Broken Bough

by Daniel I. Russell

John walked into the small kitchen. About to pitch the hot tea across the room, he took a slow breath, tipped the drink down the sink and delicately placed the mug at the side. Hands covering his eyes, he leaned back against the table.

“Why?” he asked. “Why us? What did we do?”

Fists squeezed, he rubbed his eyelids, cursing God, cursing the events looped on the news, cursing Emma for burying her head in the sand and pretending everything was fine. Nothing was fine. Not a fucking thing.

He stank. He ignored it.

It had all begun three days ago. Dressing, washing, eating. None of it seemed important anymore. The first thing he’d prepared in that time was the mug of tea, and that was a peace offering.

“Get off the damn balcony!” he screamed and pounded his fists on the table top. The wine glasses at the centre jumped and clinked. A decision was needed. If Emma took the easy way out…

He’d be the one left to make it.

The Mother and the Worm

by Tim W. Burke

We were in our places, Olivia at the door and I in the wicker basket. The windows were concealed with heavy curtains to keep out the afternoon sun, but oil lamps pushed back the gloom.

The lady who entered our study first was the old friend of Olivia’s family, who embraced Olivia, then introduced her guests. The other matron wore black; she was the hopeful patron. The men were both young, one balding and mustached and the other dark and intense. They were surprised by her frank smile, by her firm handclasp, and they smirked.

The basket that hid me was a cubit square. Within it, I sat naked on a thin cotton mat, waiting for my cue.

Set Down This

by Lavie Tidhar

On my brother’s computer, a video file shows an American fighter plane pinpointing a group of men in Iraq.

‘Do it?’ the pilot says.

‘Confirmed.’

‘Ten seconds to impact.’

Where the men have been there is a huge explosion, and black smoke covers the grainy grey streets. ‘Dude,’ the pilot says.

I have no faces and no names to put to the men. The black smoke must have contained the atoms of their flesh, their bones (though bones are hardy), vaporized sweat, burnt eyebrows and pubic hair and nose hair (unless they used a trimmer, as I do), in short, the atoms of their being. Later, I think, one could find, lying in the street, a tooth or two, the end of a finger that had somehow survived, fragments of bone, a legless shoe. These men are nothing to me. They are pixels on a screen, a peer-shared digital file uploaded from sources unknown, provenance suspect, whose only note of authenticity is that young pilot’s voice when the smoke rises and he says, quietly – ‘Dude.’

The Hand You’re Dealt

by Frank Oreto

“Find yourself a nurse,” he remembered his mother saying as they prepared for her act. “They always have jobs and they like to take care of men.” It was good advice but even Sharon’s patience had an end. Danny thought he had almost reached it. He borrowed the three hundred from her. Told her he was done gambling.

“Does that include poker?” she’d asked.

It was a good question. Danny didn’t think of poker as gambling. He learned to cold read rubes in his mother’s mentalist act. His card-sharp father taught him to make the cards dance – when the man was sober enough to hold a deck.

Poker wasn’t gambling. When you gambled you might lose. Danny knew all about losing. He was down twelve grand to Rod Renshaw due to a string of sporting misjudgments that climaxed when the Steelers had the bad grace to win the Super Bowl but lose the point spread. That was gambling.

The Engine of Desire

by Livia Llewellyn

All the signs of life are here, but this neighborhood has long been dead. They’re the only family left, and even they’ve fallen apart, like rotting meat from the suburban bone. She walks down the driveway, her low pumps clacking against the blacktop. As she steps into the street, her heart races; and now she catches the faint whine, a sonorous metallic song calling out in reply. After all these lonely years, it’s returned.

From the far end of the cul-de-sac, a sixteen-year-old girl emerges from the tangled overhang of rhododendrons framing a long-abandoned house. She saunters into the street, tanned hips curving back and forth in waves as she moves. Though autumn hovers in the air, she brings perpetual summer, shimmering all around her in rippling waves. One hand touches a lock of black hair, then tugs at her striped tube-top — for a single sublime moment, a caramel-colored areola peers into the rising dark. Megan feels the decades burn away like ash in the girl’s heat.

“Hey, spaz,” Kelly says. “Got a light?”

“You didn’t change,” Megan murmurs. “Thirty years, and you’re just the same.”

“Yeah, I never change.”

“But I have changed. Can’t you hear?” Megan presses her hand against her heart. “It’s like it’s inside me now, like I’m the engine, too.”

“Oh really? You’re the engine?” Kelly slips a cigarette into her mouth. “Are you sure?”

“You’re not taking her. It’s my turn.”

Kelly runs a long tongue over wet lips. “She’s already taken — it’s what you made her for, right?”

Crawl

by Lee Thompson

Jim grinned. “If we cut his legs off, how far do you think he can crawl before he dies?”

Sometimes soldiers come back from war full of demons, like my older brother, Jim. He slapped my shoulder, grinning, his eyes shiny as the dark still water in Sullivan County’s gravel pit. I took a step back, sent stones rolling, and rubbed my arm. Sunlight soaked through the high trees at the edge of the property. Jim looked at Robert on the ground. I didn’t want to. Didn’t want to look at Jim either, but sometimes we do what we least want anyway, God knows why.

Jim grinned. “What do you think, Gabe?”

“I don’t know.”

Bed of Scorpions

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

“It scares me,” she said finally.

“What?”

“That he’s dying.”

“Who cares?”

She turned to look at him.

“He’s filthy rich, you know,” Ramon said as he smoked a cigarette. Normally he wore gloves to avoid staining his fingers, but he had foregone such formalities in this remote corner of the state.

“I don’t want to marry him.”

“I said he was rich.”

“Maybe he will not want to marry me.”

“He better, and you better please him. There’s more money here than we’ve ever had.”

“Then you please him.”

Ramon grabbed her by the jaw, fingers digging into her flesh, and pulled her forward.

“I’ve had my share of old, ugly bitches in my bed. Sores and wrinkles and grey hair. All to keep you fed and dressed.”

“To keep us fed and dressed,” she muttered.

The Radejastians

By David Nickle

There is a cathedral in the middle of Radejast. It addresses the approaching pilgrim as a fist of granite and slate and limestone, lifting black iron bells and arches and gargoyles to touch the dangled teat of the soot-cloud that ever hangs low over the land. Within: a forest of stone pillars, some carved with the likenesses of Radejast’s saints, some simply chiseled with the mark of its venerable religion — all surrounding the dome, so high and wide that when emerging from the pillars I stumbled beneath it, madly fearful that gravity might suddenly reverse, fling me from the floor, and smash me against the curved mosaics above the whispering gallery.

The Good News Happening Congregation’s hall was larger than Radejast’s cathedral by half again: a great circular space beneath a peaked roof, lit from high, clear windows on every side. Behind the pulpit stood a crucifix with a painted sculpture of Jesus Christ bound to it, bright lines of blood trickling down his slender limbs, from the crown of thorns he wore. Altogether, it was half-again taller than any similar icon in Radejast.