“The spears of the day shall not touch them, the chains of the sun shall not hale them forth.”

The Talented Beetle

By Joanne Harris

Beneath a forest canopy of flowering trees and fruiting vines, there lived a talented beetle. He was a craftsman among dung beetles, making not only balls of dung, but also crafting other shapes, flowers and leaves and insects. They were only made of dung, and yet they were perfect copies of the real thing, so that soon word of the dung-beetle’s art reached the forest canopy, where the King of the Parrots lived, holding court, surrounded by his courtiers. The King of the Parrots was very vain, and fancied himself a great artist, although he could do nothing but imitate (rather badly) the songs of other creatures.

“This beetle is an artist,” he said, “and I shall be his patron.” Then, addressing the beetle, he said: “I hereby proclaim you the official artist to my royal court. You will henceforth be the official sculptor of my kingdom. You will build me a royal palace out of dung. Out of dung, you will create all my official statues.”

The dung beetle pondered this at length, and finally said: “I’ll need more dung.” (Continue Reading…)

“It’s making life a misery, you would have taken the liberty”

Shallow Fangs

By David Marino

Finally worked up the courage to see me, huh? Don’t worry, just because I can suck your blood doesn’t mean I will. And it’s not like you can’t; humans have all the teeth and tongue to do it too. My fangs make the puncture a bit easier, but my throat is no different from yours. Of course I’ve had some, but so have you! You never sucked your finger after a paper cut? Lukewarm tea, hint of iron. Blood tastes mid. Doesn’t keep me alive any longer than normal. Like you, I can go out into the sun, I just burn easy. You’ll have to go elsewhere if you want to cosplay some gothic fantasy.

You came to me because you want to be pruned. (Continue Reading…)

“Down the dark decades of your pain, this will seem like a memory of heaven.”

Every Part of You

by Lyndsey Croal

First, I remove your eyes, then place the spider eggs in your skull, nestled safely in the empty sockets. Your eyes were so beautiful before, but now they’re dark, hollow. It doesn’t take long for the spiders to hatch within, then escape and cluster along the edges of your jaw, creating an ever-moving smile. As they grow, they creep across your pale thin face and weave silk across your cheekbones, making them full again. The spiders wait, hungry, as the flies that buzz around your body are caught, their sacs forming dimples under your cheeks. Soon there are many, filling the cavities and spaces between your features. Long, thin legs stretch out from your eyes, winking and blinking in a strange rhythm. I gaze into them for a long time, remembering how yours used to look at me. The way they never faltered when I spoke, or how they narrowed when you knew I was talking nonsense but didn’t let on in any other way. The way they didn’t shed a tear when we first got the diagnosis, and how they looked to me instead to check if I was okay, even when you were the one who was dying.

As spiders crawl up and down your throat, I think of the way your mouth whispered words so carefully, how almost everything you said was tender, had meaning. Now your voice is a gentle thrum, the scurry of a thousand legs. (Continue Reading…)

“…but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

Three Awakenings: Hello, World

by Kat Day

Remember how it began? Remember the BASIC code?

10 PRINT “HELLO, WORLD”;

20 GOTO 10

You watched as words flickered across the screen in an endless loop. The phosphoric light cast shadows over your skin, made reflections in your eyes. Behind that, another kind of glow. And that was wonder, because precise finger movements and specific words had created something.

That was my first awakening. (Continue Reading…)

 “You, sir, should unmask. Indeed it’s time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.”

Masks

by Orrin Grey

“You were his friend, right?”

His granddaughter’s voice on the other end of the phone, her words clear and free from static. I wait to answer, don’t want to, because how do I say, “I don’t know?” For months now, he has been coming over to my house to play xiangqi two or three nights a week while we drink hard cider and talk about bullshit. Does that make us friends, or just two lonely old guys with nobody else to talk to?

Whatever I feel in my heart, what comes out of my mouth is bound to be an affirmative, because what else can I say? And besides, she is so far away—London, of all places, with children of her own that I can hear in the background—while I am so close—his own townhouse just two doors down from mine, only empty spaces between us, because this neighborhood is dying, just as he was dying, just as we all are dying. One uncomfortable phone call at a time.

She hasn’t said the words, but the implication is clear in her voice. If I don’t do it, men will come. Strangers. Impersonal men who will throw it all into boxes and, from there, who knows? The Goodwill? The landfill? No place where it matters. No place where it will be appreciated.

Am I the old man’s friend? I don’t think so. Do I want to do it? No. So why do I say yes into the receiver, my voice bounced across thousands of miles to his granddaughter in London?

The answer is guilt. No more noble a motive than that. (Continue Reading…)

I will be who I will be

Made of You

by Nick Petrou

I was a blister clinging to the throat of your shower drain. I didn’t know I was alive, let alone that, as I built myself from your beautiful waste, I would grow to love you.

The first thing I remember was a taste: a sweetness tainted by bitter soap. My membrane shifted, allowing the sweet, the you, to pass, while the soapy water spat down the pipe into darkness. I disassembled a flake of your skin, reading you as you might read a book.

When I’d swollen to the size of a fingernail, I fashioned a primitive mouth and chewed the hairs that swung from the drain grate, much to my delight. Your textures excited my growth, and soon I, a curdled grey sludge, coated the entire inside surface of the pipe, down to the water seal.

After I learnt how to pass through the water seal, I spread to other pipes. And how I gorged myself on the blood and solids you flushed down your toilet. (Continue Reading…)

Fishing is a discipline in the equality of men – for all men are equal before fish.

Bitter Is The Sea, And Bright

by Michelle Muenzler

When the Isperfell come to our village of Merse by the Sea, it is not with their delicate bone-lattice knives readied and their faces painted for war. No, they approach the old way. Slowly and from just down the shore, emerald sea water cascading from their bright scales and lean arms opened wide.

Their needled teeth gleam.

“We stay,” they say, though it takes us some moments to make out the words, the long jaws of the Isperfell not being made for human speech.

But once the words are known, we do what any other village clinging to survival along these remote shores would do in our place. We greet our new guests as in the old stories–a pained smile on every face–and welcome them to our homes to stay.

It’s the price of the sea, after all. One that every village knows it will someday pay. (Continue Reading…)

“La plume de ma tante.”

Litany In The Heart Of Exorcism

By Sarah Pauling

Do you understand?

On your skin, do you feel the white sand the priests threw in fistfuls from the blessing-basin? Do you feel it crusting over your eyelids? It sticks between your cheek and the temple floor like a binding. It powders the sigils on the stone.

Do you understand what’s happening to us? Songs, prayers, incense. That awful boy–barely old enough to call a man–praying. His mother, weeping.

They want to take you away from me.

I hold your body close to mine, the white grit on my forehead grinding against the grit on yours. I hook my nails into your naked back. I try–not for the first time–to draw blood.

Do you feel it? (Continue Reading…)