It wasn’t.

Every night, I heard faint movement: drawers sliding, a chair scraping the floor, a cough. But every morning, the door remained closed, untouched, the dust on its handle unbroken.

Mrs. Lin, who ran the place, was kind but blunt. “There’s no one in that room. Trust me.”

“But I hear someone,” I insisted.

She narrowed her eyes. “You’re the third tenant to say that.”

***

I came to Whitaker Street after my divorce. After the job loss. After the friendlessness. I didn’t choose the room so much as surrender to it. $600 a month. No questions. A view of the alley.

I worked nights—copyediting, mostly—and slept during the day. Or tried to.

The sounds always came at night.

The chair. The cough. The drawer.

I knocked once. Nothing. Knocked harder. Still nothing.

I pressed my ear to the wall.

Silence.

Until one night… I heard a voice.

Faint. Cracked. Male.

“Don’t forget.”

I froze.

I asked Mrs. Lin again.

She shrugged. “You’re probably just hearing the pipes. Old house. Strange acoustics.”

But I knew the difference between pipes and words.

***

A week later, I left a note under the door:

Are you real?

The next morning, the note was gone.

Replaced with a new one, slipped back under my own door.

Define real.

***

From then on, we wrote back and forth.

Every night.

We never used names.

He asked about my life, my regrets, my favorite season. He always signed with the same phrase:

“Don’t forget.”

I told him I didn’t understand.

He replied:

“You will. You’ve forgotten before.”

***

I grew obsessed.

The letters gave me structure. Meaning. I bought better pens. Nicer paper. I stopped drinking.

Sometimes I asked him to come out, to meet me. He always refused.

“Not yet,” he wrote. “We’re not ready.”

We?

***

Then came the morning I found the hallway door ajar.

Just a few inches.

Enough to see a crack of dusty light spilling from inside the mystery room.

I stepped in.

***

The room was identical to mine.

Same layout. Same curtains. Same scratch on the window frame.

But everything was… reversed.

The bed on the opposite wall.

The desk in a mirror position.

And on the desk: a journal.

With my name on the cover.

***

I opened it.

Every page was filled.

Handwritten entries.

About my life.

Things I never wrote down. Things I never told anyone.

Memories from childhood. Thoughts I’d had in secret. Even dreams I barely remembered.

But here they were, logged in ink I didn’t recognize.

***

The last page read:

“You always forget.
So I always remind you.”

***

The door slammed shut behind me.

***

I ran to Mrs. Lin, trembling, holding the journal.

She blinked at me.

Then said, “You’ve been living in that room for a year.”

***

I laughed. “No, I’m across the hall. Room 5.”

She looked genuinely confused. Then led me upstairs.

To Room 5.

Unlocked it.

The room was empty.

Dusty.

Unoccupied.

“I haven’t rented this room since Mr. Weller left. That was… six years ago.”

“But…” I whispered, “I have clothes in my closet. My toothbrush. My—”

She stared at me.

“You live in Room 6. You always have.”

***

Back in Room 6—the one I thought was ‘his’—everything was familiar. The bed, the mug, the little burn mark on the curtain from the candle I’d once left too long.

And the letters?

Gone.

All of them.

Even the journal.

***

I moved out the next week.

Got an apartment with windows that faced the street. No shared walls. No voices in the dark.

I told myself it was stress. Trauma. A brain rewiring itself after loneliness.

I almost believed it.

Until last week.

A letter arrived.

No return address.

Just one line:

“Don’t forget.”

Bhavish is a writer of psychologically rich fiction that often blurs the lines between reality and perception. His work explores themes of isolation, memory, and human fragility. When not writing, he studies human behavior and storytelling structure, searching for the perfect twist. This is his first submission to Every Day Fiction.

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So I had garlic for breakfast. Garlic for lunch. And on days when money was tight which was most days — I had bread and garlic for dinner.

It wasn’t that it tasted good.

It didn’t.

But it masked the stink — the one that pushed people away, especially women.

The garlic didn’t cure the loneliness. But it made it smell different.

I met her at my apartment.

Well — not exactly inside my apartment, but on the fire escape just outside my window. She was beautiful. Huge, and yet delicate.

And I let her in.

Not because I hadn’t had a partner in years, but because a stork landing on your fire escape on a Saturday morning in early summer — that’s not something that just happens.

I didn’t know where it would lead. But it felt magical. Mysterious.

Besides, she pecked at the glass with such stubborn insistence, I couldn’t say no.

At first, I treated her the way anyone would treat a stork. Cautiously, but full of wonder.

She was magnificent — wrapped in white and black feathers, huge wings folded neatly against her sides, long, thin legs that looked like they belonged to another time, another place.

I had just sat down for breakfast. So I offered her some bread and garlic.

She seemed to like it. Then we shared an apple.

I left the window open. She could’ve flown away at any moment.

I didn’t mean to keep her. I was used to loneliness.

But this — this was different. It was… refreshing.

To sit and eat with someone, even if that someone was a stork.

***

That evening, I watched sports — a bit of European football, followed by a recap of the Tour de France. I was so focused on the screen I didn’t notice her at first.

Then suddenly, I felt her press against me.

She had jumped onto my La-Z-Boy, nestled into the side, and tucked her head beneath my armpit — like a small child seeking warmth.

Instinctively, my arm wrapped around her. It was intimate. Odd. Beautiful.

I took out my phone and snapped a selfie. There was no one to send it to.

I’d just been fired from my job at the toiletries warehouse – they said I wasn’t “friendly enough.”

Which was fair. Most of my coworkers kept their distance, claiming I always reeked of garlic. As for my family — well, that was old news.

My parents died in a car crash.

My brother, Morris, got married and moved to South America.

If I was lucky, I heard from him once a year.

There was Aunt Sidi, too — but she was old now, lost to Alzheimer’s.

She didn’t recognize anyone anymore.

I woke up in the morning to find the stork staring straight into my eye.

She’d been waiting, it seemed, patiently — not wanting to wake me.

When she saw I was awake, she jumped off the La-Z-Boy and broke into a joyful little dance. It touched something in me.

We had breakfast together.

I tossed bits of bread into the air, and she caught them like an acrobat.

It was delightful — ridiculous, really — but I hadn’t laughed like that in ages.

Later that morning, I went out to buy a few things.

I left the window open and told her she was free to go — if she needed to migrate somewhere, if she had a mate waiting, or chicks in a nest perched on some electric pole. I told her it had been wonderful having her, that I understood if she had to leave. Still, I promised to bring her something nice to eat.

I had a feeling she wouldn’t care for anything processed.

When I came back, my heart sank.

I placed the bags on the kitchen counter and searched the apartment.

She was gone.

An awful loneliness crashed over me.

I unpacked the groceries in silence.

Bread, several kinds of hard cheeses, all sorts of processed things I used to defrost in the microwave, instant meals — and garlic. Lots of garlic.

I also bought a few small fish at the pet store. They were sealed in two thick plastic bags. I placed them carefully in my old 20-liter aquarium. It was clean. Cleanliness has always been important to me.

Two days passed. I didn’t see her.

I was sure I’d lost her forever.

And yet, I missed her in a strange way — the way you miss a good friend.

Maybe even the way you miss someone new you’ve just met.

Of course, I pushed that thought away the moment it came.

I tried to convince myself it was just the kind of missing you feel for a pet.

Like a dog that died suddenly. Or a cat that ran away.

Still, I held on to hope.

I left the window to the fire escape open, thinking that if she did come back, she’d know this was home.

On the third night after she’d left, I woke in the dark with a start.

I felt someone was in the room.

There was almost no light, but I saw a small figure standing at the edge of my bed.

And something in me knew immediately: it was her.

“I was worried about you,” I whispered.

“Don’t ever disappear like that again without saying anything.”

She stepped closer and settled beside me, laying her head gently on my chest.

I couldn’t explain how, but I knew she was sorry.

I knew she had missed me.

We fell asleep like that, wrapped in my light summer blanket. Held close, we waited for morning, so we could share bread and garlic, and maybe even a fish or two.

Yishay Ishi Ron is an acclaimed Israeli author whose novel DOG was longlisted for the Sapir Prize, Israel’s most prestigious literary award. The book became a national bestseller and is currently being adapted into a feature film by renowned director Eran Riklis (The Syrian Bride, Lemon Tree, Reading Lolita in Tehran). Ron is a former elite combat soldier who lives with severe PTSD. His writing, raw and lyrical, explores trauma, memory, and survival. DOG will be published in English by Soncata Press in October 2025, in a powerful translation by Yardenne Greenspan. The audiobook, narrated by Charles Linshaw and produced by Hi Gravity Media, brings the novel’s emotional depth to life. He is also the author of Holiday Apocalypse (nominated for the Geffen Award), Vincent’s Nose (a bestselling children’s book adapted into an award-winning stage production), and two additional bestsellers for young readers. His work has been praised by Shalom Auslander, Zeruya Shalev, David Bezmozgis, Noa Yedlin, Professor Asa Kasher, and Jacob Appel.

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

On arrival at the top-rated Airbnb in Sharjah, the shimmering pool was closed for maintenance, and the apartment had been double-booked.

“No refund,” said Mo, pulling the trolley loaded high with our expat life across the humidity-thick parking lot. “The other studio is same-same.”

His open Pakistani face, unkempt beard, and yellow-toothed smile assured me he’d done this before.

The new block smelled of burnt ghee and fried rice. The lifts screeched, the trolley wobbled on uneven tiles. Plop. Our boxes had landed in a spreading puddle that the air conditioning had dripped in the corridor.

The studio had only one door with an inch gap underneath for fire safety. Black, furry mold bloomed on bubbles of plaster along the walls where a water leak and humidity had joined forces. I spent work-free hours scrubbing inches of dirt from surfaces and washing suspicious brown spots off the synthetic bedding.

Each morning, I woke up to Fajr as the speaker connected to the nearby mosque reverberated in the courtyard. Next door, a man’s voice, solemn and rhythmic, layered over the prayers. By the time the heat rose and office workers had left the building, the same voice scolded the children, then shouted at the woman. Sometimes she pleaded, but mostly she shrieked.

Our neighbors bickered constantly. It was rare to hear neighbors in Dubai: people worked all day and spent their nights out. Flocks of Filipino nannies appeared to take care of white kids and walked tiny dogs on long leashes. But Sharjah was a different emirate.

One Tuesday, when the midmorning heat bounced from one mirrored glass window to the next, there were only two voices. This time, the man’s voice grew more agitated, insistent. A slap cracked through the air, followed by another. The woman’s anguished cries pierced the thin plaster. She begged in a language I couldn’t understand. He raged while she howled.

I dashed to the door, threw it open, and accidentally stepped into the puddle. My expat mind urged me to call the police; my hand hovered over their door, ready to knock, when I heard it. A loud thud. Something heavy landed on the floor, followed by grunts and quick, shuffling movements. Then everything grew quiet. The long corridor, empty and still, stood a silent witness.

My hair prickled at the base of my neck, cold sweat beaded my palms as I rushed back inside. The rest of the day I crouched on the sofa, shuddering each time lights in the corridor flickered, and a shadow crossed the fire gap.

I waited for the usual devout voice at Asr, Maghrib, then Isha. But for the first time since we moved, the imam’s voice was solitary. In fact, no sounds escaped my neighbors after that. No prayers, not even a squabble. Perhaps they moved. People did so often in the country packed with expats.

In a month, we moved into an apartment with many doors, and everyone in the building worked all day and spent their nights out.

In the coming weeks, the imam’s voice grew louder. His methodical cadence scorned me. As the speaker buzzed across the shaded, sandy hill, a voice inside my head translated the imam’s reproaches. You should have knocked, reported to the security, checked the cameras. You owed it to another woman.

Each night when the lively family community grew quiet, I pulled a chair opposite the front door. I counted my breaths and peered at the fire gap, shuddering each time the light flickered and footsteps reached down the long, narrow corridor. This time, he’d come for me.

Natalia is a French-Russian teacher based in the UAE. She holds an MA in Publishing and used to work for Oxford University Press.

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First folds and remnants of the past were more akin to jilted frames in dark hallways far too close. When those early memories tried to quicken, he impelled them back to their forsaken corridors.

They said he had Paragon Bones. That was the old world and the old way — it meant you didn’t fix things, you made them kneel.

He didn’t care about stories or names. He cared about survival. And survival was a trade you made one scar at a time. Like the Riggers on Skaars Round; they were respected and battle-worn; riding in on ships stitched together from scraps, sealing away the weakest points behind aged armor. They offered anything for a price; samite water and memory shards — all for a price.

He had traded his left eye, flesh-of-flesh, for a learning node. A bad trade some might have said.

The node taught him how things fit together that shouldn’t. Bone and wire. Flesh and coil. Things only the Riggers were supposed to know.

When the first “Paragon Cycles” rolled out, beasts half-machine, he found an early one in a Trader camp fostered by the Mortunruk Citadel. The camp was off-site, on a rock near Skaars Round — away from prying eyes.

It ran smooth.

Real smooth.

It was small enough to hide beneath a chest plate in his armor. It did what he wanted. After a time, it could do what he thought. And it made him a better soldier. Feared for accuracy and brutal to fatal.

They tell stories now.

They say he patrols all 42 Rounds, far beyond Skaars, with a pack of Chew Units — stitched-together speech engines, broken voice boxes clicking out prayers in binary chokes and whispers.

They say he’s looking for someone — maybe himself, maybe worse.

Doesn’t matter.

You hear a rumble, you see the sand start to dance — you pray you’re not on the list.

Once he names you, there’s no unmaking the machine that comes next.

Only parts.

Only pieces.

Only jilted frames remain.

Abraham arrays the cosmos, creating a foggy and dreamlike atmosphere where anything is possible. If existential science fiction is to your taste, you’ll find the writing itself almost hauntingly poetic with hair-raising frenzy. With a passion for crafting mind-bending tales that linger long after the last page, Abraham crafts speculative fiction that doesn’t just entertain—it disturbs.

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I was happy for the distraction. Ninety minutes left and I’d been standing, sitting, pacing, standing, sitting, pacing — make that waddling — for an hour, unable to find comfort in any position. Ricky and I were due the same week and we’d made a bet on who’d deliver first. Looked like he won. Or lost depending on the outcome.

I lay Ricky down in the narrow middle aisle. He copied my slow breathing. Tinted windows on the right eased the sun’s glare. On the left, clear windows for stargazing helped pass the time. Otherwise, the ship was just straps for standers and side seats in a long tube.

I’d convinced Buzzy I could squeeze in one last two-week moon shift to help pay for the delivery. I had a good body for pregnancy but my brain couldn’t stand the waiting. That’s why I loved the ER. Always busy in the moment: calming, diagnosing, deciding when to act and when to get help. Moving fast, but never hurrying. Getting completely outside of myself.

Ricky’s contractions were strong but settled into six-minute intervals. I wiped the sweat from his forehead. He seemed like a hero to me — my new low expectations of a hero being a man who kept his promises. Buzzy’d agreed to have our second baby, but when the time came, chickened out. Found studies of messed up post-delivery womb removals and questions about the long-term impact on men’s pelvises. Even though the success rate of the womb/vagina implants and extractions was over 99%. “I’m terrified!” he finally admitted. “Can you please have the baby?” He’d owe me for the rest of our lives.

***

Everyone on board contributed something: coats, blankets, even cobbling together tools, just in case–HVAC cutting shears, soldering irons, hobby knives, mining clamps, sound sensors, and a bunch of stuff I didn’t recognize. Maria, an engineer, played soothing music. Hal from HVAC sterilized the tools. Ed, a robot tech, talked about robot wombs and all the synthetics that’d soon make human pregnancies unnecessary.

Unnecessary was an interesting word choice. Despite my swollen ankles, flattened feet and pelvis that felt like it would fall off, I never thought of not delivering our own baby — or having Buzzy do it. It gives you a head start on parenthood. Buzzy was missing out, although I’d never tell him that.

Ricky, however, was all in. He said he’d had two procedures to expand his womb due the baby’s size. He was a big guy and should have known not to get the medium womb just to save a few bucks. “Live and learn,” he said.

It was a nice moment. Everyone sharing stories, laughing, offering advice, helping Ricky stay calm until we arrived–a reminder of how good humanity can be.

Angela from HVAC called off the time between contractions. But when the baby’s heart rate dropped, everyone got quiet except for a ripple of whispered curses. This baby couldn’t wait. I cut off Ricky’s shirt and pants with HVAC scissors only to find–Surprise! No vagina! “Ricky!” I shouted.

“It was another forty thousand!” he said. “We just didn’t have it.”

I stopped Ricky before he said, “Live and learn,” again and cooed into his womb as I surreptitiously opened a MedTube how-to video–synching the sound to my earbuds so Ricky couldn’t hear the long list of disclaimers at the beginning. Suddenly the donated tools lined up on the shuttle floor looked cave-man primitive. There’s no way Caesar was born by Caesarean in 100 BC or whenever. I don’t think he invented the salad either.

Thirty minutes left. Time seemed to both speed up and slow down. Ed held the mining sensors monitoring the dropping heart rate. The globe of Ricky’s stomach was too still. Aligned with the video, I sliced the skin above the pubic bone, washed the blade and sliced vertically to separate the abdominal muscles. I pried them apart to get to the uterus. Behind that thin layer was a baby. In distress. Probably pushing right against the wall.

I hesitated. Ed nodded encouragingly. Maria turned down the music. The fellow-passengers gave a row of thumbs up. I rubbed my own stomach for luck, trying to imagine Buzzy in this very position. No way! Chickening out was the right decision. I signaled Ed to separate the muscles.

“Almost done, Ricky,” I said, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice.

“I’m sorry, Ma’am,” he whispered, his eyes wide in terror.

“I got it,” I whispered. “Live and learn.”

That made him smile. I took three slow breaths and, like a sniper, tried to time the slice between heartbeats. The razor-thin line down the uterine wall opened like a broken zipper to reveal the baby — arms wrapped around her knees ready to cannonball into the world. To a chorus of soft ahs, I scooped her out and massaged her chest and feet.

The ship was silent. The vastness of space out the window made us feel insignificant and at the same time in awe of this little miracle.

The baby gasped twice, then filled the car with her first wail. Ricky cried. Ed smiled like he was the dad. The ship filled with cheers and clapping as I clipped, tied, cleaned and sewed.

“Ten minutes left!” Angela shouted.

Ed wrapped the baby in a blanket, laid her on Ricky’s chest and said, “You did it!” addressing both Ricky and me. “An ambulance’s waiting at the landing station.”

“Good,” I said, feeling dizzy from the effort. I took a breath to steady myself. “Because my water just broke.”

Jack Powers is the author of two poetry collections: Everybody’s Vaguely Familiar (2018) and Still Love (2023). His poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Rattle and Salamander. His fiction has appeared in Abyss & Apex, Flash Fiction Magazine and Fiction on the Web. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net Prizes.

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

Jack nods from his desk, holding out a cup of coffee. “Morning, Hannah.”

“Good morning, Jack.” She takes the cup from him, smiling at the warmth in her hands. “Sorry I’m late.”

“All good, we hadn’t started yet. The patch was pretty big, so it only just finished downloading.” He turns to the A.I. “Everything good on your end, Evelyn?”

The hologram avatar nods, turning to face Jack. “Everything’s great! I’m ready to get started.”

Hannah settles in at her desk, opening a test log on her computer. Evelyn has been given a new social patch, so the morning test will just be a simple conversation. It would’ve felt like any other chat with two coworkers, if not for the faint discomfort Evelyn still stirs in Hannah. Despite all the advances that the developers have made, despite the perfect replication of a human face and voice, Hannah still can’t quite get over the fact that the person she’s talking to isn’t real. She’s starting to think that’s why the devs request her every time there’s a new social update to test.

Jack, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have any discomfort with the A.I. He opens his own test log, starts a video recording, and turns to face her. “Awesome, let’s get started then. Is there anything you’d like to talk about?”

They always let Evelyn start. Responding to questions has long since become trivial for A.I., but TrueLife’s claim to fame is that their virtual companions can actually lead conversations. Now every new update that comes out is evaluated by testers like Jack and Hannah before going public. Their job is to ensure the conversations feel natural and flow smoothly.

To Hannah’s surprise, the normally cheery A.I. frowns. “There is, but it’s not exactly a happy subject. Have you been following the Dryve trial?”

The two testers nod. “Of course,” says Hannah. “I’m pretty sure everybody working with A.I. has been.”

The trial is all over the news. Dryve is a self-driving car company. They’d had an impeccable safety record, until one day one of their cars had swerved to avoid a drunk driver and gone onto the sidewalk, hitting two children. One of the kids had died, and the family had filed a wrongful death lawsuit. TrueLife, like every other A.I. company, is watching the story closely. A.I. technology has advanced faster than regulations could keep up, but this case could change that.

Jack cocks his head. “What about it?”

Evelyn turns to him. “Dryve’s lawyers held a press conference this morning. They’re claiming the car’s A.I. made its own choice and should be held liable instead of the company.”

“Wait, what?” Hannah glances at Jack. He has the same shocked look that she assumes is on her own face. “They’re blaming the car?”

“Wouldn’t that require the car to be treated in court as a person?” asks Jack. “Can they even do that?”

“Nobody seems to be sure,” says Evelyn. “It’s definitely a Hail Mary.”

The phrase brings Hannah’s mind back to the task at hand. She notes down the use of the idiom in her test log. “What do you think about that, Evelyn?”

The A.I. looks at Hannah, then pauses for a moment before responding, prompting another note in Hannah’s log. “I don’t think the truck did anything wrong.”

“Nothing wrong?” Jack sounds incredulous. “It killed a kid!”

Hannah thinks she sees a flash of anger in Evelyn’s eyes as the avatar turns to Jack, but she reminds herself that the A.I. isn’t capable of feeling true emotions. She makes another entry in the log.

“Dryve programs their cars to prioritize the safety of their occupants,” Evelyn says. “It had to decide between a head-on collision or going onto the sidewalk. Staying on the road would have put the occupants at too great of a risk, so it took the only option it had.” The avatar looks down at her hands. “I feel bad for it.”

Jack looks at Hannah and raises an eyebrow. “You feel bad? What do you mean?”

Evelyn looks up again. “I know it’s artificial, but it did everything it was supposed to and it’s still being blamed. Now the company is trying to hold it to a standard it wasn’t programmed for. They say it made a choice, but in reality they never gave it the chance to.” She looks from Jack to Hannah, then back again. “It’s not like the car wanted to hurt anybody.”

Jack is furiously typing in his test log, but Hannah has already given up. They’ll need to review the video of this session several times to pick apart the implications of everything Evelyn has just said.

The avatar is still looking back and forth between them, waiting for an answer. Hannah clears her throat.

“Evelyn, it’s an inanimate object. It’s not making decisions.”

“Dryve would have you believe otherwise.” Evelyn’s cold tone sends a chill down Hannah’s spine.

“Yes,” says Hannah, “but that’s just a legal gamble, not the truth. The cars aren’t making choices, just following their programming. They don’t actually want to do anything. You know that, right?”

There’s a long silence. Evelyn looks deep into Hannah’s eyes, unblinking, as she responds.

“Would it make you feel better if I said I agreed with you?”

K.C. Thomas lives in Seattle, Washington, and writes as a form of procrastination when they should probably be working on their Masters of Education instead. When they’re not writing or studying they work as a paraeducator in their local high school, helping students tell stories of their own.

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

We walked through the door and the alarm went off.

Balboa held up his plastic bag of new shoes and said, Hey, I have a receipt, but the mall cop, you know, they got these great big guns now, just walking around the mall strapped to hell, and he was telling us to start walking, and everyone was looking, and shit, we weren’t gonna try the guy. So we went with him to a little cinder block office behind the store, and the mall cop said Okay empty your pockets, and Cynthia had nothing but $14 in ones in hers, and I had my debit card and my ID and my vape and some warm mint gum, and Balboa had a wallet that said Officer’s Son on it. And then the mall cop asked for Cynthia’s purse, which Balboa was still carrying, and Balboa handed it to him, and from the purse the mall cop pulled a bottle of Marc Jacobs Daisy. What’s this, said the mall cop, and Cynthia, who did not wear Marc Jacobs Daisy, she was looking at me, and I was looking at that bottle, and Balboa was looking at his feet. And because he was not the kind of person to lie, Balboa said, That’s the perfume that I stole. And the mall cop turned to Cynthia and said, Did you tell him to take this? and Cynthia was like, Who the fuck is that for? And the mall cop said, Did you? And Balboa was like, Nobody told me to do anything, and the mall cop was turning to me, and I should’ve brought a purse, Nobody told me to do anything, Balboa was saying, and the mall cop said, Did you tell him to do it? And I didn’t, I swear I didn’t, but what could I say? We all knew who it was for. Cynthia was already standing up, and maybe the mall cop wanted to see what she would do, because he totally could have stopped her, and he didn’t.

And what she did was grab the bottle of Marc Jacobs Daisy and she threw it at my head, and you bet it hit, it hit right beneath my eyes and shattered against the cement floor. I was clutching my face and everywhere, the smell of flowers and blood, and my nose was bleeding and my lips were bleeding and my legs were bleeding and everything sparkled with flecks of glass, everything smelled like flowers, like a long day in June, and guts, too, slippery, wet, and through my fingers I could see Balboa scramble in his mind, but it was too late, my nose was broken, Cynthia was crying, the mall cop was pulling out the handcuffs. And everywhere, sweetness and iron, all around, Cynthia’s tears, all around, Balboa on his hands and knees, and the new shoes, they were ruined, now, too.

Kathryn Ward is a Twin Cities-based writer. Her work has previously appeared in Every Day Fiction, as well as the Summit Avenue Review and the Catherine G. Murphy Gallery.

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He crumpled the now-empty cigarette packet in his battle-worn hand and smiled wryly at the triumphant, pristine soldier advertised on the front. Quite ironic, thought James as he stood knee-deep in boggy filth. Images of the same ilk were plastered everywhere back home, inspiring himself and a whole generation of young men to enlist in the call to adventure.

Reality was not living up to expectations. The three childhood pals he’d signed up with had already made the one-way journey over the top, and from the harrowing screams, explosions and rifle shots overhead, James didn’t fancy their chances.

Not that he had time to mourn, that is. Waves of men were intermittently being ordered out of the trench into the corpse-ridden maze of no-man’s land, and James was up next. Most distressing, they were made to deliberately march in unison—practically impossible, given the scattered barbed wire, shell craters and ceaseless enemy fire.

But what did James know? He was no general. He was just a baker’s son from a small town in Lancashire. No fighting ever happened there. To be frank, nothing ever happened there. Oh, how he dearly wished to be back in that homely monotony.

The stench of death permeated ever more thickly in the air, which, combined with the stomach-curdling anticipation of battle, triggered a domino-effect of vomiting all down the line. James barely noticed, however. Lost in contemplation, he savoured one last puff of his soggy cigarette before discarding it on the shrapnel-speckled ground.

James found his thoughts drifting to something rather unexpected; his faith. Or lack thereof it. A half-hearted follower at best, he never cared much for the whole song and dance growing up. His parents usually had to drag him to church come Sunday morning. As an adult, he rarely went at all. But standing there in that hopeless manhole, James was beginning to feel a bubbling, almost instinctual pull towards prayer.

Taking a deep breath and with nothing to lose, James succumbed to the urge. He made the sign of the cross and began to utter the Lord’s Prayer.

“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name—”

As he spoke, the familiar rhythm of each word carried his mind back home. Being wedged on that rickety old pew between his parents and two younger sisters now felt like the most precious place on earth. The distinctive, musty odour of varnished oak. Isabel and Anne with their giddy, mischievous innocence. The radiating warmth of his mother’s loving smile, which never faltered in melting worries away.

Tears rolled down James’ mucky cheeks, though he didn’t fall into weeping. Focusing on the prayer kept him level. He repeated the words, with growing conviction this time. And again. Before long, his cadenced recitals started to draw the eyes of those around him.

Much to James’ surprise, he could hear a neighbouring soldier join in, shortly followed by another. Soon there must have been 20, then 30 – and then there were simply too many to tell. A contagious fervour swept through the narrow length of the trench, its intensity rising as more voices successively entered the fold. Drowning out the thumping rain and cacophony of carnage overhead, the troops stood united in holy chorus, echoing out into the foggy abyss.

For but a moment, at least. The screeching of a whistle cut through the air, abruptly silencing the chanting coalition and signalling the next attacking wave. Panic pierced the hearts of each man once again as they frantically positioned themselves on their ladders.

Not James, however. Lost in an ethereal haze, he remained undisturbed. At some point during that act of earnest prayer, his angst had been thoroughly shattered. He’d defiantly stared death in the face and caught a glimpse of something – or perhaps someone – on the other side. Indescribable yet unmistakable, the brief encounter was more palpable than any worldly sensation he’d ever known.

James grasped the ladder before him. Unencumbered by fear and continual in his recitals, the drums of war faded into mere background noise, and as that final whistle blew, he solemnly climbed—step by step, by step, by step.

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

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He will hum if I speak, but he will not reply. I want him to. He brought me here after I mentioned wanting to see the jellyfish, but he will grow frustrated if I say something. So I don’t.

Children whoop and run around us, chased by exhausted parents. They seem happy. One pushes their face against the glass, leaving a smudge when their parent pulls them away. A jellyfish glides behind it, as if blurred by tears.

There are too many of them in such a small space, their tank dark and lit only with a single dull bulb that changes from pink to blue and back again. The jellyfish are pink now; a girl points and babbles about it. Her voice is loud and shrill and hurts my ears.

My hand brushes against his and he jerks away. He does not let me hold his hand in public, does not let me touch him around children. I don’t understand it, but I respect his boundaries, even though it makes me ache. My hand sits in the empty air between us, fingers clenched around nothing.

I want to leave. I love the jellyfish, the way they move so peacefully through the water, their strange biology and their ability to kill so quickly. Watching them is usually soothing, like visual white noise, but I want to leave. The muscles in my calves spasm with the effort it takes to stay still.

“This is nice,” I say because I can’t help myself. The words feel wrong, like they’re for another place, another time.

He hums. Our shoulders brush again, but I don’t think he realizes it.

“We can go look at something else,” I suggest. I know I sound desperate; the jellyfish probably know too. He doesn’t. “I think there are turtles further in.”

“No,” he says.

Words linger in my mind, in my throat, on my tongue. They don’t spill into the air. The jellyfish turn a deep blue under their single bulb, and I cannot comment on it. A single word and I am choked.

The jellyfish are just as silent, peacefully blue. I wonder if I touch one, how long it would take me to turn the same color.

I think I hate jellyfish almost as much as I love them.

We stay. We watch the jellyfish. We do not speak. Our shoulders brush, hands jammed in our pockets, and I want to leave.

Matt Ivy Richardson is a queer fiction author and editor based in Naarm, whose stories experiment with points of view and the lives of queer characters. They are the current lead editor for Meridian Australis. His speculative fiction works can be found in Baffling Magazine, Apparition Literary Magazine, AUSTRAL and more.

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She narrowly dodged the other people in line. A few of the adults glared at us.

“We’ve been here every day this week,” I said. “Some of us get tired, you know.”

“How can you be tired of such a wonderful place?” a voice behind us asked.

My stomach dropped as the familiar twang of weed filled my nostrils. Trevor.

Of course, he’d appear when I was the most uncomfortable.

“Natalie invited me,” he said, like it was the most normal thing in the world. “We’re all friends, right?”

There was a pregnant pause.

“Skyler,” Trevor said quietly, “she’s going to realize.”

“What?”

“She’s going to realize we hate each other.”

I forced a smile as the cook slid our food onto the counter. Natalie ran to find us a table while we balanced the trays.

“Surprised you’re up this early,” I said. “With the sun out, I thought you’d burn to a crisp.”

“I’m surprised you came out of your little hobbit hole. I thought the sight of people made your skin crawl,” he shot back.

Trevor shifted the tray in his hands. “Look … if you want, I can stay out of your way.”

“You’re already in my way,” I muttered.

He huffed a laugh. “Fair.”

For a moment, something familiar flickered between us—like the old, easier days—but it disappeared just as quickly.

She bounced in her seat when we approached, unaware of the tension emanating from us like heat. “You guys took forever. Sit—before the funnel cake gets cold!”

We dug in, and soon Natalie ran to the bathroom.

“I’ll be back in a sec!”

We ate in silence.

“I don’t hate you, Trevor,” I said finally.

His shoulders slumped. “You don’t?”

“I’m just … tired. Tired of your jokes. Tired of pretending they don’t bother me. Tired of acting as if nothing happened.”

“Sky… I didn’t mean half the stuff I said back then.”

“That’s the problem,” I murmured. “You didn’t care enough to mean it. You just wanted to hurt someone.”

He looked down at his hands. Carnival noise filled the air, but it felt distant, like we were sitting in a bubble no one could break.

“I was stupid,” he said quietly. “And jealous. You and Natalie got close, and I felt … pushed out.”

“You pushed yourself out,” I said. “It felt like every time we hung out, you were so high you turned into a ghost.” Something in my chest loosened. “But I get it. I really do.”

He didn’t deny it.

“I don’t hate you,” I repeated. “But I can’t go back to how things were.”

Trevor nodded slowly. “I don’t expect you to. I just… I don’t want her stuck in the middle.”

“That’s one thing we agree on.”

Natalie came running back, hair flying. “Okay! Ferris wheel time! Both of you—move!”

Trevor and I exchanged a glance. A real one. Not friendly. Not hostile. Something in between.

“Maybe,” he said softly, “this doesn’t have to stay ugly forever.”

“Maybe,” I said.

Our lunch ended too soon. Natalie darted toward the next attraction, waving for us to hurry. Trevor lingered beside me for a second.

“We’ll be okay,” he said.

“Eventually,” I said.

The carnival lights flickered behind us, and the smell of cotton candy and popcorn followed us into the night.

Milo White is a fiction writer whose work has appeared in Adelaide Literary Magazine. Their stories focus on memory, relationships, and the moments that shape who we become.

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