Chattering Spines

By Mike Wyant Jr

My neighbors smile when they burn.

The flames melt the flesh from their bones, revealing the full six inches of sharp spines that brought them here. I swear they sigh in relief.

Hell, I would, not that I’ll say that out loud.

No screaming, though. Never that. Just the crackling silence of flames and the perpetual hiss-pop of melting fat and burst organs. That stopped being a surprise a long time ago.

Now, this is just my last shift at the burn pit for the day. (Continue Reading…)

The Hermit Crab God

by ego_bot

“Behold the truth of this world, Koji, my friend,” said Masa. Pretending sophistication. “We live in a world made by humans, for humans. Don’t need a college degree to figure that out.”

Koji puffed on his cigarette. He was trying to enjoy the sunset in silence, but his friend kept going on about the trash strewn across the beach. As if anyone actually gave a shit about that.

“My dad drove me up to this beach all the time when I was little,” Koji said.

Masa took a sip from his plastic bottle of green tea. “Is that right?”

“We came up here to catch fish for my aquarium—snails, clams, whatever. Anyway, the place was pristine back then. I swear. No trash.”

“A lot’s changed since then.” Masa gestured his green tea bottle towards the ocean. “All those countries. All those corporations, those boats out there—these days they’ve got plastic to spare. How nice of the currents to deliver it all to our lovely beaches.”

Koji took a long drag of his cigarette, let the smoke mix with his thoughts. “We must be idiots to want to be biologists.” He exhaled. “All the coral on this island will be white as snow before we graduate, and nothing you and I do will make a damn difference, ever.”

“That’s the spirit. Rest easy knowing humans will get what’s coming to us. Nature will make sure of it, yeah? And either way”—Masa took another swig of his tea, then held the bottle out—“the sun will rise again in the morning. Hey, want a sip?”

Koji accepted the plastic without thinking. It was weightless—empty. He shot a glare at his grinning excuse for a friend who had just handed him trash. (Continue Reading…)

James Courtney Goes Home

By Jamie Grimes

The personal effects of the late Mr. James Courtney found their way to me some months after his passing, once the stipulations of his will had been addressed and the remainder of his belongings had been picked over by his friends and family. He had made a promise to me long ago, and I to him, and now, some decades after he’d done his part, the rest was mine to fulfill.

His steamer trunk was left like a flag staked in the yard, the ghosts of a former life reminding me of the claim they had on my soul. Inside were a pile of well-worn journals, some wadded papers cushioning a couple of chipped dinner plates, and a few books. In with all of this was a letter addressed simply “To Thomas.” In it, Courtney recounted the better part of the last two decades of his life, during which time he never married, made but a few close friends, most of whom helped him put his meager fortune into “charities benefiting the advancement of our peoples.” He wished me great health and lamented that he could never bring himself to come back to the island no matter how he longed for it.

Underneath the letter, next to the plain brass urn containing Courtney’s earthly remains, lay a troublesome volume I’d hoped never to have the ill fortune to see. I’d heard tell of Henry Barksdale’s Statements and Observations Concerning the American Negro Species. What colored person in learned circles hadn’t? So obnoxious it was in its assertions, in its blanket characterizations of a whole people as nothing more than savages tamed to the brink of enlightenment by their enslavers. I had more than half a mind to burn it on sight, but with that urge came an appalling curiosity, and I found myself thumbing through its overwrought suppositions, its “there can be no doubts” and its “undeniable facts” about “the primitive American Negro.” No wonder the world is as divided as it is. If this is the thinking of one of the South’s allegedly preeminent minds, what hope is there in finding our common humanity?

I cursed Courtney for bequeathing me this nonsense, but I was quick to apologize. Never get on the wrong side of the dead. With Barksdale so fresh on my mind—with his feverish rantings about his last days on Ediwander Island in my hands—I ought to have known better. (Continue Reading…)

Hearts And Half-Measures

by Cassiopeia Gatmaitan

You eat the hearts of men because your father says that if you consume enough, you’ll turn back into one.

You think it’s all bull. Anyone in their right mind would. But he watches you like a hawk, so you always make sure to bring a fresh one with you when you stagger home past dawn.

He smiles over his cup of coffee, makes you one the way you like it, and helps you into your seat. Most times, he doesn’t even call you hijo when he asks about your evening.

This time, he does, and you clench your teeth as you tell him about the fire on Recoletos Street, and how you almost wanted to make one of the firemen your mark. And then you realized that it would have been too hard to tear his heart out through his uniform, that he would taste like smoke, and that the body would stand out like a stoplight, clad in red-stained neon green. You recall giggling at the image, but you know that your father would think you crass for that, so you keep it to yourself.

He takes the heart from your hand, and you continue your story as he heats up oil in a frying pan, slicing the meat into bite-sized chunks. (Continue Reading…)

Dimorphism

Jessi Ann York

Laura pours milk across her skin the first night the wolf spiders begin to bother her. It turns her bath water cloudy and congeals around the edges of her drain. She won’t dry herself before getting under the bedsheets, but she will check her email twice. It’s three-thirty in the morning. Her phone screen is the only light in the studio apartment. The wolf spiders’ eyes glow white in their stacked cages along the corner of the room.

For the most part, the wolf spiders don’t move, aside from the occasional shuffling of their three clawed toes as they groom their gray legs. Sometimes they turn restlessly in circles, laying down a nest of urticating hairs in their webs. Sometimes they flick their hairs at nothing. It’s these invisible barbs that irritate Laura’s skin whenever she opens their cage doors and stirs the air to feed them crickets and mealworms.

They never try to bite her.

They never try to escape.

They have no need to.

Laura imagines they know she’s keeping them safe while Oliver, her fiancé, is finishing up his visiting lecturer position at Newman University.

Out of the twelve wolf spiders, there is only one that takes any interest in Laura. All summer long he taps at the plexiglass, like a hand knocks on a door.

She wants him to stop.

She wishes Oliver would come home. (Continue Reading…)

Anthropology 201

Written by Kitty Sarkozy

College is a crucible. You go in a dumb kid, and with luck, you leave a less dumb adult, ready to take your place in the world. It took me a little longer than the standard four years. I had a job throughout, slowing down the matriculation process. It’s not all books, lectures, and labs – there are life lessons too. In college, you learn, grow, get exposed to new ideas, new cultures, and new people.

Do you remember that story I told you a while back, about that cow, the black Angus that showed up in the barn? How I said it came from somewhere else, kinda crawfishing into our reality. You know all about that. Wait . . . have I told you about that waterfall, up near Forsyth? No? Well remind me sometime. Don’t let me get off-topic. I’m telling you about college and learning to see what’s there, not what you think ought to be. Part of growing up is understanding that you can’t always trust that you know the truth, even when you see it with your own eyes.

Let’s see . . . that semester I think I was taking Anthropology 101, with the most delightful professor – Dr. Tragos. He was short, round, bald, and full of energy. Tragos had a dramatic voice, an energetic way of moving around the room, and a bookshelf full of antiques and specimens he used as props. He told the most exciting stories, making his class feel more like a play than a lecture.

However, you had to pay attention in his class; if not, you could get hit in the face with a human skull. (Continue Reading…)

Reflections on Bloody Mary

By Catherine MacLeod

“Maaa-reee,” my husband taunts. “Oh, Maaa-reee. Come out now, dear. We need to talk.”

Wrong, I think but don’t say. My mother used to say, “A real lady knows when to keep her mouth shut.” It was her favourite piece of advice. When I didn’t follow it, she whispered, “Sh, sh.”

“Mary, you don’t understand.”

Also, wrong. I understand my husband is a liar, a thief, and a joke, and his snug little world just imploded.

My mother would surely have advice for that, too.

I never wanted to follow in her footsteps, but tonight I did, right into a dark bathroom with only one exit. “History repeats itself,” she used to say, and yes, it does.

“Maaa-reee.” Shadows shift under the door as Leonard prowls back and forth. He’s drunk, terrified, and—SLAM!—determined to kick the door in. I might have 10 minutes before he goes full-out Jack Torrance. (Continue Reading…)

The Louder I Call, the Faster It Runs

by E. Catherine Tobler

In the predawn dark, Annie found herself in a bed, holding onto another hand beneath the cool weight of the pillow. Floral case, it was the trailer—her trailer—and slowly she came back to herself, to her body, and kissed the folded fingers beneath the pillow before claiming the ringing phone, dreadful thing. The voice on the other end was frantic, offering double pay because the cops needed her—needed her boat, a man had gone missing—Ricky had that charter, didn’t she remember—it had to be her, there was no one else. Triple, she said. She lived plain, but there were always bills.

She dressed in the dark, phantom chill of the lake already clinging to her. Her skin pebbled everywhere and she was surprised when she pulled her hair back into its customary tail that it did not leak lake water across her shoulders.

It was twenty-four minutes from the RV park to the lake, not counting the time she spent hitching the boat trailer to the truck. Years ago they’d told her: don’t stay hitched overnight, anyone could drive away with the whole shebang. She’d never seen it happen, but there was plenty she hadn’t borne witness to that still was in the record of the world.

The sun stayed hidden the whole way there. The roads were barren and she liked them that way, listening to the even breath of tires over asphalt. Dry, smooth. The trailer had a wobble, a squeak, but it would wait until the afternoon—depending how long they kept her out. A man had gone missing.

It wasn’t the first time and surely wouldn’t be the last. She had helped the law before—it was a fine diversion, given how well she knew the lake, its surrounds. Usually people wanted to know where the fish were: rainbow trout, sockeye salmon. A man was many times larger than a fish, but the lake was larger still. Sometimes the lake won. (Continue Reading…)