A Horse and Her Boy

by Vonnie Winslow Crist

The horse did not know the exact day it had been created, but it knew when it was born. Its first memory was the moment the boy hugged its neck and said, “I love her, Momma and Da.” And though there were no bones, muscles, ligaments, or female parts beneath its manufactured hide, the horse decided it must be a her to please the boy.

The horse nuzzled the boy, smelled his scent, studied his face, listened to his voice and the murmur of his heart, and felt his warm hands on her neck. She stored it all in her memory. She knew the boy would think her a flesh and blood horse, though she was not. Horses were a waste of food, water, and oxygen on a space habitat, so the boy's parents had, at great cost, ordered an automaton equine from a distant facility to be delivered to Test Station XD27. Then, they had given the robotic horse to the boy on his fourth birthday.

The horse knew it was the boy's fourth birthday, because there was a cake on the table with four recently extinguished candles embedded in icing and a banner above the cake which read, Happy Birthday!

“Can I ride her, Da?” asked the boy.

“If you hold on tight, William” answered the man as he lifted the boy onto the horse's back.

William grabbed a fistful of the horse's mane. The horse was still. Gentleness and slow movement were important as the boy was still young.

“Giddy-up!” urged William.

Monster Under the Bed

by Jeff Reynolds

The monster moved in under Alex’s bed on a Tuesday evening in late Spring. Coincidentally, it happened to be the same day she had an argument at dinner with her parents about getting a pet.

“But why can’t I have a dog?” she asked, frowning at her dinner plate, which sat stoically on the table and refused to take part in the conversation. Her peas and carrots took a different tack and began taunting the roast beef.

“Because it is too much work,” her father replied over the paper he was reading. “With school and your chores, not to mention your harpsichord lessons, you don’t have time to care for a puppy. All too soon it will grow into a dog and become a burden to you.”

Her father rarely changed his mind, but she decided to try anyway.

“But I won’t let it become a burden. I’ll walk it every day, and feed it, and brush it, and teach it good manners.” She scowled at her dinner, which scowled back and began a rousing game of blinkers and blinders.

“Your father is right,” said her mom, who generally took his side in these things. Her mom chided the vegetables for misbehaving and corralled the bread which threatened to roll away. “We have little enough room. A dog would be too much for our small house.”

“You are correct, my love,” said her father. “Besides, we can’t afford the cost right now. I’m sorry, Alex.” He turned a page and lifted his newspaper in front of his face, his preferred way of putting a conversation to rest.

Alex finished her meal, which gave the customary screams of terror with each mouthful, but she took no joy in their games and placed her fork carefully upon the chipped blue plate when she swallowed the last morsel.

“May I be excused?”

Her mother smiled gently and nodded.

Cold Concrete

by Jacob Moon

p>The wind up here blew stronger than she’d expected, whipping her hair across her face and blocking most of her vision. If she’d had at least one free hand, she could have moved it from her eyes, so that she could see the swirling black sea below her before she jumped. But instead she held onto the bridge’s guard rail in the crook of both her elbows; she feared falling if she let even one of her arms release the rail. Falling and jumping were entirely different things, she realized. Jumping entailed intent, something planned and well thought out. Falling, on the other hand, meant a loss of control, which went against every reason she’d come here in the first place. And as she shifted her bare feet against the freezing concrete ledge, her legs trembling from the fact that she’d stood in this position for over ten minutes, she felt immense regret over having forgotten to put her hair up first.    

There were other things she regretted. 

She wished she’d remembered to give the dog a treat before she’d left the house. The old hound had lifted his head toward her as she’d slipped out the front door. She hadn’t wanted to meet his eye, lest he discover with some primordial instinct what lay in her heart and announce her intentions in plaintive howls to the rest of the household. Still. She felt she should have laid out one of his favorite bones beside his bed or given him some other offering. She hadn’t patted him on the head or even looked into his old gray eyes before leaving. She wished now that she had.    

She thought about the load of laundry she’d forgotten in the dryer. Adam’s soccer uniform, as well as a pair of Ellie’s junior-sized blue jeans, now likely sat cold and wrinkled in the darkened steel drum. She should have taken the time to fold them neatly and place them on top of the basket so that, afterward, the kids would each know their mother’s hands had touched them before she’d left the house today.  

Derrick would already be worried, no doubt. Going to the store, she’d said before heading out. I’ll be right back.    

That had been an hour ago. She never took this long to return home from the neighborhood store. Since she’d decided against a note, Derrick would have no idea as to what had happened until they found her car at the base of the bridge. When she didn’t return his worried texts, he’d no doubt travel their usual route to the store, maybe even thinking to ask the cashier if they’d seen her. After that, he’d contact friends and family. Then the police. She’d done her research and, assuming the wind didn’t blow her falling body into the rocky support outcropping, her body would sink below the water’s surface soon after impact. There it would remain for two days, or perhaps even three. Then gasses would expand in her body’s cells, causing it to bloat and rise to the surface. But the current here flowed strong and whatever remnants of her corpse hadn’t been eaten by crabs and fish would likely be found miles away.  She’d researched that, as well.

Of all the thoughts passing through her mind now, the one that surprised her most happened to be how uncomfortable cold concrete felt against her bare feet. Pretending to be a jogger, she’d made it up the steady incline at a shuffling pace. Runners and bicyclists made this climb regularly, albeit rarely at night. But she’d had little choice in the matter. Daytime traffic meant too many eyes. Parking atop the bridge would have invited immediate inquiry from concerned motorists. There’d been over one hundred jumpers from this place in the past few years alone. And hiring a taxi or Uber had been no option at all.  

Destination? Hmm. Top of the Channel Bridge should just about do it....  

When she’d reached the top span, a lone car had sped by, and she’d made sure to continue jogging down the reverse slope so that the car’s driver wouldn’t recall a woman standing alone at the top. When the car’s glowing taillights had descended the slope and curved toward the highway, she’d hurried back to the crest. The only other cars approaching had been a half-mile away, their headlights like searching fingers of light in the night.    

She’d had to act fast.  

Lifeblood

by Alexandra Brandt

You learn to live moment by moment in a world like mine. Time as an entity begins to lose meaning, and even marking the hours by the old pink plastic wall clock—a relic I brought with me from my old life—seems merely born of nostalgia. I forget to care what the numbers mean. The TV stands silent, most days.

When I first made my choices, at the beginning, painting these walls butter-yellow and filling them with bookshelves from my home seemed like a good idea. But the books would gather dust, now, if they weren’t required to be sterile by hospital standards.

Inexplicable, really; it’s not as if a non-sterile environment would endanger me. No, when death takes me, it will not be by disease.

I fear weariness more than anything else. That, and losing myself.

My whole world is run by the machine.

Remember Tomorrow

by Joshua Grasso

My sister wanted me to start dating again. It’s all she ever talked about when she called me, though I rarely answered. I was busy enough trying to keep everything together, going over the Wall, making it all make sense. She didn’t understand my obsession—or my condition, as she called it—though she claimed to have seen it before. Wasn’t Mom the same way at the end, the way she collected all those magazines and kept them meticulously in order by issue and date, in floor-to-ceiling stacks in her bedroom? Remember how she couldn’t even open the door?

I always agreed and said yes, she was just like that, but to be honest I couldn’t remember. And that’s what scared me. I couldn’t remember a thing about her. Not the magazines, or her bedroom, her house, her face, her voice; I didn’t even remember that I had a mother some days. I knew I must have, and if I really tried, I could sort of remember going to the store with her, holding her hand, but it wasn’t her hand I was holding. Just the disembodied hand of a dream, a crutch for a memory that never was, one of so many that had danced out of my mind before they became part of the Wall.

I kept Zoe right in the center, a series of photographs that crisscrossed our lives: one from childhood, when she was wearing some kind of witch’s costume in the backyard. I couldn’t imagine why she would do that, though a few kids were wearing costumes in the background, so maybe it was a birthday party? Others were from high school, college, even last year, when we went to that one place…the one with the…you see, now I’ve forgotten. Another memory that didn’t make it onto the Wall in time.

I knew she was coming over on Tuesday, so I got up extra early to rehearse everything on the Wall I needed for our conversation. I found her husband (bad photograph, probably too old by now), the directions to her house (traced on the map), receipts from the last two times we ate out (veggie wraps and tacos), and her birthday three months from Tuesday (circled on the calendar). She didn’t like it when I had one of my lapses, since she could see me go blank and try to change the conversation to something I did remember. That’s when the whole dating business began. After I lost Freddy (that’s what she said, Freddy had no clue) she thinks I just retreated into a shell of home, work, and bad movies (how can my sister not like Amelie?). I needed to get out and see the world, she insisted; try to remember why I was on Planet Earth in the first place.

But the truth was, if it wasn’t up on the Wall, it didn’t exist and I couldn’t find it no matter how many years I spent looking. I tried to tell her that once, but she didn’t like the Wall, much less when I brought it up in conversation. And she told me definitely not to mention it on a first date. “Wait until you’re married a few years, expecting your second kid, then mention the Wall if you have to. But never let him see it.”

Bone Rights

by Mel Harlan

"Thank you for waiting, Mrs. Harper. We got your test results back and, unfortunately, I have to inform you that, with your condition, you are infringing upon bone rights." Doctor Gladstone takes off his glasses and sighs like he is delivering news of an incurable disease.

"Like mineral rights? Do you mean someone else's rights to my bones?" I sit in a paper gown on the exam table. As I pull out my cell phone, the gown crinkles loudly.

"No, this is simply referring to a bone's right to livable conditions where they are and not subject to abuse from their host."

"Abuse? What are you accusing me of?" I toss the phone back into my purse and cross my arms.

"For your condition, where there has been significant abuse—that cannot be attributed to overuse or working conditions—the bone can exercise its right to extraction. We've seen this outcome connected to excessive alcohol consumption over many years."

"Well, that's absolutely ridiculous." I hop off the exam table.

All Through the House

by Sean MacKendrick

It used to be so easy, Nicolas thought to himself as he watched the scanning lights sweep the living room. They didn’t quite reach behind the sofa where he crouched on the balls of his feet, impatient but still. The lights paused on the plate of cookies laying on its side where he bumped it off the hearth exiting the fireplace. Not able to identify a viable threat, the scanners continued on without raising an alarm.

After two full sweeps the scanners powered down and the house was still again. Nicolas waited another full minute, just to be sure nothing else was stirring, and stepped very slowly out into the open.

His bag was still in the fireplace where he abandoned it before sprinting to his hiding place. Nicolas judged the distance at approximately fifteen feet. Not bad, to have covered that much ground before the scanners kicked in. Still got it, in his very old age.

People used to welcome visitors.

The Lemon Tree

by Josh Schlossberg

Over the summer, to Russ’ immense satisfaction, the lemons plumped. The earliest one stayed well ahead of the pack, growing larger, rounder, and yellower. But it was slow going, and by the end of August Russ worried he wouldn’t be able to taste his own lemonade until after a frost. Which was like going for your first swim of the year on Halloween.

Late one night, he was caressing the fruit’s smooth dimpled skin. Squeezed it. Lifted it a bit. And then—oh crap!—it broke off its stem to drop in his palm. Horrified, he stood there staring at it like a puppy’s head that’d popped off.

He’d gotten greedy and picked an unripened fruit. Except when he sniffed it, it smelled sharp and sweet the way it should. Maybe it was ready, after all.

He hurried to the kitchen, set the squat little sun on the cutting board. Got a knife from the drawer and warily sliced off the very end of the nubbin.

The knife fell out of his hand to clang on the tile.

He blinked and blinked to try to form what he was seeing into something sane. Something remotely in the realm of logic and sense. But the awful vision wouldn’t clear, and his veins were ice.

From each of the seven segments of lemon, two pairs of tiny stumps—threaded with slender white bones—dripping clear juice onto the cutting board. Meanwhile, the cut-off nubbin encased fourteen miniature severed feet, each with imperfectly formed flippers instead of toes. Peering closer, the bones appeared to be made of seeds, stretched out and articulated into a rudimentary form. And none of them moving.

The Martian and The Eel

by Austen Lee

Journal Entry - 4010.19.10

Below us, the black water is still. It's unfathomably deep and encircled by a crescent moon isle. Uncle calls it “a deep-water lagoon." All I know is it's as reflective as crystal glass. A fat yellow moon seems to hang in the water, and the reflection sometimes doubles in the blackness. It reminds me of hollowed eyes.

Our ship is in tatters.

A squall surprised us, took two men with it, and rolled us. They shouted in chaos, but their words drowned in the whip-crack of the wind. Wood creaked. The waves crested us from all sides, and, when the foremast broke, everything seemed lost. Then the main snapped in two and came crashing to the deck. Its heavy beam crushed the captain's leg. He just kept screaming…

The Radiant floated for days until they found the crescent-moon isle and its deep underwater cavern.

"We're all to perish here, cursed, cursed," the captain cried as we drifted into the lagoon.

The men whispered of blood poisoning; Uncle said, "Infection."

Either way, the captain died. And over the ship's rail, the men tossed his body, and the black lagoon swallowed it whole.

The Last Train

by Jeff Enos

It was 4:50am and there was still no sign of the train. I was going to be late for work again.

My phone vibrated with a new text message. I imagined it was Mike, scolding me for not waking him up and kissing him goodbye. But Mike had been dead for nearly twenty years. And I’d been alone ever since. An old man, lost, tired, and alone.

The text was from the mayor’s office, a warning.

Curfew tonight: 8:30pm. Anyone caught outside after hours will be culled.

Land Sick

by JR Warrior

Robert would be furious if he knew I had ventured this way, so close to the seashore. In the summer, Milport is teaming with visitors from the mainland with ferries offloading tourists in their droves. Families with their wee kiddies, paddling in the shallows and making sand castles along the shore, with sticky fingers clutching at dripping ice cream cones or half-eaten sticks of rock. The shop fronts glisten with life and energy, the tangy aroma of salt and vinegar intermingling with the briny sea air. The adventurous types whizz past on their push bikes or bob around on the ocean’s waves on canoes or paddle boards. The sound of laughter and excitement drifts on the breeze. I do so love Cumbrae during the summer.

Now, however, as the air has chilled to a biting frost and the sky has dimmed to a hazy grey, the island sees very few visitors. The shop fronts sit vacant, the cafes and fish and chip shops deserted. The island lies still and dormant, forgotten. As the bitter wind lashes my face, burning my cheeks, I notice the troubled sky on the horizon. The blackened clouds swirl thick and heavy, ready to burst open. There is a storm coming. I wring my hands anxiously, knowing that Robert will be returning to dock shortly. During the summer, he works long hours, sometimes leaving for days at a time. I am free to do as I please, for the most part, as long as he comes home to a clean house and a hot meal. However, as the nights draw in and the waters churn and swell unpredictably, Robert’s days shorten. He is often home by the early hours of the afternoon.

I can’t stay out here much longer; I know I am cutting it close already, wasting precious time. He will want the linen folded, the basins bleached, the tatties peeled and the mince stewed. If he comes home from a hard day at sea to find I’ve been neglecting my chores, he will make me atone for my laziness. I should go. But the sea air, the way it chills and warms my bones at the same time, the way the salt prickles my skin, the lashings of the bitter wind as it steals my breath from my lungs, I crave it like a wain craves its maw’s embrace. Just a little longer.

I remember how I used to play here as a wee one, right here on this very beach. The other pups and I, we would play and scrap for hours, before our maws would call us back onto the shore to warm up. I remember it clear as day, as if it were yesterday, basking by my mam’s side as she slept, feeling the sun’s rays heating my skin. I remember the visitors of Cumbrae would watch us from afar, sometimes even snapping photos as we basked upon the pebbles. All the maws would warn us wee ones to never let a stranger get too close. They would bark and scald anyone who dared try to. I think about my dear mam often. I think of her sweet face and her kind eyes. I think of how I should have heeded her.

As the storm begins to break on the horizon, I turn to make my way inland. The bairns will be finishing school soon, and I don’t like them to walk home on their own. Robert will want the three of us back at the house by the time he gets back.

Later that afternoon, as I get ready to dish up tea, Robert returns home. I smell him before I see him, the smell of fish blood and slurry stinging my nostrils as he walks through the door. Isla and John go to greet him and he rustles their golden hair with his dirty, unwashed hands. I wish he wouldn’t do that. He goes to me, my back is kept turned towards him but the hairs on the back of my neck prickle, pre-empting his touch.

“Whin is tea duin?”

“Just a few minutes.”

“Aye, that's a guid lassie,” he purrs as he strokes the space between my shoulder blades, leaving an invisible trail of filth. I turn to face him, plastering on my sweetest smile before I do so. He likes to see me smile. It takes every ounce of strength I can muster not to grimace as his blackened fingers trace the line of my jaw.

“How was your day?” I ask, my voice high-pitched and girlish. Saccharine, sickly sweet.

“A' th' better fur comin' hame tae yer bonny coupon,” he coos. I stare into his face, weathered by years at sea and outlined in grime. I gaze down at his rough, calloused hand as it rests on my chin. I remember the feel of it around my neck, fingers grasping, the other hand clutching the blood-splattered blade, slicing, ripping and tearing. My smile widens.

“I’ve missed you,” I lie.

Wet Paint

by Edward DeGeorge

Who knew that purple was such a dangerous color?

It all started when my wife grew bored with white kitchen walls. I arrived home from work on a sweltering August day to find color samples strewn across the kitchen counter. Before I could decipher their significance, Margaret’s car pulled into the driveway.

I walked out to greet her, beer in hand. She struggled with two gallon pails of paint. I bent forward to kiss her and she drew back.

“I could use a little help.” Eyebrows sharp enough to cut flesh arched over her eyes.

I flushed and looked in vain for a place to set my beer down. I reached for the pails and a splash of beer spilled from the tilted bottle. Margaret pulled her white pump away in the nick of time. She shot me an evil look. “I’ve got these,” she said. “Get the rest out of the trunk.”

I trotted to the open trunk. Two more gallon cans crouched within. As I carried them to the house, Margaret triggered the remote for the garage and I had to duck as the door came down.