The Honey Witch
By Kathryn McMahon

My hood and gloves are on the table next to the smoker that, for now, remains unlit. Its charred pine needles quiet the bees and mask their alarm, a perfume that smells, improbably, of bananas. I don’t need the smoker at the moment and if I used it, I wouldn’t be privy to the hive’s secrets. I sniff. Wafts of apple linger with thyme that grows between the orchard rows. And lemon, the Nasonov pheromone calling the bees back home. Usually, a few would be dancing now, telling their sisters about the nectar they have found. But just as my sinuses throb, the bees feel the air pressure dropping. A storm is on its way. (Continue Reading…)

We’ve All Gone To The Magic Show

By Todd Keisling

Earlier this summer, word spread around our town that the Magic Show’s doors were open. Swollen and stained timbers that once barred the entrance were found scattered about its front stoop among a pile of last year’s dead leaves. The double doors, famously ornate from a lavish bygone era, stood half-open in offering. The building was a converted brick rowhome sandwiched between two residences and had always been there, I think, but no one could say for sure. Not then, and certainly not now. Anyone who might’ve offered conjecture to its origins is gone now. 

All I can offer in explanation is that it’s been here for as long as I have, and I was born in this little hamlet. While the other townsfolk called it by its name—THE MAGIC SHOW—after the chipped and peeling sign which hung above the entrance, I employed another name for my own private amusement, Mannequin House, after its bizarre form of decoration. 

Two mannequins stood in the storefront windows against a backdrop of thick black curtains. The figures were often shrouded in patchwork garb to reflect the season or holiday, from bathing suits and sunglasses on the 4th of July to jeans and sweaters for fall. Eyeless, expressionless, they stood on display to anyone who passed by on the sidewalk, silent sentinels for our little town. To new residents and tourists, the storefront offered nothing more than a curious mystery and a general eeriness inherent in the presentation: Just who maintained the storefront windows? And why was the entrance boarded up?  (Continue Reading…)

Taxiptómy

By Shannyn Campbell

Taxiptómy [tak-si-toe-mee]

From the Greek words Taxis meaning “arrangement” and Ptóma meaning “corpse”.

Noun

1. The controversial art of deliberately causing the death of a human as part of a public performance, before preparing and preserving the skin of the deceased person. The skin is then stuffed, and the body mounted in a life-like manner.

Taxiptómist [tak-si-toe-mist]

Noun

1. An artist who kills a human as part of a public performance, before stuffing and mounting the deceased person in a life-like manner.

Synonyms for Taxiptómist

Red Artist (colloquialism), Babe-Butcher (colloquialism, vulgar), Stiff-Stuffer (colloquialism, vulgar)

Muse [myooz]

Noun (2)

1. (capitalised) any of the nine sister Goddesses in Greek mythology presiding over song, poetry, and the arts and sciences
2. A source of inspiration
3. Poet
4. (colloquialism) A person who allows themselves to be killed as part of a Taxiptómy performance and their remains to be preserved and displayed.

Webster, Noah. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary. London: Pocket Books, 1977. (Continue Reading…)

She Works in the Office Where They Died

By Alex T. Singer

Dezra works in an office where 1000 people died. Well, 1082. People round down. 

No one’s told the ones who died.  (Continue Reading…)

Flowering Evil

By Margaret St. Clair

Captain Bjornson shook a grizzled head. “I never saw a plant I liked the looks of less,” he said. “I don’t know how he got it through the planetary plant quarantine. You take my advice, Amy, and watch out for it.” He took another of the little geela nut cookies from the quaint old lucite platter, and bit into it appreciately.

Mrs. Dinsmore sniffed. “I don’t know what you’re driving at,” she said coldly, “or why you’re so prejudiced against my poor little Rambler. You know perfectly well that Robert would never send me anything the least bit dangerous.” (Continue Reading…)

Renascent

by Pauline Yates

The Scalpers took my left eye today, but I wish they’d take my heart. Every beat holds me shackled to this existence and I want out. I give up trying to escape. I can’t find the right connection with any of my recipients. I can’t even rely on my soul. I sold that to the Scalpers the second I signed the consent form. My face may now be on a missing person’s list, but I’ll never be gone. I’ll live on in other people while my ghost remains here, on this recliner chair in this grey-walled room, for eternity.

Since I’m not dead yet, I may as well continue tormenting the new owner of my right hand. She’s just arrived for her shift. I thought she’d show some level of kindness due to our new connection, but she still treats me like a piece of meat curing on a slab waiting to be sliced and diced. Her name is Cathy. She has small eyes and a paunch for a neck and greasy, black hair pinned up in a bun. She also has not one ounce of humanity. Not one of the Tubers do. If they did, they’d have reported the Scalpers long ago and this heinous body parts trafficking operation wouldn’t exist. (Continue Reading…)

Little Freedoms

By Ephiny Gale

The room is cylindrical, metal, no doors or windows. Nine of us stand in a circle, not touching, but spread your arms and you’d hit someone. I think I could lie flat in here without brushing the walls, but not by much.

The ceiling hatch above us locks shut with a scrape. We examine faces, muscles, body fat. I’ve seen six of these women before; two are complete strangers. We do not trade names or origin stories. We go around the circle and we say what we miss most from the outside:

Chocolate, Music, Flowers, Cigarettes, Hot Chips, Internet, Guns, Privacy.

I am Hot Chips. Privacy says hers while staring mournfully at the circular grate in the floor, and I think oh, she must be new. (Continue Reading…)