet Camellia, swept away at the glance of an artist's brush. She is Camellian. Her colors change with but a whim, flickering in a cosmic sunset kaleidoscope. She licks them like candy as they drip off her lips, staining the artist’s canvas. When she becomes the muse she eats poets for breakfast. Her taste buds burst with the caviar of art: imagination. II. Drawing Camellia White camellias are a sign of my adoration, handed to the clear air and draped across the shoulder of the mountains breathing in the distance. It is a curse: to be surrounded by the pollution-stained  beauty of South Korea, the trembling hills lifting into the hazy horizon. I write love letters to the camellias as they die in droves, rotting and falling to the sidewalks, crushed by the passerby into a nondescript smear of brownish pink. Even in death, the camellia stands proud, reminding every allergy sufferer that they will return to torment next spring, their rose-like buds mixing with the gentle cherry blossoms. In Korea, camellias are the flowers of weddings, adorning the  paths of faithfulness and piety, matching the bride’s brilliant red hanbok and the groom's muted blue. Perhaps the artist can breathe the fumes of loyalty as she sketches her final command, her finality, Camellia. III. Helper to the Priest It draws an irony that starving children can walk along arching walkways and donation-lined walls like those of St. Patrick’s cathedral. It has a  bitter taste and bleeds the tongue like a sword to the throat. It draws  a metaphor that camellias line the pathway to disorder. It burns the nose with smoky desire. It brushes the skin in anointed oil and lights a candle of devotion. It splashes the soul with moldy holy water.  It looks upon the holy trinity: Camellian, devil, she.  IV. Camellian, Pt. 2 I am Camellia, which is to say, I breathe. Paige Eaton (she/her) is a poet who is currently teaching English in South Korea and is originally from Rochester, New York. Her work has appeared in Dark Entries, Does it Have Pockets, Long Winded Anthology, and Unlikely Stories  among others, and is forthcoming in Pink Hydra  and The Bitchin’ Kitsch .

the damned stands before her ʻāina ,  repressed tears embellish her limpid eyes  as she overlooks the lavender, melancholy skies,  acknowledging those before her  with a silent prayer and nod.   winds swim around her,  the trees serve as companions,  and the distant chants of spirits grow closer to her despondent heart as seconds speed by. she sits on the sand,  watching the intricate waves clash against the rocks— ( i remember clashing like that with…  “ embrace the little things, my girl, ”)   a tear skips down her cheek  and she’s hasty to wipe it away,  as if someone’s there to judge. poor soul,  sitting on the ashes of her damned spirit,  contaminating the ʻāina . ( everything i do —  i do it wrong  i deserve to — become an ancestor )  –  the damned  retrieves a shovel  from pa’s tool room. she returns to the  spot—  the spot of self,  the spot of ola . –   6 feet deep  sand grave. she throws the beaten shovel aside,  then grabs the matches. slowly, she descends into the grave. (“ goodbye, my dearest ola .”) –  the damned takes a final glance  at the lavender, melancholy skies,  cherishing the moments she had during this ola . aesthetic of her ola —death.  the end.  for the damned .  she lights the ahi ,  and smiles,  relishing in her final moments,  before being welcomed by mother earth to her new ʻāina ,  just across the alaula .  the end. M.S. Blues is a writer, editor, and advocate from San Jose, California. Her objective is to raise awareness to issues that society tends to neglect, as well as represent her communities. She’s one of the most decorated figures in the literary magazine community, having been published over 130 times and serving on multiple staff boards. She’s an editor for; The Amazine, Adolescence Magazine, The Elysian Chronicles, Hyacinthus Zine, Low Hanging Fruit, Sister Time, DICED Online Magazine , and The Mixtape Review. She is a poetry/prose reviewer for The Cawnpore Magazine . In addition, she’s the Prose Submission Manager of Chromatic Scars Review . She’s also the co Editor-in-Chief of The Beaulieu Gazette and Sorry! Zine , as well as the Assistant Editor-in-Chief for Voices of Asylum . Lastly, she is the Founder & Editor-in-Chief of The Infinite Blues Review. You can interact with her on Instagram @m.s.blues_

Violet Plays With Raindrops, 2024 With a fingertip, I caught raindrops on the windowpane one by one, letting the coolness shock my skin and obscure the whorls of my fingerprint. “They broke the fabric again at the accelerator site,” my brother said as he passed through the room and turned on the TV. He flopped down on the futon and scrolled through streaming services. He didn’t seem to see me, but I saw him perfectly well even without looking at him. He was in my peripheral vision, not to mention he was doing the same thing I’d seen him do every day forever. “At least that’s what the weirdos are calling it. They say the accelerator ‘breaks the fabric of reality.’” He snorted. “All anyone really knows is they’re detecting unusual energy fluctuations.” He shifted sideways to face me. The old futon creaked. “Are you even listening to me? What are you doing? You should close the window. It’s raining.” I caught another raindrop. “I know it’s raining. That’s why I have the window open.” “Honestly, Violet. How old are you? Four?” “Times a few.” I muttered the words into my forearm, because I was resting my chin on my folded arm, and I was just as happy if he didn’t hear me. I was eighteen and saw nothing wrong with raindrop-catching at any age. Besides, it kept me facing away from him, which made it easier to hide the fact that I was more interested in his talk about the fabric of reality than I wanted to admit. I didn’t know why I resisted showing interest, except that it plucked a string inside me that resonated with half-formed ideas, things I didn’t want to have to try to describe because I had no words for them. Violet Feels the Crossroads of Dimensions, 2034 The side room of the bio-physics lab was a mess. It was the space dedicated to cutting-edge molecular and subatomic research that would one day be used for new medical technology, yet somehow it had collected more than its share of junk. The fume hood contained a few kilos of dried leaves for reasons only one of the grad students knew, and I had to turn sideways to get past all the clutter in the room—boxes, a broken stool, a bin of stained glassware. Two thermocyclers were running at one end of the bench, alternately heating and cooling DNA to allow the heat-tolerant Taq polymerases in the tiny tubes to make thousands of copies of the genomes within. I knew not to touch those, and I also knew not to touch the plasma particle collider at the other end of the bench. My only job was to wash and put away the day’s glassware and shiny steel spatulas and scoopulas, make sure the hot-water bath and shaker plates were all turned off for the night, and sweep the floor in here and out in the main lab. My job was not to think about the text from my brother, who was on an overnight solo hike in the desert mountains. The text that said only, I screwed up and forgot to pack enough water. Ran out before nightfall. That’s fifteen miles to go tomorrow before I get anything else to drink. My job was to be a good assistant and clean things well so next year, when I applied to grad schools, Dr. Farmer might consider letting me join her lab. Worrying about my brother wouldn’t aid that cause, since I couldn’t do anything to help him.  Someone had left their electrophoresis apparatus on the counter between the thermocyclers and the particle accelerator. I needed to wash the apparatus and put it away or Dr. Farmer would be annoyed with me in the morning. To get to that side of the room, I stepped over one of the boxes that stood crooked on the floor, misjudged the distance, and tripped. My hand shot out, jostling the particle accelerator. In the space between stumbling and catching myself, the room dissolved. My own matter became not the solid suit of meat I was used to but something that shimmered, something indefinite yet more truly me than I’d ever been before in this life. A crystalline grid of stardust surrounded me, instead of the familiar lab. I caught myself on the black epoxy resin bench before my nose would have smashed into it. The particle accelerator slid a few inches and came to a stop. The machine was unharmed, as far as I could tell. But I was not the same as a moment before. I still felt made of shimmering light, and the air, the walls, and everything else seemed to pulse in time with the vibration of my body. I straightened up and took a deep breath. Maybe I was just dizzy from the near-fall. The air pulsed again, stronger this time. It felt like the waves of sound that hit you physically when you’re near a jet taking off, except I heard nothing. My torso compressed and released in rhythm. My jawbone vibrated. “What’s going on?” Since I was alone and no one could hear me, it made me feel better to speak the confusion aloud. As soon as I said the words, the pulsing calmed to a low buzz in my chest and in my bones. Relieved, I took a deep breath, gazing absently toward the fume hood, toward all those red maple leaves spread out to dry inside it. A form appeared in the hood’s shadowy glass. I whirled to see who’d come up behind me, but there was no one there. When I turned toward the glass again, the form remained, a pattern of shadow vaguely humanlike in shape but lacking any distinct features. “Must be a trick of the light.” We are not a trick of the light. I looked around again, pulse pounding. Still no one there. We have always been here. “What do you mean, always?” There was still no one in the room that I could see, but I felt the presence of someone—or some ones —as surely as I heard their words in my mind. Always is always,  pulsed the voice in my mind.  Time is not what you think. Time is not linear, or cyclical, or multilinear. All time is simultaneous; all pasts, presents, and futures, as you would name them, are equally real and equally here. I sat down on the grungy tile floor and closed my eyes. The pulsing from earlier returned and vibrated the marrow of my bones, my brain stem, my heart. In my mind’s eye, I “saw” the beings who were talking with me, but I didn’t see them as a visual image—just as I didn’t hear what they were saying as sounds. You don’t have to close your eyes to see us,  they say. We’re non-corporeal, which means we’re not made of matter. Our decisions are not determined at the quantum level. Distance does not exist for us, neither in space nor in time. Humanity will know this in time. We wait for opportunities such as this one, when a disturbance in the quantum field allows you to perceive us. The words didn’t fully make sense, but I felt  their meaning—just as I felt my body and the room and all the world beyond it made up of billions of points of light. You are bound by a vast set of either/or decisions made every moment at the quantum level,  said the voice, now seeming warm and familiar even though I’d only been acquainted with it for a few minutes. In physical reality, there exist an infinite number of parallel realities, each unfolding from a quantum possibility. My hands felt warm on my knees. “So there’s a reality in which my brother will walk home without a problem, and a reality in which he’s about to die, and another in which he’s already dead.” The air pulsed again, placing an even pressure on every surface of my body. Yes . And every other possibility that exists across all multiverses. They all exist. They all, also, do not exist. I sat feeling the pulsing for a few minutes, listening to the loud rush of the overhead ventilation system and the lower hum of the various small machines in the room. “You said humanity will know this? Have other people had the same experience I’m having now?” A few have. Many more will in the near future, as plasma particle colliders become more common and as you expand their usage. When you corporeal beings look at the world, what you think you are perceiving is not technically inaccurate, but it is only a fraction of the story of reality and therefore not truly correct. “How do I know I’m not just hallucinating you?” Our access to your realm is weakening, but if we act quickly, we can show you something that will remind you of these moments. Name one thing you would like to change in the version of physical reality you inhabit right now. My eyes opened and I sat up straighter. There was no question about what one thing I wanted to change, even though I knew it was impossible.  “ I want my brother to have water. But he’s a thousand miles away.” The feeling of soft laughter vibrated in the air around me. The apparent distances in your spacetime are not real, not in our dimension. I pictured myself filling a bottle of water and handing it to my brother but shook my head. He was several states and two time zones away. Try it,  the voice urged. I got up and went to the computer area in the entrance to the lab suite, where I’d left my blue plastic one-liter water bottle. Outside in the hall, next to a dark window looking out on the quad, I filled the bottle at a water fountain.  As soon as I screwed the bottle’s cap back on, I felt the air around me grow warmer. Close your eyes,  urged the voice. I did so, and in the dark of my temporary lack of sight, I saw myself standing in a dark desert landscape, bending over, and placing the water in my brother’s green hiking pack. When I opened my eyes, I didn’t have the water bottle in my hand. Probably I’d wandered out here into the hall without it. Probably, I was half-dreaming all this and needed to go home and go to sleep. I re-entered the lab, and the air inside it felt normal again. One of the thermocyclers had finished its run and entered its overnight hold at four degrees Celsius. The other thermocycler was almost finished, and the particle accelerator had entered automatic shutoff mode too. By now, the data it had collected had been transmitted to Dr. Farmer’s computer and would be waiting for her in the morning. I checked the water bath and the shaker plates. Satisfied that everything was shut down for the night, I turned off the lights and locked the lab. Violet Wakes in the Certainty of Rain, 2040 The morning of my dissertation defense, I woke to a steady rain, looked up at the gray window, and put my hand over my heart to feel the steady beat. Whatever happened today, I would be at peace. There was a reality in which I would pass the defense, a reality in which I would fail, and a reality in which the defense never happened at all. The sound of each drop striking the windowpane contained a world of possibility. I picked up my phone to read the screenshot of the text from my brother six years ago, the same thing I read every morning as a reminder of how I, and the world, had changed. Thought I forgot to pack an extra water bottle, but I was wrong! Found another in my pack. Didn’t even know I had a blue water bottle like this one. A.J. Van Belle is a nonbinary biologist and writer who lives on Vancouver Island with their husband and two dogs. Their stories have appeared in journals and anthologies from 2004 to the present. A member of HWA and SFWA, A.J. is a literary agent intern at the Booker-Albert Agency, volunteers as a submissions reader for Apparition Lit, and a mentor in two novel-writing mentorship programs. They are represented by Lauren Bieker of FinePrint Literary.

With enough years of practice, I easily store six days  of outfits in a single backpack pocket Crumpled five dollar bills tucked in bunched socks stuffed in  every jacket pocket—-  I pray to the gods of Just in Case of What If  of What We’ve Had to Do Without It Most of the orange safety bottles hold hoarded prescriptions  needed but rationed— yet some hold thumbtacks  coarse salt  old to-do’s as scrolls,  as fortunes   Nothing unconsidered,  an ex’s birth certificate stored with the lack of fulfillment  of medical records requests  from the institution  where I was unfree  on my sweet sixteen I leave this baggage behind,  filling space with tarot cards  I bought my best friend  three Christmases before her last. She died on my little brother’s birthday so I pack something he gave me in the before times  willing this magic enough  to extend the lives of those left in my usual and expected absence. I pack eyebrow tint  but never concealer  I am trying to look older  not prettier… I don’t want to be spoken to,  just want to look alive enough no one tries to change that. Hot pink hairbrush unsheathes  cold pink plastic knife, serrated blade too dull  to slice bread, to defend  A memory aid, a false sense of safety.  A tube of San Marzano tomato paste contrastive enough from toothpaste they won’t get confused  When my depression creeps Mom’s sauce recipe  far exceeds the importance of brushing my teeth. Caidyn Bearfield (she/her) is a queer Italian-American poet from Columbus, OH. Her debut chapbook, INIZIARE, was published by River Dog Press in 2024. She has featured all across the Midwest at festivals, museums, punk shows, and more. Caidyn is also a peer and legislative advocate for current and former foster youth who enjoys making anything from crafts to cakes to change.

My Sufi guide and I are meeting on Zoom. She welcomes me with a home-run smile and a “Hi” laced with joy. “Read me one of your poems,” she says, eyes glistening. When I finish, she exclaims, “That’s wonderful. You’re doing holy work.” She taught me to typeset my poems by hand, then published them in a beautiful letterpress book, seeing me with God’s eyes. “How are you feeling about the surgery?” I ask about her six-hour operation next week. A hint of anxiety flits over her angular face. “I’ve asked my son to be with me in the hospital. I’ve been doing practices to calm myself, but I still feel a little nervous,” she confesses, willing to be vulnerable. “Many of us will be praying for you,” I tell her, referring to all the people who love her, a fountain of light illuminating my life and so many others, the mother I might have had. Ralph Dranow works as an editor and poetry guide. His most recent book is At Work on the Garments of Refuge , poems of his and his late friend Daniel Marlin. He lives in Oakland, California with his family.