Bite-Apple

by D. Matthew Urban

Oh yes, I’ll be sure to give her the pills every morning. Thank you for coming all this way, Doctor, and on Halloween, too.

I’m sure you’re eager to get home and take your children trick-or-treating, but could you spare a minute to join us in a game before you leave? It won’t take long, and it would make Sarah so happy. We don’t get trick-or-treaters out here, and I can’t take her to town, not with her condition. A holiday game would make it feel like a real Halloween.

Thank you so much, Doctor. You’re so kind, so generous. (Continue Reading…)

Kill Screen

by Chris Lewis Carter

I’m about to close shop when a kid walks in, no older than eight or nine, lugging a cardboard box with

Do Not Open Ever

scrawled on the side. He pushes it onto the counter and stares at me with expectation. (Continue Reading…)

Put Your Metal Blade to the Earth

by Maddie Logemann

There is an inherent danger in digging. Not metaphorically, rifling through the lives or possessions or hidden minds of others. Though that, too, poses a risk. It’s putting metal blades to the earth and overturning the flesh of their mother that Elias alone seems to understand the danger of. Or perhaps the others know, but keep the frights tucked back on a secluded shelf in their minds. It’s a necessity, after all, in these days where the very air seems polluted with the distinct stench of flesh becoming other. It festers into sickly white pustules or blotches violet with blood. It melts down, becomes rotten pulp to feed the magpies.

He’s seen carrion crows carrying around the eyes of the corpses. They stash them, sometimes, in the boughs of the trees. The forest never stops watching, not really, but now there is a reminder. (Continue Reading…)

The Ghost of a Flea

By Orrin Grey

“Of course, I haven’t exactly conducted a survey,” Robert was saying, “but I get the impression that people used to see ghosts a lot more often than they do these days. Doesn’t it seem like the opposite ought to be true? After all, with each passing year, the number of dead must steadily increase, so by now the spirit world should be quite crowded. It seems that seeing ghosts ought to be a daily occurrence.” (Continue Reading…)

This House of Hopes, This House of Bones

By Cynthia Zhang

My husband is home again. I cannot hear him well, not with the ringing in my ears and the throbbing headache making every movement agony, but the ghosts keep me informed. There he is, slipping off his coat and shoes at the door and placing his briefcase on a drawer; there he is in the kitchen, chopping vegetables and tasting the broth for salt. The worried caretaker, ever careful of my comfort.

The ghost with ribbons in her hair strokes my arm. She is the youngest of my visitors, with a round, heart-shaped face framed by curling ringlets that reach the middle of her nightgown—a picture of Victorian innocence, skin white and smooth as a doll. A knife gash winds around her throat like a ribbon, blood spilling down her dress like rubies.

Transparent fingers reach for mine, squeeze with more strength than you would imagine a ghost could possess. A voice scrapes inside my head, soft and high like whispers in the wind. Now, she whispers, now, now, now.

But I cannot get out of this bed. (Continue Reading…)

An Inordinate Amount of Interest

by Ayida Shonibar

Green flows from your imagination onto the page, bleeding viridescent liquid through the intermediary of your brush. The handle bends to your grip like the natural extension it’s been for as long as you remember, the interface between skin and lacquered wood as familiar as your eyelids kissing to blink.

This last stroke completes the painting. It’s not finished finished—you could always add a layer of yellow to bathe the leaves in warmer sunlight or deepen their definition with purple shading. More details to bring this rendition of the peepal tree closer to how it’s rooted in your memories of your homeland.

But there’s the time limit to consider.

The interviewer waits for you to slide the paper to her side of the table. Her gaze traces over your artwork and lights up. “It’s beautiful.” She splays her fingers an inch above the still damp branches. “So lifelike it hardly takes any effort to do this.”

Light suffuses her hand. Beneath her palm, foliage springs from the paper and spills across the tabletop. She pulls it upwards, fingers still glowing as they curl around the sapling to draw it out of your now blank canvas.

Air catches in your throat. Pulse pounding, you lean closer to gingerly touch a heart-shaped peepal leaf.

It’s solid. Waxy. A real piece of where you came from, a shining emerald on this other side of the planet. When you dig your nail in, the bitter scent of raw vegetation tickles your nose. (Continue Reading…)