The Story-Stealer’s Night

by Madhu Campbell

Story-teller, Story-screamer

Tell your tales into this night.

The words of the poem rush into Durga’s foggy mind with unbidden clarity. She waits quietly at her school gate on the edge of the beach as the fishing boats make their way to shore at sunset.

Three girls join Durga at the gate, all still in their brand-new school uniforms, but with blankets and flashlights instead of book bags. They are not as quiet as Durga; their audible whispers and nervous laughter push against the silence of their school and the beach. A few teachers watch, expressionless, from high-up windows, but none bother to stop the girls from venturing out after dark.

Durga has done this once before, but the memory flows through her mind like sand through a sieve. And yet she knows where to go, where to stop, which rock to skip over. She knows how to lead the rite of passage every new student, teacher and novitiate at St. Anne’s Convent School for Girls must go through—spend a night on the beach telling stories.

The girls reach a low area on the beach and lay out their blankets to sit as best as they can in their starchy uniforms. A gold ring glints in the moonlight on Durga’s left hand.

“Jewelry is not allowed in our school,” says Rani, in her most pretentious voice, tucking her short hair behind her ear to reveal her own piercing with a small, silver hoop in place.

“The only ‘jewelry’ we’re allowed is the rosary,” says Mary, clutching the plastic cross on her plastic rosary, missing the smirk on Rani’s face.

(Continue Reading…)

The Suitable Surroundings

By Ambrose Bierce

THE NIGHT

ONE midsummer night a farmer’s boy living about ten miles from the city of Cincinnati was following a bridle path through a dense and dark forest. He had lost himself while searching for some missing cows, and near midnight was a long way from home, in a part of the country with which he was unfamiliar. But he was a stout-hearted lad, and knowing his general direction from his home, he plunged into the forest without hesitation, guided by the stars. Coming into the bridle path, and observing that it ran in the right direction, he followed it.

The night was clear, but in the woods it was exceedingly dark. It was more by the sense of touch than by that of sight that the lad kept the path. He could not, indeed, very easily go astray; the undergrowth on both sides was so thick as to be almost impenetrable. He had gone into the forest a mile or more when he was surprised to see a feeble gleam of light shining through the foliage skirting the path on his left. The sight of it startled him and set his heart beating audibly.

“The old Breede house is somewhere about here,” he said to himself. “This must be the other end of the path which we reach it by from our side. Ugh! what should a light be doing there?” (Continue Reading…)

The Bride

by Shaenon K. Garrity

As you drive south, the heat rushes up to greet you like your name is in the guestbook and it has your room prepared. A wet, eager heat, scarlet and citrus, the heat of orange crayons melting under a windshield, a heat that already feels like a sunburn. She’s at the center, and you might as well know you’ll never reach her. But here you are, still driving.

You have to drive because the railroad was never finished, but here is the miraculous road. The Overseas Highway! Route 1 unrolling off the Florida panhandle and over the ocean, baffling the eye, a fairy-tale magic carpet poured from American concrete. Another marvel of the twentieth century! You can drive from island to sparkling island as easily as you drove to the grocer back home. Waves undulate under your tires and the heat presses in.

The highway is safe, safe as it is modern. It hasn’t suffered serious damage since the hurricane of ’35. She remembers the hurricane. It was in the third year of her marriage, or was it the fifth? She’s never sure whether to count from the year she became a corpse or the year the Doctor’s treatments finally injected her with life. It’s all in the past, anyway. Now the marriage is over and she prefers to take long walks, smell the flowers, focus on the present. (Continue Reading…)

Home, Laced in Web

By Cameron Schoettle

I follow behind Butcher. A lot of nights spent imagining what I’d say to him. But there’s not been much talk on the road. Pretty used to silence anyway. Don’t hate it. Leaves room for possibilities, for what could happen when the right moment comes. Already know he’s lied though. Could hear the pause in the words my friend when he spoke of the patient in question. Didn’t elaborate. I didn’t press. Sets me off a little, though try not to show it. Don’t want him thinking I still love him, seeing as I don’t.

The cart rattles as he tugs it along. Kind of him to take it, though there are few I would leave my equipment in the care of. A cleaver dangles from his belt. His seven-foot frame kindly shading my eyes from the smoke-red sun—his antlers standing another two feet above that. Considered not coming. Bet he never doubted he could get me. And here I am, in step. The trees around us getting taller. The fog thicker as we head north.

We’ll be in Deep Wells soon. What once was home. A place where people know my name whether I want them to or not. Where I’m alone and unwelcome. (Continue Reading…)

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…)