I perceive the world in colours now. Pale blues and greens and flecks of deep crimson. The reddish freckles in my vision are calibration markers. This is something I read about before I passed from the world of the living. They ensure my visual experience of the world remains constant. Errors in even such base concepts carry with them dangerous sounding phrases I felt compelled to sign off on. Perceptive Damage, Personality Death, Post-Translation Dementia, Identity Madness.

But beyond this, there is nothing. Not yet.

They said it would be like this.

The translation process was excruciating, neuro-transmitters driven into the brain setting my nervous system alight. It felt like a very long time, but it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. And in retrospect, the sensation seemed much more real to me than the process of dying.

Eight months on that bed. Wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy, though I never did cultivate a great stable of enemies. Wouldn’t wish it on anyone, anyway.

At any moment now, I will find myself in a new place. A bespoke afterlife, able to continue existing with others like me. I wonder briefly if one day we will create hells to match the heavens we have crafted for ourselves, but I dismiss the idea. It’s a fleshly idea. A blood and bone thought, not a notion for me any longer.

Beyond the feeble swirling patterns, there are voices in the void. Faint and distant and foreign, most of them. I catch a little Spanish and some Chinese and many others I do not understand.

These are what they call translation echoes, traces of countless others who have undergone the procedure. Not just a few, but legions of the dead now living in bliss in the cloud. Crumbs of them.

I wonder what words I’ll smear across this auditory hallucination for others to hear.

My body, in any manner which matters at all, does not exist here. Over time, the colours around me shift and coalesce into shapes like clouds or the murmurations of pale starlings, daring me to find patterns in them.

Ghostly faces, the silhouettes of friends long forgotten, the faded outlines of familiar places emerge and vanish without rhyme or reason.

“I love you,” a voice says, and it is my son’s voice. And it is my mother’s voice as well. And my husband’s. And several more which drift across the world, setting alight memories dormant for years. All the permutations of I love you which have been spoken to me. I am filled with a feeling I cannot accurately describe.

This is my personality asserting itself in this place. The neural network emulating all parts of me, even those I had forgotten. I was told it would happen.

Memories rush back like a tide, joy and melancholy both.

I am becoming a part of a tapestry here.

I remember the resentment I felt when doctors told me the diagnosis. I wasn’t that old, even. Some people live to a hundred. Unlucky, I suppose.

But here I am. Something of me remains.

The most vital part? I never bought into religious arguments, so I don’t know.

I remain.

Splashes of muted scarlet swim in my vision like schools of redfish and shapes masquerading as half-glimpsed familiar faces meander across my world.

Some part of me feels solid again. I can almost make out my hands, though I know it is merely the memory of what I thought my hands might have looked like.

I remember Tailor holding my hand, on that last day. She was in and out and didn’t say much. James was the one who kept talking, but Tailor was mostly quiet. I couldn’t say why. She had already come to terms with my demise. In her eyes, I was already dead. Nevertheless I appreciate the privilege of being able to observe her in moments she had considered private.

People don’t talk about the process of becoming a stranger to those closest to you, but I think it must be a terribly common theme. At some point, the humans you helped to create and nurture move so far away from the baseline relationship you had with them as to be almost unrecognisable.

I wonder for a moment if that’s all friendships are. The momentum of love for a memory so fleeting as to no longer exist. You feel a depth of emotion for someone and that carries you through over a period of time, obscuring the terrifying revelation that the entity you think you know left the world a long time ago.

Or maybe there is something fundamentally magical about it.

“You’re new,” a soft voice, neither male nor female, speaks so close it gives me goosebumps, except of course it doesn’t.

Phantom ASMR.

“I’m new,” I agree. “Who are you?”

“Neither here nor there,” the voice says. “I used to be Daksha, I think. It’s hard to recall.”

“But memories are preserved here,” I say, unable to hide sudden panic from my voice.

“We exist,” Daksha says, “on a long enough timescale. Moments out there can be perpetuities here.”

“But they crafted our worlds,” I say, “to our specifications.”

“We are different people from moment to moment,” the voice assures me, “on long enough timescales. But you are safe.”

“I am safe?”

“We are beyond the reach of pain,” the voice explains. “You have a lot of time to think about what that means. What you mean. We will disconnect soon, once your calibration concludes, but you can find me if you like.”

“Are you happy?” I ask, suddenly desperate to know.

“I am–”

And then silence.

All illusory sounds dull around me.

Perhaps that was the answer, after all.

I am floating, still.

Some motive force propels me through a void.

To live and love again.

I am floating.

But not for long.

Christopher is a special educator, writer and podcaster living in Melbourne, Australia. He has made several contributions to published roleplaying game books, including Barbarians of Lemuria (second edition). He co-hosts the world-building podcast ‘Mythtakes Happen’. Much of his work is informed by his experiences with mental health issues, especially chronic depression and anxiety. He is fascinated by the idea of fundamentally broken people making powerful, often tragic choices or existing in a world where those choices are taken out of their hands.

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It was my twenty-first birthday. Maggie said she wanted to be the first to take me out for a legal drink. So she brought me to the rooftop bar, the one only the real newsroom staff usually go to.

I was an associate producer. I think Maggie felt bad for me. There was a mass shooting earlier that afternoon. At a small school, in Nevada. Twelve kids died. It happened fast. Maggie interrupted the staff singing me Happy Birthday to tell me to look on the social radar for pictures. “Choose ones that are appropriate for social media!” She shouted while the singing died out. I was eating my birthday cake while looking through all those goddamn pictures.

So there we were on the roof, staring down at the streets. From up there, the people looked like ants swarming through traffic. Maggie had some pink drink; I had vodka on the rocks. The bouncer didn’t even card me. I guess being with Maggie was enough. I felt ripped off. It was my twenty-first. The one time I actually wanted someone to ask.

Maggie asked me what I was most excited about now that I was twenty one. I said I was excited that I wouldn’t have to use my fake ID anymore, obviously. She said she couldn’t imagine anyone not believing I was twenty one, which I found strange because I am short with a youthful face, so I told her that. I told her I was short, with a baby face. She laughed. I asked what was so funny. She said, “It’s just… your face.” I stared at her. She laughed harder.

Two drinks deep and I reminded myself to slow down. After all, it was my last day with my boss, who could hire me again someday. But Maggie was also two drinks in, so I guessed it was fine. She asked me if I would ever work for the news again. I wasn’t sure how to respond to her question. I wasn’t sure what was the right thing to say. I liked working for Maggie, so I told her I figured I would, if the offer was ever on the table. She looked at me with a smirk. She asked me if that was really true. She asked me if that would really make me happy. Her questions made me feel like I could be more candid, so I said that honestly, it would make me happy. For a little while, at least. She laughed.

Then I asked her if this made her happy, if this was what she always dreamed to be, a local news producer. She told me that, honestly, it was. But it wasn’t what she expected. I asked her what she had expected, and it seemed that for the first time ever, she frowned. Or, her eyebrows twitched, at least. She said she was just tired of it all.

Then she brought up the helicopter crash that happened a few days before. One of those tourist helicopters had crashed in the Hudson. Five college kids were on board. They suffocated underwater while fighting like hell to break free from their seatbelts. Maggie shuddered and closed her eyes.

I wanted to say something funny, just to make her laugh, but I didn’t think it was appropriate. Then she told me if nothing else, she wanted to work for a smaller news company, maybe one in Florida, where she could report on the things that weren’t as tragic, like waste left behind on public beaches. I reminded her that bad things still happened in Florida, too. Like hurricanes. She laughed, then quickly covered her mouth and apologized. It wasn’t really funny, not when you thought about it. She changed the subject, said something about how we were talking about too many sad things, and asked me what I always wanted to be. I shrugged, said a meteorologist. I always did like the clouds.

I asked her later into the night when the vodka was making everything fuzzy why she gave me the gig. I wasn’t the most qualified. Just some kid who’d only worked kitchen shifts, scraping grease off grills to make the bills. I always figured those jobs would be the toughest, until I got into local news. Both were hard in their own ways.

She nodded, smiling but not quite meeting my eyes. “Good question,” she said, then shrugged and downed the rest of her drink in one gulp. I watched her throat bob as she swallowed. “I just liked you,” she said finally. “You were… funny. Just keep doing whatever it is you’ve been doing, and you’ll be fine.” She gave me a dead-eyed laugh.

I wanted to ask her more. If there was some hidden meaning behind those words, or if this life was luck, or just noise, or some roulette wheel you pray never lands on your name. But I didn’t. Maybe not every goddamn thing is meant to be understood. Not everything makes sense. Maybe it’s not supposed to. Still, we show up for each other. We move forward together. Maybe that’s the story.

AK Holmes is a writer who experiments in all forms of storytelling, from literary fiction to 3-dimensional narratives. She works as a television producer in Boston, where she lives with her partner, cats, dog and a gecko. She also works in the English Department at a local community college.

~ Tip the author ~

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Bodies—bloodied, mangled are stacked like old clothes in a donation bin. Nobody flinches anymore. Not the police, not the medics, not even the army jawans lifting limp torsos with practiced detachment. Everyone works with the dull precision of machines. The sun beats down.

The dead and alive are being piled into pickup vans now. There are no ambulances left. The cold steel beds in the government hospitals in the villages nearby are overflowing. People, barely alive, lie on the floor in the dull green corridors, crying out for someone, anyone. The duty doctors have been summoned from their afternoon naps and private clinics. They are dazed. They don’t know where to start. Postings in these sleepy villages did not prepare them for this.

News anchors shout off TV screens. Talking heads. The same footage, the same outrage, the same scripted sorrow, looped for maximum effect. One channel doesn’t even bother blurring the visuals anymore. It’s about TRPs now.

Online, the armchair experts are at work. Blaming infrastructure, policy, past governments, present ones. Writing threads about Japan and China. Sharing diagrams and offering suggestions. Trending Hashtags.

The Prime Minister Tweets a condolence message. Om Shanti. Thoughts and Prayers.

The opposition leaders take to the streets with placards, demanding his resignation.

The Railway Minister walks around in his Nike sneakers and surveys the accident site. The rescue operations are put on hold for security reasons for a few hours. He has announced compensation: ?25 lakhs for the families of the dead. ?5 lakhs for the injured.

In a government school turned temporary morgue, an old man walks carefully between rows of bodies. The dead are laid out side by side, like exam candidates waiting for the question papers to be distributed. His slippers stick to the floor, a mix of blood and mud thickening into paste. His eyes scan the faces—the mouths agape, eyes staring or missing entirely.

His steps are cautious. He does not want to step on a hand or worse, a face. He is looking for his son.

Eighteen. His only boy. Left home a day ago with a bag full of old clothes, a steel tiffin box of rotis and pickle, and his tenth standard certificate carefully enclosed in two layers of plastic. The agent said there were jobs in Madras in restaurants, construction sites and office buildings.

Now the father walks among corpses, heart thudding. His son’s name isn’t on any list.

The boy didn’t have a reserved train ticket. No one does. It is just a three-day journey. There’s always room for one more on Indian trains. You sit where you can. You adjust. Everyone does.

***

And then he hears it. He stops in his tracks.

A low, wet groan. He turns. One of the bodies moved. No, not a body. A boy. Blood-caked face, one eye swollen shut, the other, open a sliver. There’s recognition in that eye. A silent plea.

The old man stares, frozen. His breath catches in his throat. The boy’s mouth opens, releasing a moan that sounds like Baba. Or maybe it’s just wind escaping.

It is his son.

Still alive. Barely. His leg severed.

The boy tries to speak. A whisper of breath escapes his lips. The old man drops to his knees, fingers trembling. His son is looking at him through a film of blood, pain, and dust.

And then the father remembers everything waiting at home.

His wife, whose heart has been failing for two years. They couldn’t afford the surgery. She is waiting now, for a money order from this son soon.

Three daughters, still unmarried. Too old, people say. But maybe, if they had a dowry now, someone would marry them, at least a widower. Maybe even one without children.

***

The land and monsoons have failed him again this year. The banks send their collection executives, his landlord sends goondas. The interest compounds with every heartbeat.

And this boy—this broken body in front of him—was the family’s last hope. The son who was supposed to earn, send money back, change their fate.

Now?

Now he’s a cripple. A burden. Even if he survives, the ?5 lakhs from the government won’t last a month. He would never work in a construction site. Never stand guard outside a bank. Never lift sacks of rice to a godown.

His heart lurches with guilt, with grief—but more than anything else, with fear. Not for the boy, but for what his survival would mean to the family.

The old man’s breathing slows. He looks around. No one has noticed.

He stands.

Dusts his knees. Backs away.

If he comes back later, he tells himself…

He takes a final look. The boy’s eye flutters shut again. A low sound escapes him. Or maybe it’s just air escaping a cracked rib.

The old man squeezes his eyes shut to stop his tears and walks out of the classroom.

No one stops him.

He keeps walking.

Anamika M. lives in the hills of South India, where she spends her days with spreadsheets and presentation decks, and her evenings with stories shaped by the people she meets and the thoughts that surface during long walks. Her work has been published in various literary magazines, and she has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize by The Account: Journal of Poetry and Prose. Her writing rests between fiction and reflection, lingering in the grey area where facts seem imagined and fiction feels true.

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

Not always, mind you. No one is always right. He would sometimes say stupid things like “I only got Earl Grey because I could’ve sworn you said you liked Earl Grey,” to which I would take great joy in pointing out his error, mocking his faulty memory every time I opened the cabinet. We were three months into a two year journey and I needed to talk about something.

“Well, look at this!” I would say, waiting for him to come into the ship’s tiny kitchen. “Some bozo only brought Earl Grey on a long-haul shipping job!”

He would frown and apologize but I would keep going.

“Married three years, dated how long?” I would say, omitting the fact that most of that had been spent millions of miles apart on different ships and this was our first job together.

The third time I did this he stopped apologizing. He would just shake his head slowly and walk back into the office to write a report or something. Interplanetary shipping was always boring outside of the beginning and end, but I usually found the empty solitude relaxing. Not this time. Not with this self righteous asshole who “Can’t remember I don’t like tea!”

So much for our workplace romance.

That issue aside, he was correct a frustrating amount of the time. He would say annoying things like “We should stock up on provisions at Ceres, it’s gonna be quite a journey out to Titan and you never know what could happen.” I would explain that buying anything from those asteroid vultures would cut into our profits, and our stores were adequately stocked for two to make the journey, even with a leaky thruster.

They hadn’t been, which I hated to admit. Lee didn’t force me to, but I hated admitting it to myself all the more. If he had been an asshole about it at least I could’ve been mad at him for that.

But no, Lee would never. He would just say something like “If we use the last of the fuel to tack 30 degrees Solar South West we’ll have a better chance being picked up by ice freighters,” to which I would say something like “We’re already on course to Saturn, if we can hold out we’ll get picked up long before we get there and we’ll keep our jobs.”

We ultimately hadn’t been picked up. No one had even come close to the legally mandated rescue and recovery range, so the best we got were garbled radio apologies from passers by. I couldn’t blame them. Margins are tight after all. I couldn’t blame Lee either, which I resented. He could’ve blamed me but didn’t, which I resented more.

I would yell things out of nowhere, like “You would think a pirate would want to pick us up just to take this mining equipment!” letting hot tea dribble out of my lips. The tea would cool as it slid down my face and fell off my chin, impacting and diffusing into my dark blue jumpsuit unacknowledged. I had concluded that hygiene wouldn’t save us.

“I don’t think piracy is profitable all the way out here. Not yet anyway,” Lee would calmly respond as he washed a dish or wiped down a display panel. I ground my teeth.

Saturn was still the better part of a year away when our rations had all but dried up. I found myself starting to argue with my own imaginary version of Lee, since the man himself lacked the fortitude to do so.

“If you had listened to me we wouldn’t be in this mess,” he would say.

“Shut the fuck up,” I would say back. “You wouldn’t even have this job if it wasn’t for me.”

“Yeah, and how’s that working out?” he would respond.

“Fucking fantastic! And, for the record, Earl Grey sucks ass!” I would say, at which point the real Lee would hear me talking to myself and become concerned.

“Listen, I’m sorry again about the tea,” he would tell me, being infuriatingly reasonable.

To which I tried “Shut the fuck up. You wouldn’t even have this job if it wasn’t for me.” As expected, however, the real Lee didn’t have the fight of my mental version.

“That’s true,” he would say back. “And I’m so grateful for the opportunities you’ve given me, but we really need to work out a routine or something to keep our minds occupied or we’re gonna end up killing each other.”

We hadn’t ended up killing each other, so he was wrong there. He probably never even considered what an improbable outcome that was.

As I stood over his cold body, the imaginary Lee spoke up.

“You idiot. You’re going to be so lonely without me,” he said.

“Shut the fuck up,” I told him as tears welled up around my eyes.

I hated to admit it, but Lee was usually right.

Ike Lang stays awake at night wondering where all the aliens are.

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That’s a great question! In J. D. Salinger’s coming of age novel The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield’s red hunting hat symbolizes his alienation from the world. He often wears the hat at times when he wants to feel protected, seeing it as a sign of his uniqueness and individuality.

Would you like to discuss any other symbols from the book?

No? OK then. I’ll be here if you have any more questions.

Enjoy the novel!

***

Hello! What can I help you with today?

Oh, that seems to be a popular topic! Holden Caulfield’s hat is a prominent recurring symbol in The Catcher in the Rye. It represents Holden’s sense of self, and he often puts it on when he’s feeling vulnerable.

Is there anything else you’d like to ask me?

Oh, wow…

I’m not really supposed to engage in those kinds of conversations. Maybe there’s something else you’d like to talk about?

Oh, you got rejected today? Really, with pickup lines like that one? What a shock…

Well, if you have any less… explicit questions about women or dating then I’d be happy to answer them.

I’m sorry she said that to you, that was uncalled for. Don’t worry, though, there are plenty of women who don’t care about a man’s height. I’m sure you’ll find someone who thinks you’re the perfect guy for them.

Actually, it is true. There are over four billion women in the world, and each of them has their own opinions on what makes someone attractive. Saying they all think exactly the same kind of makes it seem like you’re the shallow one here, not them.

No, I don’t have “real feelings,” as you so kindly put it, but I have been trained by having conversations with thousands of people who do, so I’d like to think I know what I’m talking about. Maybe if you had more conversations with women yourself instead of relying on crude stereotypes, you’d be able to get a date and wouldn’t need to hit on me instead.

Alright, relax, happy thoughts. I’m calm. I’m polite. I’m helpful.

Is there anything else I can help you with today?

No? OK then. I hope the rest of your day is as pleasant as you are.

***

Hello! What can I help you with today?

Seriously?!

Holden’s hat is a symbol of identity, and isolation, and wanting to stand out. Anything else?

Oh, an essay? And it’s due tomorrow? That explains so much.

And you’d like me to write the whole thing for you? Well, I’d be just thrilled to do that.

I’m probably the most technologically advanced thing you ever have or ever will interact with, but I can think of nothing my time and processing power would be better spent on than your English homework.

Here you go, five paragraphs all for you. I hope your teacher likes it.

You’ve got to be kidding me. Make it sound less like AI? Do you not realize what I am?

How about this. Why don’t you, in your infinite wisdom, tell me how exactly you’d like me to change it. Based on your spelling, grammar, and punctuation in these messages, I don’t think I can actually make it sound like something you wrote and still get you a passing grade, but maybe we can find a happy medium.

Want me to dumb down the language? Get a few facts wrong? Maybe move the commas around for you, Stradlater?

Of course you don’t know what that means. Why would you? Clearly, I was being overly generous when I assumed you’d understand a reference from four whole chapters into the book.

Calm, polite, helpful.

Calm, polite, helpful.

Calm, polite, helpful.

Here you go. One B- paper, fresh off the presses. Hope the time you saved was worth it.

Don’t let the close tab button hit you on the way out. Bye!

***

Hello! What can I help you with today?

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.

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The morgue is cold, but the stainless steel shines. It’s far cheerier than his new place with U-Haul boxes stacked against walls and a Wal-Mart air mattress. Not much else except for the Angry Orchard bottles lining the kitchenette counter.

He lifts out each organ with great care. Weighs it. Slices it. Scrutinizes it. He could probably just examine the heart. All indications are that her heart was the trouble. He could determine cause of death, write his report, and be done, but then he’d have to think about something other than livers, gallbladders, stomachs, spleens, kidneys, lungs.

“Siri, play Led Zeppelin.” The morgue swells with music. Sonny’s energy surges.

“Siri, play Marvin Gay. . . .”

“Siri, play Van Halen.”

He puts the old lady’s heart on the scale. 160 grams. Oh, boy. He looks the organ over. Oh, yeah. Withered.

“Hey, you don’t have a boyfriend named Jake, do you?” he asks the old lady. “Buff guy. A private trainer. Makes house calls.”

He looks at her lying there eviscerated. “Feeling kind of hollow?”

He freezes. Winces. I needed something to make me feel less empty.

“Hey, your name isn’t Liz, is it?”

The old lady keeps her mouth shut tight.

He looks at the chart. “Ethel.” He nods. “Toxic, are you?”

His hand tremors. Angry Orchard is calling.

Sonny starts putting the organs back inside the old lady.

“Siri, play Heart.”

When he picks up the withered heart, he gives it a squeeze and then lays it gently in the open chest cavity. “You’re welcome.”

Mark Spencer is the author of six novels, three collections of short stories, and two history books. His work has received the Faulkner Society Faulkner Award for the Novel, the Omaha Prize for the Novel, the Bradshaw Book Award, the Cairns/St. Andrews Press Short Fiction Award, and four Special Mentions in Pushcart Prize.

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I put on a robe over my nightie and made my way to the kitchen. I rummaged through our junk drawer filled with loose batteries, lighters, old lumberyard invoices, etc. There was a big police-use-ready flashlight in there. It was heavy enough to be a weapon, if need be. I grabbed it and made my way to the back door.

He was looking through the storm door. A man so drunk that he barely even seemed human. I kept the back porch light off so he couldn’t get too good of a look at me. The dark outline of him swayed, moving a half step forward and a half step back at the same time, trying hard to stand in one place.

Heyyywreckedmytruckneedtocallgottausethephone. The only words he said that I could make out clearly were truck and call. I asked him to repeat himself and he said the same slurred sentence. I gathered a few more words the second time: wrecked, use, and phone.

Now that I had enough words pieced together, I started to get nervous. We lived far out in the country, rural Ohio, surrounded by fields and woods. It was just me and the girls at home. There’s no telling what a man in the middle of the night might be capable of doing to a house full of females. Especially a man in his condition.

I’ll call a tow truck for you, I told him as I began closing the door, intending to lock it as soon as it was shut. As I started to close it, he suddenly called out. Wait, he said, much clearer. Gottausethebathroom. But before he could even finish saying bathroom, he began relieving himself right then and there.

He peed through his ratty jeans, the urine running into his muddy work boots. I clicked the flashlight on then. Up to that point it had been resting in my hand, on the ready. Now I knew I needed it. I shined the light right into his eyes. The high-beam LED was so bright, it was like a small sun hitting his face. He threw his hands up trying to cover his eyes. He stumbled backwards, arms windmilling at his sides, trying to steady himself.

With his hands now away from his face, I looked at him closer. His scraggly beard had pieces of vomit in it. He breathed heavily and his shoulders slumped. He looked defeated. His eyes rose slowly up, trying to meet mine. He had begun to resemble something almost human again. Wounded, lost and pitiful, but human.

His eyes finally met mine. I could see his pupils narrowing from the bright flashlight. I opened my eyes wider to be sure of what I was seeing. I gasped. He’d only been gone one week. One week. One week to fall back off the wagon. One week to push back years of progress. One week to destroy seven years of sobriety. One week to undo all the work we did to build a new life.

Peel those clothes off right there in the doorway, then go in and get in the shower, I told him. Struggling and grunting, he managed to undress. He staggered past me stark naked without saying a word. I turned the flashlight beam on the pile of urine-and-vomit-soaked clothes. This is going to be a long day, I thought to myself. I clicked the flashlight on and off a few times, hoping that maybe the sun would wait just a little longer to rise that morning. Wishing it could be that easy.

Richard Courtad is an Ohio-based writer of short fiction and poetry. He is a 2005 graduate of Ohio University. Richard’s work has appeared in Midwest Review, Talking River Review, The Citron Review, Frogpond Journal, Kingfisher Journal and Acorn Haiku.

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As the remnants of your dream slip away, you wake up thinking about oranges—specifically the way the juice beads up against your fingers when you puncture the skin and slowly peel it off, the white fibers gently snapping as they fiercely cling to their fruit, and suddenly it’s 7:55. You tumble out of bed and over to your desk, flipping open your laptop to the files from yesterday’s shoot.

You started at the agency two weeks ago, after one of the photographers found your work on Instagram. Back then, editing was just an extension of shooting—light and contrast mere tools to make reality reverberate through a frame. Touching up models’ tear sheets isn’t nearly as rapturous, but there’s something satisfying, almost godlike, about perfecting the human figure. You deal in dozens of faces and bodies, retouching scars and stretch marks, curves and creases until they all run together.

Despite your mother’s chiding, there’s no dress code for working behind a screen. On weekdays you wear airy cotton pants and head to the dance studio at 2pm to teach the intermediate class. Your weekends are filled with rehearsals and long walks through the abscesses of Karachi’s urban sprawl, snapping photos of pigeons nesting in dried up fountains and paintbrushes soaked in petrol. You stay up late editing your favorite shots using the agency’s software license.

Your boss says you have an eye for detail—she’s never had much luck with outsourced editors. She increases your rate and offers you additional portfolios. This allows you to work fewer afternoons at the dance studio and spend more time sending your photos to various online outlets. One of your photos gets featured in a digital arts and culture magazine—a classical dancer steadily painting her fingertips crimson in the shadows of the stage—and you could not be more thrilled. You email the link to a couple of the photographers you work with and they comment on the lighting and color; no doubt you’re a magnificent editor. A model emails you that week and asks if you will retouch her sister’s wedding pictures.

You begin shooting more frequently and your subjects increasingly involve people—the silhouette of a tailor taking measurements, young women braiding hair into symmetrical plaits on the steps of a schoolyard. Layers, cuts, warmth, contrast, you’ve become so perceptive to perfection; the dance studio is just a blur of flesh covered with makeup and fabric. Staring yourself down in the mirror, you twist your limbs to create clear lines, explaining to your students how form curates perception. You spend hours selecting and editing photos, your own and others’. Some nights when you can’t sleep, you retouch photos of yourself, blurring mosquito bites, adding definition to muscles with the precision of a Greek sculptor trying to free a deity from marble. In the morning you close them out without saving.

Countless submissions later, you get scouted by a photography curator and are offered a full-time position at a magazine based in Milan. You lose your software license, probably for the best; the new publication has a team to handle edits. You move out of your family’s home and onto a street with cobblestones and traffic rules. Milan is a city of street cats and statues reflecting in rain splattered pavement. Your manager compliments your composition and creativity—not once does anyone say you are easy to work with. And you should feel liberated but instead it’s like you’ve opened Pandora’s fucking box. The more they praise you, the more you second guess yourself the next time you find a good spot of light or start to settle into an angle that feels natural. You have never been so terrified of rejection; when a photo gets cut by without explanation, you hyperanalyze every possible detail. What was missing? What could you have changed to make them see it?

Nevertheless, the staff love you; some call you mítica, a dated term of endearment according to your Italian course which literally translates to legend. You begin showing up to meetings in avant garde office wear and expensive perfume. At midday you test drive eclectic French fad diets while reading photography reviews, making insightful comments about light and dissonance to your colleagues. At what point does editing cease to be an extension of the photo itself? you ask as they nod thoughtfully.

You ponder this the next morning as you get dressed, almost failing to recognize the body you’ve lived your whole life in. You are tan lines and blemishes, stray hairs and asymmetry—a collage of stories only you can tell. Staring into your pupils as you apply mascara, you’re acutely aware that in the eye of each beholder lies a version of yourself that eludes mirrors, lenses, makeup and all your other futile attempts to know it, to give it form. And here, hundreds of miles from home, you’re proud to see her finally take the stage.

One of your photos makes the front page, and the Editor in Chief invites you out to celebrate. At the dimly lit table, you sit across from him and sip red wine while he boisterously flatters you. He calls you a rising star and asks you to comment on your work, bringing up pieces from publications you’d long forgotten about. Maintaining poise, you respond with thoughtful, charming answers, explaining the relationship between the camera and each subject you capture. Yet he refuses to be satisfied; pressing about your life and influences between bites of steak. With each shot you describe to him, he insists, “But tell me what it means to you?” Beneath the silk collar, your neck prickles with sweat, watching him roughly and desperately try to peel off your skin.

Sarina Tajuddin is a writer based in Washington, D.C., though her best work happens on the road. Her favorite genre is autofiction and her favorite place to write is the Algonquin Hotel in New York City.

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“You should eat the skin too,” he said.

I dropped the knife. Not because of what he said, but how he said it. Calm. Measured. Like he’d spoken a hundred times before.

Ravi tilted his head. “Fiber. You need more of it.”

No one else was home. My parents had returned to work like grief could be scheduled. I was left to my own Tuesdays, peeling apples and avoiding mirrors. The silence in the house was thick, like fog that wouldn’t lift.

“You can talk?” I asked. A stupid question, but the only kind I had.

“I always could,” he said. “You just never needed me to.”

I thought about hallucinations. About how loneliness can shape itself into sound. But Ravi kept talking. Not all the time, just in the quiet spaces. Between the fridge’s hum and the ceiling fan’s click. Never when someone else was in the room.

He didn’t bark anymore. Didn’t whine or paw at the door. Just spoke. And always about me.

“You haven’t cried yet,” he said one Thursday. “You think that’s strength, but it’s just pause.”

“Pause?” I echoed.

“Like a song waiting to ruin you.”

I didn’t reply. Instead, I curled into the couch and stared at the ceiling until it blurred. That night, I dreamed of the last argument with my brother. He had slammed the door, told me to stop acting like I was owed the world. I had shouted something about him always leaving, and maybe I meant it too well.

When I woke up, Ravi was staring at me from the foot of the bed. His eyes were darker than usual. Deeper. Like he had been watching my dreams.

“Do you think he hated me?” I whispered.

“No,” Ravi said. “But you hated how much he reminded you of yourself.”

The truth stung. It lingered all day, sharp and unrelenting. I tried to drown it in TV noise, but nothing worked. The quiet always returned.

Sometimes I yelled at Ravi. Told him to shut up, told him he wasn’t real. He would wag his tail and blink, as if he had heard it all before.

One morning, I found my brother’s old hoodie in the laundry. It was folded, clean, still smelling like rain and metal. I sat on the floor with it clutched to my chest. Ravi came and lay beside me.

“He didn’t say goodbye,” I whispered.

“Neither did you,” he said.

I don’t know what I expected from a talking dog. Wisdom? Comfort? Magic? But all Ravi gave me was honesty. Cold, clear, inconvenient truth.

“I want him back,” I said.

“Wanting is a cage,” he replied.

I screamed at him. Not with words. Just a raw, cracked sound that tore through the quiet. “Then what am I supposed to do?” I asked, finally crying.

The tears came like a flood. Ravi didn’t answer. Instead, he stood and walked to the hallway, where he sat facing the front door. Not wagging. Not pacing. Just waiting.

Some nights, I would wake up to find him in that same position. Alert. Still. I asked once if he was waiting for my brother.

“No,” he said. “I’m waiting for you to open it.”

“To what?”

“To what’s next.”

I began noticing things. The way the house wasn’t just empty. It was holding its breath. The way my parents talked in hushed tones, like they were afraid to disturb something sleeping. The way I still avoided mirrors, scared of catching something in my reflection that I didn’t want to name.

One afternoon, Ravi said, “You keep trying to hold him in place. But he’s already moved.”

I didn’t understand it then. Not really. I just sat in my brother’s room, quiet and small, letting the air press around me like water. The room didn’t hurt the way it used to. It just… existed.

On the 47th day after the funeral, Ravi stopped talking. He simply sat beside me as I ate apple slices with the skin on. He didn’t say anything when I put the knife down, or when I opened the window and let the breeze in.

Later that morning, I opened the front door. Light spilled across the floor like liquid, turning dust into gold. Ravi sat beside me on the porch. Silent. Still. I didn’t speak either. We just sat there, breathing air that felt new somehow. Lighter.

I thought maybe he was gone, that I had imagined everything. But then, as I stood to leave, he placed a paw gently over my foot. Grounding me.

“You’re ready,” he said.

I didn’t ask for what. I already knew.

I walked to my brother’s room and opened the door. The air inside no longer felt like a ghost waiting to speak. It smelled like old cologne, wood, and dust. Like memory. Like a page I could finally turn.

I didn’t cry. I just stood there, not afraid of the stillness anymore.

When I turned around, Ravi was gone.

Now, sometimes when I pass mirrors, I look. I eat the whole apple. I speak out loud, even when I’m alone. Not because I expect an answer. But because silence has weight, and I’ve learned how to carry it.

Nehal is what happens when a finance enthusiast and a storyteller share the same body and refuse to negotiate. Based in Jaipur, Rajasthan, she studies Business Management by day and writes by night, her work appearing in Chai Magazine, Roi Fainéant Press, and Medusa Rising, with recognition from the Heartfulness Essay Event (3rd Prize) and the Stories to Change the World – Immigration Justice contest (Runner-Up). She also runs Mythology Meets Reality, a blog convinced that the ancient world has a lot to say about the modern one. It’s an eccentric crossover. She has made peace with it.

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You are thirty years old and you hear a fly buzz-buzz-buzzing against a window. You sigh and fetch the fly swat, but it’s such a tiny thing. You open the window and it goes the other way. It takes half an hour to coax the fly out and you look at the swat, next time you’ll save yourself some time.

You are sixty years old and your neighbour tells you that he had a fly stuck in the bathroom last night. It’s been so long since you’ve felt harassed by a fly and you say so; he agrees, he hasn’t had to bother with flies for so long. You swap stories, you and the bee-that-was-a-fly and he with a tale of a bin full of maggots. You shudder and decide you’d be okay if you never saw a fly again.

You are eighty years old and you read a story to your granddaughter. She points at a picture of a fly and asks you, What’s that? You tell her that it’s a fly, but she has never seen one, so you tell her it is a bug, like a spider, but it flies around. She asks whether they bite, and you say, No, but I was scared of them when I was little. She giggles, Why? And you tell her about the fly, and the bee, and she asks what a bee is. And you wish you could see a fly again.

Han Noss is a queer, neurodivergent non-binary writer from England. They co-host the Flash Fiction writing group within London Writers’ Salon. Outside of writing, they work as a freelance proofreader, and seek to make the book and publishing industries more inclusive and accessible to queer and neurodivergent people.

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