Micro-Orbital Lunar Winter Activity 53

by dave ring

It’s Time to Reconnect with the Past: RETRO SÉANCES

Thanks for subscribing to our micro-orbital lunar winter activity newsletter, <FirstName HiveNumber>!  Filling time through the lunar winter can become dull without exciting activities to liven up the months of dark days. Break up the doldrums with this daring retro occult activity!

Did you know that, throughout the First and Second Neo-Victorian Wars, wartime rituals that centered séances were commonplace? Squad captains would gather their soldiers together to contact the otherworld in preparation for battle amidst the stars. Only in recent years have séances been returning to favor amidst the hive. However, it is still possible to utilize the tools of those long ago generals for the purpose of connecting with spirits. Keep reading to learn more!

Supplies

Use this opportunity to borrow more than sugar from your neighbors!  In order to hold a retro séance, you need a few willing participants and a number of important objects. Asking hivemates with a healthy suspension of disbelief, or those with ancestors connected to the military, can improve the séance's chances of success.

Pro Tip! Make sure you hire a sitter; retro séances often have an adult flavor and it would be inappropriate to expose children to the intensity of the experience.

Other materials you’ll need include a flat surface to gather around, a candle for every participant, something to offer the spirit you are hoping to speak with, and some tertiary safety materials like fire-retardant sprays, canisters of sea salt, and water-based lubricant. 

How to Hold a Retro Séance

To hold a retro séance, and increase the chances of contacting a spirit, follow these steps:

1. Assemble the Participants: We recommend that you reach out to at least two other hivemates within walking distance of your cell. No fewer than three people should attempt a retro séance, as the spirits summoned can be unpredictable and having at least two physically-capable participants nearby to subdue unwelcome guests is essential.

2. Choose a Medium: A successful séance often results in the possession of one of the participants by your otherworldly visitor. It can be helpful to designate this person ahead of time, so that they have had an opportunity to hydrate, stretch and otherwise prepare themselves for hosting. If you’re not sure who is most suitable, have a quick conversation amongst your hivemates to ascertain who has had the most agency while dreaming. Lucid dreaming has often been linked to successful spirit channeling.

3. Use the Right Surface: A flat surface to gather spectral energies is essential for a séance. While spare tables are in short supply in the hive, it can be helpful to improvise an alternate surface from that supplied with your cell. Circular tables are perhaps best suited for genteel ancestral ghosts, while square surfaces often result in ill-tempered poltergeists. Regulation hexagonal tables will still function, of course, but the sacred geometry of sixes appears to be keyed towards an erotic sublevel of the first, second or fourth hell, and often will result in the séance devolving into an orgy of calisthenic proportions. Unless that is the desired result, of course, in which case you might want to check out our networked appendices for 15 Sensual Tips to Most Amplify Your Demonic Intercoital Stamina (free with your subscription to this micro-orbital lunar winter activity newsletter).

4. Set the Table: Place your offering in the center of the table. The type of offering is believed to influence the nature of the otherworldly visitor that you summon. We often recommend a fragrant baked good or soup, as the steam is meant to be comforting for those otherworldly guests that miss human sustenance. Please note that, when using a hexagonal table, we have observed that the pistil and stamen arrangements of floral offerings often correspond to the interests and appetites of the demonic energies called forth.

5. Light Candles: Retro séances are rarely successful without the warmth and light of at least one candle, and if you follow our instructions by utilizing a subchant routine which you can purchase from us for a low by-orbital fee, the séance will abruptly cease when the last candle has been snuffed.

6. Create Some Atmosphere: Turn down all ambient light sensors and manually pause all feeds, including subaural routines.

7. Join Hands: Seated around the designated surface, you and the participants should all join hands or otherwise form a continuous connection. Those who can’t or prefer not to hold hands can use a silk rope or cord as a method to achieve this connection, or conduct the séance within a salt circle.

8. Summon the Spirit: After securing the séance space with a circle of some sort, the summoning can begin. The actual words are not important, so much as chanting or silently thinking them in unison. Please note that poltergeists are rarely worth the novelty and it is very difficult to get your deposit back if the hive learns the reason for the destruction of your cell.

9. Wait for a Response: If no response comes, repeat the chant until an otherworldly guest arrives. Encourage your participants to quiet any skepticism they might be feeling, because that will hamper the séance’s occult energy.

10. Communicate: If and when a spirit responds—either by rapping, or some other means, or through the medium—communicate in whatever manner feels most appropriate. If you accidentally or intentionally summon a demon from an erotic sublevel of the first, second or fourth hell, be very mindful of how you frame your statements, because the demon will interpret this as consent. Communication can be hard, especially if your cell is located in one of the more conservative hives, but we expect that you’ll find conversing with the spirit world to be thought-provoking and fun!

11. Greet the Spirit and Set Boundaries: It is expected that you’ll ask the spirit simple yes and no questions at first, especially as the otherworld guest is situating themselves in their new host. Ask the spirit for one rap to communicate no, and two raps to communicate yes, for example.

Pro Tip! Demons from erotic sublevels of the third hell are significantly more powerful and are bound not by stated consent but rather by your unstated wishes and desires. This has proven incendiary amongst participants who were not aware of their colleagues’ individual erotic desires as well as those with self-destructive thoughts. These demons can be identified by a number of traits, including wings in excess of the typical two dozen, bifurcated double phalli, and/or labial dentata with full rotational capability.

Those inexperienced in demonic coitus, as well as those with expressed masochistic tendencies (even as mild as thinking “That woman could step on me”), are encouraged to immediately cease any retro séance during which the medium manifests any of these visual signifiers.

1. Communicate Directly: If a spirit chooses to speak through the medium, you may ask any kind of question. A séance allows for getting to know the otherworld in new and exciting ways. Don’t be afraid to step out of your comfort zone. The ancient soldiers took this time to bond with each other and grow closer before facing adversity. What better way for you and your hivemates to pass the interminable lunar winter than to try something new?

2. Maintain Control: While you won’t have access to the safety equipment of the First and Second Neo-Victorian Wars (Editor’s Note: Check out our special full-color fold-out—complete with an artist rendering of a demonic neural brimstone saddle—and instructions on how to make a model anti-spectral hyperthermal artillery cannon!), by negotiating carefully in Step 11, you may set up verbal agreements with your otherworld guests. If the séance seems to be getting out of hand, you can end it by extinguishing all of the candles and/or utilizing any safe word that you have established with your otherworldly guests early in the session.

3. End the Séance: When you're done with your visitation, thank the otherworldly guest for their time and ask them to leave. If they are unable or unwilling, you can break the circle and/or extinguish the candles.

Hosting a retro séance can be an exhilarating and fulfilling experience. When hosting your own, be sure to follow these steps in order to yield the most positive results.  If for any reason Step 14 is unsuccessful, consider fleeing the room and taking shelter in any nearby building that still has an intact historical spectral shelter. These buildings typically have enough of the vintage synthetic lead-salt weave in the walls that the otherworldly guest will be unable to cross the threshold. 

For additional ways to pass time during the lunar winter, check out our twice-orbital supplements Tarot Today: Fun New Rituals for an Inescapable Future, Must See TV: Retro Media and Ancient Secrets of the Twentieth Century, and for residents of solo hives, Modern Principles and Occult Practices of Auto-Erotic Asphysixiation.

This hivemail was sent by Vintage Occult Curios, a program of the Western Office of the Department of the Interior Hive Cluster. We respect your right to privacy—view our policy.  VOC believes that all cellmates deserve access to activities that celebrate their spiritual freedom. Learn more and report suspicious activity here. To unsubscribe to this or other email communications from VOC, please contact your queen node or designated hive representative.

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 About the Author

dave ring is a queer writer of speculative fiction living in Washington, DC. He is the author of The Hidden Ones (2021, Rebel Satori Press) and numerous short stories. He is also the publisher and managing editor of Neon Hemlock Press, and the co-editor of Baffling Magazine. Find him online at www.dave-ring.com or @slickhop on Twitter.

© Micro-Orbital Lunar Winter Activity 53 by dave ring. 2022. All rights reserved.

Sumerki

by E. G. Condé

The world is wet and white as I peel open my eyes. The cold wants to seal them shut, to keep my body in its cruel clutches, but I cannot rest. My ears are ringing. Something is screeching above the din of the winter squalls. Proximity alarm. They’ve found us. I am thoughtless, still drenched in the sweet musk of tropical dreams as I thrust on soggy boots, as I strap a plastichrome cuirass to my chest and a smart-rifle to my back. I muster my comrades. In short order, we leave the warmth of our shelters and trudge out into the Siberian night.

White whorls eddy in the ragged sky, dappling the jagged outlines of the Kodar mountains with snowy jewels. The front is not all terror and tragedy. There is a beauty here in this frigid wilderness if you permit yourself to see it. I used to think of this place as a frozen purgatory, where lost souls or exiles might go to find quiet, cold deaths. But now I see things differently. This gelid hell is our sanctuary, a last bastion of hope and light in the encroaching dark of our tireless enemy.

In the blue twilight, we march past our shoddy encampment to the front on the Chara Sands, where Commander Vera Ilyich Malinovsky is already waiting for us. Our boots sink in the brassy sand, shattering the thin crust of frost bedding the dunes. I feel as if I am treading water. I strain to keep myself upright against gravity’s pull, sinking ever deeper in a sea of sand and snow. My overwrought limbs ache, but I continue, nourished by a font of will that burns as hot and clear as the light of the coming day. With each sinking step, I imagine the grasses of the steppe swaying, I imagine the homestead and the lakes and the herds of my youth. I see the pastoral life that I yearn to defend with every grain of my being. But I am not as brave as I long to be. I am merely a boy with a gun and a dream.

“Form ranks!” The Commander bellows.

My body obeys, even as my mind wanders. I am like an animal, so conditioned, so molded by the machinery of war that my limbs can be played like cello strings at the slightest command. In scarcely a year, I have become something mechanical and lethal. They’ve made me into a soldier. I can still hear the radio blaring, on that fateful day, November’s seventeenth, the day Russia broke in two, the world in awe, watching, waiting. There I was, a son of the steppe with nothing but hope and audacity to my name, ready to enlist, drunk on the promise of a fragile dream already withering in the shadow of a despotic crown. I was so innocent once.

Beside me, Private Bogdanov shudders. He turns to me, and I steal a glance, afraid that I might never again have the chance to look upon him. I  feel flush and breathless as his bright, iron eyes lock with mine. Even now, as emaciated and filthy as he is, I am overwhelmed by his beauty. I want to press my lips against his, I want to retreat to the comfort of his thick arms and boyish smile, but the battle draws near and there is no time. I try not to think of what the Tsarina will do to us if she catches us alive. I try to forget the stories of those like us she branded abominations and executed in the prison camps for committing the crime of unholy love. We deserve better. Private Bogdanov gives me a wink, as if he can read my thoughts. Sometimes I think he can. Sometimes I think any of them can. Our toil, our shared struggle, is like mortar.

We form ranks, a series of rows and columns, slightly staggered. As I scan their steely faces, wearied, bloodied, and gaunt, I try to remember them as they were in the beginning. Many of them came from the hinterlands, youth, farmers, the downtrodden and disaffected, demanding change, refusing to kneel to the tyranny that sprung up to devour us whole. Others, like Bogdanov, arrived from the heartland and cities, fleeing to our wilderness so that they could love whom they wished without fear of reprisal. I can still remember the pyres where they heaped the “apostates” they used as scapegoats to explain why the world was burning. But it was not God or queers that made the world hot.

It all happened so fast. The permafrost thawed more rapidly than even the most hysterical of the scientists predicted. Then, came the flames, the dust clouds and the superstorms. Wherever the calamity struck, fear rose to meet it. Rudderless and broken, the peoples of the world turned to nostalgia for comfort. They reached back into distant ages, clutching again for the stability of the Crown and the Cross. Dynasties long dethroned were rekindled.

But some refused to cede to fear, to trade liberty for brutal stability. Our revolution began with the seizure of railroads, the hijacking of satellites to mask our movements, and the severing of telecommunications to keep us from being heard or seen by our ever-watchful foe. Under the crimson of the sickle, we rallied to reclaim our country from the neo-monarchists and their newly ordained Tsarina. They came to Siberia in droves, revolutionaries, heretics, refugees, enemies of the State, to turn our cold quaint corner of the world into a battlefield. And thus, we began a coalition of the scrappy and downtrodden, drone factory workers, herders, farmers, sinners and queers—those left out of her majesty’s vision for a new Russian ecclesiocracy. We choose not to bow, for we are the future, and we long to be free. We will avenge the planet they have ravaged, the herds that their greed disappeared, and those of our comrades they have taken and destroyed merely for being and loving contrary to their holy doctrine.
“Marksman positions!” Commander Malinovsky shouted, her voice acrid, strained.

I drop to all fours on the wet sand, bracing my smart-rifle in the crook of my shoulder before settling into a familiar prone pose. We guerrillas are like little corsacs, hunting our prey in the quiet dignity of night. But not today. Today we are the hunted, we are prey. Something in the Commander’s voice suggests tragedy is on the horizon, but I am not alarmed, because tragedy is always just a breath away for us. Mortal fear has become a sustenance more potent than our nutty ration bars.

“Incoming!” The Commander whimpers. She consults her handheld scanner, flipping through the screens with determination and freezes in disbelief.

“What is it, Commander?” I ask, my voice crisp, resonant, despite my fatigue.

“No life signs on infrared scanners,” The Commander reported. “Whatever is coming, it isn’t human.”

Above us, the heavens shudder. Densely clotted clouds buckle, then unravel, as something descends upon the valley. I watch the velvety curls of moisture unspool, giving way to a dark, triangular vessel. Its searchlights cut through the glittering veils of newborn snow, soaking the spindly crystals with phosphorescent hues. In denial of the danger before me, I retreat to the realm of memory; wintry scenes from my childhood, roaring fires, the festive lights of the Kazan Cathedral on the day we broke fast to celebrate Christmas. The remembered aromas, faintly spiced and sweet, remind me that I am hungry. Given the ration shortage, I might as well be fasting. But these memories are a comfort nonetheless. War is easier if you have something to fight for, something to return to.

Don’t run, I tell myself. It’s a mantra. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it keeps me brave. But there are some days where I cannot help but flee from the gunfire and the gore. Am I a coward? Or am I just a human keen to survive? No one said revolutionaries had to be fearless. Bogdanov forgives me every time. I want to be as brave as him, but I know I never will be. Beside me, my commanding officer sighs coarsely.

“They mean to bomb us then?” I ask, searching for cover in the dune field.

“Negative, Lieutenant,” Commander Malinovsky says, referring to her scanner. Her ruddy face seems more weathered now, her cropped, buzzed hair, somehow grayer. “It appears that the rumors are accurate. The Tsarina has purchased Chinese conscripts.”
“Conscripts, eh? I’m not afraid of Chinese steel,” my Bogdanov, the burly comedian of our lot, says with a chuckle. “Or is it plastichrome now?”

“You should be,” I want to say, but don’t. The others laugh and I join in, indulging in this moment of solidarity, for morale is as scarce as our rations these days. He catches me staring at him, I think he sees my fear, I think he shares in it too, but I say nothing. Instead, I recall the night we met, in that derelict training lodge at the base of these steely mountains. Where we ran drills and ran laps and made love in a warm bunk, the wind clawing through the valley as it was now. They say love makes warriors loyal to one another, they say it was the secret to the Spartans’ greatness. I like to think that what we have makes us invincible.

“When all this is over,” Bogdanov says to me, “let’s take that holiday in Borneo.”

“I dreamt of it again last night,” I manage above the roaring something tearing across the sky. “You were with me at the beach, burnt to a crisp. Redder than a—”

The world tremors. I am as still as the mountains when the dropship emerges. Its engines screech, their cries audible above the roiling blizzard. I draw breath to slow my thrumming heart, trying to forget the rumors of the many-fronts of the Sino-American cold war. Tales of technological monstrosities of the cruelest sort— mechanical perversions designed to extinguish all trace of the human spirit from combat. The ship swoops down at us like a bird of prey, only to pitch upward at the last second. The bay doors lurch open and its payload tumbles down with the coruscating snow. A dozen plummet toward us, spheres of polished ivory, their descents eased by silky parachutes that resemble sails. I clutch my rifle, aware that I am trembling, from the fear or the searing cold or the cumulative fatigue of months of hopeless guerrilla strikes against the Tsarina’s forces.  

“Bogdanov!” I say, but he cannot hear me. The capsules make landfall, splintering the ice with riverine cracks where they fall.

“The pupae, they’re opening!” Private Bogdanov observes, fear snuffing out his earlier bravado. Pupae, that’s what they’re calling them now. I want to comfort him, but time is different during combat. Seconds feel like centuries.

“Hold your fire!” Commander Malinovsky says, defiant as ever. “We’ll need a coordinated volley to break through their armor.”

Something stirs in the nearest pod. A steamy brume billows up from the crater it has bored in the golden dunes. Silently, the white sphere unfurls. Like the gossamer wings of an insect, layers of shimmering, liquid polymers burst into novel alignments. A chrysalis begins. I know what is happening, but I refuse to believe that such technological sorcery is possible. Pearly sinews twist and thread into durable shapes. Molten strings of polymer congeal and snap into preordained sockets. Programmed matter. Plastichrome; harder than steel, as light as spider silk, etched by nanoscopic printers into jagged, sinuous shapes. Exoskeletons contort into ghoulish silhouettes above the snow.

One turns to me, and I see glassy spheres dock into ocular slots in its rude cranium. I gaze into those empty orbs, the soulless eyes of a Marionette. An apex predator. They rise silently from their spherical wrecks, hideous simulacra of their human makers, only taller. They walk like men, but are more precise, their gait so synchronized and fluid that I am enthralled. It is as if they are meant to bewitch us.

“Remember, comrades, we are true soldiers,” Commander Malinovsky bellows, “those things out there are just dolls on strings.”

Dolls on strings. Soulless pawns. They lack our fire, our spirit. But is our spirit enough? Malinovsky seems to think so. But she seems incapable of fear. Perhaps she has lost everything worth losing, or perhaps she feels she died long ago. I clutch my rifle tighter, closer.
“Borneo is probably overrated anyway,” Bogdanov says to me, chuckling with pain that makes me want to weep.

“Definitely overrated,” I say to him, smiling. But he is not smiling. The fear, the despair, the fatigue, seem to have finally taken hold of his face, which is no longer warm. He is now as cold and chiseled as the stone massifs looming beyond.

“Mikhailov,” He whispers to me. “I don’t regret anything. Not a damn day of it.”

“Neither do I,” I start, repositioning my rifle and my pulse flutters. I have the desire to run like I did when we engaged the Tsarina’s 115th legion, but with Bogdanov beside me, I feel braver.  “Let’s show these things what we are made of.”

“I’ll keep you safe,” Bogdanov says to me, eyes scanning the horizon.

“I know.”

My voice breaks as I speak, because I understand what will soon happen. I reach a hand out to Bogdanov and he reaches back. Though we are gloved, I feel his warmth. In a single gaze we exchange the decades that might have been. We imagine our lives together out in the rolling plains, our future when the last shots have been fired and Siberia is free at last. I imagine him old, hair graying, waist thick without drills or sit-ups to keep him lissome, until I cannot, until I see no future at all, until all I see are the titanic silhouettes of the Marionettes converging upon us.

The sand tremors with their approach, their massive heels shattering the ice as they advance. Broken by fear, Bogdanov unleashes a volley of golden seekers, smart projectiles that find their targets in circuitous arcs. Over the shouting of my commander, we watch the pellets ricochet off the pearly armors of the automata as they fail to penetrate their dense carapaces. Then there is despair. I hear the tortured voices of my comrades, I see some of them abandon their posts, wailing. The Marionettes do not hasten, as if their slow shamble is a deliberate gesture meant to amplify our terror.

Our demolitions expert, comrade Volkov, rushes in to meet them, a belt of thermobaric grenades dangling from her hand. The stilted shadows of the automata shroud her as she hurls the payload. The valley shrieks as carmine flames plume over the sand, baking the silica into beds of wiry glass. Volkov is barely visible in the thickening smoke, but I can see her face, incredulous, wrought with fear. From the dark, they emerge, unscathed. One of the mechanical hulks raises its arm, which terminates in a serrated jag rather than clasping digits. Volkov freezes. Through black billows of smoke, scarlet blood spurts and bodies drop in gored heaps on the vitreous sands. The plastichrome butchers are silent as they cleave and crush and kill with inhuman precision. My comrades’ screams echo in the valley, as if the mountains refuse to let their memory be extinguished.

The Marionettes crush the last of Volkov’s explosives with their taloned feet. Flames sprout everywhere but the shockwave is delayed. I fail to brace myself in time. Then there is blinding bright as I am hoisted by a molten force. My limbs flail to slow the fall, but the thud is hard and devastating as my face meets frozen sand. A tooth slips from my parched gums. My rifle pricks my ribs. Something crunches. I think I have broken one, but I am still alive. I still breathe. My mouth tastes of hot iron as the blood pools. I turn my aching neck to search for Bogdanov, as if seeing him will give me the strength to continue.

 When I find him, I want to look away, but I cannot. He is shattered. Scarcely human. Gone. And then there is pain. Sundering agony. And I am weak and I am hungry and cold and perfectly still and devoid of purpose or will. I want to submit. I want to rest. They march, their plastichrome feet crunching the snow as they advance. With every ragged breath they are nearer to me and I want to surrender, I want to let go. I want to go wherever Bogdanov is. I want to crawl to him and wrap myself in whatever is left of him. Until I hear my name, and somehow, I am standing, somehow, I obey, like a marionette on a string.
“Get up, comrade Mikhailov.”

A bloodied Commander Malinovsky materializes from the smoke to clasp my shoulder, “I’m giving you the order, so you can flee and feel no shame in it. Now, get out of here!” She coughs, and I can see that she is maimed, that her time in this world is swiftly coming to an end.

I smile at her, as I did the first time we met, a year prior. There I was, the son of a shepherd, radicalized by the Novemberists’ broadcasts. We were so much younger then. She asked me if I knew how to fire a smart-rifle. I shook my head, saying that the only violent thing I knew how to do was scare sheep. We laughed together then and I remember the warmth of that laughter, the innocence and purity of it. She grabbed my shoulder with one hand and clasped my chin with the other to reassure me that she could make a Streltsy out of anyone. And here I am, a year later, a Stretsy indeed.
“Bogdanov,” I say, at last, “he’s—”
“I know,” Her eyes well with tears.
“You,” I say, sensing she was more to say, sensing that in my moment of grief she is ready to tell me what she has long hidden from us. Her pain and suffering.
“Me too,” She says, “Her name was Katarina, and she was stubborn and fierce and irritating and perfect.”
I start to wheeze, “How?”

“Gunned down from behind by drone fire,” Malinovsky muttered. Her eyes are sparkling. The ice within them thawing at last. “It was a cruel and unceremonious death. She deserved better. She deserved a soldier’s death.”

The vale tremors as the Marionettes near.

Malinovsky clears her throat, grabbing my arm, “but you’re still here - you can still have a future. Flee now while there’s still a chance”

I nod, remembering Bogdanov’s goofy smile, the crook in his shoulder where I used to rest my head, the sweetness of his skin, the tambor of his laugh. For a moment I imagine what my life might be without him, in a wooded cabin beyond the reach of the Tsarina, in quiet exile, but the taste of blood in my mouth reminds me of the enemy’s cruelty.

“No,” I say to her, and to you, now, in this viscast, “we are the November revolution. We are the hope and the rage of the Sickle.”

Spiny shadows engulf me. I load my rifle. “If these Marionettes are the future of warfare, then we should give these soulless husks everything we have.”

Commander Malinovsky's eyes darken, but I see her smile again, radiant, defiant, as they approach, crushing sand and snow and bone with every step.

“Because in the end we might just be a memory.”  We turn together to face the automata that blot out the horizon, “A spark…a seed.”

I lift my rifle, “And as our blood stains the sands”. I take aim, “we sow the future because even a single seed can sprout a forest.”

“Do you still remember how to scare sheep?” Commander Malinovsky asks me, and we cackle with laughter as they meet us on the battlefield.

We open fire and then there is light. One by one, the eyes of the Marionettes are igniting, celadon beacons that herald our destruction. But beyond them, a brightness diffuses into the vale. Twilight is giving way to a softening pall of blue that we of the steppe call sumerki, the light that follows the great darkness, the fiery birth that comes after the cold of death. Our future. Our dream.

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About the Author

E.G. Condé identifies as a Cuir (Queer), Boricua (Puerto Rican) man.  His fiction appears in Anthropology & Humanism (2020), Reckoning (2022), If There’s Anyone Left (2022), Solarpunk Magazine (forthcoming 2022) and Stelliform Press (forthcoming 2023).

© Sumerki by E. G. Condé. 2022. All rights reserved.

Tell Tale

by Sara Hartje

Adventure was a word full of richness and promise, exotic as the flavors of off-world dishes Weston sometimes cooked for their guests. Ria’s longing for it was constant, always there in the background, steadier and more reliable than the pulse of her half-synthetic heart.

It was ironic, she thought, that her physical and metaphorical hearts were so at odds. As much as she wished to experience the worlds the inn’s guests came from, or the cities on her own planet, she was tethered. The ancient biogen hub in the basement, synced to monitor and correct her heart, was the star constraining her orbit to the edge of town.

Someday, Ria would change that. Someday, the money she placed in the inn’s vault, each a small piece of a dream, would add up. Another year, if everything went smoothly, and she’d have enough to contract an implantation specialist to give her a fully internal heart system. Then she would seek every dream in every location she wished.

But for now, she continued to run the inn her father had run before her. And in place of adventure, she filled her soul with stories.

It was the perk of the job; a continual flow of people meant a continual flow of stories. Growing up, Ria had pestered countless wealthy guests for tales against her father’s exasperated attempts to divert her attention. It hadn’t been until he died when Ria was nineteen that she reined herself in. As the inn’s new and very young proprietress, her position required more sophistication and reserve.

It didn’t mean she stopped asking—she just added more polish. After so many years around the wealthy, she’d learned to emulate their manners when it suited her. When guest found unexpected refinement in such a rural town, they were usually charmed and softened enough to relinquish their tales.

Each guest had a new story, a new experience, a new adventure to share. Which was why she knew their recent arrival’s story had to be worth prying from the woman.

“She doesn’t give you the creeps?” Nina wondered, her brow furrowed as everybody helped Weston prep dinner.  

Ria laughed, tossing a peeled potato into the pot. “I mean, she isn’t very interested in small talk, but she’s always polite. I wish all our guests managed that.”

The woman, Doran, had arrived the week before, softly asking if it was possible to exchange work for five weeks of lodging. They could spare the room while they were in the early spring off-season, and they needed the extra hands more than Ria wanted to admit.

But the staff had expressed reluctance about Doran. It could’ve made sense—nobody unvetted had ever stayed so long—but a few admitted that their hesitance was harder to explain.

“I’m glad for your certainty about her, Miss Ria,” Weston said as they shucked corn. “You interact with guests more than I do, so I’ll follow your judgment.”

Nina made a noncommittal sound. “She’s at least useful, I suppose.”

That was true. Over the past week, Doran had demonstrated a remarkably varied set of skills for somebody with the appearance of a privileged background. She hauled dirty linens from rooms and brought clean ones back to Eliza. She patched the storage room’s roof before helping Nina reorganize the items displaced by the leak. She even fixed the sixth burner on the stove. Weston had been so ecstatic that they asked to create something off-menu to celebrate.

As Ria finished the potatoes and left to check on Doran, she thought about the discrepancy between the staff reaction and her own. There’d been no unease for her; Doran felt familiar from the moment she stepped into the inn, regardless of how impossible it was for Ria to dredge up any memory of her.

When Ria stepped into the storage building, Doran was half inside the delivery truck’s engine. The truck had been out of commission since earlier that year with mechanical issues that cost more than the vehicle was worth to fix, leaving the inn’s staff to rely on their personal cars to haul deliveries and luggage. They were all holding their breaths hoping Doran would find some miracle way to fix it.

Doran stood, wiping a forearm across her brow to push away loose honey-gold hair. Ria tried desperately to drag her eyes away from the long line of Doran’s throat. “I think I can do it.”

That managed to catch Ria’s attention. “Seriously?”

“If you’d let me purchase a few things, yes. It should be fairly inexpensive,” Doran assured, considering the truck again. “As long as you’re okay with the fixes not being strictly by the manual.”

“Of course. It’s better than nothing.”

As Doran closed the hood, Ria’s focus was already shifting. After so many years around the wealthy, she noticed the money in the tailoring of Doran’s clothing, the smoothness of her hands, the tones of her speech. She couldn’t make sense of those details when combined with the breadth of Doran’s skills and her lack of funds to pay for a room.

When Ria said nothing further, Doran turned to look at her. Her dark eyes were guarded. “What is it?”

The question that hummed in Ria’s thoughts since Doran first entered the inn finally spilled past her lips. “Do I know you?”

Doran stilled. It was the sort of motionlessness that shed attention, that made her seem to waver into the landscape. A not-entirely-human stillness, Ria thought, though that was common enough in the decades since hyperlight travel took off. She tucked the observation away.

“Why would you think that?” Doran asked in return. Not a yes, but not a no.

“You seem really familiar,” Ria admitted, again taking stock of Doran’s features. “I thought it might explain why I’m comfortable around you, but the others aren’t. I can’t remember seeing you before, though.”

Doran turned back to the truck, knocking a foot against the tire. “I’ve come and gone a few times,” she said eventually. “I never stayed, but perhaps you saw me.”

“Perhaps,” Ria allowed. Her curiosity strained, urging her to prod at Doran’s vague answer in hopes that she could coax something interesting to fall out. “I should’ve warned you upfront, but there’s something else you have to do while staying here.”

A cautious beat passed. “Which is?”

“I can’t travel.” Ria glossed over the pain the admission inspired. “So, I ask people to share stories.”

“And you believe I have stories to share?” Doran wondered. Something new settled into the keenness of her eyes. Curiosity, Ria realized, like an echo of her own.

Ria nodded. “I think you have a library worth of stories.”

Slowly, Doran smiled. It wasn’t as full as the polite smiles she’d given before, but this was unmistakably authentic. “An interesting conclusion,” Doran mused, her own fascination now obvious. “I’ve always sought stories as well. If you can join me while I purchase replacement parts, I’ll tell you about Ancleet before the supernova.”

“We don’t have other guests coming with reservations,” Ria said, grabbing the keys to her own car with a grin. Eagerness brimmed inside her, ready to spill into the cracks Doran had finally revealed. “Eliza can manage the desk for a bit.”

An easy rhythm settled into place. Doran worked through the wish list of tasks the staff always talked about doing but never found time for. It eased enough of everyone’s burden that Ria suddenly found herself with free time, a luxury that had been absent since before her father’s death.

Although Doran seemed puzzled that Ria sought her out, she accepted her company in their gaps between chores. The prim professionalism between them thawed like frost-crisp grass in the morning sun, their working agreement softening into an easy companionship.

Once Doran started telling stories of her travels through the galaxy, it was like a dam crumbled until they flowed out of her, at least one every day. Some were small, a candy for Ria to tuck beneath her tongue as she went about her work: the bioluminescent fish market from pre-war Ti; the fire dance of the lost We’un people; the blinding glimmer of Vehle’s diamond moon when it shattered. Others were longer, patterned carefully over multiple days, weaving threads of wonder through Ria’s thoughts until Doran tied the strings into a whole.

“What about your home?” Ria asked, loading supplies into the fixed truck. She noticed the distance to Doran’s stories; they were things she observed, but not things she was part of. “Do you have any stories from there?”

“I have no home,” Doran said, voice bland in a way that was too careful to be genuine. “I’ve never remained anywhere long enough to have one.”

“Seeing so many places must be exciting,” Ria probed.

“Yes.”

“But difficult,” she continued. She considered the flatness in Doran’s eyes, the rigid line of her lips. “You aren’t happy, are you?”

Doran looked at her sharply. “Why do you say that?”

“Am I wrong?” Things were comfortable between them, but perhaps she had overstepped.

Doran took a deep breath, fingers fluttering over the lid of the box. “No,” she finally admitted, the word almost a sigh. “I’m not sure I even know what that feels like.”

Ria recognized the expression that pulled Doran’s features; it must paint her own every time she acknowledged how trapped she was. Maybe that was what Ria saw in Doran—a kindred spirit, somebody who also longed deeply for something out of reach.

She didn’t think when she set her hand over Doran’s.

Something in that simple contact froze Ria, a tripping electric hum buzzing under her skin. All the brightness it filled her with just made the shadows it also threw were darker. Not only giddiness raced with the tingle up her arm as caution lit her like a match; the chime of her aerotab was a redundant alert to her unsteady pulse.

“I’m sorry,” Ria said, jerking back her hand. “I shouldn’t have presumed—”

“It’s fine,” Doran murmured before she picked up more boxes and set them in the truck. “I doubt you’ll do it again.”

Ria would have dropped it, but Doran’s tone was so precisely constructed, so suddenly guarded. Unease that had never existed between them yawned through the fissure of that moment. “Why?”

“You felt it, didn’t you?”

There was no need to ask what Doran meant. “Is it something from your non-human heritage?”

Doran stopped again, and that stillness was back. “What do you know of that?”

“Just that there’s something,” Ria said softly, hoping to soothe. “I noticed a while ago, but I didn’t want to pry. I figured you’d tell me if you felt like it.”

“And you’ve still sought me out?”

Ria shrugged. “What difference does it make? I serve all sorts of people out here.”

When Doran spoke, the breeze nearly torn away her small voice. “You can only say that because you don’t know.”

“Maybe.” Flexing her fingers to dislodge the warning that had climbed up her nerves, she stepped closer and reached again. It helped that she was prepared for the warring reactions as her fingertips settled over Doran’s hand. “But I don’t know, and I won’t demand that you explain.”

The careful construction of Doran’s expression shattered. “You might regret that.”

“Oh, another regret to add to the list,” Ria said dryly, rolling her eyes. “However, will I manage?”

A pained laugh bubbled passed Doran’s lips. As Ria shifted to pull her hand away, point made, Doran caught her fingers and threaded theirs together. “Then I guess I might as well follow your reckless lead.”

When the light caught in Doran’s eyes, sparking like garnets as she smiled, Ria floundered. Whatever lingered of the warning fled; all that remained was warmth that marched up her throat and across her cheeks.

As they walked back to grab another load of supplies, hands still linked between them, Ria figured that warmth was likely a sort of warning, too.

Five weeks. Ria knew from the beginning that Doran would only stay that long. She knew it when she marveled at the work the woman accomplished, and when she fell into the plushness of Doran’s stories like they were a down comforter, and when she thought there was no danger in allowing the spark between them to warm her.

She had been wrong.

The spark caught like wildfire in the neglected tinder of her heart. For all the worldliness and knowledge Doran exuded, she seemed as unversed in this as Ria—if not more so. Where Ria felt flustered by the new thing growing between them, the fact that Doran was now cautious and unsure inspired her with unexpected courage.

So she led in this new dance—an arm slipped around a waist, a head rested against a shoulder, a hand carded through hair. Doran’s expression would catch somewhere between distant assessment and immediate wonder every time Ria reached for her or when Ria allowed her to reach back.

Still, there were lines her boldness could not buoy her across, at least not without Doran moving to meet her. It was fine that she hadn’t. Time was so precious and even the flare of this joy was bright. That fifth week, in whatever way it unfurled, would have to be enough. It was all they would get.

But the days slid away too quickly. Ria thought this would be like her beloved stories, one in which she, finally, got to be a character as well. She would enjoy the whirlwind of everything she felt and then tuck it away like a note, something she could pull from her memories to look back at after Doran was gone.

That had been arrogant. She knew that, now, as they sat together on the bench behind the inn, hours after Doran finished her final story. They’d both acknowledged the need to go back inside—Ria still had responsibilities to complete, and Doran needed to prepare to leave in the morning—but neither moved. Ria’s arm, threaded around Doran’s, had long since fallen asleep.

She wouldn’t leave, not when Doran held her hand so gently between both of hers. There was no longer any hesitance in the gestures Doran initiated. Ria wondered where they’d be if they had another week, another month, another year. Maybe nowhere, she knew, realistically. But…

“You could stay.” The words were fragile, almost as unsubstantial as the air Ria used to speak them, but the sentiment was heavy enough to break the lingering peace.

Doran didn’t look at her. “I wish I could,” she said, but the denial was there, spilled into the spaces between her words.

Ria nodded and pressed her emotions deep, deep down. They went into the same place where she put all the other dreams she half-knew would never bloom. “I’ll prepare some supplies for you to take.”

“I have my own—” Doran started, but Ria lifted a hand.

“Let me do this much,” she insisted. She forced a smile to her lips as she untangled her arm and stood. Staying out that late was only prolonging the inevitable; it wouldn’t make it hurt any less if she faced reality later rather than now. “Then you can take something of me along on your next adventure.”

She turned to go inside. With any luck, she’d hold the tattering pieces of her heart together until she got to her suite. As she reached for the door, though, Doran pulled her back.

“You need to leave here,” Doran breathed as her warmth encircled her, pressing her face into the crook of Ria’s shoulder.

“I can’t.” The pounding of her heart reminding her of why with every labored beat.

“You’ve always wanted an adventure.” The crush of Doran’s arms bordered on painful, but it was grounding. “Why won’t you take that for yourself?”

Ria closed her eyes. She could imagine it, had imagined it, every beautiful, wild thing in the galaxy spread before her. “I want to. But I can’t.”

Before Doran could protest, Ria pulled away. She tugged the neckline of her shirt, and even in the darkness, the puckered surgical scars littering her chest were clear. “I’ve been saving for a new heart, one that’ll let me go to another world.” Ria gave a weary laugh. “Or even to another town. But right now I’m stuck with this, and that means being stuck here. No matter how much I wish to go.”

“That’s why you can’t travel,” Doran said slowly as understanding slid into place.

“Yes.” Ria searched her face. “That’s why I have to stay near the inn. At least for now.”

Doran stepped away. She ran a hand through her hair as she paced, panic slipping through her usually reserved features. “You’re actually trapped here.”

“Nothing new,” Ria said, but her levity fell flat. Regardless of how she tried to stay calm, Doran’s energy stained the air.

“This is different,” Doran insisted. “Something’s going to happen, Ria.”

Ria frowned. “What’re you talking about?”

“There’ll be an accident at the inn tomorrow,” Doran said, sharp and hopeless. “And you need to be gone to avoid being killed when it does—but now I realize you’ll die regardless, if your life is tethered here.”

Ria stared at Doran, this woman who had always been so softspoken and gentle. “What?”

“You asked me, once, why I was so disconnected from my stories.” Doran shook her head with a bitter laugh. “I was relieved when you only made that connection and didn’t notice how everything I spoke about was dead or destroyed.”

Ria froze. She thought about what Doran had told her, the tales she wove, all of it covering vibrant places and people—and all of them gone.

“You asked if you knew me. You said I was familiar, and I am, in a way. To the others as well, only they knew to be uneasy.” Doran took cautious, measured steps closer. “I wondered why you weren’t. It must be because of this,” she said, fingers ghosting the scarred space beneath Ria’s clavicles. “Because a piece of me has been with you from the moment your life began.”

Ria’s blood was sluggish regardless of her tripping heartbeat. “What’re you saying?” she whispered, but that wasn’t the right question. Watching Doran, it rose to her lips—a question she said she wouldn’t demand. “What are you?”

That inhuman stillness settled over Doran, but Ria realized now that she had been wrong. This wasn’t just the indication of mixed blood. This otherness, all-encompassing enough to trigger instinct, was different.

Doran dropped her words into the silence like stones into still water. “I’m a herald, or a harbinger.” Her tone was as distant and empty as the space between stars. “The living face of an inescapable force.”

The recognition skittering at the edges finally slid into place, a key turning a lock.

“Death,” Ria breathed.

Of course, that was the answer, regardless of the absurdity, the impossibility. She felt it now that she saw the truth of it. Death had always been at her side, tracing her steps through the path of her life. Sometimes farther away, like in the lull after she received her new heart. Sometimes, like when the fuse to the biogen hub blew, so close that the space was no more than a breath. Doran was right; after having such a constant companion, why would she not feel familiar?

All of Ria’s declarations now seemed like the foolish ignorance of a child. The warnings had skimmed her, there in her staff’s unease and the caution that filled Ria’s mind the first time she touched Doran’s hand. She overlooked it in her determination to prove that she could, even though Doran had suspected from the beginning that it couldn’t last.

“You can only say that because you don’t know.”

“You’re death.”

“Yes, and no,” Doran said eventually. For a moment she was far away. “This form is meant to collect a different sort of harvest.”

“And what’s that?”

Her smile twisted with irony. “Stories.”

“Stories,” Ria echoed.

“You feel trapped, wishing for something new and unknown,” Doran replied. “How trapping do you think endlessness feels? Don’t you think similar problems might have similar solutions?”

Somehow, even as her mind buzzed at the impossibility of this, Ria still didn’t feel the terror she knew she should. “That’s why you wanted to stay at the inn. Even locals come there to socialize and chat.” When Doran nodded, Ria gestured to her. “But why are you like this?”

“Lived stories are best,” she replied, glancing at herself. “This form helps provide a point of reference.”

“And was I a point of reference, too?”

Doran’s features softened so that the pain shone through again. “No. This was for me. Just this facet of me.” When she looked away, her weariness held the weight of centuries, millennia. “Although I should have been more careful when I knew the ending.”

“You told me to leave, though. So, the ending can’t be set,” Ria reasoned. “Otherwise, I should die here with everybody else regardless, right?”

Doran turned away with a noise of frustration. “You are one life. What difference does it make if a grain of sand is misplaced?”

Ria’s thoughts spun so fiercely she could hardly get them to settle long enough to stitch together. If Doran could choose to spare her, Ria had to hope it was possible for her to spare the others, her staff who were like family, too. “And you’re only here for stories? That’s all you need?”

“Ria, what does this matter?”

“What if I could be more than a grain of sand? What if I could be a gem?” Ria wondered, pushing past the arrogance of her presumptions. “Could I take the place of everybody who should die here?”

When Doran shook her head, brow drawn, Ria pushed forward. “I’ve listened to countless stories from everywhere across the galaxy. How many do you think I hold now? Hundreds? Thousands? And I’ve always wanted an adventure.” Even though her pulse stumbled, she managed a wry smile. “What bigger one is there?”

Doran lifted her free hand to touch Ria’s chin, gently tipping her head back into the wane light of the moons. “You’re afraid,” she said, thumb pressing against a tear as it slipped down Ria’s cheek.

She hadn’t realized she was crying. “For the people. Not of you,” she replied. Even in the uproar of everything else, that was still true. Ria thought of her staff, so willing to follow her regardless of their own worries, and the stream of people who filled the inn.

Swallowing, she stepped closer until she could lean her forehead against Doran’s. “I know it’s too much to ask. But if what you’ve said means you care for me at all, rather than saving me, please let me save them.”

Every sound silenced, and the shadows closed around them like an embrace. Doran’s eyes were as deep and dark as a void and just as unreachable, all her warmth hidden beyond a distance Ria could never hope to cross.

When Doran’s eyes finally slid shut, she let out a long, slow breath. The hand still against Ria’s face sank back into her hair. “Very well.”

Relief swelled in her chest before Doran shifted, pressing her lips over Ria’s like the sealing of a pact. Suddenly she understood why Doran had neared but never crossed this line; under that gentle pressure, Ria tripped and shattered, everything within her flung across the spread of the cosmos. The flare of her spirit was at once too big to be contained in her frail, mortal form and too wavering and fragile to fill this immensity. She would blaze and then flicker, sputter, extinguish.

A kiss of death. Ria was lost, her senses overwhelmed, torn in every direction, every plane, every reality.

And then there was Doran’s other hand against her cheek, an anchor to moor her spirit. There was the warmth of her mouth, gentle and seeking. A kiss to call Ria back.

The songs of night birds pushed against the silence like the lapping of a tide. Somehow Ria was still standing, dew-chilled air caressing her bare legs as she tried and failed to drag her eyes open. Her heart thundered and thrashed behind the cage of her ribs, her pulse singing in her ears, and yet her aerotab was quiet. No warnings. No errors.

Everything was the same, and nothing was.

“You bartered stories,” Doran breathed into the fragile space between them. “And I will collect. But I don’t want the tales of others. I want yours.”

For a moment, Doran’s fingers settled over Ria’s heart. “I can only offer rest—not adventure. So, seek that now, and live now, and I will come for your stories in due time.”

Her presence withdrew. Ria pressed her hand over her chest, trapping the fleeting heat of Doran’s touch beneath her palm. In the stillness, the pulse of her heart, strange and new and strong, rushed with the reliability of a timepiece. Ria smiled, throat constricting against a laugh that was almost a sob, as she finally opened her eyes upon the first weak blush of dawn.

In every heartbeat she felt the echo of Doran’s words, each heavy with portent—and promise.

---

About the Author

Sara Hartje is an asexual writer who gets to play with words in her personal and professional life, where she works as a school-based occupational therapist. She's deeply moved by the vastness of space, the way humanity seeks to see itself reflected in all things, and the perfection of baked goods.

© Tell Tale by Sara Hartje. 2022. All rights reserved.

I Wish I Didn’t Have to Go

by Cass Richards

As soon as she reached her empty bedroom, Seychelle felt her legs start to buckle from under her. Using the wall as support, she struggled to reach the corner and let herself fall on the dusty floor. Feeling feverish, her heart and mind racing, she tried counting in her mind as she took a deep breath in.

1…2…3…4

And exhaled slowly.

She knew she shouldn’t have come back to her parents’ home but, for some reason, hadn’t been able to think straight since she had found her way outside the Facility. Since she had opened one of the main building’s doors and had found herself out in the open, all she could feel was the burning eyes of cameras and drones lazily patrolling the skies looking above the city.

She felt her anxiety rise again and resumed her deep breathing, now focusing her attention on the small clumps of dust that were rolling around in her former room, disturbed by her presence. For some reason, she remembered the day when she was maybe six or seven years old when she had typed “are dust bunnies alive” online and had found out that they were, in fact, made of various debris all tangled together. From that moment on, she had always carefully picked them up to analyze them and catalog their content. On that day, however, they just looked dead and grey for they contained the rubbish of a life that was now over.

She sighed deeply, feeling somewhat calmer, and wiped her sweaty forehead with her red hoodie sleeve. She then took out her phone, which felt heavy, slippery and somewhat dangerous between her trembling, clammy fingers. She turned it on and, despite her fear of it being tracked, opened the texting app, took a deep breath in and tapped Amrita’s name-

Please… Please… she thought, feeling her heartrate accelerate again.

 - and loudly exhaled when she saw that her last texts had remained unanswered.

Shit.

She felt her vision blur and an increasing tightness at the back of her throat as she read the messages she had sent Amrita in the hours before she was taken away for her final Scan.

Sunday 8:05

Amrita it’s me. Seychelle. I hope you didn’t delete my number already.

8:06

I know I’ve been selfish and scared. But I need to talk to you.

8:07

I don’t know how to put it, but you’re the only one who can understand what I’m going through.

8:12

I put a letter in our secret place. I really want you to read it. Please text me if you can get to it.

10:43

Have you found the letter? I really need you to read it.

11:00

Please. It’s important.

11:30

Please, Amrita. Get that letter and read it before I am completely gone from your life. I don’t have much time left.

11:50

Please, I hear them coming me for the Scan. I don’t think I can go through with this. I need to know you’ll read my letter when I’m…

She scrolled her unanswered messages several times, not wanting to face how utterly lost she now was, with no idea of what she should be doing next. Despite what she had done to Amrita (for her own good, as she had told herself many times), she still had had a little spark of hope that their relationship had meant something and that there would be a message, something, anything, waiting for her rather than this sudden void of loneliness and a slight ringing in her ears.

What now… she thought as she looked around the empty bedroom.

A car passed by outside, humming loudly. Seychelle got on her knees and looked through the blinds, wondering if there were people, somewhere, actively looking for her. She knew that what she had done was considered illegal and yet, she wondered how many people actually escaped the Transfer Station when they had paid for it.

She looked up at the clear sky and noticed a few drones going about their business, some of them carrying packages. Then came the shrill call of a police car, coming from somewhere in the distance and she felt a prickle at the back of her neck. The walls of the room suddenly seemed to be closing in on her, with no way out but the door.

I can’t stay here… She thought as she swiftly got up and wiped her sweaty hands on the front of her jeans. She walked to the door, the same one that her parents had always asked her to keep open and, one hand on the handle, took one last look at the room where she grew up.

Goodbye again, room. Thanks for the memories.

 She found the letter exactly where she had left it, in the rusty, makeshift mailbox of her childhood treehouse. When she took it out, she found that it was warped and damp, like the various remnants of her and Amrita’s childhood that were still sprawled among the heavy-duty planks of the treehouse’s floor. She opened the envelope, took out the letter and held it like an old, precious parchment and found that she could still read it, despite the water damage.

Dear Amrita, she read.

I know you hate the way I write… but no matter how many times I tried to rewrite this letter I keep ending up with something that sounds like I’m an old spinster. I guess I’ve read too many of those spinster novels… or that I actually have the heart and soul of a spinster. Trust me, I tried to be funny and light (like your texts, you know, the ones) but I just… can’t.

Anyway.

First of all, I wanted to say that I am sorry for not answering your messages. I didn’t want to lie to you by saying things like “my parents are keeping me busy, preparing me for the big “Transfer” because you know as well as I do that, because of where we’re going, I won’t need my stuff anymore.

In fact, as of today, nothing remains of my present self but my own body and the clothes I’m wearing… and my phone, of course. I literally had to go through our garbage to find this piece of paper and this pen. Everything else was sold, given away, or destroyed, leaving nothing but shadows on my bedroom walls and that damned echo that you hate so much. Yes, I even had to get rid of my 80’s fantasy posters!

She smiled to herself as she pictured her room and Amrita’s 1990’s counterpart. Waves of bittersweet nostalgia swept through her mind, like the smell of burning wood that announced the end of Fall.

She continued to read.

Can you picture me on the bare floor, my bony body hunched over this paper as I am scribbling this to you? Can you imagine me in that room (the one in which you sneaked so many times) emptied of all the material things that, in a way, used to be “me”?

I actually cried yesterday when, after mine was cleared of everything and when I had to destroy all of your letters. Yes, I did scan them and sent them ahead of us, but it’s just not the same without the impression of your pencil on the paper, the idea of your nail-bitten fingers touching it and, yes, that intoxicating shampoo scent of yours that sticks to everything you touch.

Did I ever tell you it reminded me of the ocean?

Of all things, I wish I could have taken that with me to Cyrta.

She turned the page carefully and looked at the sky. Even though she had no idea where Cyrta was, she tried to imagine her mother, father and brother and herself, now pure data rushing through the vast emptiness of space, unaware that she was there, still on Earth. As much as she tried, it felt inconceivable that there could be two versions of her: one that was on her way to Cyrta and her present, confused fleshy self.

I guess that’s why there can’t be two of me, she thought.

She sighed, now feeling isolated and vulnerable, as unwanted questions about lodging, food and money started to skim the surface of her conscious thoughts. She thought about her data-Self again and how she was safely traveling in the darkness with her family, blissfully unaware of the danger her other Self was now experiencing and started to regret her impulsive decision.

She continued to read.

Anyway, the sudden absence of these traces of you around me now feels like a… cold emptiness inside my heart. Your absence in my life is like a void I need to fill by imagining telling you these things and talking to you one last time.

My dear Amrita, I wish I was six months older so that I could tell my parents to “fuck off” with all their Cyrta plans. I wish they had waited another six months so that I could actually make my own decisions. I feel like they did it on purpose, to trap me with them... But then again, if I had a daughter, would I want to leave her behind, never to see her again? Probably not.

So, yeah, I can’t really blame them for their decision. I guess I’ll blame society then, and this randomly chosen age of twenty-one to let us be our own selves.

But this is not what this letter is about.

Amrita, I wanted you to know that I blame myself for pushing you away when you wanted to be there for me. But more than that, I blame myself even more for never being able to really enjoy our time together, and for my constant complaints about our relationship. Today, as I am writing this, I only wish I could go for one last walk with you in that creepy, gnarly forest behind your house, or watch one last episode of one of your stupid 90’s sitcoms, laughing with you at the bad acting and rant about all those lame stereotypes!

You know what? I also wish I could spend one last day doing absolutely nothing with you.

Can you believe I’m actually writing this, when all I actually did was complain about us never doing anything adventurous together?

A warm breeze glided through the trees, shaking the leaves like clapping hands. There was already a hint of Fall in it, even though it was still months in the future. It would be another Summer and Fall before her data-self and her family would wake up on Cyrta. There was something pleasant about the inevitability of those thoughts, compared to the uncertainty of her own fate. She realized that she really wanted to experience another cycle of Nature and that, if that were to happen, she would do her best to enjoy every moment of it.

My Love, I am so sorry about everything I said, and how selfishly I acted when we were together. I know how much I hurt you every time I said that my life was boring and that I hated it. And yet I remember how excited you were for me when my parents said we were leaving for Cyrta, even though you knew we would never see each other again, and that our story had to come to an end. I know the news must have broken your heart and yet, there you were, with your bright, star-like eyes burning with joy for me. Even now I can’t understand how someone can be so selfless as you’ve been with me. I’m now realizing I never really deserved any of it…

Gosh, I feel like a total cliché! A 90’s sitcom cliché? You tell me.

But now I am terrified, Amrita.

Since my parents told me about the move, about the Transfer, I can’t stop hearing that awful jingle in my head, teasing me: “New planet, new home, new you!” and it terrifies me. I know I made a lot of people jealous when I announced that we were leaving, but if only they knew how quickly I would trade places with them. I don’t understand how anyone can be so excited about the idea of being uploaded, transformed into data before being cast across the galaxy and downloaded back into their clone.

Worse. I’m terrified about the scan itself, and something they don’t really talk about (although I think my parents may know about it, since they’ve been super evasive): what will happen to my body, to theirs and my brother’s, once our scans are complete?

Do you know?

I’ve done research, but it’s not clear. It’s as if everybody knows, but no one really talks about it. I know that I’ll get scanned for half a day or so, that I’ll be uploaded, and that I’ll wake up, seemingly instantaneously, on Cyrta in a new, cloned body… but what will happen to the body that is mine, here on Earth? The one being scanned?

Amrita, I’m afraid the scan is going to actually kill me. The real me. And that a copy of my Self will be sent to a body that will also be a copy.

Does that make any sense to you?

They keep telling us that by scanning our Selves we can live forever and travel across the universe, but I don’t feel that way because… well, they don’t actually “remove” your Self from your body, right? The scan is not removing anything to put it somewhere else. They are just… copying you and sending that copy away to travel between star systems. In other words, the person waking up on Cyrta will only be a copy of my mind in a copied body, thinking it’s still me, but it won’t be. Not really.

Seychelle looked at the houses and silvery buildings that, in the distance, rose like spears above the tree line. She tried to imagine people going about their lives, unaware of her own situation. She then tried to imagine her parents as they would, in eighteen months, wake up in their new bodies.

What would they say, what would they all think of her?

She then tried to imagine herself waking up on Cyrta and being told that she had escaped the Facility before being caught and terminated (because as far as she knew, that was now the only way for her cloned self to be imprinted on Cyrta). How would her other Self react to an escape she didn’t even remember? To the thought of her original body being destroyed? She tried to imagine what it would feel like to know that she had physically died, but couldn’t conjure any clear emotion. As far as she was concerned, she was born on Earth and that made her the one and true Seychelle. Since the “Cyrta Seychelle” would only be an imprinted clone, she would be a completely different person, and therefore unpredictable.

She continued to read, the words she had written now echoing her thoughts.

Amrita, as much as I try, I cannot believe that I am actually going to continue my life with my family on another planet because I don’t see any sort of continuity between this “me” who is writing to you, who loves you and misses you so much... and that clone who will wake up almost a full light year away on Cyrta.

I am terrified because I am now convinced there is no eternal life for anyone and that I’ll be, in fact, killed after I am scanned, and that my present consciousness will cease to be, my body discarded… while another Seychelle will wake on Cyrta believing she is utterly and completely me.

I know how crazy it sounds, but I also have this terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that she will also love you exactly the way I do and that, by loving her, you will be in love with someone else, and that I will be replaced.

So here I am, laying in anguish in an empty room, writing to you because I think you will understand. But also, I think, because there is something in me desperately trying to survive through this letter, and maybe through you.

She heard a buzzing sound and saw a drone coming her way. She ducked away from the window and let it pass. More than ever, she realized that she needed to talk to Amrita, to see her, hug her. Reading the final part of the letter, she now felt as if she was talking directly to her.

My dear Amrita,

I don’t know if we’ll ever speak again, considering the distance that will be separating us. Maybe we will but I want you to remember that the person who will be writing to you, remembering you, may not be exactly me because that person, writing to you today, will have most certainly died.

But whatever actually happens… Whether I truly die or not, I want you to know that I will be thinking about you when they put me to sleep before the upload.

It’s stupid and corny, I know, but I’m telling myself that if you’re the last thing on my mind when I die, this memory of you will travel the galaxy and, hopefully, you will be the first thing that the other Seychelle will think about when she awakes. Hopefully, she’ll love you better than I did.

My sweet Amrita, I think it’s time for me to go. I don’t think I’ll have time to write again, at least not in this life, and definitely not on this planet.

I love you, Amrita, and I am sorry I didn’t get to spend my last days on Earth with you.

Yours always, from my last breath to my first, from the Earth to Cyrta,

Seychelle

She folded the letter and put it back in the box, feeling empty and hopeless. She had no idea what to do next, or where to go. All she wanted was to curl up on the floor of the platform and rest, for this treehouse was now the only place where she felt safe and, somehow, close to Amrita.

She turned her phone on, checked the unanswered messages again and texted the last words of the letter as a final farewell.

I love you, Amrita… and I am sorry I didn’t get to spend my last days on Earth with you.

Her heart loudly dropped in her chest when three little dots suddenly appeared on the screen, disappeared, then reappeared again.

She held her breath, waiting for a message to pop up on her screen.

…

Seychelle? Is that you?

Yes! It’s me!

I don’t understand, how are you writing this?

I escaped the Facility after they scanned me.

You WHAT?

Yeah, I know…

But now I don’t know what to do.

How on Earth did you escape?

I thought the place was secure.

I guess they assume people don’t leave.

I mean I literally walked out.

Just like that?

Well, I did steal a nurse’s uniform.

That’s so badass.

Yeah well now I’m screwed, so…

Seychelle. I can’t believe it’s really you.

It’s really me.                           

So what happened to “a memory of you traveling the universe”?

What? You read the letter?

What do you think?

But it’s still in our secret spot.

Well it was more secure than bringing it home.

Yeah. Makes sense.

So, what’s the plan?

The plan?

Oh my God, S.

You didn’t think any of this through, did you?

I guess not…

Why did you have to write a letter?

You could’ve called.

I don’t know…

It’s very pre-Internet 90’s so I thought you’d like it.

After you dumped my ass?

I guess I was always afraid of how you would react.

A letter was easier, especially after I was gone.

Yeah. Right.

Amrita… I’m sorry.

I know. You said it 15 times in your letter.

I guess I was afraid.

Of what. The Transfer?

Yeah.

And afraid of seeing you one last time, I guess.

What do you mean?

I didn’t want to put you through that.

Oh, so you wanted to protect me.

Cute.

But I don’t need protecting.

I know.

So tell me why you really cut me off.

What do you mean?

Come on, S.

I know you didn’t want to hurt me.

But that’s not all.

I mean I hope it’s not all

I…

Yes?

I guess I didn’t want to feel hurt.

You mean you couldn’t live without me?

Yeah. Something like that.

Your letter was so beautiful, Seychelle.

Why couldn’t it have been like that when we were together.

I don’t know.

You know how hard it is for me to say things to people.

It’s always been easier to write.

I know.

Even now, you’re writing to ask for help instead of calling.

That’s not why I texted you.

So why did you text me?

I texted you because…

Please, S. I want you to say it.

I need to know it’s going to be worth it.

I texted you because I love you.

Because I need you.

You? Seychelle? You need me?

I know they’re probably going to catch me anyway.

But I want to see you one last time before they do.

I want to hold you, to kiss you, to tell you how much I love you.

Wow… You’re actually making me blush.

I wish I could see that.

Yeah well. I’m still mad at you.

I would be too.

It literally took a Transfer.

And the idea of DEATH for you to tell me those things.

I’m sorry. I love you, Amrita.

I love you too, S.

So, what’s next?

I don’t know… I don’t have a plan. Remember?

LOL

What?

Nothing. You’re adorable

Impulsive yet introverted.

Sue me.

I’m going to be in so much trouble for this…

What do you mean?

I hope it’s going to be worth it.

Amrita. What do you mean?

You’re so hot too, so it’s not like I have a choice.

Why did you have to be so hot?

Amrita, stop that!

I guess I’ll tell them you bewitched me.

AMRITA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then, just like that, Seychelle’s consciousness left her phone and focused back on the real world where she had just heard a familiar voice, say “bewitched me” right before the words appeared on her screen.

She looked around, slightly confused. The warm breeze was still blowing, rustling through the leaves, and a hyper-plane was cruising at high altitude, the glow of its engines like a hot, white star. When she heard the voice again, coming from somewhere nearby, she recognized it and everything felt bright and light again.

A backpack was thrown onto the platform and, a second later, Amrita’s face peered from the edge of the treehouse floor, her large dark eyes like pools of shadowed stars.

“Honey I’m home!” She said with a smile.

 “You found me…” Seychelle said, feeling the tears well up again as she realized how much she had missed those eyes and the slight gap between Amrita’s front teeth - her diastema, a word that, to them, had always sounded like some kind of jewelry.

“Your parents are going to be so pissed at you. It’s the ultimate Home Alone situation…”

“What?”

Amrita rolled her eyes and sighed as she helped Seychelle get on her feet.

“S. if we’re going to be on the run together, you’re gonna have to try to understand my 1990’s references”

“Okay. But maybe not now? I mean I can’t exist here and on Cyrta. There are probably people looking for me-”

“I know. In the end, there can only be one…” Amrita said, dramatically.

“Was that another quote?”

“Whatever. Let’s get you somewhere safe, shall we? But first…”

Amrita opened her arms and Seychelle instinctively let herself fall forward and into her lover’s warm embrace, knowing, without the shadow of a doubt, that she had made the right decision and that the Cyrta Seychelle would understand, and hopefully, envy her.

She took a deep breath of Amrita’s shampoo-scented hair and thought of the ocean and of distant places. She then looked up at the sky where she knew her other Self would be travelling for the next eighteen months.

“I guess that right now I’m the only physical Seychelle in existence. At least for the next eighteen months, right?” Seychelle said.

Amrita pulled away from her and gently stroke the side of her face with the back of her hand, sadness in her eyes.

“I don’t think that’s how it works, S. They’ll get you. Eventually.”

“Yeah, I know… But it’s not a reason not to make it count, right?”

“Then let’s make it count. Fuck you, other Seychelle,” Amrita said as they held each other close, feeling as one again.

---

About the Author

Cass Richards (they/them) is a francophone writer from Toronto, Canada. Their most recent stories in English have been published under various pen names in Interzone (upcoming), Metastellar Magazine, Cloaked Press’s anthology “Winter of Wonder”, JayHenge Publishing’s anthology “Phantasmical Contraptions & More Errors”, and others.

© I Wish I Didn’t Have to Go by Cass Richards. 2022. All rights reserved.

Ponte Selvaggio

by Meg Murray

Before the sea swallowed the secluded town of Ponte Selvaggio, Marcy and I enjoyed it twice a month for dinner. We visited on Sundays during the warm season when the town put on fairs in the steep, narrow streets. Sometimes we ducked into tiny alleys behind upscale galleries where we kissed, ignoring the sweeping views down to the shining sea. That was five years ago.

In the summer of 2049, we were evicted from our apartment in the city. We heard on the news that the government issued a non-mandatory evacuation of the vacation town, which really meant that no more aid would be allocated there. Not many permanent residents were left anyway. The news report showed waves crashing up the cliffside. Tiny houses—blue and orange and fuchsia dots abandoned by their wealthy owners—were pulled down by the ocean’s hungry grasp. The turquoise waters of the Emerhenian Sea forced the business owners to finally abandon their village shops. Marcy wanted to take advantage of their misfortune.

“One person’s misfortune is another’s chance to eat,” she often told me in those desperate months. I wasn’t sure if I agreed, but I couldn’t resist seeing the town one last time.

Ponte Selvaggio, advertised as a ritzy seagirt village, was connected to the mainland only by a thin isthmus bridge with a tunnel carved in the style of an aqueduct to give it an old world atmosphere. With breathtaking views, it was full of danger and romance. No access by air. No access by water because of the steep cliffs. Water was the problem in the end, of course.

The last Sunday in June that summer was too hot, and the celebrations were long gone. But we went. Marcy drove me in her banged-up convertible along the twisting shoreline. The apple red coupe barreled into the hill under the arch of the aqueduct bridge at the land’s end. The car shot out of the hill on the other side, and her foot collided with the brake pedal under the small town speed limit laws. A salty sea breeze and the scent of lemon groves filled the air.

“Ponte Selvaggio,” I recited from the welcome sign as we drove into the heart of the village. “Escape from the world. Quite a lofty motto they had.”

She didn’t respond. I sighed, thinking of better times. Before I had to leave school to find work. When the village restaurants were still open. When we had money for food. Before we sold all our nice clothing.

A few pedestrians meandered between the closed cafes and boutiques. Probably locals from the higher cliffside homes who’d hiked down to find treasures left in the shops. Or tourists like me, who came to see the last days of a luxury legend. I wanted to see the transformation of exclusive resort village to ghost town. I wanted to watch it crumble away into the ocean. I felt guilty for my curiosity as I gawked at the boarded up doors and windows.

When the town was thriving, I felt like a real grown-up going on a dinner date there. We’d put on stylish outfits. I had a few evening dresses, some with glitter threads. Marcy preferred wearing skirts which she usually bought at vintage stores. She had to borrow nice tops from me because all she owned was t-shirts, and it thrilled me to loan one to her. Even if she complained about uncomfortable fabric or too many ruffles. I knew she really loved me when we started sharing clothes. After leisurely zigzagging along the serpentine roadway with the convertible top up, we’d dine on a restaurant’s veranda under a string of outdoor lights and gaze at the panoramic sunset view with the terraced landscape behind us.

On that June Sunday, we drove the entire main stretch to where a loop in the highway forced cars to turn back into the rows of shops and restaurants. At the dizzying cliff edge of the switchback curve, a sign normally stood with the name Linger Longer Road. But the pole was bent over. Vandalism maybe. Or a car wreck, though I didn’t want to picture how the damage had been done.

“The sign’s gone,” I said, hoping she’d remember how she used to joke about the road’s dirty sounding name.

“What sign?” She turned the wheel sharply to ride the curve back into the village. The tires of the battered convertible clung to the well-worn road.

“Never mind.” I swallowed my disappointment that her mood wasn’t improving as we drove through the place where we had our first date. She was always cranky when we had to siphon gas to fill the convertible. I’d thought the extra gas would be worth it to salvage something of the happier days we’d had there. I wanted to pretend our trip was purely for pleasure, not necessity.

We couldn’t go on an evening date. It wasn’t safe anymore. We’d have to loot in the daytime with the other respectable downtrodden folks. We couldn’t risk running into the type of people who showed up to ransack the stores and bars after dusk.

She drove slowly past the restaurant with the terraced hillside behind it. She brought me there at the end of our first summer together. The restaurant’s veranda was empty now. I pictured us sitting at the table with a sunset in the distance. The imaginary Marcy picked up the hand of an imaginary me and pressed the palm to her cheek.

“What will people at school say?” I’d asked. “A grad student and a professor…”

“They’ll say, ‘Aren’t they lucky.’”

“I don’t know…”

“They won’t fire me. And if they do, screw ‘em. I want to be with you. Nothing else matters. It’s us against the world, Brenda.” The words of her ghost echoed in my ears as the car rolled past the restaurant. Us against the world. I looked over at her in the driver’s seat. She was right; she wasn’t fired for dating a student because her entire department was closed down last year.

“We could try the restaurant,” I said to the side of her face.

“The restaurants were probably the first places scavengers went to,” she said without glancing back at me. “So, let’s go further in.”

“Okay.” I looked back and forth on the village streets for any other places I recognized. The rumble of the car’s motor ricocheted between the buildings, which stood like gravestones marking the long gone residents. “Hey, isn’t that where they set up the fruit stands during the street fairs? And the baker had a booth on the end. Oh, those lemon tarts were to die for. You would eat five or six. Then chase them with champagne.”

She scrunched up her face. “And we’d dance all night like the world was ending.”

I wanted to laugh, but a small piece of my heart broke away and flew out of the convertible. We left behind bits and pieces of ourselves all down the road. She turned a corner to drive in an alleyway. I wondered if it was the spot where we’d had our first kiss. She pulled out onto another side street of vacant shops. The bright red car rolled along slowly as we peered into each store.

“This looks like a decent spot.” Marcy parked the car at a jewelry boutique, the outside painted an optimistic pink. The storefront glass was smashed. Leaves and dust covered the previously flawless window displays. “The shop has probably been picked clean, which means we can take our time in the upstairs residence.”

“Remember when we came in here once?” I asked. “And you said that after you got tenure, we’d come back and buy the most expensive earrings?”

She shrugged and frowned. Another fissure in my heart began. A memory that flitted away, dropped to the dusty road and dissolved. I stepped out of the old convertible. Down the street, a group of teenagers kicked bottles as they walked. The ringing of the glass skipping along the curb mixed with the distant sound of laughter from the teens. An elderly man paced on the opposite sidewalk, taking no notice of us or the teens. With cleaner clothes, he could have been one of the rich Ponte Selvaggio proprietors. I shifted my backpack onto my shoulder and followed Marcy through the jewelry store’s broken door.

The decor inside was beautiful—had been beautiful. The cases were destroyed and the floor was a layer of glass and dirt, but the ceiling was immaculate. It featured a Renaissance-style mural between four chandeliers. The walls were pink. Teal columns lining the entire shop matched the large sign painted on the back wall that declared ‘Ponte Selvaggio’s finest jewelry craftsman’ in teal cursive letters while emerald-blue waves swooped underneath and a white seagull was frozen in flight above. Our boots crunched over glass.

“Marcy, remember the ceiling? It’s incredible.”

She stopped and stared up. “An amateur reproduction at best.”

“Well, of course, I don’t think it’s authentic. I just thought you would appreciate the effort, Miss Art History Professor.”

“You mean Ex-Professor,” she said with a sigh. “And I don’t care about that shit anymore. If no one else is going to care, then I’m not going to waste my time caring.”

“Some people still care.”

“Not the people who paid my salary. Not the kids coming into college these days. Not the people in charge of scheduling classes. When the world is drowning, no one cares about art.”

“I meant I still care, okay?” I hated the rising anger in her voice when her old job came up. I shouldn’t have pointed out the ceiling. “And I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry. I’m just hungry, you know?”

“I know,” I said.

“Damn, come here.” She stretched out her hand to take mine.

“It’s still you and me against the world, right?”

“Sure,” she said. We held hands as we crossed to the back of the debris-filled store. The seagull sign must have been painted long after the last of the seagulls flew around the town, which seemed a bit morbid to me. I remembered the pictures of the last dying seagull pairs on their failing nests. Pictures we were shown in elementary school. Every one of them gone now. Another notch in Darwin’s belt, in the endless entries of extinct species. Now the town itself was going the way of the seagulls before it.

“The staircase is back here,” she said, pointing.

“Shouldn’t we look on the floor here for any rings or bracelets that fell when the thieves busted the place up?”

“Let’s check for food in the apartment upstairs first.” She grinned. “Then we can comb for any leftover diamonds on our way out if we have time.”

“You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?” I asked, watching her smile. I stared at her lips like a lost person in the desert watches an oasis, skeptical but hopeful.

“I just think it’s cute that you apply yourself fully to anything you pursue. Even trying to be a criminal. You want me to give you an A.”

“Hey, I earned my A’s. I did all my coursework.”

“Yes, Brenda. You always complete your work.” She squeezed my hand before letting it go. “Come on. Let’s scrounge.”

“I can’t stop thinking about the seagulls.”

“Seagulls?”

“Yeah, the seagull painted on the wall here. It reminds me of the trips we’d take to the southern peninsula. Me and my parents and Joshua.”

“Hmm, them,” she said, her voice muffled as she walked away from me up the stairs.

My older brother told me stories of the vacations we took when I was a baby. A few pictures survived in an album that I found in Josh’s apartment after he died. My brother, at age eight or nine, floating in a swimming pool on a blue inner tube. Another of him poised above the water, waving to the camera, goggles awkwardly covering his eyes. I’d tried to imagine my mom or dad behind the camera telling him to smile.

Our footsteps echoed on the bare wooden staircase. “Josh was old enough to remember when the gulls swarmed around the tourists at the shore,” I said to Marcy’s back. “The air was filled with them, squawking for crumbs. Mom never let him throw oyster crackers or crusts of his bread because she hated the way the birds fought each other over the food.”

“I guess we’re like the seagulls now,” Marcy said.

“People everywhere fighting for food and shelter? Or do you mean the two of us are like a dying pair of birds?” She didn’t answer. We entered the upstairs studio apartment. Despite a stale, musty scent, everything appeared tidy. A queen mattress on the floor in the far corner. A small kitchen, a couple of wooden chairs at a table, and a wall of windows looking out on the encroaching sea. “It’s decently clean,” I said. “No one’s been up here to rob it yet. We’re definitely going to find something useful.”

“Hope so.” She crossed into the kitchen. She started opening the cupboards while I walked to a bookcase under the picturesque window. On the shelf, I found a framed photo of a group of people at one of the upscale restaurants. Probably the store owners and their friends from the town. Climate refugees now. If the rising water had been this drastic five years ago, they may have successfully petitioned the government to help with their relocation. But the tax funds for that were dried up after the hurricanes of ‘47 and no one else from Ponte Selvaggio could receive aid.

“I feel kind of guilty for stealing from these people,” I said.

“Brenda.” Marcy tilted her head. “Nothing here will belong to anyone when it’s underwater. You know?”

“I know, but what if the owners still live here?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You saw the shop. These people aren’t coming back. Are you going to help search, or what?”

I scanned the bookshelf for anything valuable, but only found a light layer of dust on old books and ceramic fish figurines. A few feet away in the kitchen, she banged cupboards open and closed.

“Aha! Pasta linguine, mi amore?” She placed a package of dehydrated noodles on her palm and gave me a slight bow.

“I wish we could cook them here,” I said.

Her smile crumbled away and she threw the noodles into her backpack. She opened the fridge and slammed it shut quickly. “Disgusting. The power’s been out for a long time. Eating anything in there will kill us. Hmm, maybe we should eat it, actually. Poison ourselves. All this work to get here and we’ve got one package of ramen? If we don’t starve tonight, then we’ll starve next week.”

I held back tears as I tried to decide how to steer Marcy away from her dark thoughts. “We can’t give up yet. There are more buildings to search.”

“Let’s just get what we can and get out of this phony town before it sinks into the ocean.”

“Doesn’t any part of you miss the time we spent here?”

She stomped across to the apartment’s bathroom. “This isn’t the same place it once was. I hate seeing it destroyed and empty. We’re just sifting through crumbs here.” She held up a tube of toothpaste she’d found before tossing it into the bag.

“Okay, let’s just get what we can and go home.”

“Home?” Her voice cracked. “We’re living in the car! It doesn’t matter where we drive back to tonight. We don’t have a home, you know?”

“I know!” I said, hating when my voice matched her volume. I turned away from her and stared out of the large window at lines of lemon trees and gnarled olive trees on the cliff below. Silver wisps of moss draped over their branches, and they looked like the ghosts of trees that had suffocated under dry tinsel decorations. Breaker waves surged at the foot of the trunks, eroding the ground holding the roots. How long until it would all be washed away and the trees fall forward into the water?

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” she said behind me. “It’s too hard. There’s nothing left for us. Anywhere.”

“We could stay here, I guess. Wait for the tide to come and take us into the ocean.” The fissures inside me built up more pressure.

“I don’t want to be trapped here.”

“What are you saying, Marcy?” I wished we’d never come.

“Stop being irrational. Let’s just get back to the car.”

I spun around. “I’m not irrational! You can drive me as far north as you can and drop me off. I’ll hitchhike until I find someone to give me work.”

“You can go walk yourself straight into the ocean, if that’s what you really want.” Marcy slammed the bathroom door and started back to the stairs.

I was trembling, like I’d waited so long for us to break up that I’d become a tight bundle of tectonic plates, ready to burst wide open. “I mean it!” I yelled after her. “I don’t think we can do this together anymore.”

Marcy stopped on the staircase and looked back at me. “Fine.”

She threw me away with one word. That’s all she gave me in exchange for five years. ‘Fine.’ A cruel word. A non-answer.

I followed her through the decrepit jewelry store. We said nothing to each other. No jokes about looking for diamonds. No talk of buying earrings. There was shouting outside.

“Brenda!” She ran over the broken glass. The group of teenagers from earlier sat in the red convertible. The engine sputtered to life and the driver pulled away from the curb. They accelerated far past the speed limit as we ran out of the shop.

“Brenda!” she yelled again as the car disappeared where the dusty highway curved sharply away. “That was everything we had.”

The dust left behind from the stolen car made me cough. Sweat dripped into my eyes. I doubled over, coughing and crying. I fell to my knees. We’re finished. We’re really trapped now. I beat my fists twice on the ground. The sharpness of the pain in my hands was almost a relief.

Marcy picked up a small rock and threw it across the street into a window. The shattering of glass continued as she did it again and again until falling onto the road next to me.

I put my bruised hands onto my knees and started screaming. I screamed until I didn’t recognize the sounds coming out of me. I yelled at the teenagers for stealing our car. Yelled at the town for crumbling away. Yelled at the ocean for coming to take it. Yelled at my parents for dying so painfully slow. Yelled at my brother for getting sick and dying so painfully fast.

I yelled at Marcy for giving in to despair. And yelled at myself for the same. My hands were numb. My throat raw. It was quiet for a moment, then I heard her laughing beside me.

“You’re wild,” she said through delirious laughter.

“Why are you laughing? We’ve lost everything.”

“We still have our backpacks.”

“All we have is our backpacks,” I said.

“Hey, our luck had to catch up to us eventually. Our misfortune is their--”

“Don’t say it–”

“–chance to eat.”

I groaned. “What is going on with you?”

“What about you? I think we’ve both cracked.”

“Marcy,” I whispered. “I don’t really want to leave you.”

“I know.”

We hugged, sitting in the dirt, covered in sweat. I imagined the tiny bits of memories in the town rolling towards us and gathering themselves into my heart again. Our frustrations had burned up and dissipated like the settled dust kicked up from the car.

She stood up and brushed off her jeans. “I remember when we were here. At the jewelry shop. I remember telling you I’d buy you earrings.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“No, look at this place. How could I forget this ridiculous pink building? Look at the purple trim and hideous copper gutters. Those shutters upstairs were fluorescent orange before the sun faded them. That window…”

“What about it? You remember it’s encrusted with diamonds?” I looked up at the pink front of the jewelry shop. The triangle dormer over the smashed front door pointed at the clear, sun-bleached sky. The dusty square of an unbroken upstairs window looked out over the street.

“No, Brenda, look at the window on the second story. Do you remember seeing that from the apartment? There might be another room up there. We only saw the back part.”

“But there wasn’t any other room.”

“There has to be. Come on. Let’s go back up.”

“What’s the point? You said yourself, we can only find crumbs. It’s hopeless.”

“Brenda.” She grasped my shoulders and picked me up from the road. “We’re not the seagulls.”

I stood weakly, letting her hands on my shoulders hold me up.

“I know how awful things seem now,” she said, “but we still have each other. You and me against the world, okay?”

We hustled inside, over the glass shards and past the seagull painting. Back upstairs, we found no obvious door to a second room. Finally, pushing on the wall panel next to the bathroom sink, Marcy let out a jubilant squeal. “It’s here! Oh my God, cans and boxes and it’s all edible.”

She handed me a box of pantry foods, looking into my eyes with the first signs of joy that I’d seen all summer. We took a quick count of all the food in the storage room as we hauled out box after box.

“We’re going to be alright,” she said. “I’m sorry I was so angry before. I want to keep you safe, you know?”

“I know.” I carried the last box of food to the small kitchen. She followed me, putting her arms around my shoulders. We stood together and stared through the picture window at the blue, sparkling sea.

“Maybe we could hitchhike farther inside the state,” I said. “Away from the coast. Remember when we had to evacuate for Hurricane Emma? We were bussed to that shelter in an old high school. What was that town called?”

“There probably aren’t any jobs there either. Even for a professor and a grad school drop-out willing to do menial labor. I doubt anyone would hire two homeless women. No housekeeping jobs. No line cook jobs. The tourist season is over for good in this state. Money’s gone elsewhere.”

“Yeah,” I said, walking away from the window. I opened the top drawer of a small dresser next to the bed and found a collection of neatly folded clothes. “I think the town was Saint Cloud or Mount Cloud or something,” I murmured as I held up a short green dress made of a delicate shiny fabric.

“Sleeping on cots really sucked,” she said.

“But it was better than the car. I’ve missed having a real bed to share with you.” We stared at the queen bed between us.

“Let me make you dinner,” she said. “Try on that dress. It looks too big, but we can pin it with something.”

The last time I’d worn a fancy dress was our final dinner date in Ponte Selvaggio. We couldn’t afford it anymore, but she insisted. Secretly, I’d collected matchboxes from every restaurant we’d gone to on our dates. I never knew how much they’d come in handy for lighting candles after the power company shut off our services. I fished a box of matches out of my backpack and threw them to Marcy so she could set the table for our romantic meal. We didn’t have to think about the future for a while; just make ourselves a little vacation home on top of a plundered shop in Ponte Selvaggio.

After dinner, laying together on the mattress, we kissed like we were happy again, like we were safe again. People yelled somewhere in the distance, and we worried other scavengers would come around. We snuffed out the candles. We walked the rotten fridge across the floor and pushed it down the stairs to block anyone from coming up. Later, in the daylight, we cleaned the fridge out so the smell wouldn’t bother us, but we kept it on the stairs to prevent anyone from finding us at night.

There was enough canned food hidden away in that little room to keep us both alive for weeks. Too much to carry back to civilization, especially without a car. So we stayed.

We escaped from the world. Cold refried beans and dry ramen aren’t fine dining, but the apartment was comfortable. We tried to boil water over candles to drink and to cook with. The town seemed completely evacuated after two weeks. We picked whatever lemons and olives were left on the trees. Soon though, the water was too high for us to venture into the hillside groves.

I had a recurring nightmare about my parents. They were taking pictures of the ocean. Their backs were to me, and I couldn’t see their faces, but I felt it was them. I called out, but they wouldn’t turn. They kept taking pictures, and I saw that seagulls flew around their heads. I shouted at them to run, thinking the seagulls were attacking, but then the birds picked up my parents and lifted them away in the sky just as the ocean swelled, covering all the land.

“It’s time for us to go,” I said one evening as I watched the waves swallowing the olive trees on the hill below.

“I know,” Marcy said. “We’ve used up most of the rations anyway.”

The next morning, we fit the last of the food into our backpacks and started the long hike out of the town. Crossing the isthmus bridge was surreal as the rising Emerhenian Sea was nearly up to the edge of the road. “Goodbye, Ponte Selvaggio,” I said.

We hitchhiked inland. A family let us squeeze into the back of their minivan. We gave them packages of ramen as payment.

Two months later, we watched the ocean take out the aqueduct bridge. We saw it on the news. From TV screens inside a coffee shop, video of the village showed the mountainside crumbling as it was consumed by waves. Helicopter footage recorded the last of the brightly hued villas, built on the towering bluffs, covered by water swirling around the craggy rocks. I scanned the water for a hint of our pink jewelry store oasis above the hill of fruit trees, but never saw it. The weather forecaster waved her arms dramatically as she clung to the edge of the helicopter flying over Ponte Selvaggio as it sank beneath the waves like a modern-day Atlantis.

We begged for money on the street to get by. Over the next year, we made our way farther north and found jobs picking lettuce and spinach in wide, hot fields.

The smell of lemons brought back the memories of our blissful few weeks when no one else on Earth existed but us. Memories of our happier days—meeting at the university, dates in Ponte Selvaggio, and being stranded there in our stolen vacation home—kept us going. As long as we had each other, we could work together to get what we needed to be safe. We could endure. Us against the world.

---

About the Author

Meg Murray (she/her) is a queer writer living in Colorado with her spouse, four children, and rescue dog. Her work has been published in Solarpunk Magazine, HyphenPunk Magazine, TL;DR Press, and elsewhere. Find her on Twitter (@megmurraywrites) and online (megmurraywrites.com).

© Ponte Selvaggio by Meg Murray. 2022. All rights reserved.

Triangles are Forever

by Ramez Yoakeim

I arrived home to find it empty aside from Liam Rout sitting in the living room like he owned the place. Instinctively, my hand went to the weapon I no longer carried. Rout didn’t seem concerned. “Relax, Keziah. It’s only a hologram. My meatsuit is in no condition to travel, and you’re not taking my calls.”

“If you wanted to die this badly, you should’ve turned up in the flesh.”

Rout chuckled before it turned into a wheezing cough. Even if he really was this close to the end of a Cycle, why incorporate that into a hologram? “You know very well I’m not talking about swapping meatsuits. I want out,” he said, once his breathing steadied.

Once real-time mirrored neural maps and rapidly matured clones made the irreversible loss of human consciousness a rare oddity, death and dying became taboo, aside from the Al-Nuri clan. What we once meted out by commission became a gift we bestowed only on the worthy among those who sought it. A couple of decades ago, I wouldn’t have refused Rout, but I’d given my word to leave that life behind, and where I come from, a woman’s word is her bond. “You can’t force me to kill you, Rout.”

Rout shrugged. “It’s just a question of finding the right motivation.”

A shiver shot up my spine, and I told my proxy to call Bahlool and Jed. Seconds passed without a response. “What have you done?” I growled at the hologram.

“Your husbands and kids are safe,” Rout said, a self-satisfied sneer distorting his pale, drawn face, “and they’ll stay that way if you do as I ask.”

“For the umpteenth time, I don’t do that anymore.”

“You’re still an Al-Nuri,” Rout said, before adding meaningfully, “as is your line. You have three girls, right?”

“Leave my kids out of this,” I said, my hands bunched up into fists, as if I could punch photons. “There’re hundreds of clan assassins who’d gladly take your commission, why me?”

“You’re the best. Why shouldn’t I have the best? I’m not starting another Cycle. I can’t bear the idea of a new meatsuit, another century or two, only to repeat it all over again. I’ve had enough. It’s time I died by your hands, Keziah Al-Nuri, one way or another.”

I dug my bugout bag out of the backyard and was at the front door when it swung open. My daughters—Adara, Nabeela, and little Raesa—rushed in, shrieking playfully and chasing one another ahead of my husbands. Jed was too busy corralling the kids, but Bahlool saw me wide-eyed and frozen by the door and did a surprised double-take.

“You’re back,” I stammered.

“So are you. The note said you’d be gone a few days,” Bahlool said as they closed the door and noticed the backpack I’d dropped behind it. Their eyes alternated between the olive drab bag and my stricken face, their frown deepening with each turn.

Jed noticed the standoff from across the room. He walked closer, saw the bag, and turned to face me, lips pursed, head tilted, arms akimbo. “Keziah Al-Nuri, what were you about to do?” he demanded. “Did you send us away so you could leave? Why bother? Sweetie, if you wanted out, you only had to say the word.” A raised eyebrow and one hand finger snap rounded out his defiance. Bahlool grunted their concurrence.

“That’s not what’s happening here.” I reached out to both of them. Jed swatted one hand away. Bahlool side-stepped the other.

It wasn’t my first family, nor would it be my last. With open-ended lifespans, till-death-do-us-part stopped being a viable option, but in that moment, nothing mattered more to me than my husbands and girls. “Let me explain.” I told them about Liam Rout’s determination to die by my hands, an obsession that pre-dated our union, and his latest ploy, leading me to believe he’d abducted them and the kids.

Bahlool’s thick eyebrows nearly met. “You thought we’d been kidnapped and you decided to run?”

Jed wasn’t as circumspect. “I fancied knowing you well, Keziah. A killer, liar, and all-around scoundrel, but I never figured you for a coward.”

“I’m doing it for you.” The words tumbled out in a torrent. “Once I’m gone, Rout won’t have a reason to target you or the girls. You’d be safe.”

Bahlool scoffed. “You didn’t arrange the limo, hotel, private shopper?”

I pursed my lips and shook my head.

“What about the azaleas?” Jed said. “Who else would know I love azaleas?”

“I didn’t send them, babe.”

“Figures.” Jed sucked teeth, “Didn’t seem like you. It was … romantic.”

I smarted. I had no idea my husbands felt that way. How did we get here?

“Why didn’t you call the police?” Bahlool asked.

“Why indeed.” I shook my head. I expected that sort of question from Jed, not from Bahlool. “When was the last time they sided with a woman who looks like me against someone like Rout? I have to disappear, at least until he’s given up or picked another Al-Nuri.”

“You can’t leave, we need you.” Jed sniffled, choking back tears.

The girls had gone silent watching our tense standoff with wide, expectant eyes.

Jed saw them and wagged a finger at me before Bahlool gently pulled down Jed’s arm. “Not here,” they said and quietly handed Jed the bugout bag before corralling us both toward our bedroom. From the hallway, they exhorted the girls to clean up before dinner, promising ice cream with sprinkles for desert. I almost objected to feeding them all that sugar but bit my tongue, exhaling instead with enough force to flatten a row of straw houses.

Bahlool closed the bedroom door behind us and turned to face me. “You’re not abandoning our daughters.”

Jed dropped the bag by the door. “Nor will you break your vow to us.”

“You promised your past would stay in the past,” Bahlool said.

“You swore you’d be a new woman,” Jed added with that one-two punching rhythm they’d grown far too proficient at delivering.

“Now, prove it,” Bahlool said, nodding affirmatively to themselves.

“What am I supposed to do?” Normally, I didn’t care when they ganged up and shut me out, if it meant they weren’t bickering with one another, but this wasn’t such a time. “It’s my job to keep this family safe, but I can’t be here to protect you all the time. What if next time, Rout kidnapped you and the girls for real? If he does, I’ll do anything he asks to get you back. Anything at all. He knows that.”

“I’m not raising my girls with a killer,” Jed said with finality.

“Keziah, we all agreed to leave our pasts in the past when we decided to start this family,” Bahlool said. “Leaving isn’t the answer, nor is breaking your vows to us.”

“What’s the alternative?” I demanded angrily as Jed opened the door to find Raesa standing in the corridor looking lost and scared. He scooped her up with a forced little chortle and hurried away. I hung my head.

Bahlool turned me to face them by the shoulders, lifted my chin with an impeccably manicured forefinger, and stared me straight in the eyes. Quietly, almost whispering, they told me we’d figure it out together, as a family.

Eliminating the few backups of an ordinary person’s genome and neural state is a tedious, laborious task. When it came to Liam Rout’s multiplicities, it was damn near Herculean, even for an old-hand Al-Nuri like me. I spent nine weeks shuttling between bioclinics and databanks, but by the end of it, the only remaining instance of Rout’s essence was the corporeal one ailing at the end of a Cycle.

At Rout’s idyllic estate, a robot ushered me into an opulent leather and mahogany study reeking of floor wax and antiseptics. Sloughing in a wheelchair with a tartan blanket over his legs, Rout wheezed awake as the oversized door thudded closed. He tried to speak but issued a gurgling croak instead, which devolved into a wheezing coughing fit that raked his whole body.

What drove anyone to this masochistic sort of insanity, I’d never know. Perhaps we lose our will to live when the last impossible peak is crested, or perhaps it was little more than nature’s ultimate palladium, buried deeply in our germline, for species circumventing its evolutionary guardrails.

Rout eventually managed to speak. “You’ve come to release me.”

Though I’d been raised to venerate death, I’d never imbue it with as much longing as Rout had. It had to be the dying body yearning for release, I decided, its terminal secretions clouding Rout’s thoughts. I had no doubt he’d feel differently wearing a young, vibrant meatsuit, or even inhabiting a vivid sim of the sort he made his vast fortune peddling, but I hadn’t come to debate philosophy with him. We were well past all that.

“Are you ready?” I asked with more compassion than I thought myself capable of, given what he’d put me through.

Rout nodded slightly, his thin bloodless lips stretching at some private joke in his head. “Your fee’s on the desk.”

When I drew nearer, he whispered, “thank you,” and reached for my hand, perhaps to shake it, but couldn’t muster the energy to do more than brush my palm with ice-cold digits arthritically frozen in a claw.

I leaned over and pressed a sedative infuser to his neck. His eyes flickered open at the touch but soon drooped again. I dabbed his clammy hairless head dry with a foam-cloth and slipped on a scanner’s wispy net. When it finished, I steeled myself, recited an ancient prayer the meaning of which no one remembered anymore, and aimed a disruptor between his eyes. I didn’t hang around to watch the energetic electromagnetic field unbind his body, one cell at a time, eventually turning it into a puddle of simple organics. I picked the anonymous credit coin off the desk and left to face the tempest awaiting me at home.

The undulating turquoise water and pearlescent white sand amplified midday’s radiance to a blinding, uniform glare. I squinted and fought the warm drowsiness threatening to envelope me. Not helping my quest for alertness were Bahlool’s arms tightening around my waist and Jed’s hands caressing my bare arms and shoulders. Unfazed by the blaze, Adara, Nabeela, and Raesa frolicked and shrieked as they chased one another through the surf.

“Quite the coincidence, Rout’s Cycle ending on its own the moment you arrived,” Bahlool noted to a derisive scoff from Jed. At least he stopped pawing me.

I’d told them I didn’t have to kill Rout after all, and so long as a sim of his final neural state continued to run in a sandboxed partition of my implants, he remained technically alive. Though not what I’d consider a fulfilling life, I fared no better on my end. Having Liam Rout haunt me for the rest of my days was a steep price, but worth it to keep my family and my vows intact.

“I’m hungry,” Nabeela squealed, seemingly angry that her three parents hadn’t somehow anticipated the need before she had to voice it.

In an instant, Jed jumped off the sand and ran to the water’s edge to muster the brood. Rout stirred within, chafing at his confinement as he watched my life through a read-only sensory feed. “It never occurred to me raising children could be this much fun,” he noted ruefully.

I ignored him and got up to follow. Bahlool made no move to join us. “Are you coming?”

“In a minute, I want to catch some rays,” Bahlool said and stretched on the sand outside the umbrella’s shade. My eyes traveled over their swarthy body from head to toe as I pretended to brush the sand off my limbs.

Bahlool noticed and chuckled. “What’s going on in that devious mind of yours?” Despite squinting against the glare, their eyes sparkled, and a smile brightened their bearded face.

“Who? Me?” I responded, confused.

“As I live and breathe, Keziah Al-Nuri. You’re leering,” Bahlool accused, mockingly wagging a finger at me. Their smile took a mischievous turn, and the voice came huskier. “Like we’re meeting for the first time.”

Suddenly, alarm blossomed in my mind, but before it could crystalize into a coherent thought, I found myself tumbling down a dark rabbit hole, mute, deaf, and blind.

“Just thinking how lucky I am to have so much to live for,” Rout said through my lips.

“So, Rout gets all googly-eyed over Bahlool, while I slave away in the kitchen to feed your children,” Jed grumbled, twisting his lips and half turning away from me. On the other side of the bed, Bahlool shook the frame with their laughter. I shot them a disapproving glower and snuggled closer to Jed, spooning him, desperate to avoid any discord, now that tranquility had at long last returned to the Al-Nuri household.

“Look at the three of us. Who wouldn’t want to ogle us?” I whispered into Jed’s ear between nibbles on his earlobe.

After a pregnant pause that saw Bahlool and me hold our breath, Jed gave a short, delighted giggle and turned back to face us. “I feared he’d immediately identify his own sim software.” Jed’s eyes gleamed, empathy warring with voyeurism. “He does seem happy.”

I kissed Jed’s back, between his shoulder blades. “Rout thinks he bested me and rediscovered his zeal for living. I’d call that a win for all involved.”

“Let’s just hope he doesn’t take it out on us when he discovers he’d been conned,” Bahlool said. “No sim is good enough to fool someone forever.”

“By then, I suspect, he’ll be so overwhelmed with relief, his gratitude will offset his anger,” I said, raising my voice over the sound of the girls’ shrieks barreling down the hallway towards the bedroom door. “At least, I hope it will.”

Jed jumped out of bed and slipped on a mauve kimono matching the one he wore in the sim. “If it doesn’t?”

Bahlool groaned and pulled on some underwear in anticipation of the imminent stampede.

I shrugged. “I could always turn the sim off.”

Jed and Bahlool gave me a synchronized dirty look and opened the door to our offspring.

---

About the Author

Ramez Yoakeim writes about many things, many of them grim, but mostly he writes about hope. At one time or another an engineer and educator, these days Ramez devotes himself to solving problems, wherever he encounters them. Find out more about Ramez and his work at yoakeim.com.

© Triangles are Forever by Ramez Yoakeim. 2022. All rights reserved.

Hazmat Hearts

by Avra Margariti

It isn’t your own idea to start online dating, but Andreas’, your handler’s. He says you should put yourself out there, make some human connections. You don’t feel entirely human, at least not most of the time, but he’s right. If anything, isolating yourself in your new shoebox apartment makes your condition even more volatile.

The first date is in a waffle house, everything painted a sunny yellow and smelling of syrup and egg yolk. You’re in a form-fitting hazmat suit, courtesy of Andreas. You’re mostly safe now, they say, mostly not-poison, but you can never be too careful, right? The rest of the patrons don’t seem too bothered by you. A couple of kids asked if you’d pose for a photo, earlier. Most people just ignore you, and you guess there are weirder things than a former lab subject going on a date.

Your face is still visible through your clear head gear, but the world feels far away, as if observed through a submarine’s periscope.

Jesse, the boy sitting across from you, wears athletic wristbands, but they do little to hide the raised scars spanning the length of his arms. Some of the scars are scarlet, fresh, while others have faded to thin, pale lines on his skin. This is no lab scientist’ handiwork; you suspect Jesse has done this to his own self.

He holds your hand over the table. Skin on insulated nitrile glove.

“It’s okay,” Jesse says as he points at your facepiece. “You can take that silly thing off.”

“The radiation will harm you,” you say, because part of your agreement with Andreas and the rest of your team of handlers was being truthful about your condition.

“I know. It’s okay,” Jesse repeats hungrily. His eyes have a sharp shine, like light glinting off the edge of a razor. “I want this.”

You pull your hand away, tell him you can’t, you won’t.

His anger—his change of tactics—is instantaneous. “I don’t need you anyway,” he says and spits at you. The glob of mucus and saliva lands on the bulged glass of your facepiece.

You dip a napkin in your water glass to clean your vision, and by the time you look up, the self-destructive boy has stormed out of the diner. The cutlery set on his side of the table is missing a knife.

Two plates of golden waffles arrive, the vanilla ice cream pooling inside the chessboard squares. The waiter looks at you with pity. You pay for both orders but eat neither.

---

Your next date is with a girl named Annalise. You are prepared to answer any questions she may have, like how you can drink liquids in your hazmat suit (through a fine pipe attached to your wrist that travels all the way up your mouth) or how you go to the toilet. You’re prepared to be asked, “What’s it like being a semi-famous ex-lab subject?” and to answer, “That’s a fourth date kind of question.”

What you’re not prepared for is Annalise’s portable ventilator, or the oxygen-carrying tubes attached to her nose.

Between sips of hibiscus tea and tiny pecks of jam scones, Annalise says in her wispy cirrus-cloud voice, “As you can see, nature has already beaten you. I can’t get cancer if I’m already dying from it.”

When both of your dainty rose teacups are drained, you ask her over to your apartment.

Between kisses, you don’t mention the too-sweet taste of her mouth, and she doesn’t comment on the metallic traces your kiss leaves behind.

“Are you sure about this?” you say when she pulls off her shirt and untangles her nasal tube.

Her laughter turns into a wheezing cough midway. “I don’t exactly have anything to lose.”

Annalise says she tires easily, so you take things slow, lying on your colorful patchwork quilt—you’re not into white or minimalism, not since the lab.  You touch, breathe in sync, laugh a bit, touch again. Skin on skin.

On the second date, you’re hopeful. You wait at the same teahouse as last time, but hours pass and Annalise doesn’t show up. Your milk tea grows cold. The sun paints your wrought-iron table in orange tiger stripes. You text her again and again, but there’s no response. Tears blur your vision, because you know, of course you know. The waterworks keep coming, and you can’t even dry your eyes through your bulky head gear. At closing time, when everyone has gone, the little old lady locking up her shop asks if you need her to call someone for you.

“There’s no one,” you whisper, voice raspy through your breathing apparatus.

“What was that, dear?”

You don’t reply. The world is submerged in murky water, or maybe you are.

---

You avoid dating after Annalise. Andreas visits your apartment once a week as scheduled, to oversee your medical tests and psych evaluation.

“She was sick,” Andreas says. “Cancer doesn’t discriminate. I should know—it’s wiped-out half of my family. You shouldn’t blame yourself for what happened.”

“Maybe I am poison,” you say, buried under a mound of blankets. Maybe the staff at the underground laboratory were right, keeping you locked up for your own good and everyone else’s.

“You’re not poison,” Andreas insists with wide-eyed conviction. “Poison is something to be avoided. You have so much to offer. Anyone would be lucky to date you.”

You nod toward the hazmat suit he always wears around you, the irony of his words. He becomes quiet then, his eyes sad behind the fishbowl glass. He busies himself with his needles and vials as he takes blood and tissue samples from you in order to measure radiation levels. The prick of the needle hurts. You cling to the pain, which makes you think of Jesse and his scars.

“I’m sorry,” Andreas says as he bandages your arm. He always apologizes afterward, unlike the doctors at the lab. “I’m so sorry.”

Why are you apologizing? you want to ask. Don’t you know I deserve this?

---

You lose track of time for a while, similar to when you lived in the lab, when you were called Radium Girl and the days and weeks and months bled into years, bled like you did on a silver examination table as nameless, faceless scientists tried to figure out what you are, why you are.

The next time Andreas visits, he says, “I’ve found you someone. A new potential date.”

“I’m not interested,” you mumble against your pillow. It reeks of sweat and giving up.

“Just give them a chance. Do it for me.”

You don’t feel like trying, but Andreas has always been kind to you when no one else was and advocated for you when you were allowed no voice. He’s the whistleblower who exposed to the world the scientists’ crimes against you and your fellow nameless, faceless subjects. He helped you find this apartment and take the first steps toward freedom, toward normalcy.

So, you agree to go on another date.

His name is Ektoras. He texts to say he’s already in the movie theater when you arrive. You’re late, nervously clutching a coke in your gloved hand. Some black-and-white French film plays across the large screen. When the projected image turns white, the dust motes in the viewing room swirl, alight. You think you won’t be able to find him, but your worries are unfounded. The theater is almost empty. Even if it were full, there’s not a chance you’d miss him.

You make your way down the dark aisle, toward the glowing figure at the front row.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he says when you’ve settled on the burgundy velvet seat beside him. He doesn’t sound angry you’re late, but awed that you’re here at last.

You both stare straight ahead at the screen. The movie is reflected on the curved glass of his facepiece. You steal glances at him every time he sips his drink through the wrist-attached tube of his hazmat suit. His skin, like yours, is luminescent in the dark.

When he catches you staring, his smile is even brighter.

You burn with a million questions. Had he been told his entire life there was something wrong with him, so he tried to find out whether he was beyond saving? Did he sign up for the research like you did, then regret it right away? Did the scientists at the lab hurt him, too? Tried to weaponize him?

Did they call him Radium Boy until he nearly forgot his own name?

You touch Ektoras’ hand when the movie is almost over, to make sure he’s really here with you. Your fingers interlace. Nitrile glove on nitrile glove.

---

About the Author

Avra Margariti is a queer author, Greek sea monster, and Rhysling-nominated poet with a fondness for the dark and the darling. Avra’s work haunts publications such as Vastarien, Asimov’s, Liminality, Arsenika, The Future Fire, Space and Time, Eye to the Telescope, and Glittership. “The Saint of Witches”, Avra’s debut collection of horror poetry, is available from Weasel Press. You can find Avra on twitter (@avramargariti).

© Hazmat Hearts by Avra Margariti. 2022. All rights reserved.

Untucked

by Justin Moritz

Content warning: sexual harassment, attempted sexual assault

Author’s note: I came up with the idea of this story several years ago when I was dealing with what I now recognize as gender dysphoria/body dysmorphia. Particularly, I was struggling with the idea that a large percentage of our society operates on defining someone based on their genitalia, regardless of how they identify. After coming out as non-binary this year and getting more confident in the type of stuff I like to write, I decided to take my original concept and make it grosser, but also sexier. Influence-wise, I hoped to combine late-in-life coming-of-age tropes with elements of the romance, body horror, and erotica subgenres. I believe that while this combination could be a tough sell to certain markets, it successfully navigates the difficult boundary between acceptance of one's body as a trans person and sexual desire/repulsion to be a genre-bending piece with strong social commentary.

By the third date, I worry I look like a prude kissing Ivan goodbye on the step of his brownstone. His fingers linger. Delicately, I bring my hand up to his mouth. He kisses each of my knuckles goodbye. His blue eyes declare: I would kiss every inch of you, if you just allowed me to bring you upstairs.

"I should get going,” I say, squeezing his hand adieu.

But his fingers do not slacken, his voice serious as he says, “Did I do something to offend you, Emma?”

Beneath the warm glow of the nearby streetlight, he appears impishly handsome, stubble covering his jawline and the coppery curls of his hair shimmering in the light. I should go, yet I remain drawn to him, saying, “You want me to stay?”

“Of course, I want a beautiful woman like you to stay,” He says, pulling my hips towards his own. I resist just enough that we aren’t quite touching.

I wish a cab would pass by at that very moment, an excuse to break free from his spell. But the street is silent. No one walking their dogs or drunkenly staggering home from the bars. It is just Ivan and me. When he kisses me, I can’t help but allow him to slide his tongue into my mouth.

Caught up in the moment, Ivan presses his body against mine in the brick entryway, the stiffness of his erection digging into my hip. I try to think of anything but how sexy he is. As his hand stops groping my breast and slips down my body, the reality of what he’s about to discover disrupts my pleasure.

“Ivan…wait…” I whisper as he slides his hand up my leg. He recoils as soon as he feels the rigidness of my penis throbbing against his palm. Red-faced, he paces across the stoop. I try to comfort him, saying, “I told you I was trans, Ivan.”

He sucks air through his teeth, spitting out venom upon exhaling, “I know you did, Emma. I just…I just assumed you had it taken care.”

“Taken care of?” I reel back, the hurt audible as I reply, “I was upfront about this, Ivan. It’s not that big of a deal.”

“Not that big of a deal? How am I supposed to look past something that noticeable? It’s bigger than mine for Christ’s sake.” Ivan pushes past me, digging in his pocket for his keys. I know then that I should leave and never talk to him again, but there is the matter of my penis, no longer confined in a way that he finds palatable. He hisses, “You know how much of a turn-off a girl with a dick is?”

So, my penis becomes undeniable, snaking its way free from my underwear despite the finesse of my tuck. It slithers down my leg, curling like a viper beneath the fabric of my skirt. My penis isn’t like other penises. It’s bizarrely muscular, thick blue veins siphoning blood from my body to enable the cursed thing to move on its own volition.  Before I know what’s happening, my vision blurs from the lack of blood in my brain. The wretched organ stretches beyond its perceived capabilities, a noose of veiny, corded flesh that catches Ivan around the throat. As it constricts about his throat, I desperately try to ease it back into my body, but every movement applies more pressure to his windpipe till Ivan collapses against the stoop. My mutated cock goes flaccid as I look at his body, a necktie of bruises around his throat, busted capillaries turning the whites around his eyes a bloody red.

When I arrive back at my apartment, the first thing I do is grab the pint of frost-dusted cookie dough ice cream, chipping away at it as I delete every dating app off my phone. But before I can finish the task, I find myself once again swiping and imagining a white-picket fence and two-and-a-half kids based on four photos and a shitty bio that reads I never know what to write for these things. I can’t help but be a sucker for love.

“This can’t happen again, Emma,” I mumble, then create a Google search for extra sturdy chastity belts.

The world I stumble upon is one that both fascinates and frightens me. Evangelical purity culture overlaps with painful, pleasure-inducing BDSM. Searching for the perfect device, I ponder the benefit of leather or steel, of padlocks or combination dials. But by deciding to cage my penis, I am acknowledging its undeniability. The dysphoria is nauseating.

I refine my search for belts specifically for trans women. The results are much narrower, but eventually I come across a website covered in pink frills and boutique graphic design that draws my eye to an assortment of gender affirming BDSM toys. Their signature chastity belt is a piece of art made of curved steel that both tucks and shapes the penis, creating a look reminiscent of a woman’s external sex organs. But I freeze when I look at the price tag. $900 for the thing that would solve my problems. Almost the price of a month’s rent. A rent that I already struggle to pay.

Settling for a cheap leather substitute, the image of Ivan’s corpse is seared into my eyelids each time I blink away tears. I pay $20 for rush shipping as I shovel the melted ice cream down my throat.

When I’m good and sick, I pull down my underwear in front of the mirror, recreating the moment in high school where I realized my penis wasn’t like everyone else’s. Carefully, I fold my anatomy backwards, squeezing my thighs shut to create a silhouette that is smooth and recognizably female. But then I part my legs, my penis appearing massive as it falls back into place. Then I repeat the process. Concealing my wretched anatomy between my legs, letting it fall, and with each repetition, it becomes until it’s touching the floor, snaking around my body as I sob. Just the sight of it is enough to cause me to vomit onto the floor.

It’s impossible to style a chastity belt. What was once form-fitting and pleasing to the eye suddenly appears bulgy, the device concealed beneath my skirts bulky like a soiled diaper. Even the loudest pattern can’t hide the fact that beneath my clothing is a device of medieval proportions. My phone dings, a groan escaping my lips as my friends ponder what bar we’ll be drinking and dancing in till the early hours. I type quickly before anyone has a chance to protest: It doesn’t matter, as long as it’s dark and crowded. I slip on a loose black dress that won’t draw the eye and order a Lyft.

As soon as the driver stops outside the club, a line of spiky haired Jersey Shore wannabees greet me with catcalls and wolf-whistles. The bouncer motions me into the club with a beckoning wave like he’s backing in a truck full of fresh meat.

Inside, I’m comforted by the darkness. The flashing lights concealing patrons in momentary blackness, leaving one’s dance partner to focus on the sway of their hips not the bulk concealed beneath their cocktail dress. I’m greeted by my friends with a vodka tonic shoved into my hand.

Sobriety smothered beneath the weight of well liquor, I ask, “Shall we dance, ladies?”

But my cis friends are hypnotized by handsome men with open tabs. There is no suitor asking what I’m drinking. As a kid, I was a sissie without a leg who was chosen last for kickball. As an adult, the heterosexual male clocks me as the unideal mate, my femininity not quite to their taste. But two drinks are enough to give me the confidence to dance alone.

I love the anonymity of dance floors. The undulating, grinding bodies not quite separate. An arm belongs to no one, a swaying pair of hips part of the collective. Bad remix after remix blasts from the overhead speakers, so when a familiar song comes on, everybody belts out the words, wild as we dance beneath the flashing lights.

Then I see a pair of hazel eyes and a strong jawline that makes me bite my lip. A total Fuck Me, Daddy staring right back at me. He walks towards me with a shoulder thrown out, the crowd parting at the sight of his tatted beefcake arms. He wraps his arm around me and commands, “Dance with me, baby.”

I agree, but I do so with caution, hyperaware of the distance between us. But the way his big hands seem to support every vertebra of my spine as they run down my body is dangerous when mixed with alcohol. I let him pull me close against my better judgement.

The music smothers any chance of him hearing me as I say, “Let’s take things slow.”

The daddy’s hand tightens around my inner thigh, pushing up my skirt as he holds me firm. I try to playfully push him away, but the higher his hand climbs, the more desperate I become. The chastity belt feels tighter the more we drunkenly struggle. I’m disgusted with myself, my body unable to differentiate his forcefulness from consensual masculine domination. Genuine discomfort indistinguishable from fantastical bliss.

My penis goes rigid as his fingers skim the leather chastity belt, his eyebrows rising with curiosity. The belt digs into my waist, the seams aching as my body no longer obeys my will. I try to push the man away, to shout over the sound of the speakers, to create a scene that will draw me into the safety of a group of pissed-off women ready to beat down another creep hunting the dance floor. Before he has a chance to grope what lies beneath the belt, I feel the sudden absence of it around my waist, the sound of leather being shredded audible even against the music.

The creep stumbles backwards. Shock registering on his face as blood gushes from his eviscerated fingers. He screams, “You cut me.”

I bolt from the dance floor, retreating to the sanctity of the dark hallway of the club’s restrooms as blood spills down my leg. A line snakes out of the women’s, ladies applying lipstick and wiping away mascara tears without putting down their drinks.  Any other woman would simply ask for a tampon or a pad, the shared urgency of unexpected leakage being enough to bypass the queue. But the women stare at me, clocking me much too fast and turning their backs to whisper even as blood drips down my leg.

Dysphoric nausea wells in my belly as I rush into one of the empty stalls in the men’s room, which smells of vomit and sex. I hike my skirt up and sit down on the toilet seat, some man’s piss soaking into my thighs.

What lies between my legs isn’t a penis, it’s a monstrosity. A weapon whose only purpose is to maim and ruin. But I suppose that is what a penis is in the first place.  I take my phallus between my forefinger and thumb to pull it free from my blood-slicked thighs. A jolt of pain stops me. Blood isn’t the only thing holding the organ stationary. Along the underside of the organ protrudes a half dozen chitinous spines like the quills covering a porcupine’s back.

The more I fret, the more blood spills onto the floor. My thigh aches as I push into the tender skin, forcing one of the sharp barbs free from the meat of my leg. I can’t help but to sob as I look at this new feature of my anatomy in the dim light. “Oh fuck, oh god.”

 The more agitated I become, the further the spines extend. I take a deep breath in, then try to force one back into my body; however, the barb is sharp to touch, unwilling to retreat beneath the skin. Looking at my unique adaptations, I am reminded of how an animal when frightened will do anything in its power to defend itself, expressing violent and desperate manners of self-defense. As disturbed as I am, I can recognize that this transformation is a defense mechanism itself. My penis may be something I wish I could be rid of, but while I’m stuck with it, it itself is a way for deterring men whose allyship only goes as far as the bedroom. The thought relaxes me, the row of spines retreating into my body.

I pull my dress down, throwing the stall door open as I wipe the smeared mascara from my eyes. But in the process, I run smack dab into a body that doesn’t budge. The shock of it cracks my composition, the tears spilling down my cheeks as I look up a face that is much too pretty to be seeing me crying. The man’s chiseled features immediately soften as he sees the mess of my face, stuttering out, “I’m so sorry, miss.”

He reaches out to touch my shoulder on instinct. While his touch his tender, his hand immediately retreats upon realizing that he’s touching a stranger. I push by him as he shouts, “Are you sure you’re okay, miss?”

I stop in the doorway, unable to stammer out a response, yet unable to leave. Again, he speaks, his voice so soft and level that I am comforted by the calmness of it, “That creep out there started screaming that some girl cut him, but if he made you cry, that’ll be the least of his worries…because, because I’ll make him learn what his fucking teeth taste like.”

I sniffle, turning back to him and saying, “You’re sweet for a stranger in a disgusting club bathroom. But I should run before the police are called.”

“They’re already here. They sent me to check the bathroom before my shift is over.”

“Fuck.”

“There’s another exit,” he murmurs, “I could show you.”

“I need a fucking drink.”

“I think I have an answer to that problem too,” the stranger says, beckoning me to follow.

We retreat to a hole-in-the-wall where the lights are dim and the glasses are dirty, but the drinks are cheap. When I sit at the bar, all I can mutter is, “A couple shots of vodka”

The bartender lays out three shot glasses, sloshing liquor over the bar mat as he overfills them. I down them without worrying about the liquor dripping down my wrists. All I want is to reach a point where I’ll forget what happened.

“What’s your name?” I ask before I throw back the final shot.

“Looks like you won’t remember it anyway.”

“Looks like you don’t know how to be memorable,” I reply, smiling so my joke isn’t lost to him.

“Billy,” He says, taking a swig of a beer.

“Really?” I shouldn’t laugh, but I do.

“What? Never met a grown man named Billy?”

“Never met one so handsome. I’m Emma.” And with that his hand reaches across the bar, fingers gently circling about my wrist to lift it from the counter. I stare up at him, my heart fluttering with the question: is this fate, or is the booze just turning this stranger into a dream boat?

“You just put your hand in someone else’s beer.” Billy lets go off my hand as a blush warms my cheeks. I turn away, trying to hide this embarrassing admission of my attraction by tucking a lock of my hair behind my ear. But beer still dripping down my hand, he bridges the space between us to push the strand out of my line of sight.

Now I can see him unfettered. His eyes the amber color of honey, his voice just as slick and sweet. His touch is tender, his expression curious, leaning in ever so slightly to ask me more and more about myself. It’s that sort of instant connection that I always thought was just something that happened in movies. The longer we talk, the more I can feel the bartender’s eyes on us, neither of us nervous enough to wave a hand for another drink.

“Think he’s getting ready to kick us out?” Billy says, his thumb tracing loops around my knuckles.

A line now snakes out from the bar’s front door, bodies squeezing closer and closer to us as the bouncer waves them in.

“Guess I was paying too much attention to you to notice it got busy,” I say.

“Talking to a beautiful woman like you really makes this shitty bar less shitty, but it’s getting late,” Billy says, his hand lingering atop mine.

“I don’t want to say goodbye.”

“Maybe we don’t have to?” A sheepish grin on his face, his eyes say only one thing: what about my place?

“There’s something you should know about me first—” I protest, the uncomfortable truth resting between my thighs.

“—Nothing you could say would make me change my mind about wanting to spend more time with you.” Billy says, throwing down a couple tens as he tries to shepherd me to the door.

Billy leads me through the crowd with his shoulder parting the bodies around us, his mannerisms gentle as he guides me onto the sidewalk. His kindness is arousing, his company exactly what I needed, but I know I should do anything to stop this before it begins. I picture him as dead as Ivan, his body bleeding like the creep’s in the club, but I let him hold my hand and lead me into the night anyway.

His apartment is impressive, not a wall without a painting nor a cushion without a throw blanket in sight. But I avoid soft surfaces, tiptoeing from corner to corner as Billy pops open a bottle of wine. I guess what I’m looking for are red flags, but considering how well-decorated his apartment is, my bet is Billy knows that you shouldn’t include such noisy displays.

 I wish I knew how to bring up my transness, but there’s never a right way to go about it. A text message creates a buffer that can serve as a wall behind which one’s opponent can hide and slug vitriol. A reveal over dinner can leave you with the bill as your lover slips out the bathroom window. But to present one’s most precious secrets aloud in the moments before a hot, sweaty tryst, that’s like pinning a sign to your chest that reads MURDER ME.

“I spent too much money on that couch to have my guests stand on their feet,” Billy says as he gives me glass of wine before flopping onto the sofa.

I stare at his slumped form, my eyes unable to glance away from the inch or so of hairy belly peeking out from beneath his too tight shirt. Finally, I sit down a foot or so away from him, just close enough not to raise concern.

“You weren’t this quiet at the bar,” Billy mumbles, looking away after a long, silent beat, “Is everything okay?”

I take a deep breath, fingers crossed that I won’t regret this as I say, “You seem like a really nice guy, and I would love to go to bed with you. Hell, I’d love to go to bed with you, then take you to breakfast. But the thing is…well, I’m not exactly like the average girl you bring home from the bar. If I unzip my dress, it’s not going to fall to the floor and reveal all smooth curves. Billy, I’m trans.”

“I mean I didn’t want to assume, but I had my suspicions,” Billy says, reaching out to cradle my chin in the palm of his hand. “I enjoy you for you, Emma. Whatever you’re scared of me seeing, it isn’t going to make me change my mind about that.”

I want to protest that he’s speaking too soon, but he’s looking at me with those honey-slick eyes. I’m a fly drawn in by the sweetness, trapped beneath the syrupy weight of his presence as he presses his lips against mine. I kiss him back hard, as if the ferocity of it will force the memory of my confession from his mind. But then he’s on top me, his thighs pressing up against mine, his hand groping at my breast as his mouth explores the perfumed skin of my neck. Everything is happening too fast, but before I can ease him off, I hear the tearing of fabric.

“Fuck, I’m so sorry. I’ll pay for the dress,” Billy apologizes, inspecting the impromptu slit running up the length of my dress.

But the tear is the least of my problems, the barbed protrusions of my penis carefully concealed by the crossing of my legs. He isn’t going to hurt you, Emma. There is no need for this reaction. I take a few deep breaths, the most dangerous parts of my anatomy easing back into my body as I motion for him to come back and kiss me.

Everything Billy does is right, his body responding to mine in just the right ways. Hands move slowly down my spine, flirting with the prospect of my legs. Kissing me with just the right amount of tongue. I undo the button of his jeans, his face showing no sign of embarrassment as I look upon his erect penis. Billy pushes up my skirt, gently kissing around the curve of my knee, his lips inching their way up my thigh.

The closer he gets to my penis, the more in my head I become. I picture the beige couch we sit upon stained with blood; his moans replaced by the sound of desperate screaming. Billy eases up, looking up from beneath my skirt. “Do you want me to stop?”

“No…it’s just that I’ve had men be disgusted by my penis. They promise me I’m a beautiful woman, but as soon as they discover it, they seem to change their mind. They look at it like it’s monstrous.”

Billy peels back my skirt, his eyebrows raising in an exaggerated manner, but quickly fall back to a neutral expression. We both laugh at this as he says, “Looks like a penis to me. A sizeable one, but that’s never stopped me before.”

Billy kisses me, then disappears beneath my skirt. I flinch as he touches it, the organ growing more and more noticeable as his fingertips ease it into his mouth. I watch as he slips off his boxers, clearly enjoying pleasing me as he masturbates. When I close my eyes, succumbing to the bliss of Billy’s actions, all I can picture is Ivan dead on his stoop, the daddy and his bleeding fingers screaming.

Billy suddenly reels back, my eyes fluttering open to see my penis curling up the length of his arm. Before I can say anything, Billy relaxes himself, easing his arm free, but continuing to embrace my anatomy as he takes it both hands. He falls back onto the couch, his muscular legs pulling me on top of him. He kisses me before he whispers in my ear, “I want you to fuck me, Emma.”

“I don’t want to hurt you, love,” I mutter as he grabs for a bottle of lube hidden in the coffee table drawer.

“Give it to me. I can take it.”

So, I do what he says, and his moans are a choir proclaiming again and again: you are not your anatomy.

---

About the Author

Justin Moritz (They/He) is a non-binary writer of queer horror, ranging from grotesque camp to societal filth. Raised on true crime and horror movies from way too young of an age, their work tends to explore the terror of living as a queer person in modern times, while adding a speculative twist. Currently based in Austin, Texas where they're pursuing an MFA in Screenwriting at the University of Texas at Austin, they hope to help expand the types of queer representation seen in horror via prose, screenwriting, and academic writing.  You can follow them on Twitter at @jeepers_justin.

© Untucked by Justin Moritz. 2022. All rights reserved.