The ratatat-tat of the shatterproof glass by my seat window doesn’t bother me. A drunken man stumbles around, like a cripple, but I don’t care. He gets on board, and I keep to myself.

I’ve got my books, my studies to protect me. I’m taking American Lit. We’re studying that attic-dwelling chick, the one who always wrote about death. Foster kids get to go to college for free. It’s a little-known secret, so don’t spread it, or everyone will want to get into the system.

The next stop arrives, and I happen to glance up. A little girl walks alongside her mother from a distance, like G and M in the alphabet. The mother is angry, already ten steps ahead, as the child slips through the closing doors.

The mother snaps, slinging the girl across the seat like a ball off a paddle. “Sit your bony ass down,” she hisses, depositing the girl across from her.

The smell of alcohol hangs thick in the air. The woman’s hair is dyed orange, dry and brittle, looking ready to be chopped into cornmeal. She wears a cheap, stained shirt, and her bra straps hang out — dirty, like she never bothered to wash them. The shape of her body is spilling out of her dungarees. It’s not her poverty that embarrasses me, or even the fact that she drinks during the day — it’s the lack of love for her daughter.

I bow my head, but I can’t help but look again. The girl’s pitch-black eyes remind me of myself. Her clothes are too small for her thin body — high-water pants, tight and worn, covered in lint. She’s darker than a brown paper bag, with thick, wide African nostrils and unkempt hair. The cruelest thing you can do to a black girl is not fix her hair. This girl’s hair was especially damaged from neglect. Black hair is deceptive — it looks wiry and tough, but it breaks easily when it’s not cared for. After all these years, there’s still a patch in my hair that won’t grow.

The car jolts as we enter the tunnel, the chain hook rattling.

“Mommy, what if the train goes in the wrong tunnel?” the girl asks.

Her mother snaps, “Shut the hell up, I ain’t got time for your foolishness.”

At the next stop, the tracks are hot. A rat as big as a cat struts across them. For a second, my mother’s face morphs with this woman’s. I see her fresh like the flash of a knife slicing through stars with steel stillness — the blade blood-stained, tear-stained. If I had a death wish, I’d walk up to that mother and tell her she should smile at her girl.  Pretend she has golden hair instead of dark skin. Pretend her name is Colleen or Jenny, not the ghetto name you gave her, a name that even the other ghetto girls think is too ghetto.

I can’t study Dickinson anymore. I’ve never done drugs, but right then, I think I’d like to try something — Crystal meth, maybe, or at least marijuana, then methadone.

Maybe that’ll numb my mind.

I think even more, and I wish I were dead, like my father. Found on the North

Side, a gun cold and heavy in his stiffening hand.

Being in the system took me South, to a place where doctors, lawyers, professionals, and professors outnumbered the hustlers, whiners, and prostitutes. Until I was 10, I lived in various HUD buildings. The last one was condemned by neglect, and the residents let it fall apart piece by piece. I remember how the fiberglass ate at me alive, how I had to dig myself out from under the wreckage like I was in some disaster film.

I study this woman, as she sucks her teeth and rolls her eyes, scowling at her daughter and anyone else who dares to look her way.

(The NAACP sued the school district because the kids were coming to school shoeless and smelling of urine. The school even had a great Christmas play, but no parents showed up. The solution? Buy more buses — 500 inner-city kids sent out to the suburbs. Talk about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.)

I never found out the girl’s name, and in the litany of life’s guardians, I wanted to lock her in a box marked “fragile.” The next stop comes, and I feel my arm jerk — my shoulder aches.

I watch the girl being pushed, cursed at, and dragged along.

I wouldn’t call what I witness ignorance or even hatred — it’s just tradition.

Allison Whittenberg is an award winning novelist and playwright. Her poetry has appeared in Columbia Review, Feminist Studies, J Journal, and New Orleans Review. Whittenberg is a six-time Pushcart Prize nominee. They Were Horrible Cooks is her collection of poetry.

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A HORSE’S PLOW WE WON’T ALLOW

Their voices cracked hollow, like imaginary whips against which they rebelled.

“Ignorant jackasses,” Gertie muttered. “The field’s been fallow for weeks.”

The other cows barely twitched their ears. Gertie dropped hers down, retreating from the mulish boycott toward a shade tree at the pasture’s edge. With a grunt, she sank into the cool turf, sweet cud rising in her throat, drowning out the donkeys’ clamor beneath the steady churn of her own chewing.

“Excuse me.”

Gertie’s eyes snapped open, her ears pinned back. An orange-and-cream tabby perched on a branch above her, eyes amber-bright in the shade, head tilted, grinning.

“Trouble with the rabble-rousers out there?” it purred.

“I’m a cow,” Gertie replied flatly. “Dissatisfaction isn’t the brand.”

“That’s right,” said the cat, its voice sliding into that of a radio announcer:

Our milk comes from contented cows!

It leaned closer. “Until your teats are dry and they grind you into hamburger.”

Gertie lurched upright. “How rude!”

“Am I wrong?”

Her jaw stilled, the cud caught mid-chew. A long moment passed. “I guess I never thought of it that way.”

A shiver rippled across her hide. She glanced at the empty stall next to the barn where the old bull once bellowed. She remembered Molly’s calf — its panicked bleat fading as the trailer disappeared into the horizon at dawn.

Molly never recovered. She hadn’t made a sound since.

“I don’t like the thought,” Gertie said, her eyelids clamped down, blocking out the empty stall. “But I’ve made peace with my purpose.”

“Yes, purpose,” said the cat, “a word used to keep the simple in line.” It waved its paw toward the herd. “Like those bovine buffoons out there.”

Gertie pursed her lips, gazing past the herd toward the pasture’s edge, where the fencing gave way to scrub and thistle. Her muscles tensed.

A sudden bellow sounded. Gertie turned to see Molly’s head wedged between two rungs of the fence, tongue lashing wildly at a thistle mere inches beyond reach.

Gertie rose. She lifted her front hoof — one step, then another. She froze, leg suspended. Molly’s panicked eyes rolled white.

The cat slithered lower, claws flexed, until it dangled inches from Gertie’s ear. “That’s it,” it whispered, whiskers brushing her side. “Just a few steps further.” Its breath was cloying and sweet — the words oozed into Gertie’s ear like spoiled honey.

Bootsteps thudded across the pasture. The farmer’s whistle split the air — two sharp notes.

The cat froze. Gertie’s ears swiveled, her body remembering: stand, walk, eat. The other cows were already moving toward the gate. The farmer’s silhouette disappeared behind the barn.

“What are you waiting for?” the cat hissed. “Before the butcher comes for you!”

Molly, convulsing, finally wrenched her head free and lumbered into line with the others.

Gertie swung her head back toward the cat — its eyes wide, its grin slick and greedy. Its stomach growled, a string of saliva glistening at the corner of its mouth.

Gertie’s pulse drummed in her throat. The fence line blurred in her peripheral vision. She drew a long breath, pressing her hooves into the turf. “You don’t want me free,” she said. “You want me lost — picked apart when the coyotes are through.”

The cat’s eyes shuttered, its grin twitching.

“Maybe I am just someone else’s hamburger,” she continued, “But I’d rather be a purposeful meal than carrion for a scavenger.”

The cat hissed, ears flat. It spat, twisting away — tail lashing like a tattered flag — and vanished into the tall grass.

Gertie’s breath left her in one long stream, stirring the grass at her hooves. Somewhere in the distance, the donkeys resumed picketing:

A FARMER’S GREED WILL MEET STAMPEDE!

Gertie eased herself once more into the worn patch of turf beneath the tree, warm and familiar. She felt the cud rising again, though the sweetness sat strangely on her tongue this time.

She drifted toward sleep, dreaming of a cat’s hollow trill echoing across a barren horizon as witless donkeys gave chase, convinced it was leading them to paradise.

The pasture stretched endlessly around her.

Joshua Nash is a husband and father in Lockhart, Texas, whose other reveries have appeared in 101 Words and Nail Polish Stories.

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One night, we’re on this snatch and grab op, when, on our way up to the objective, she doesn’t catch the scent of this one Soviet era mine buried in the dirt on the edge of a pomegranate orchard. They covered over the smell somehow, with diesel or mud and, well, you can guess what happened next. Guys running, radios crackling, dust and bust-open pomegranates everywhere, their red sticky bits all over everyone. They call in the medevac. Her handler, Bronco, he’s got shrapnel up and down his leg but she’s — turns out, she’s the one took the brunt of the blast. She doesn’t whine, or yelp, or cry, not once, even as the minutes tick by, a panicked waiting in the darkness, before the flaps of the bird could be heard and it finally finds where we are and settles and sends stinging nettle-sands over pomegranates and all. We slide her onto the stretcher, load her into the bird, wave goodbye, as the bird lifts up, and the onboard medic slips an IV into the vein in her foreleg — to stop the bleeding, treat for shock — same as you would for any person, any fellow soldier, or, at least, we try to.

She hardly knows what’s happened to her or what’s going to happen. “It’s gonna be alright,” Bronco tells her, riding alongside her. “It’ll be alright, girl.” A tactically gloved hand reaches out in the green cabin light to soothe her but, before the bird can haul ass over those hills that touched the sky, to reach the field hospital in the next valley, she’s already gone down that dark path in the woods where only the shades of heroes tread.

I kept a picture of her saved to my desktop a long time. I’d show it to people at work. In the picture, she’s all geared up, grinning, that glimmer in her eye. People always liked that picture of her. I’m not even sure where it is anymore. 

J.G.P. MacAdam is the first in his family to earn a college degree. His publications can be found in The Colorado Review, The Atticus Review, JMWW, Pithead Chapel and Consequence, among others. His novelette “A Square of Dirt” about the birth, life and death of a firebase in the Tangi Valley, Afghanistan is available from ELJ Editions. You can find him at jgpmacadam.com.

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Windy Pines 2.6 miles.

Other than the time of day, the images are identical. The trailhead signs are weathered in the same places and an ancient pine tree looms behind them, ready to topple with the right gust of wind. Splotches of bird droppings are crusted in the same place, confirming my suspicions. It rained two days ago, so these photos were taken in the last 48 hours. The air is still, but a chill runs through me anyway, sneaking beneath my windbreaker and wrapping my arms in goosebumps. 

“Shall we?” Deputy Phillips asks, her lips pressed in a thin, bloodless line.

I nod, and follow her up the trail. Thirty yards ahead, we find the origin of the second photo — a pine tree with a missing branch and a tangle of purple flowers wilting at its base. When the photo was taken, the flowers were in full bloom. So much can change in so little time.

A lump rises in my throat. I know what we will find at the top of this mountain if we are lucky, and I’m praying we aren’t. The work we do is bittersweet. We provide closure, often at the expense of people’s hopes. 

My deputy pulls out her personal cell phone and takes a picture of the photo side by side with the tree. Our pace increases as we make our way forward, following the switchback trail.

We almost walk right past the third photo: a trio of boulders poking out of the ground. In the picture, harsh midday sunlight casts shadows from the peaks, making the rocks appear larger than they are. We both squint, but confirm the location is the same.

“Is that…?” asks Phillips, trailing off as she points. 

A small, dried dot of rust. I pull a swab and evidence bag from my pocket and collect the sample. When the swab comes away red, we have to expect the worst. 

There are 38 pictures in the envelope, each printed on glossy paper in perfect clarity. Our lab analyzed them for DNA, but we aren’t that lucky. Whoever did this is diligent, careful to only reveal what they want us to see.

I grabbed a handful of evidence bags from the lab before we left, but with 35 locations ahead of us, I’m afraid it isn’t enough. Worse, I’m afraid what we’ll find is too large for an evidence bag. 

The winding path up the side of the mountain yields something new every three to four stops — some strands of blonde hair here, a few shirt fibers there. My head spins from the elevation and the implications. With three stops to go, I know we should turn back. This trail should be blocked from visitors and a team of forensic analysts should be combing the mountainside. 

But I can’t let her stay there that long. Alone.

Phillips seems to agree with me, because she doesn’t suggest going back to the cruiser either. We take our photo, collect the shoelace that dangles from a twig, and move on down the trail. We keep going until we reach the summit. It’s too far. The previous clues were clumped together, no more than 150 yards apart. We’ve gone more than triple that distance and have nothing to show for it.

For the first time today, we come up short. The photo shows a bulbous mushroom reigning over a pile of dried pine needles. We go back to the previous clue and start our search again. It’s Phillips who steps off the trail and takes her flashlight around the forest floor. 

“Here,” she bellows. 

The wind shifted the needles, hiding away the mushroom. A series of brown dots and a chunk of dark flesh underneath the cap confirm this is the same one from the picture. We continue straight into the trees, leaving the gravel behind us.

Two photos left, and we discover a silver earring on a bed of moss. When I press down on a similar patch nearby, the moss holds its shape. Based on the way the earring is balanced just so, I think it was placed here intentionally, not dropped. The girl’s mother confirmed this morning Gretta owned a pair exactly like it. They were a graduation gift from her grandfather. She was planning to go to grad school in the fall, but now I’m worried someone else will have to take her place.

The final picture shows only the fabric of the t-shirt Gretta Hanson was believed to be wearing when she left for a hike two days ago. While there are no clues to the location of the final photo, we press forward wordlessly. Between two large pine trees, we win this perverse treasure hunt. 

In less than 48 hours, her body has changed. While mornings like this one are cold, the afternoon sun burns away the clouds and bakes the mountainside with hundred degree days. What flesh remains on Gretta’s body is red from the abuse. The rest has been ravaged by animals, or so we hope. The lab will give us more answers, and our missing persons report will become a homicide. 

The hardest part of a case like this isn’t finding the body. The worst thing that ever happened to Gretta has already happened, but her mother’s worst fear will be confirmed. That’s the part I hate the most. But that will come later. 

Maire E. Brown graduated with a degree in writing in 2022, and hasn’t stopped typing since. When she isn’t writing fiction, she’s working as a proposal writer or escaping into someone else’s stories. Maire and her partner live in the Pacific Northwest with their dog, Rigby, and spend time exploring the world around them.

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I want to comfort her but I fear that my words might sound hypocritical for I too am grappling with mixed feelings about her father getting married tomorrow.

“It’ll be alright, honey,” I say. “Everything will be just the same as it is now.”

“Everything’s rotten now!” she snaps.

Jenny had never been one to talk much about her feelings but I knew that the pain she felt was deep. After her father left, I’d often hear her crying alone in her room. I knew she had never given up hope of her father and me getting back together… maybe I hadn’t either. But tomorrow would put an end to the quiet longings we both had over the past two years.

“I’m not going,” I hear my daughter say.

“You’ll go,” I respond gently.

“No. I hate him!”

Jenny jumps up and I hear her footsteps moving quickly up the stairs. Then comes the sound of her bedroom door slamming shut.

I wait a few minutes and walk upstairs. I stand in front of her door, take a deep breath and knock.

She is sitting on her bed. The Little Prince lies opened on her lap.

I had first read The Little Prince to Jenny when she was six years old. She’d cried at the ending and when I told her it wasn’t real, she announced there were some things adults would never understand. I wonder if that’s why she’s reading it now.

“Let’s go for a drive,” I say. “I feel like getting out of the house for awhile.”

She looks at me suspiciously. “Where?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Just for a drive.”

I don’t know where I’m going as I head north on the Parkway. Jenny and I have both been silent since we got in the car.

“Where are we going?” Jenny asks, breaking the silence.

“I’m not sure yet,” I say. “But we’ll know when we get there.”

I can feel Jennifer looking at me disapprovingly. She is at the age where any unexpected or frivolous act by an adult, especially me, is intolerable.

I pull off on an exit for Bedford Hills. Her father and I used to take Jennifer to a park around here.

I make a right turn on a familiar looking road and there it is. I park the car.

“Doesn’t this place seem familiar?” I ask as we walk along a narrow cement paved path.

Jenny shrugs.

“Your dad and I used to take you here,” I say as I sit down on a wooden bench with a view of the lake.

“Why are we here?” she asks.

Now I shrug my shoulders. “It seemed like a nice place to re-visit some old memories, good memories.”

Jennifer walks to the lake. She squats down and her hand plays with the water.

She’s so angry, I think sadly — so hurt. I remember being in this very spot with a lively, bright eyed little girl, and a loving husband and father. It wasn’t that long ago and yet it seems like an eternity. I take a deep breath of the cool evening air and suddenly I feel more at peace than I’ve felt in some time.

I sigh as I get up and walk toward the lake. “What are you thinking?” I ask Jenny as I squat down next to her.

No answer.

“I remember when you were five years old,” I say. “You drove me and your father crazy because you always wanted to come here and feed the ducks. But when the ducks came near you, you’d cry and want to go home. Then the next weekend, you’d want to come back and do it again.”

A smile forms on Jenny’s lips which she quickly withdraws.

“Your dad loves you very much, Jen,” I say.

“No he doesn’t,” she responds as she stares down at her hand which is hovering above the water.

“He does, Jen.”

Jenny whirls her head around to face me. “Then why did he leave me!”

There are tears in her eyes as she turns her head quickly away from me and focuses back on the water.

“He didn’t leave you,” I say softly. “He left me. We just weren’t happy anymore.”

Jenny jumps up. “It’s not fair. I’m the one who has to pay for it!”

Jenny is crying. She turns her back on me and walks a short distance, stopping in front of a large oak tree. I can see her running her hand gently over the surface of the tree.

I walk over to her. “You’re right,” I say.

She turns her head slowly to face me, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“It’s not fair that you’ve been hurt. But sometimes life isn’t fair, Jen. But we have to move on and accept that things change.”

Jenny looks away, her eyes fixated on the lake. “Some changes are rotten,” she says.

“I know,” I say, “but we can’t dwell on the past. All we have left from the past is memories and you have a lot of happy memories from when you dad was at home. Now it’s time to go on, to stop being angry, and to make new memories.”

Now she looks back at the tree and runs her hand over the names and initials that have been carved in it over the years. “Here it is,” she says softly.

“What?” I ask as I lean down to see what she’s pointing to.

“Daddy carved this in the tree when I was six… I’ll never forget.”

I look at the carving. It reads “Jenny — Daddy’s little girl.”

She turns to face me and I hold her in my arms. “I love you, mom,” she says.

“I love you, Jen,” I say.

Jill Potter is a psychologist and re-emerging writer from New York whose stories were previously published in a variety of literary and women’s magazines in the U.S. and Scotland. She has worked with Broadway and Off Broadway scripts as an editor and advisor and she is currently working on a screenplay based on a true story from the 1920s.

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This was on his eighth birthday. Little Bella, a mere six months at the time, had ruined his party with her constant crying and screaming, and she then threw up on the cake before Buck could have even a single slice. So instead of delicious double-decker red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting, Buck’s father had to run out to the corner market for a store-bought slab that resembled a frosted cinderblock.

All because of his selfish, needy little sister. Ever since Bella was born, she’d sucked up all the attention in the house. Even before she was born, really. Almost from the time his mother had found out she was going to have another baby, it had become all about the impending bundle of joy. Buck had started to feel invisible.

He had naively thought that on his birthday he would be the center of attention again, at least for a little while. No such luck.

So when his mother stuck the candle shaped like the number 8 in the cake and lit the wick, he had closed his eyes, wished his sister had never been born, and blew out the candle.

As soon as he opened his eyes, he knew his wish had come true. The slab cake had disappeared, replaced with the red velvet he had wanted. His father sat across the table, smiling gently at him. “What did you wish for?”

Buck mimicked zipping his lips shut. “I can’t tell you that.”

The highchair where Bella had sat was gone, along with Bella herself. His grandmother and grandfather remained, though they somehow looked older. His mother was nowhere to be seen.

He took a beat to enjoy the silence, no baby wailing as if being scalded. He smiled so wide he thought his face might just split in two.

His first inkling that his wish had gone wrong was when his father picked up the knife and started to cut the cake. That was his mother’s job. Always his mother’s job.

“Where’s Mom?” he asked.

His grandparents both winced in unison, as if he’d used a bad word. His father’s smile wilted and he just looked sad.

“Buddy, we’ve been over this. When your mother lost the baby, she couldn’t deal with it. She wanted to go be with your baby sister.”

Buck went cold all over, as if he’d been pushed in a tub full of ice water. “You mean… are you saying Mommy’s…?” He couldn’t bring himself to finish the question.

His grandmother was weeping now, while his grandfather held her and whispered that it would be okay. His father even looked near tears.

“She’s in heaven looking down on us now like a guardian angel.”

This wasn’t what Buck had meant by his wish. This wasn’t what he had meant at all. Could he undo it, unwish his wish?

He glanced at the candle, a wispy line of smoke trailing up from the extinguished wick, and thought he might have to wait until next year. Maybe on his ninth birthday he could make it right.

MG Allan loves telling stories above all else. He spent his childhood making up stories in his head, and now he’s spending his adult life writing them down.

If you want to keep EDF around, Patreon is the answer.

“Come in — I’ve been expecting you,” I replied.

“We’ve come about suspicious withdrawals from your account,” said the shorter agent. “Normally, we would send you a routine inquiry by mail, but the amounts are concerning… as are the lack of deposits. Would you care to explain?”

I sighed. “You’ll want to sit down,” I guided my guests into the dining room and cleared stacks of gold bars, empty bottles of Krug cuvée, and high-end electronics from the table. “This is going to sound strange. Insane, even. But… it’s easy to check out and verify. You see, every night, any money I have in my bank account triples.”

“Come again?” said the lanky Fed.

“It’s nothing criminal, nothing immoral. Just, hard to believe. You see, I found a leprechaun caught in a snare. When I freed him, he gave me a magic silver dollar. Wherever I put it, he said, the money I had would triple at the stroke of midnight. I deposited the dollar, and after a week had over $10M in my account. I realized I needed to spend it faster than it accumulated, or things would soon get out of control!”

“Wait, what do you mean?” said the fractionally smaller agent.

“In 13 days, it would be $250 mill. In a month, I’d have enough cash to pay off the Federal debt. A few days after that, it would compound to the point that every dollar not in my account would be diluted into worthlessness. More money, chasing the same amount of stuff. Maybe it was a trick, or maybe leprechauns are just lousy at math! If I let it keep growing, the US dollar would soon collapse.

So, I’ve been doing my patriotic best to spend like crazy.”

The agents huddled together and exchanged fierce whispers. The towering agent finally said “This explains a lot of problems we’ve encountered recently. So, hear me out. Have you considered transferring to an account in Swiss Francs? Or Chinese Yuan?”

I cocked my head to the side. “How would that solve my spending problem?”

He smiled and replied “It wouldn’t. But you can pick who gets to enjoy runaway inflation. We can also make your tax problems go away, if that helps.”

“What tax problems?” I asked.

The troll-like agent replied with an even larger grin, “You’ve reached a tax bracket that assesses more than 100% of your income.”

George Morris wears many hats and is bound to none. He has (appropriately) a BS in Advertising from UT Austin and lives in Dallas, Texas. With a relatively humorless day-job conducting government surveys and cataloging numismatic collections, his curiosity is free to wander. His work has appeared in a range of publications from Texas Highway Patrol Magazine and Numis International to Wily Winchester and Lost Lake Folk Opera magazine. He embraces chaos and unfinished projects, from stageplays and medallic art, to ghostly tales and a murder-mystery set aboard a zeppelin cruiseship. You can find more of his projects at ProstStageProduction.com.

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Winter was finally receding for the vibrancy of Spring, illustrated by the wealth of plant life blooming from the earth. Hawthorn, Tormentil, Spindle Tree — previously a gardener by trade, John could name them all. Though none of that really mattered, not anymore.

Bouncing on the back of Arthur’s quad bike as they navigated over rugged terrain, John’s thoughts turned to the precious box clutched in his hand. His bones tingled with anticipation. Few devotees were ever invited to gaze upon The Dark Space, so naturally he heeded the call as soon as he could. He dearly hoped his gift would be adequate.

A faraway church bell piercingly sounded, the wind carrying its faintly off-tune chimes over the secluded hillsides.

One-

Two-

Three-

Four-

Five-

John was momentarily swept away by the rhythmic reverberation, his sight still absorbed on the box. By the time the bell rang six, he was pleased to see the barn already in view.

Everything was just as he recalled. The rigid, rotting barn latch. The unassuming entrance hidden beneath hay bales and loose floor beams. And most of all, the smell. The escaping odour upon opening the cavern trapdoor was something else. A pungent, putrid stench from beyond this earthly realm; John could feel his conscience cry out in pure revulsion. Not that he paid any heed to his conscience anymore, that is.

Slithers of sunlight desperately struggled through small pockets between barn wall slats, mother nature’s last plea for the gardener not to proceed. But with each passing ritual, his curiosity had grown into something uncontrollable. Twisted whispering slowly took root, calling him away from life’s mundane expectations. Calling him towards what lurked beneath.

Arthur led the way, flame torch in hand, as they descended the spiral staircase. After that came the cave tunnels. Obscure and coarse symbology was etched all along the cavern walls, though John could only steal brief glances through the flickering lighting.

For an elderly devotee, Arthur hobbled surprisingly fast. Expertly flitting through the vast maze of burrows, John lost all sense of direction. Nevertheless, from the faint sound of chanting, he knew they mustn’t be far. What started as a whisper steadily rose to thunderous proportions, and as they turned the final corner to reveal the shrine, John stepped inside.

On either side stood disordered assemblies of naked, malnourished figures. Chanting in primitive, guttural tones no mortal cords could muster, their bodies twitched in erratic motions though their eyes fixed unwaveringly ahead.

The Testmaster came down from the raised stone altar to meet John, and looming behind the approaching silhouette, John at last set eyes on it — The Dark Space. A gaping wound running straight through the cavern’s limestone, its pulsating darkness subtly seeping beyond the jagged edges that housed it. Throbbing from deep within, the room’s very foundations vibrated to its off-kilter beat.

Silently, the Testmaster held out his hands and John passed over his box. Inside, a ring finger. Wedding band still fastened. Congealed blood dangling from the bone. Lifting his bandaged and damaged hand, John validated the deed. The final test; an irrevocable severing from his painfully ordinary existence.

But would the offering be accepted? The Testmaster nodded, beckoning John towards the altar. With both knees resting on the cold stone floor, he stared. Waiting. Wanting.

***

Had it been seconds? Minutes? Or hours? John couldn’t tell. He’d been foretold The Dark Space had no desire to uphold the laws of time. Peeking further into its alluring depths, his gaze had been taken wholly captive; suppressing the impulse to even blink.

As his dry eyes agonised, the pounding pulse of the aperture intensified. In pure synchronicity, the chanting congregation recalibrated to its quickening tempo. Their archaic trills bellowed out, an avalanche of unpleasant, painful syllable combinations.

As if enticed by their calls, the darkness began to animate. Long shadowy vines slowly sprouting out from the abyss, eagerly reaching towards the kneeling gardener. John’s heart fluttered. He’d done unspeakable things to arrive at this point. Glaring directly into this indefinable yet tremendous organism, he widened his eyes and opened his jaw, inviting The Dark Space to enter its willing prey.

As it penetrated through his facial cavities and flooded itself inside of him, John grinned like he hadn’t in years. Mortal life was rapidly slipping through his fingers. All nine of them. Drowning out any last morsel of bodily connection, soon his whole being was submerged.

Soaking.

Sinking.

Gone.

***

John awoke from the shadows, wearily adjusting to the bright slither of light before him. As his vision came into focus, he recognised it was done. He’d crossed over.

Looking out from within The Dark Space, John now saw his corpse by the altar — standing and staring right back at him. Naked and faintly smirking through a gaunt face, John’s skin was being inhabited as if it were a mere costume. John smiled back, before watching his cadaver turn and merge into the ensemble of other soulless vessels. From that point on, John never saw himself again. United with all other Brothers who’d foregone worldly autonomy, each swallowed soul served as delightful nourishment for their parasitic host.

Based in the picturesque countryside of Lancashire, England, Reece Howarth is a digital marketer and blogger by trade. Having recently taken the plunge into creative writing, you’ll likely find him hiking, spending time with family or getting beaten up at Jiu-Jitsu when he’s not tapping away at his keyboard.

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I wrote to the council and asked if they could do something about it. My country vibe was being ruined. I sent a long letter about the price of my house and my vision board about country life being quiet. I explained to them that I couldn’t find my bliss amongst the scratching of a million wings in the air as the bugs tried to find their mates. I explained that I was in fact in the prime of my life and needed space to spread my own wings about town, uninhibited by a plague of insects.

Besides, I had a very attractive neighbour that I was hoping to impress. With all the noise it was hard to hatch a plan.

The council responded with a brochure from the cicada society about their life cycle. It explained how they are born in the ground, stay there for seven years, then pop up and breed in a chaotic sex frenzy for several months before dying.

The noise continued, the beauty of nature was killing me. When I walked outside the dead cicadas fell on me like an abject rain storm. I accidentally crunched one beneath my boot and in that moment my attitude changed. I felt empathy emerging and I felt deep in my soul for the pathos of the cicada.

I went home and sat in my thinking chair and tried to work out what was going on. The cicadas were my spirit animal. We shared a certain boldness and intense way of being in the world. I was just jealous that they were out enjoying their love life, just as I had been seven years ago before my ex-girlfriend left me for apparently being annoying and noisy.

So I opened my window and called out to them that I respected their decisions, that they should be free and do all the things that they wanted, and then I sat at my window like some green-change pervert watching them soaring through the air full of passion and lust.

As I watched them through the window I also noticed my neighbour on the other side of the road. She often got dressed in the lamp light and had a glorious and sensual body. I would often watch her weeding the garden for hours as I gazed out through the haze of cicadas. She awakened something in me, a part of me awakened after so many years, and I found myself spending more and more time at the window thinking about cicadas and my neighbour.

They inspired me, I loved their style, their boldness and their brazen declaration of desire that screeched through the night air. Country life had changed me, and I started opening myself to the eternal teachings of nature. My neighbour came out to do the weeding and I waved. She waved back and smiled.

I felt I already knew her and had a sense of what would impress her. So I got a shovel and during the night I dug a hole for myself outside her house. I curled up naked and thought about the seven years I had lost in celibate misery, all the wasted opportunities and loneliness. When I poked a hole in the dirt above and saw the early morning light appearing.

I knew she would be out soon to start gardening.

So I channelled the spirit of the cicada and braced myself to emerge.

Fiona Murray is a writer and social worker living in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney.

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Katarite tucked the silk of her kimono behind her knees and sank gracefully to the carefully manicured lawn. “Today we speak English,” she admonished the girl, any potential rebellion cut off by the barest arch of her eyebrow. “French tomorrow, followed by German. Japanese comes after Hindi, then Mandarin and Spanish, before starting again with Arabic.”

“Why do I need to learn all these silly languages? Can’t you just choose one?” the girl complained. “I can never remember all the different words.”

“Language is not just about words, grammar and syntax. Really knowing a language gives you an incredible insight into the people’s psyche. Each language has its own poetry and beauty that can be impossible to translate. Sadly, the subtleties are so often lost.”

“I don’t understand.”

“German is wonderfully brisk and efficient; exactly like the people. French is the language of food. And of love. And, as anyone that has ever tried to learn it will know, full of exceptions. Even the exceptions have exceptions.” Katarite laughed. “Each and every syllable is given the same reverence and respect in Japanese, as the Japanese give to everything they do. It can sound flat and monotonous to foreigners, yet it has a profound depth and charm that are unmistakable to native speakers. Like the British Empire, English is the conqueror. It takes what it needs or wants from the languages around it when it doesn’t have the words of its own. It’s like a magpie, stealing all the brightest jewels.”

The girl at Katarite’s feet pulled a sour expression.

“And besides, you need to be ready to greet everyone properly when they arrive.”

“When will they finally get here?” Keisho asked, but didn’t wait for a reply. “I hate it here. There’s nothing to do. Only rake the sand again and again. I’m bored,” she moaned from her supine position, repeating her earlier complaint, this time in the proper language.

“What a melancholy thing to say,” Katarite sighed, her eyes glistening with uncried tears. “Such ennui is a luxury that was denied so many of our people. It saddens me that you are blind to the splendour of the gifts you’ve been given.” Katarite waved her hand through the air, highlighting the almost artificial beauty of the Zen garden around them.

“Does the bonsai mope in its pot and complain that it is not like the other trees in the forest? No, it simply creates a different kind of life within its confines.”

“But they’re so ugly and stunted,” Keisho huffed.

“Nonsense. Bonsai are quite remarkable and extraordinarily beautiful. It takes a lifetime to fully master the art of bending nature to one’s will. Did you know that if they escape their bindings, they grow back into a normal tree?” Katarite rose to her feet and resumed the endless task of raking the glistening white sand, a contented smile on her lips. “And you, my precious little Bonsai, will be the most extraordinary that ever lived,” she whispered to herself.

Keisho joined Katarite in the pool of sand and began dragging her rake half-heartedly behind her, leaving a myriad of rough, jagged lines in its wake, unlike Katarite’s perfectly straight rows.

“Where did we get up to in our history lesson?” Katarite asked after a few moments of silence.

“You were telling me about the fall of the empire.”

“It started slowly, as such things always do. Hatred and intolerance, followed by ripples of apathy and despair, flowed through society so gently that we didn’t even notice until it was too late. Greed, corruption and ambition outweighed everything else, until one day, we ran out of resources. The cracks were there for all to see, but we had become blind to them. In the end, there were more cracks than anything else and eventually the pieces simply couldn’t remain together any longer. And when that happened: the world imploded.”

Keisho gasped at the revelation, “What happened to everyone?”

“They perished.“

“Everyone?”

Keisho’s teacher nodded, her silence spoke more than a thousand words ever could.

“But you just said that the others were on their way.” Keisho’s words died on her lips as the enormity of Katarite’s admission that they were truly alone sunk in.

“Countless people sacrificed themselves to afford everything on planet Earth one last, fragile chance at survival,” Katarite continued.

“But what about us? How did we survive?”

Katarite paused for a moment as if deciding on which version of the truth to tell, the weight of the secret suddenly too great to bear a moment longer. Keisho was no longer a child; it was finally time for her to know her destiny.

“We created a bonsai universe.”

She picked up a handful of sand and let it run gently through her fingers. The pulsating plasma lights overhead, illuminating the minute specks as they fell onto the perfectly raked lines. “Each grain contains the DNA of a thousand animals.” She pointed to the carefully tended garden around them. “Each blade of grass and leaf is genetically engineered to store the seeds of different plants. Each brick in the pagoda: an encyclopaedia of humanity’s collected knowledge.”

Keisho’s mouth dropped open in wonder as she looked at her surroundings with newfound awe.

“And you, my precious, little Bonsai, will be the mother of nations.”

“What do you mean?” the girl asked, the look of wonder replaced by one of worried trepidation.

“Keisho means inheritance. You, my dear Bonsai, are mankind’s legacy. Every cell in your body contains enough genetic code to repopulate a thousand worlds.”

Katarite stared through the shimmering glass-like dome at the galaxy of stars speeding past them. She knew that somewhere, out there, in the immense vastness of space was a new garden waiting for the legacy of the bonsai tree to finally be released.

Cliff Hannan’s career has taken a quirky and somewhat circuitous route from catering to working as a croupier in top London casinos, before transitioning to roles in the British government and education sectors. When not writing, you’ll find him cooking, crafting his signature James Bond–inspired “Shaken, not Stirred” vodka martini, or exploring hiking trails in the Swiss Alps. Symbolism and human vulnerability are recurring elements in stories that effortlessly transcend emotion, perception and imagination. His debut novel, The Hive Codex, will be published by Quills & Cosmos Press in autumn 2026.

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