Offerings

By Joe Koch

Blaine’s head hurts at the sight of Amelia shuffling up the block. Hot from raking leaves, Blaine stretches as she admires her new house in her new neighborhood. The cold pinch of October air and brisk setting sun anticipate kids pouring in tomorrow at dusk. This is prime candy territory, nothing like the streets where Blaine grew up. Children don’t trick or treat in Blaine’s old neighborhood, not with the fires and gunshots. Down there, they call it Devil’s Night. Blaine’s worked her way up and out, from dishwasher to sous chef to culinary manager. She’s hosting her nieces and nephews at the new house tomorrow, and she expects to show them the flawless picture of safety and charm she’s paying for. Being a member of this community doesn’t come cheap. Looking down the block, it’s a perfect Norman Rockwell until Amelia enters the frame.

Amelia is the neighborhood chimera. Big moist eyes, throbbing temple bones and a perpetual brood in tow mark her as an anomaly. Maybe she runs some sort of daycare. Low cost, out of her home. The couple across from Blaine points her out as Amelia Something—do you think she even has a license? They raise their eyebrows in knowing distaste. Fiftyish and dressed for golf no matter the day of the week, they interrogate Blaine. By the time they spot Amelia, Blaine’s relieved to shift the critique to the other woman’s childcare credentials. She feels wrong about it later when Amelia shambles by. Nervous and harried, Amelia wanders the upscale streets like a restless spirit locked in a magic circle of misbehaving mongrel children. (Continue Reading…)

The 2022 Halloween Parade

by Alasdair Stuart

The parade this year feels brittle. At least at first. It reminds you of that first step into a swimming pool, wondering if it will be too hot or too cold. You brace yourself for sharp contrast, face the suck, breathe through it. And then you’re there.

There’s an opening act waiting for you — the horror of wondering how many participants and attendees will be masked. No float. Just you, your too-conscious breath, and too many visible faces for complete comfort.

Nonetheless, you settle in a good spot. With churros in hand and your own mask nearby, you wait for the parade to begin.

The Controller walks the road as she always does, masked as she always is now, and then turns. Spreading her hands wide, the street fills with smoke… (Continue Reading…)

Cockcrow Inn

By Tod Robbins

Cockcrow Inn stands defiantly facing the sea. For countless years it has stood thus, holding at naught the greatest strength of wind and water, quite careless of the dazzling thunderstorms which on sultry summer evenings attack it as though with lifted sword-blades—a staunch old dwelling raised by hands long gone back into their native dust. And on wild winter nights, when the waves thunder out their war-song on the beach, when the wind screams its challenge to the sky, when all nature’s resources seem bent on destruction, the windows of this hostelry twinkle cheerily for lonely travelers by land or sea. It feeds the hungry and warms the cold; and only once in all its ten-score years has it failed to ward off the spirits of darkness which, if the villagers are to be believed, infest the moaning caves of Wishbone Point. (Continue Reading…)

Idomeneja

by Eris Young

The whole ride back to the village I hold you steady in the bed of the pickup, praying the straps hold, the wood isn’t rotted, that you won’t be tumbled into dust before I even get you out. Every dip, every hill crested, my heart jumps into my mouth. Sweating, I look eastward, watching for light creeping back into the sky.

It’s morning by the time I get you back and into the house. Relief of a cool entryway, of knowing you’re safe in the garage below the tiles under my feet. Birdsong comes in through an open window somewhere. I wash the dust off my skin and it pools, red, around the drain.

I crawl into my sleeping bag for a few hours, then sit on the balcony to watch the sun move. It dips behind the ridge to the west, but I wait, chewing my cuticles, for true sunset. When it is well past the horizon, when it is safe, I go downstairs.

Now that I have you, I don’t feel rushed. The house, paid up for a month, has olive groves all around. It sits in a construction site, the builders paid to go away. In the village near the dig site they are used to archaeologists, to not asking questions when something needs to disappear. This is not even the first time Christos has been asked to drive to the site after dark. I will find out later that the fee he charged me is a standard one. (Continue Reading…)

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…)