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Potent Pussy by Chelsea Fanning
After Judy Chicago Your hands dovetail around my waist, seek to pull me closer as my back arches away. Come on darlin, you croon, the whiskey on your breath igniting the air between us. Let me take you home, take you to bed, you look like a whole lotta trouble. It isn’t enough to just…
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Midnight Mass in a One Hundred Year Old Home by Mae Fraser
there are footsteps in the attic.unopened far before we came,no one has ever been inside.we were told to never openclaustrophobic hallway latches.young children had no reason to.at night i would listen for them.my mother said it was the petsscurrying in other parts of our old home,but they were unmistakableheavy footfalls on unfinished wood floors,creaking household…
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From the Insect to the Corpse by John Grey
I admit it’s oddthat I can crawl across your faceand you don’t winceI even flutter to the tipof your lipnibble where you used to nibbleflick a redundant disease or two downthe gaping hole of your mouthI circumnavigate your wristin honor of the generations of usyou swatted into bug oblivionto thinkthis is the palmthat once reeked…
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Beneath the Moss by Jennifer Edwards
Bogland is dark, tangled, and treacherous underfoot. Do not go there looking for the lady beneath the waters, for she may find you first. Plants spilled from her gaping maw—tubular pitcher plants, the woody stems of bog-myrtle, butterworts. Tendrils that almost looked as though they were writhing. Her hair had long withered away, leaving only…
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Caught in the Dark by Gregory Meece
I would have remembered her first kiss even without the brittle strip of home movie film. That I was six and she was eight doesn’t blunt its truth. I loved Becca from the start, and in that brief, grainy moment, her kiss proved she loved me too. Our parents joked we were inseparable. I never…
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Tradition by Emerson Bell
Winter’s touch had caressed the valley of my ancestors. The twilight before dawn bathed the snow in blues as I watched from the short hill near my home. A crow’s corpse swung gently on a leafless branch. Its blood clung to the bark. Tiny droplets spattered the snow below. Soon, golden sunlight would shatter my…
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Phantom Limb by Jamie Sheasley
John’s left hand itched. He awoke, eyes sleep-crusted and head groggy from cold medicine he’d taken to knock himself out only hours ago. He felt a gentle touch that left tingles in the center of his left palm and crawled up the surrounding fingers. His right hand, ever protective of its twin, instinctively crossed his…
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Rapture of the Deep by K. L. Shepherd
The dark November sky cast a pall over the cove, but the sea lions are what dampened my enthusiasm. I felt their eyes boring into me the moment I set foot on the beach. Their barking cries sent shivers down my spine. Their foul stench, like a fish market gone bad, announced their presence even…
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The Collector by J. T. Fisherman
My old man didn’t teach me much before he split last year, but at least one lesson he hammered home with fist and boot has served me well so far. “Never let the bastards know what you know.” He never really said who the bastards were, but I had a good idea that he meant…
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The Archive of Vanishing Things by David Anson Lee
The first alteration was almost invisible.In a photograph from 1998, my father’s wristwatch disappeared.Weeks passed before anyone noticed. Then a wedding photograph lost a guest. A precise absence remained: a space in the arrangement, a disturbance in the light, as though reality had forgotten to finish composing itself.The revisions accelerated.A childhood photograph removed the swing…