Tree of the Forest Seven Bells Turns the World Round Midnight

by Sheree Renée Thomas

Thistle stepped over an upturned root that twisted from the dark, wet earth.

“Your mama live near the river?” “Naw.”

“Your mama live in a tree?” “Nope.”

“Then what we doing?”

“Mama the river and the tree.” She moved with deliberate grace, each footfall a code that unlocked another hidden key. Wilder should have known. Every other word out of her mouth was some strange, cryptic poetry. She was more siren than sage, more whistle than song. In the few months they’d been hanging, he had gotten used to her “magic woman” guise. Bohemian bruja, wide-hipped hoodoo. Unlike the other women Wilder tried to lay with, Thistle felt sincere. At least she was original. Most other relationships Wilder had had, all ended the way he felt now, lost. With the others he would soon lose interest — or they would, tossing him back on the street, the fascination over before it had begun. Then he’d be off, duffel bag in hand, looking for cover. To Wilder, everyone worked so hard to be just like the next. What was the challenge in that? (Continue Reading…)

At the God Show

by Shaenon K. Garrity

6:15 A.M.

“It’ll be Pternoch the Fisher,” Sheila overheard one pilgrim say to another. “Why did we bother coming?”

“May the Green Damsel stitch your mouth shut until your blasphemies cease,” said the other. “We come to honor Her and reveal Her glory.” There was a silence as the two filled out their name tags, then, “Where’d you hear that from?”

“Everyone’s saying it. It always goes to the Sanguine group, and this year Pternoch is the Sanguine with the buzz.”

“It wasn’t a Sanguine last year. It was an Amoratus.”

“And look how that turned out. The judges will play it safe. It’s all politics.”

His companion snorted—whether in disbelief or reluctant agreement, Sheila couldn’t tell.

“I’m telling you. The fix is in.” (Continue Reading…)

Spunk

by Zora Neale Hurston

I

A giant of a brown-skinned man sauntered up the one street of the Village and out into the palmetto thickets with a small pretty woman clinging lovingly to his arm.

“Looka theah, folkses!” cried Elijah Mosley, slapping his leg gleefully. “Theah they go, big as life an’ brassy as tacks.”

All the loungers in the store tried to walk to the door with an air of nonchalance but with small success.

“Now pee-eople!” Walter Thomas gasped. “Will you look at ’em!”

“But that’s one thing Ah likes about Spunk Banks—he ain’t skeered of nothin‘ on God’s green footstool—nothin’! He rides that log down at saw-mill jus‘ like he struts ’round wid another man’s wife—jus‘ don’t give a kitty. When Tes’ Miller got cut to giblets on that circle-saw, Spunk steps right up and starts ridin’. The rest of us was skeered to go near it.”

A round-shouldered figure in overalls much too large, came nervously in the door and the talking ceased. The men looked at each other and winked. (Continue Reading…)

Two’s Company, Three Might Be a Sign of Demonic Possession

by Audrey Zhou

You didn’t take the usual precautions when Lin died.

You would find out later how it happened—slippery tile floor, the trials of installing a new shower curtain rod, and the surprisingly fragile vertebrae going up Lin’s neck—but in the moment all you knew was that there was a crash. When Lin didn’t respond after you called her name from the kitchen, you had enough wherewithal to grab the salt before stumbling to the bathroom, but not enough to keep from spilling a third of it all over yourself when you saw her body.

There was no pulse—your face twisted at the angle of her neck and all the blood, and you knew there couldn’t be—but you checked anyway. Then you took a deep breath and ignored every lesson you’d ever learned about how to conduct a proper resurrection. (Continue Reading…)

Fat Betty

By H R Laurence

They say it’s God’s own country, and He’s always had a thing for rain. I’m high and soaked, looking over the valley with a sea of heather at my back, and if the storm lasts forty nights I’ll not be shocked. There’s still a little light over the hills to the east, but it’s cloud-clogged overhead and the sunlight can’t get through to where I’m huddled in anorak and hugging my carbine, praying for that bastard Jamie Cornfeld to make his way quick.

“You miserable sod,” I tell him, when he comes up in his hood and coat with a rifle on his shoulder and a stick in his hand. “To meet up here.” I might have walked down the street with gun in hands and not met an odd glance, let alone a copper.

“Do you good,” he says, and he’s right although I’ll not say it. “I guess that works, and all.” He’s looking at the carbine. Of course it works. Two tours and more Syrian sand than any crusader saw, it works all-bloody-right. One of them police half-tracks still has the holes.

“Alright, then,” he says, this being made clear, and we walk. It’s that steady rain, not too heavy but sure to last all night, and the heather’s wet, its springiness turned soggy. We scare some grouse and they go shooting off; I’d take a pot at them if we didn’t need to keep quiet. Good eating on those birds, though I bet they were fatter when they were bred for it.

“Let’s not fuss about this,” I say. We’ve been walking five minutes, but it’s been on my mind all day. “If there’s trouble, we should shoot them.” (Continue Reading…)

The Ecstasy of the Saints

by J.A.W. McCarthy

I’m six the first time it happens. I’m sitting in the backseat of the family sedan, staring at the rearview mirror so I can see when my father’s big eye peels upward and focuses on me, steely grey and always watching, as he promised when I started doing this. Mom faces straight ahead, shoulders curled forward as if folding herself around the cold jets blasting from the AC. They’re busy talking about traffic or what Grandma will make for dinner or how we’ll have to atone for missing confession this weekend—it’s all the same to me. It means I can slip my pinkie into my mouth, hooking towards my cheek until I feel the silky swollen hole between my tongue and molar. As I nudge into the opening, I think of my cat flexing her paw, how her claws extend smooth and quick as switchblades as her toes curl into her palm. I’m a claw, I’m a dagger. I’m dangerous, I do harm. (Continue Reading…)

The Darkness Carried by the Beasts

by Maria Haskins

Northern Sweden, March 1987, eleven months after Chernobyl

Torsten is dreaming of Gunvor, like he does every night. All these dreams are the same. He is searching for her in the woods, Ricky running ahead on eager paws with his nose to the ground, the elkhound a gray blur in untouched snow. Torsten’s chest aches and the air is hard to breathe, tainted by some unseen poison. A colorless void stretches out above the treetops, a menacing sky that holds no stars, but no matter how Torsten runs, no matter how he searches, he can never find Gunvor. Even there, even in his dreams, she is gone. (Continue Reading…)