Issue 8
“What the Humans Call Heartache” by Jiksun Cheung (967 words)
The egg crunched in her fist, yolk oozing between her fingers onto the kitchen counter. She wiped away the mess, dropped the empty carton into the whirring garbage disposal chute, and patted down her apron in the doorway to the dining room.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” said Astrid, “but we seem to have run out of eggs.”
“On the Getting of Husbands and the Spawning of Children” by Sophie Sparrow (967 words)
Deep in the woods, where the sun’s light never reaches to break apart the shadows, through a thicket of brambles and stinging shrubs, there stands a house. It is not made of gingerbread, nor does it walk on chicken’s legs. But it is, for want of a better word, home.
Issue 7
“Olam Ha-Ba (4th Movement of the World to Come in B Flat)” by David-Christopher Harris Galhea (1,000 words)
In the first world, the chosen people had crafted them of mud, and flame, and Word. Cracked clay limbs had softened to flesh, and the Messiah—both elder and child—had awoken to song: Odem yesoydoy meyofor vesoyfo leyofor. Man begins in dust, and ends in dust.
“This Is Your Life Now” by Lev Mirov (994 words)
Later, when you ask the woman you remember as the one with a bloody mouth why she saved your life, she says it’s because she didn’t mean to hurt you.
You didn’t ask to be saved. You also didn’t ask for your legs to be crushed, and her bloody mouth didn’t undo the gap between the car crumpling and the ambulance arriving.
Issue 6
“We Are the Bees” by Andrew Kozma (988 words)
Harris walked into the tent, his sun-burned face wrinkled into a permanent, unconscious frown.
“There aren’t enough bees.”
“What You Lost in the Wildermere” by R. J. Howell (750 words)
Things vanish in the Wildermere. The usual, expected things—livestock, the occasional person—but also the less conventional.
The less tangible.
Issue 3
“Mother?” by Cynthia So (1,004 words)
My mother had been dead just a week when a moth flew into my room.
You’re wondering, what’s so special about a moth? I may as well talk about my chipped nails. My nails were black that night, because I was committed to my grief, and the polish was flaking away. I painted them the night after she died, sitting up at 4 a.m. listening to the sound of birds outside my window.
Anyway, my mother was a week dead, my nails were chipped, and a moth flew into my room.
“The Stories of Your Name” by J. M. Melican (578 words)
If I were Palaeolithic, I would paint your name on sacred stones with ochre and ash.
After a thousand generations archaeologists would discover my work, and would marvel at it. They would protect your name and preserve it, ascribe meaning to it, infer understandings from it, and formulate inadequate hypotheses for its being. Your name would be a clue to their origins. It would lead them to transcend their ephemeral present and connect them to the epoch of their kind.
“Jiak liu lian” by Yap Xiong (974 words)
You catch a faint whiff of blood while selecting durians for the buffet.
You smell it, despite the fusion of sweat, lubricant and the sandal-bottom aroma of durian fresh from the tree. You eye the guests Ah Jie guides to the tables, seeking the source of the iron-heavy scent. The ox-like man with a nose ring? The white girl wearing shades and a hoodie? Or the child chewing the plastic wrapper of a sweet–
Ah Jie scolds you for staring. So you take a deep breath, start carving with your knife and call out to the tourists:
“Lai lai D24! Verrrry nice! Verrrry creamy!”
Issue 2
“Homebrew Wine Recipes for Favourable Effects, from the Regrettable Life of Mrs Poulman” by Matt Dovey (997 words)
5 gill of twinkling dew from the petals of roses, tulips, peonies &c. as available in early Spring. The more admirable the flower, the greater the effect.
“The Scarecrows’ Daughter” by Hamilton Perez (995 words)
Our world was dying; that was the excuse anyways. A better life, Dad promised, and Mom followed. But we only traded one wasteland for another. I think I hated them for that. Not just being dramatic “I hate you” anger. Full on hate that lives in the bones. I suppose you never take it straight though. Like salt, you always mix hate with other things.
Issue 1
“Reflected Across the Dark” by Laurel Amberdine (861 words)
The portals began appearing four months ago. We were curious, like everyone, but they were rare and strange and didn’t matter. I thought it might be a hoax, but you believed in them. You believe in everything.
“Praying to the God of Small Chances” by L Chan (961 words)
I meet the god of small chances in a hospital waiting room, amidst the smell of unwashed bodies and overwashed floors. Chairs in cemetery rows, blue plastic headstones each one of them. I’m reading last week’s papers again and munching on a fried pastry: chicken and potato mashed into a slurry of turmeric-stained mush under crisp dough. Oil has already soaked through the paper bag to my fingertips.
Issue 0
“Letter From an Artist to a Thousand Future Versions of Her Wife” by Neon Yang (1,152 words)
My dearest Anatolia:
Before you left this world, you asked me to celebrate the dissolution of your body. And I have. Are you proud of me? It has been seventy-two days since you left Earth. Fifteen since we were told the ansibles don’t work. Fifteen days to mourn broken promises. Fifteen days to realize that without instantaneous transmissions across the gulfs of space, your voice and mind are lost to me forever. You are not dead, my dearest, but it feels like you are. I have held ceremonies and read poetry and lit candles with friends and family. Your belongings we gave to the needy, your flesh we fed to lions and eagles. Tomorrow, I distribute your bones.
“Not an Ocean, But the Sea” by Nino Cipri (930 words)
Nadia found the ocean behind the Swedish assholes’ couch during her weekly cleaning. She had followed a small trail of sand grains to the eastern wall with the vacuum, and when she’d moved the couch to clean underneath it, there was an ocean, snuggled right up to the wall. A fresh wind blew off it, stirring the curtains: the smell of salt and mud.