A light scratching sound. Coming from somewhere deep within the walls. I freeze in place as the suspicious noise pricks my ears.

Scrrrrratch-scratch-scratch… Scritch-scratch…

Others might mistakenly assume the house’s structural faults, or blame the plumbing. But this is a false lead. I am convinced that these noises are the stirrings of a more malicious presence. Intrigued and wishing to investigate further, I leave the comfort of the couch cushion and approach the air intake vent. I drop low to the ground, so I can hear better. Soon enough my patience is rewarded: a tiny whisper emanates from a far-off hidden place, uttered by a being with a lung capacity much smaller than my own.

It’s confirmed, then. I know what I’m dealing with now. The things inside the walls — I have seen their kind before. My housemates remain clueless, their senses dulled with their screens and the substances they consume. But I can hear the creatures, and one truth is becoming clearer than glass.

They do not deserve to exist.

This is not information I can share with my roommates, even if I could find a way I wouldn’t do it. Because this feels personal. Primal. Something deep unlocks within me, as I realize the inhabitants of these walls are my mortal enemies. While they’ve been careful to leave behind few outward clues of their parasitic lives, I can’t be the only one who has sensed them. Crafty and clever, they travel under the cover of night, when darkness falls over the house and most of us are dead asleep.

Most, but not all. I creep across the carpeted floor, treading as lightly as I can. Tactical, delicate steps that wouldn’t spook a moth, let alone one of those abhorrent invaders in my walls. Something internal compels me to pursue them. My mouth salivates at the mental image of them in my grasp. They’re so close I can smell them. Hear their tiny heartbeats as they speed up ever faster… until the moment I stop them forever.

First, I make sure everyone else is asleep. They do not need to bear witness to what’s about to happen. This is between me and the creatures in the walls. They mock me with their infinitesimal voices, a hellish chorus invisible to most, but not to me. Never me.

A soft peep sounds from the kitchen. I pause, willing my eyes to adjust to the darkness quicker. Then I see it.

The creature is alone, and it’s crouched over something even tinier than it. Feasting. The enemy is smaller than I expected, but it truly doesn’t matter. As soon as I home in on it, I feel galvanized with purpose. Its very presence offends me, nearly sending my dinner back up my esophagus. I manage to soldier on despite the close call.

I sprint across the floor, giving chase to the intruder. As if supernaturally endowed with extra sentience, it somehow knows I’m closing in, drops its payload and darts away. My legs move ever swifter as I follow the bastard down the basement steps.

The dampness slices at my nostrils, making me flinch. I hate this place, everything about it disgusts me. The mold blossoming in the southwest corner, the wet ring pooling around the sump pump every time it rains outside… But now I am forced to prioritize. I must either choose comfort and dryness (thus retreating with my tail between my legs), or risk the momentary distress that nets me a sweet reward.

I go for the suffering that gets results. Leaping over the sump pump puddle, I reach my enemy in three quick bounds. Yes! It’s in my grip! Struggling while its hateful maw yelps those trademark high-pitched pinpricks. Even as it begs for its life, I despise it. It’s the thing that shouldn’t exist. Especially where I am. The two of us are mutually exclusive.

In a flash-quick motion, my jaws part and I bite off its head at the neck. It’s a clean cut, and I’m pleased. The blood filling my mouth is warm and brings its own reward. There’s one kind of dampness I don’t mind. No, I don’t mind it at all.

I make quick work of the body, chewing up the bones and lightly choking on the fur-covered flesh. But I get it all down, huffing it greedily, as if I hadn’t eaten dinner a mere hour ago. But no processed food could ever live up to a live meal begging for mercy. I leave some soggy remains to be discovered later; of course my roommates will know who did it, but at that point the deed will be done. I will have lived out my purpose, and they can only offer me gratitude for the service I selflessly provided.

But the hunt is far from over. I hear a new scratching, this one coming from a crack inside the foundation. Blood-drunk but curious, I tiptoe over and listen. The creatures must sense me looming outside their hidey-hole, because they quiet down. My face is resolute as I lick the blood off my cheek. They can mourn their fallen comrade all they want, but the same fate will befall them all.

I will track down and eat them. One by one I will drag them from their holes — with my teeth if I have to — and crush their sumptuous little bones. Then I will drink their lifeblood. Lick it off the floor if there’s any left. And afterwards, I will curl up in my spot on the window sill for a well-earned nap.

Mike Rusetsky is a Ukrainian-American author of dark and speculative fiction with a satirical bite. His work has appeared in The Brussels Review, Across the Margin, Carnage House, Tales from the Crosstimbers, Sometimes Hilarious Horror, Trollbreath Magazine, and numerous themed anthologies of horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and crime fiction. Mike is an active member of the Horror Writers Association and the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association. He lives in Columbus, Ohio with his beautiful wife and their spoiled Alaskan Malamute dog.

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

She adjusted the lighting. Warm tones, soft filter, a faint sparkle. Her manager said the sparkle made her look more “achievable.” Jenna smiled — not too much teeth — and hit record.

“Hey fam, it’s me, and today I’m finally trying the GlowSkin Subdermal Mask. Y’all have been asking, and I’m super excited-slash-scared. Let’s go!”

She popped the box open. Inside: a flat disc with needle-like petals curled inward, like a steel chrysanthemum. A button blinked yellow on top.

“This is the main module. It attaches right under the cheekbone,” Jenna said, lifting it. “And before y’all come for me, yes, it is FDA-adjacent. But you know I like to live on the edge.”

She laughed. The device whirred softly in her hand. She pressed it under her left cheekbone. It stuck with a sharp click.

Jenna winced. The petals unfurled. Twelve needles drove under her skin at once. Her left eye watered. She smiled harder.

“You feel that little pinch? That’s the microneedles injecting the pigment base and flex-lattice.” She moved her head a fraction. Gold light clung to her cheek, soft and uneven, like old gift wrap peeled from a box.

“Now the cool part,” she said, and double-tapped the blinking button.

The needles jolted forward. A ripple passed through her face like a spasm. For a second, the skin sagged and then restructured — tighter, glowing, almost too smooth.

Jenna blinked. Her left cheek didn’t move right when she smiled. She turned back to the camera.

“That’s the auto-lift function. It’s temporary but sooo worth it.”

She paused recording. Her cheek stung like sunburn over a bruise. The FAQ said that was “normal inflammation.” She knew it wasn’t. She opened the second compartment.

Inside were four small ampoules. One pink, one green, one blue, one clear. She picked the clear one — “Neutral Bloom” — and loaded it into the applicator gun.

“Okay! Time for lip infusion. You’ve seen this on my girl Demi, but we’re gonna do it live.” Jenna pressed the gun to the center of her bottom lip and pulled the trigger. There was a wet snap, like bubble wrap. Her lip pulsed, then began to expand.

“It tingles,” she said through her teeth. “But like, in a good way.”

The color in her lips deepened. The gloss looked permanent. In a way, it was.

By the end of the demo, her cheek was twitching intermittently and her bottom lip wouldn’t fully close. She still had to do the eyes.

The EyeThreads came last. Delicate wires you guide through your lower lid, hooking them along the inner rim. It hurt worse than threading a needle through your own earlobe — which she had once done, live, for a collab.

She paused before opening the last tray. Her face itched. The pain was rising behind her eye, and the GlowSkin hadn’t given her the “natural lift” as promised. It looked like a tension blister.

But the comments were already flooding in.

“QUEEN.”
“I’d let that chrysanthemum ruin me.”
“Is it safe for teens? Asking for my daughter (and maybe me lmao).”

Jenna smiled again. Full teeth this time. The GlowSkin pulled too tight across her gums, but that could be fixed in post.

“Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and click that little bell. Beauty is evolution, and you’re watching me molt.”

She raised the EyeThreads.

“Let’s bloom.”

Yoram Ong is a writer based in the Philippines. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s, The Penny Pub, and more.

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“My parents…they want a traditional family, Yuki-chan,” he’d said, the honorific a tiny, twisting knife. “A wife who can…you know.”

She knew. A wife who was born a wife. A wife whose past didn’t require explanation at family gatherings. The future they had built over three years, a delicate glass sculpture, shattered by the hammer of tradition.

Her Yokohama apartment, once their cozy nest, felt vast and accusatory. His favorite mug still sat by the sink. His scent lingered on the pillows. For weeks, Yuki moved through a gray fog, her reflection in the mirror a stranger she didn’t have the energy to console.

Her friend, Akari, intervened. “You can’t just wilt,” Akari had insisted, snatching Yuki’s phone. “You’re a catch. A beautiful, kind, brilliant woman. Ken is an idiot.” Akari’s fingers flew, downloading a dating app. “Just look. No pressure.”

Yuki had scoffed, but later, in the lonely quiet of the night, she scrolled. A gallery of hopeful faces, each a potential for more heartbreak. She was about to delete the app when a profile caught her eye.

The photo was unassuming. A man with kind eyes and a slightly shy smile, standing in front of a wall of vintage records. His name was Akito. His bio was short: “Trans man. Designer. I can talk for hours about 70s funk and good coffee. Looking for a genuine connection.”

Her finger hovered over the screen. With Ken, her identity had been a delicate subject, a footnote he hoped she’d never mention. He loved her despite it. The thought of being with someone where it wasn’t a subject to navigate, but a shared starting point, was both terrifying and exhilarating. She swiped right.

It was an instant match.

Their first messages were tentative, revolving around music. He recommended an obscure funk band; she sent him a picture of her latte art. There were no loaded questions, no clumsy inquiries about her “journey.”

They met at a small, quiet kissaten in Motomachi. Akito was even handsomer in person, with a low, gentle voice that calmed the frantic hummingbird in her chest. He had a small scar above his eyebrow that crinkled when he smiled.

“It’s nice,” he said, gesturing around the coffee shop, “not having to do the pronoun dance.”

Yuki sank back into her chair, feeling the rigid set of her spine soften. “Or the ‘so when did you know?’ speech.”

He laughed — a warm, genuine sound. “God, yes. As if it’s a single, neat anecdote for their curiosity collection.”

In that moment, the fog around Yuki dissipated. With Ken, she had always felt like an ambassador for her identity, carefully curating her story to be palatable. With Akito, she was just Yuki. Their shared language already existed, unspoken, freeing them up to talk about everything else: his passion for typography, her love for classic cinema, their mutual despair over the latest season of a popular anime.

Their dates became a weekly ritual. A walk through Yamashita Park, a ramen crawl near Yokohama Station, a quiet evening in his apartment listening to records. He never made her feel like a conquest or a curiosity. He saw the strength in her survival, not the tragedy. He once traced the faint scar on her wrist from a long-ago surgery and said, “This is a map of how you found yourself. It’s beautiful.”

Yuki had cried later that night, not from sadness, but from a profound, aching relief. Ken had never touched her scars. He had loved the woman she had become, but he shied away from the evidence of the journey itself. Akito cherished the entire map.

One evening, sitting on a bench at ?sanbashi Pier, the city lights painting ripples on the dark water, Yuki found herself rubbing her bare ring finger again. But this time, the absence felt like an empty space waiting for something new.

Akito followed her gaze. He didn’t ask. He gently took her hand, his own warm and solid around hers. His thumb stroked the pale band of skin.

“I was with someone,” Yuki said, the words coming out softer than she expected. “A cis man. He wanted a different kind of future.”

Akito nodded, his eyes fixed on the sea. “The kind that comes in a pre-approved box.”

“Yes.”

He turned to her, his kind eyes searching hers. “I’m not interested in boxes, Yuki. I’m interested in you.”

He didn’t need to say he loved her. Not yet. The love was in the way he saw her, the way he held her hand, the way he understood the silent language of her scars. Looking at him, bathed in the glow of the Minato Mirai skyline, Yuki knew. The phantom weight was gone. Her hand, held firmly in his, felt perfectly, wonderfully full.

Toshiya Kamei (she/they) is a queer Asian writer who takes inspiration from fairy tales, folklore, and mythology.

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Do you read by electric light? Oh, I’m sure for years, squinting at your copy of Great Expectations by the spark of a candle on your Davenport, was a familiar experience. But here in the twentieth century, we can now rely on the light bulb.

Doubtless you think Mr. Edison is responsible for that. You are mistaken.

Were I to speak the name Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim, would it mean anything to you? It might if you fought in the Boer War, or perhaps the Boxer Rebellion. If so, you would’ve used a Maxim, the world’s first automatic machine gun. I understand at this moment, our boys are using them in the Great War.

Anyway, Sir Hiram, a former Yank, as a matter of fact, is known for such creations — and here, in this portfolio, I have, at last, irrefutable proof he filed the patent for the invention of the light bulb before Mr. Edison. In Menlo Park, I will present my evidence in a court of law.

Ah ah — I must insist you do not touch it. Since disembarking from the ship in New York and boarding this train, I have had reason to believe I am being… followed. You’ll forgive me if I take precautions with its safety.

I have been in Sir Hiram’s employ for thirty years, ever since moving to London from Blackpool in my youth. Perhaps I flatter myself by stating I helped him create items like the Maxim gun, or hair-curling irons or steam pumps. When it comes to assembling the necessary materials according to his specifications, however, or noting the results of his experiments, my role in these endeavors is indisputable. I admit to a degree of self-interest in setting the record straight on the matter of the light bulb patent. Why not? I dare say it has the potential to change the world.

Without going too deeply into the circumstances that led to Sir Hiram’s dispute with Mr. Edison, let me say an employee of Sir Hiram’s violated his trust with regard to patent law, and Mr. Edison took advantage of the situation.

Sir Hiram would’ve voyaged to America himself to settle the matter, but he suffers from bronchitis; indeed, I regret to say he has lived with the ailment most of his life. Hence I get to see the States while acting on his behalf. Excuse me a moment…

Forgive me. As I said, I am certain a pair of unknown men have followed me since arriving in New York. I think they’re on this train as we speak. My suspicion is they are in Mr. Edison’s employ and may do me harm. Alas, I cannot prove it. It could be paranoia, but one hears stories, even from the other side of the Atlantic…

Enough. I shall put it out of my mind.

***

New York City
May 1915

At the bank of the Hudson River, cargo trucks come and go from the grand, arched entrance to Pier 54. I slump within its shadow, watching cars with white-walled tires and passengers in derbies and dark trenchcoats swarm all about.

I sigh. The portfolio containing my documents is gone and it’s my fault.

When I left the train and checked into the hotel, hunger overwhelmed me. The bellman took my luggage, including my portfolio, upstairs and I entered the dining room on the ground level. “Dine” is an insufficient verb to describe my four hours there. Five courses, plus cognac and pipe smoking at the bar. I discussed the Great War with an architect with business interests in Europe, concerned whether or not America would be drawn into the conflict. Pleasant chap.

Upstairs in my room, my portfolio had vanished. The bellman swore there was none and no one from the front desk could prove I had it. In looks, it was indistinguishable from my other luggage.

I believe the bellman conspired with Edison’s men. They bribed or blackmailed him. The last time I glimpsed them was when I disembarked from the train. They could have followed me to the hotel. They would have had the opportunity to intercept the bellman. But this is conjecture.

Did they even work for Edison? I’m unsure, but the timing of the disappearance raises questions in my mind.

I moved to another hotel. Days later, I kept my appointment at Menlo Park’s City Hall, but without my portfolio, my case for Sir Hiram as the original light bulb patent holder could not be made.

My despondent state caused me to miss my scheduled train back to New York. Before I caught another, I stopped at the original hotel, determined to recover my property. My ship would depart soon, but I needed to settle this. Another search of the premises by the staff revealed nothing. The desk man offered remuneration, but what value could mere cash offer?

When I arrived at Pier 54, the ship had sailed.

My only option now is to wire Sir Hiram for more money. He will understand.

I can re-board the Lusitania when it returns from England.

***

En route to London
two months later

Imagine. A missing portfolio meant the difference between life and death for me. These past weeks have been spent dwelling on the very subject.

Now, I am grateful to Almighty God to be going home, alive — but wait. Have those two men on the starboard side of the ship been watching me?

No. All this traveling has addled my senses. I no longer have my portfolio; I pose no threat to Edison anymore!

But I still have the knowledge of Sir Hiram’s light bulb plans. If they don’t have the portfolio, they can settle for me… and where on this ship could I run if they make their move?

They are mere fellow passengers. They have nothing to do with Edison. I’ll go talk to them. Perhaps they’ll invite me to dinner.

Perhaps…

This will be a long voyage home.

Since 2021, Rich Watson has been writing about twentieth-century pop culture biweekly, plus original fiction, and is working on a novella. He enjoys baseball, cooking and hiking. He lives in New York City.

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I park in the church across the street rather than join the line of cars dropping off. I’m not alone in this choice; plenty of parents believe moving constantly on foot is faster than stopping and starting in the car. It’s cold, but Simon and I are both dressed for later in the day. Fall in Texas means figuring out what to wear on days with forty degrees between the highs and lows.

Simon slept in while his older sister Emily and I got ready for the day. As he climbs out of the car, clutching at a half-eaten cereal bar, I notice his long hair still needs combing. His lunch is good, though. Healthy. A thermos of soup, grapes, and cherry tomatoes. He likes to put a tomato in his cheek and pretend it’s his tongue. Then he bites into it, and I act horrified. Or at least he liked this when he was four. I have no clue what he does during lunch at school. It’s his fourth week since starting at public school. He already seems so different, so much more confident. The work is easy compared to the private school where he spent the last two years. He is humble about being the best reader in class.

Simon takes my hand as we start the trek across the parking lot. An added bonus of walking the last bit to school: parking lots and street crossings are still ingrained as a place to hold hands. I remind myself daily how soon it was before his sister Emily started pulling away. Though she was old enough to remember life before her mother drowned at sea.

“You actually have to say the Pledge of Allegiance,” Simon says. “And the Texas pledge.” The topic was from last week — I’m glad it’s been on his mind. We step through the grass briefly to get from the parking lot to the sidewalk, and he lets go of my hand. The dew from the grass soaks through my shoes.

“You don’t have to,” I say. “You can just stand there quietly.”

“I tried just moving my lips, but people kept looking at me.”

We both stop talking as we approach the crosswalk. The crossing guard switches on his hearing aid as he walks towards us from the other side of the street. “Hold on, wait for me,” he says. Simon and I stop a solid pace into the crosswalk. The crossing guard’s skin is almost as gray as his hair in the dim light of dawn. I hate how dark it is in the mornings before Daylight Saving ends. Lights from a passing car reflect off his vest. “Good morning,” he says, holding up his stop sign.

I nod towards him, and Simon looks at the ground as we pass. There is no one else crossing with us. “Have a blessed day,” he says. The words irritate me — I don’t understand what he wants to say. Am I supposed to sneeze?

“You can’t let other people make your decisions,” I say, once we are out of earshot. “If you want to say the words, it’s fine. But what other people think about you — that doesn’t matter.”

Simon nods. “I think the first bell already rang,” he says. My watch shows 7:42, still eight minutes before the second bell. The school was right ahead. I can see the flagpoles. The Texas and U.S. flags flop lazily in the mostly still cold.

Cars and kids converge on the school. Everyone else is wearing jackets. Simon has one in his bag if he wants to put it on. Once we get inside the school, I kneel to hug him.

“Dad, not yet.” He doesn’t want to be late; I can tell by how he’s rushing away.

“I thought you wouldn’t want your friends to see,” I say.

“Their moms all wait until they leave them.” He said moms, and it stings — maybe since I haven’t heard him say the word in a while. The sheer volume of moms he must see here, though, every day. It must affect him.

“I think I’m going to say the pledge,” Simon says. We’re in the first-grade hall, 7:47.

“As long as it’s something you want to do,” I say.

“They’re just words. It makes my teacher happy.”

We make it to class two minutes before the bell. Simon puts his backpack in his cubby. The teacher sits at her desk and lets the kids talk before the bell. Simon lets me give him a hug and kiss before he sits down.

“Bodies of water.” These words identify pictures hanging in the hallway — the first graders made each type of body of water from cut-up pieces of blue paper glued onto white cardstock. I stop to find Simon’s. His has a river going into a lake and a wooden dam with a brown crayon beaver smiling nearby. Beavers made lakes, too; it wasn’t all humans. And I bet there are ponds—plenty of ponds too humble to be lakes.

It’s difficult to wait for the crossing guard without Simon in tow. Picture it — a woman in a black Explorer waving for me to walk before Yellow Vest is even off the curb, turning his hearing aid on for me. The woman waves again, and I walk. “Have a blessed day, young man.”

They’re just words. I’m supposed to say thank you. I’m holding my hand to shield my eyes against the sun rising over the houses around us, trying to find the strength Simon has to say the words I know I’m supposed to say. If you zoom out far enough, the same sun shines on the whole continent, surrounded by oceans — enclosing our bodies on land.

Walker Smart is a writer and performer living in Denton, Texas. He earned his MFA in creative writing from Queens University of Charlotte and is the prose editor for Thimble Lit Mag.

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I grew up in military housing — straight lines, clean corridors, watchful neighbors. Even happiness had rules. Boys wrestled and played war; I hovered at the edges, never fully inside my own skin. With the girls there was breathing room. I remember cheap lipstick that tasted like plastic and the click of toy bracelets on my wrist. For a few hours I felt… not brave, but safe.

Then safety ended. My mother’s look turned sharp. My father’s silence filled rooms. I understood what was allowed and what would be punished, so I packed parts of me away. At night the same thoughts came back: Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m sick. But desire doesn’t vanish just because you order it to.

At school there was Navid — quiet, sealed off, like a door you couldn’t open — and Sasan, loud and always mocking. We argued in public, but sometimes, when no one watched, his hand stayed on my shoulder too long. To others it meant nothing. To me it meant I wasn’t imagining everything.

High school taught me another truth: being touched isn’t the same as being loved. Amir Ali walked around with a hard face, like the world owed him something. I hated that I wanted him. After a stupid game and one long look, we slipped into secret kisses and quick meetings — the kind of relationship that survives only in shadows. He told me I calmed him down. I believed it, with my whole body. Then he married. The door shut as if it had never existed. I carried him anyway, like a photograph you never show.

After him came Hooman — bright, restless, always chasing an exit. We met to study; studying turned into late-night talks and reckless closeness. It was thrilling, but it didn’t change our lives. We drifted apart, and I learned how compromise tastes.

Living with male roommates felt like being close to a fire. Some nights ended in strangers’ beds — not love, just hunger. Around that time I saw Reza, a friend of my roommate, and my chest tightened. I couldn’t approach him as myself. I found a photo, and on the back of it an address. The idea came — wrong, but tempting: write as someone else. I made “Niloufar,” a girl stitched from my wish and fear, and hid behind her name just to be near without being seen.

Military service left me tired and hollow. Later I lived with Nariman — young, curious, not yet hardened. I tested the line again: a joke, a look, a touch that pretended to be accidental. For a short time we became more than roommates. Then it ended quickly. He moved out, and the apartment sounded emptier afterward.

Then Shahrouz entered my life — older, steadier, running from a family that would never understand. At first we spoke carefully, like people used to being punished for honesty. One night it simply happened: no speeches, just two men in the dark reaching for warmth. With him, briefly, I didn’t have to perform. But nothing in my life ever stayed.

By thirty, my family’s pressure turned into a wall. “It’s time.” “A man has to.” The wedding felt like a play staged to calm everyone else. A child came later. I loved the child, and still guilt sat in my throat because the child was born inside a lie. Night by night I slept farther from my wife. Intimacy felt like drowning. We tried fighting, silence, therapy — anything that could fix what was never built right.

Eventually she found love elsewhere. When I confronted her, she didn’t deny it. She only said, tired and plain: “You were never really mine.” She was right. We separated without screaming — no heroism in it, just emptiness. Our child went with her family. I left with a suitcase and the quietest kind of defeat.

Later, in a chatroom, I met Saeed. He was patient, gentle, uninterested in proof. “I don’t want you to be just a name on a screen,” he said. With him it started to feel real: morning greetings, goodnights, songs shared, memories traded like small gifts. His voice notes carried warmth. In his voice there was no mockery, no bargain — just a simple steadiness. For a while I caught myself planning a future: a real meeting, a real hand held in daylight.

One day he asked, “Can I come see you?” My heart dropped. I wanted it so badly I could taste it — and I was terrified. What if the real me didn’t match what he’d imagined? I delayed — sick, busy, later. Saeed didn’t pressure me. “I’m here when you’re ready,” he said.

But I never became ready. His messages shortened. The voice notes stopped. The mornings emptied out. Then one day there was nothing at all. I didn’t blame him. I only carried him like another loss I wasn’t allowed to mourn in public.

By fifty, I stopped chasing — bodies, names, approval. Not out of drama. Out of survival. I began writing again, not as Niloufar, not behind a mask, but as myself. I listened to santur and daf, music that demanded nothing. Some nights I lit a candle and sat by the window and let my thoughts come and go.

People said, “You’ve changed. You’re quieter.” I smiled, because they didn’t know: this silence was no longer emptiness. It was a room I could finally live in.

And when I look in the mirror now, I don’t see someone broken. I don’t see shame. I see someone whole — in his own quiet way.

Seyed Mohsen Parsa is an Iranian writer whose flash fiction explores identity, self-denial, and the quiet damage of growing up where desire is policed. His work often follows characters who mistake fear for normality—men who don’t yet have the words for what they feel, and who learn too late how much silence can cost. In stories set against everyday Iran, love appears as something ordinary and dangerous at the same time: a glance held too long, a name borrowed online, a life arranged to satisfy family and survive society. He writes in English and Persian.

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Years ago, he built me an entire bike from parts, assembling each piece while drinking a beer or two in the garage. One night, I brought out a plate of my mom’s meatloaf for him. His fingers were covered in black bicycle grease but he ate anyway, shoveling down massive forkfuls, and returning to his project while chewing. He promised to have it finished before school let out.

With black handlebars, a bright orange frame, and a black leather banana seat, the bike matched the high school colors. Heavy duty tire treads growled down a hill. The shiny chrome chainwheel sparkled like a diamond in the sun.

But I hated riding that orange bike. I wanted a normal one, a Trek or a Schwinn, like my friends.

Inside my own garage, my dad whispered in my ear, “The pedal axle is frozen, kid. Use the vise-grips.” A black grease stain quickly appeared on his white v-neck undershirt. “Clamp the grips, and hit ‘em with the mallet.”

My dad made it sound so easy, after I’d labored for hours, sweating, grunting and cussing at the dumb bike that wouldn’t sit still. I only managed to round every flat edge with my cheap crescent wrench. Now, my dad’s vintage vise-grips wouldn’t lock. Were they broken? Was I doing it wrong? Finally, with one more grunt, the old grips bit down.

With a swing of the rubber mallet, the vise held, and the pedal axle turned inside the crank arm. I breathed a tremendous sigh of relief and thanked my dad. I installed the new pedals with a textured tread, making the SE Ripper safer and easier to ride.

With a big grin, my son tested out his new pedals on the driveway. He asked me where I learned to fix bikes and I smiled.

Sometimes, I still talked to my dad, even though he’d been dead for thirty years.

After he died, I tore apart that orange bike, piece by piece. When I tried to rebuild it, I realized that I had no idea where to begin.

Read Ryan Standley’s award-winning novels, To the Top of Greenfield Street, and When To Fire. Ryan, a high school teacher, lives with his wife and kids near Boston.

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It was only £40. Charlene called the number: a Margaret Pierce with a croaky voice and a hint of deafness. Charlene drove to the address: an old, rather scruffy ground-floor division with a broken front step and a small garden gone to seed. Charlene looked at the cabinet, and her face fell: it was incomplete. It must have been attached to a corner wall, for one side was missing. Maybe if she pulled the side-piece off her broken cabinet…

“Oh, is it meant to be an all-round cupboard,” said Margaret Pierce. “No dear, I didn’t know. Twenty pounds for you because it’s not complete. I’d give it you free but I need to make what I can off the old stuff before the winter, I only heat one room but the electric costs an arm and a leg these days…”

“No!” said Charlene quickly. “It’ll be fine. I’m sure I can make it fit, it’s lovely. These rose handles! They’re just what I nee — what I was looking for. It’s — it’s actually a pretty good piece, I’ll give you sixty, seriously, I don’t want to feel like I’m robbing you.”

“Oh, are you sure that’s —”

“Absolutely!” said Charlene, pulling out her wallet. “Here’s sixty-five. And do let me know if you have any other little pieces you’re looking to sell off. Thank you so much!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Margaret Pierce, looking vaguely around, and Charlene tried not to seem aware of how uncomfortable the room looked. Not bare, but under-furnished; sparse. A worn sofa and a single chair at the broken-leaved table. An old TV perched on a peeling kitchen stool. “Well, I always wondered about my old teapot, worth a couple of quid maybe.”

Charlene hardly glanced at the teapot, but agreed on a price of £200. She went out to find a cashpoint, returned with the money and tried to slip in an extra twenty, but Margaret Pierce caught her.

“No, no, that’s not right,” said Margaret Pierce. “That’s eight twenties and six tens, look. You need to count your money more carefully, young lady, or you’ll find yourself short in later life, you will. Here, that’s better.”

***

It was in the parish newsletter, under Obituaries: “Margaret Pierce, aged 83, suddenly at her home after a short illness. Funeral 27th November at 11am, Dordley Parish Church.”

Charlene decided to go to the funeral. She wanted to listen to Margaret Pierce’s eulogy — to hear just a little of her life story. The small, badly-furnished room had stayed with Charlene, diluting the pleasure of repairing her bathroom décor.

Young Margaret had been a singer. Had sung on the radio. Had never married, but had always been extremely fond of her niece and her niece’s husband. Always ready and welcoming with her blue-and-white teapot and home-made scones. Something of a family treasure, that teapot. Blue and white. No-one knew where it was now, lost, broken, maybe stolen, but the bereaved would be very, very happy if any fellow mourners knew of its whereabouts, for it held great sentimental value to the family. Charlene began to feel that the eulogy was more about the teapot than the teapot’s owner—who had refused to sell it to her niece, but had offered it to a stranger.

“And what was your connection to our Dear Departed?” asked the niece’s husband after the service.

“Oh,” said Charlene. “No, I didn’t know her well. But she — she seemed a lovely person, so kind and gentle.”

The niece’s husband’s eyebrows lifted. “Well. I’d imagined you were very close. The way you were crying through the hymns.”

“Oh sorry!” said Charlene. “I mean — yes, um, funerals do that to you, you know —”

“Did you often visit at her home?”

“Uh,” said Charlene, backing away as politely as she could. “Um, no. So sorry; I would have liked to know her better.”

“Well, let us know if anything comes to mind,” said the niece’s husband. “Regarding her estate, I mean. According to the church secretary, our Dear Departed was in the habit of selling what she thought was old furniture, and she didn’t always know the true value of things.”

***

There was an advert in the parish newsletter for a local antiques and house clearances dealer who would give free valuations, but Charlene decided to go farther afield. On her next trip to Hurdlington, she carried a small suitcase containing the blue and white teapot, swathed in bubble-wrap and padded with newspapers. On her phone she carried the postcodes of two or three well-reputed antiques experts.

Charlene felt strangely shy. She knew nothing about antique china. She’d been pretending all along. She’d paid £200 for a piece of old crockery she’d intended to throw out; she had only held on to it from a sentimental sense of connection with Margaret Pierce.

“I’ve got this piece,” she said, taking it out. “It’s, I don’t know, it might be rubbish of course, I just had this feeling…”

The woman picked up the teapot, turned it over, and gave Charlene a sharp look.

“You need to get this thing insured,” she said.

“It’s valuable?”

“I can’t give you an exact figure, but it’ll be upwards of twenty thousand, probably quite a lot upwards. Are you looking to sell? I can contact my colleague in London…”

Charlene heard the woman talking on the phone, talking fast, too fast for Charlene to follow. Originals and centuries and trade routes and thousands and thousands of pounds. Charlene fidgeted, trying to take deep breaths. She had done a kind deed. Or she had cheated an old lady. Or both. Was she laughing or crying? She didn’t know.

Fiona M Jones writes very short things. Her stories and literary essays are published everywhere except Antarctica.

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Of course, you can’t check inside the grapefruit beforehand, as that would be vandalism. So, you are left no choice but to trust the label placed on the exterior. As such, I purchase my grapefruit, questioning nothing, like a good consumer.

Some time later, I’m home, groceries well put away. I get a hankering for said red grapefruit. I palm the fruit’s golden hide and, humming a carefree tune, give the leathery orb a light toss in the air, like a plaything. The grapefruit is placed down on a cutting board and measured up by a serrated knife with no lack of care.

Slice.

Pink.

Hold on a second, my brain tells me.

I re-close the two halves of the grapefruit.

I gather myself. “Get it together, old boy. The label said ‘Star Ruby.’ Let’s try this again.”

I re-open the grapefruit.

Pink.

Three minutes later I’m storming down the street, back to the supermarket, half a pink grapefruit in my left hand, the right a fist gnarled by injustice.

“Excuse me!” I state, eventually breaking the sliding-door threshold, grapefruit aloft. “I’d like to speak to a manager!”

By this time, of course, I have no pants on.

A quick rewind. I took my pants off before leaving my apartment in a rage. I kept on my shirt, and my shoes, and my underwear, it should be noted. But my pants? Nope. Nah-ah. I refused to right this wrong while sheathing my thighs.

I did this in a sort of fugue state. I kept a hard eye on the evidential grapefruit as I removed my sweats and tugged them off the ends of my shoes, which I stoutly refused to remove from my feet. I proceeded to exit my front door, in a hunched march, hand and fist swinging like pendulums as I surely conveyed righteous menace and displeasure. Pantsless.

“Hey!” This is the assistant manager, I come to learn. The manager manager is apparently indisposed. Well, excuse me, Charlemagne.

“Earlier today,” I begin, unprompted, “I purchased a grapefruit in this very establishment.”

“Please leave!”

“I’m stating my grievance.”

“You have no pants on!”

“Your sign states that only shirts and shoes are required. I am wearing both.”

“Get out of here! Get out!”

“Are you the manager?”

“I’m the assistant manager. Now get out!”

That was the moment I discovered his true place in the hierarchy. “Underling, I say this to you: your establishment has lied to me and others.”

By now, he’s grabbing a worker by the arm. “Just call the police.”

I’m undaunted, like a monument stone against a windstorm. “A grocer has an unspoken contract with their community. When one of us – today it was me, tomorrow it may be another – when one of us is deliberately misled into buying the wrong item, all of us are deceived and trampled upon.”

I pause for some kind of cheer or affirmation from other shoppers. It never comes. I just assume it’s a quiet awe instead. Just as reassuring. “And your manager is where exactly? I demand to see their face! Because their face needs to see this grapefruit in all its ugly deception.”

“Your head’s bleeding,” a worker parps. “It’s really fucking bleeding, dude.”

To rewind, again, my wife had left me. In between purchasing the grapefruit and aiming to eat the grapefruit, she hit me. In the head. With a cast-iron pan before storming out. It was a flat pan. Which allows for more speed.

I could explain why she did all that. There’s time enough for getting into “who groped who” when they were blackout drunk, or how close of a relative they were to my wife, or why a person can easily mistake an uncovered love handle for a roll of paper towels after spilling their fourth shot of Fireball into the hair of somebody’s toddler, trying to do the right thing by cleaning the poor little creature up, yet giving in to natural, if misguided, human tendencies, and blah, blah, blah.

And there’s plenty of time to get into the whole who-was-de-priotizing-who, and which small corrosions in the marriage had become untraversable chasms, or where else she would rather be in the world, it could be anywhere, even Botswana, as long as I wasn’t there, and now I’m defending the good people of Botswana from her prejudices, which to her is criminally beside the point, and blah, blah, blah.

But this is about the grapefruit.

Things become blurry.

“This asshole’s going to fall.” It was that same worker. Observant. Maybe they should put him on the grapefruit sorting. Or have him replace the useless assistant manager.

Before I could suggest exactly that, the world around me turns amorphous. In one sense, I knew I was falling. However, I don’t know where up or down is. Does one truly fall when that’s the case?

Turns out the resulting head injury – my second of that day – proved that, yes, one truly does fall, even if that’s the case.

“Shouldn’t you call an ambulance for the crazy fuck?” A fine worker. Observant.

“The cops are already coming,” says the feeble assistant manager, I assume. “They’ll call one.”

These are the final words I hear for some time, from somewhere in the immediate ether before me. All words are beautiful, when you’re barely conscious from brain damage. And these had the echo of lyric poetry in that fading moment. Was that Yeats and Rilke eulogizing me then? Do all moments fade? Can all moments fade? Please, can they?

Joe Thristino is a writer based in Brooklyn. He is a staff writer for food and culture website The Takeout, as well as being a playwright (Dramatist Guild member), short story writer, script writer, and all-around worker in words and narrative.

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We first met while working at a slowly failing startup. I was drawn to his earnest helpfulness, his puns and wordplay, and his affable cynicism about our company’s sacred calves. He maintained a firm barrier between work and private life — we never hung out on weekends, and I never met any of his friends — yet our relationship was still warm and trusting. Between lunches, post-work happy hours, and the occasional bus ride home, I’d wager I saw Julio more frequently than my girlfriend at the time, or most of my closest friends. 

Eventually he moved to Austin, and we fell out of touch. So it often goes in a city as transient as San Francisco. But no matter — I met him again later in a yoga studio in Lower Haight.  

He looked different, and had a different name, but after a short conversation I realized he was Julio all the same. He was the only other student who chuckled at the elderly instructor’s unintentional innuendo. And he gave me solid, unpretentious advice on certain difficult poses.

From then on, we often lingered after those classes to chat, and sometimes got coffee or breakfast at a nearby cafe. He never offered to hang out entirely independently of class, though, and I never asked. Just like when we worked together — see what I mean?

He stopped coming to class after a few months, but I knew by then what was happening. And, sure enough, I’ve met him in seven other guises since then. Or eight, if you count the time he dated my friend Alexandra for a few rocky months. I never saw him in person then, but I recognized him from Alexandra’s stories. His tendency to compartmentalize — that emotional distance — was tough in a romantic context. 

I knew that because I’d had an ongoing flirtation with him in a dog park the year before. He was a woman then, and I didn’t recognize him at first, but the telltale signs became clear as I got to know him better. I’m not surprised things between us never panned out. I should have known we were better as friends. 

I last saw him just a few weeks ago, actually. He was an old, old man this time — careworn and shaky-handed, perched precariously on a bar stool in a sleepy Outer Sunset tavern. And yet for all his age, he was still keen-eyed and subtly hilarious, telling outrageous stories and dispensing homespun advice rich with empathy and understanding. He cheerfully skewered my generation’s mores but was equally unsparing about his own. The bartenders clearly loved him, and didn’t seem to mind him nursing a single glass of cheap white wine. I think they only kept the bottle around for him.

I sat there with him for hours, listening contentedly as he held court. Eventually night gathered over the ocean and swept in to cover the land. The tavern’s lamps grew brighter, and I realized Julio was watching me sadly. When I asked what was wrong he sighed and said, “Oh, nothing. You just remind me of someone I used to know.”

Martin Reid Sanchez was born in northern California. His fiction has appeared in Maudlin House, Flash Fiction Magazine, Scaffold, and The San Franciscan, among other publications. He lives in Brooklyn.

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