Kill Screen

by Chris Lewis Carter

I finish cataloging his junk. It’s nothing but shareware for ancient computers, old printer drivers, and a dozen of those America Online discs. I should charge him for making me dig through this mess. ‘Sorry, kid. Even if this stuff didn’t reek, you don’t have anything worth… Hmm?’

At the bottom of the box is a jewel case with no insert. The CD inside has the words Mr. Plott’s Bad Game written in black marker.

‘All right, let’s make a deal.’ I pop open the register, and the sound finally catches his attention. ‘Five bucks for the entire thing.’

She Said

by Kirstyn McDermott

As I lifted my brush to the canvas, as I felt the paint flow thick and eager from the bristles, I could see the end, how it needed to be finished. I could see the promise that glimmered beneath the threat, the mercy inherent in destruction. My hand steadied, and worked.

The Women Who Watch

by Thomas Owen

Translated by Edward Gauvin

‘Do you know that woman?’ he asked the waiter.

‘What woman?’

‘The one in the corner just now.’

The waiter gave the man a look as if he were joking, and assured him no one had been sitting there. He seemed sincere, and gave no reason to believe he’d been in cahoots with the woman.

Of course something had to burst his bubble. At the foot of the abandoned chair, he spotted the forgotten shopping bag. Out peered the green of leeks, wrapped in newspaper.

The man didn’t insist. He was too happy to have escaped the evil spell.

The Meat Forest

by John Haggerty

Dmitri laughed in my face. ‘Who is going to stop me? I do what I want.’ He looked out into the drizzly evening. ‘I can get you out of here. Do you want to go?’

‘What? Out of the camp? How?’

‘How do you think?’ He nodded toward the gray forest that crowded the perimeter, where the electrodes got too weak to keep it out. ‘Through that.’

‘Through the forest? I thought it was impossible.’

Dmitri tilted his head up. Beneath his jaw were tattoos of two men’s heads, done with red and black ink. Their faces were contorted in an expression of horror; their eyes closed. He pointed to them. ‘Do you know what they mean?’ he asked. I shook my head. ‘I’ve gotten through it twice. The only man in New Russia. I’ll take you.’ He paused, looking me up and down. ‘It’s probably a lost cause. I don’t think you’ll make it. But if you’re interested, come to my hut tonight.’

I looked back out at the forest. It wavered in and out of focus in the rain, gray and silent. When I turned back around, Dmitri was already gone.

Gingerbread And Ashes

by Jaelithe Ingold

The roof of the gingerbread house has long been gone, and green mold covers the sides like a copper patina, but the air surrounding it is still sweet. Sugar gone bad with the passage of time and the death of its caretaker.

Last week, Gretel vanished from our home. She’s been lured away, I think, by something bad, for this is the only reason she would willingly leave me.

Has she come here lately? That’s the question at the forefront of my mind. We don’t talk about it, but I know she’s been here before. Many times since the witch’s death. And I haven’t always been able to resist either. The sweet rot of the place both rumbles and turns my stomach, yet still it calls to me.

We haven’t been children for a very long time, but if I remember hard enough, the sensation remains. The taste still melts on my tongue.

The Prophet’s Daughters

by Michael J. DeLuca

“Do you wonder, my brothers in service of death, what powers the prophet takes with her on her voyage down the Acheron? We all do, I suspect: all of us from Sybaris who felt the lash of her tongue. She told many bleak fates. We all wonder which she is waiting yet to fulfill–or else I suspect so many wouldn’t have come to bestow such gifts!” He cackled.

Melia’s fingernails dug into Io’s palm; Io gripped her sister tighter. No one said a word to silence him. The priest only played his lyre.

“Now let me think,” death’s taskmaster rambled, helping a mourner to hoist up the corpse of a heavy black calf, “What do the ancients teach on the subject of power after death?

“Sheshet, astronomer priestess of Egypt, achieved deathly might through preservation. She took her own life by drowning, at the age of twenty-nine. Her cult preserved her flesh and organs whole in vats of lotus honey. It is said she left plans for her own resurrection, and any man who walks within miles of her tomb dies of fever before the next moonrise.”