By Alex Treuber

When I finally gave up and pulled off the highway it was snowing so hard that my wipers had given up. The lines on the road had long since disappeared, so I used the blue glow from an overhead billboard to navigate the exit ramp. Big piles of snow had been plowed to the shoulder to form a wall, narrowing the road. I turned down the radio to better focus. Up ahead, the lights of the travel center looked like a string of pearls submerged in dishwater.

After the last doctor’s visit I’d sat down at my dinner table with a pot of coffee and run the numbers. Another bonus like last year’s and I’d be able to afford the medicine, but one more late delivery would disqualify me. According to the man on the radio, the blizzard was expected to peak overnight and fade to flurries by early morning, but temperatures would remain sub-zero for a few more days. I’d felt a buzzing in my chest when I heard that, and soon fell into a coughing fit that left my green handkerchief spotted with red. The storm had already left me behind schedule, and I hadn’t planned to turn in for another two hundred miles. I would need to leave before dawn if I had any chance of making it on time. 

The lot was nearly full, so I parked at the far end. The twirling snow through the windshield made me feel like I was still moving. I grabbed my overnight bag and pulled on my wool jacket and switched to boots. Wind whistled into the cab when I opened the door, throwing white flakes onto the dashboard like vanilla sprinkles. I slammed the door shut and made my way to the travel center.

Inside I found a locker, setting the combination as my daughter’s birthday. I took a long hot shower, letting the water beat my sore muscles into submission. The grill was closing up for the night, but I convinced the kid at the counter to make me two cheeseburgers in exchange for a hefty tip. While they cooked I visited the convenience store where I bought a pack of smokes and a cup of coffee. I ate the burgers and sipped the coffee at a long yellow formica table, looking at the handful of other truckers, their beards the color of asphalt under the pale light.

A voice announced the cafeteria would close in thirty minutes, so I refilled my coffee and stepped outside for a cigarette under the covered area. I coughed in between every other drag, the smoke irritating something deep inside of me. The snow seemed to spiral around the floodlights, similar to how I imagined whirlpools in the ocean. I’d never seen the ocean, and as the smoke tumbled out of my lungs into the wild night air I wondered if I ever would.

Back in the truck, I flipped the latch behind the seat and slid the door to the side and reached around the corner for the switch. Christmas lights jumped to life around the edges of a twin bed. I was removing my boots and sweater when I heard a knock on the door.

I redressed and looked through the driver’s side window, eyes adjusting to the dark. Outside was a woman, arms wrapped around herself. She was wearing an oversized canvas jacket and a miniskirt and boots. I saw her see me and she stamped her feet and waved. I looked around the cabin as if trying to find something and then opened the door.

“Can I help you?” I yelled over the wind.

“Do you need any company tonight?”

From the light from the cabin I could tell she was young. She had bangs and shoulder-length hair that looked black against the howling blizzard. Her mascara was smeared in the corners and her smile spoke of desperation.

“What are you doing out there on a night like this? You’re going to freeze to death.”

She ran her hands over her arms and looked out into the lot. “I’m just trying to find someone to keep me warm.”

I sighed and chewed the inside of my cheek. Eventually I told her to come around the passenger’s side and opened the door for her.

I turned the heat on and put the radio on low. She shivered next to me in silence. I reached back and handed her a blanket from behind the seat. She wrapped it around her shoulders. When she turned to me she looked like a little girl.

“So,” she said, “what are you into?”

“Cut that out,” I told her. “I’m not interested in what you’re selling.”

“But you let me in. You must want something.”

I ran a hand over my mouth and down my neck, resting it over my Adam’s apple. The dashboard clock said 10:27pm. Drifts of snow in the parking lot outside gathered and curled in waves.

“You can sleep in the bed,” I said. I felt a sharp pain rattle along one of my ribs and failed to stifle a coughing fit.

“You sick or something?” she said, brows knitted.

I shook my head, settling myself. “I’ll take the front cab.”

She hesitated, and from her eyes I could tell she was wary of a catch. “Why are you doing this?”

I took a long breath, feeling the warm dry air fill my lungs, letting it swirl around the shriveled alveoli which in six month’s time would leave me suffocating on the cement floor of a gas station restroom.

“You take the bed,” I said, and turned out the light.

*

When I woke the next day she was gone. I blinked hard and ran a hand through my hair. The sun was high in the sky, peaking between wispy clouds that rushed together and apart like children at play. I coughed twice, pulled my coat over my head and dreamed of the ocean.

*   *   *

Originally from Portland, Oregon, Alex now lives in Brooklyn, New York. His work has been featured in literary journals such as The Los Angeles Review and The Raven Review and he has been nominated for the PEN America/Robert J. Dau Literary Award for Emerging Writers. He spends his free time writing, traveling, and fending off surprise attacks from his cat, Napoleon.

        

            

By Marla Krauss

Don’t raise short hands in short anger towards short gods who don’t give a flying short about short lives with short ambitions to stake claims on short worlds that grow shorter and shorter as days get longer and leaner. 

Go take a large number. Someone won’t be with you shortly.

*  *   *

Marla Krauss is a writer who lives in Massachusetts. Her work can also be found in 50-Word Stories.

By Sarai Mannolini-Winwood

My fingers touched hers and felt a spark. What a cliché. 

It was liquid lightning through my veins. A bullet train to my heart.

I looked up with a wry smile to meet her unsmiling eyes.

She rubbed her fingers on her jeans. 

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to shock you.”

*   *   *

Sarai Mannolini-Winwood (she/her) is an avid creative writer as well as a literary theorist and academic. I am intrigued by how we make sense of ourselves through our writing. My work is available academically in TEXT, Creatio Fantastica, and Dissection, professionally in The Artifice, and creatively in Eunoia Review, Emerging Possibilities, and Creature.

By Madison Hankins

Marina has never liked change. It is the one thing in life that rips her soul from her very being, leaving her feeling bare in a room full of strangers as she is forced to face the unknown. Her routine is developed specifically to avoid the concept. Marina’s mornings involve feeding the cat named Chugga, taking the bus to the farmer’s market, and coming home to make breakfast with her purchases, all before 8:00 AM. The rest of her day is spent at a clinic where she works as a receptionist, and then she takes the bus back home to crochet sweaters for Chugga. Marina is perfectly content.

Today’s trip to the farmer’s market results in a bag of fresh rolls, a mini jar of orange apricot marmalade, and a bunch of bananas. The old man working the produce stand says the same two words that he says everyday: lovely morning. Marina gives him the same curt nod and smirk she gave him yesterday. The same nod and smirk she gives the bus driver and the woman that sells the fresh bread. She doesn’t nod at the marmalade man. He gets a smile and a slight blush. The marmalade man smiles back. No change from yesterday. 

Marina has never liked change, but she likes the marmalade man. His smile evokes a pur from inside her that rivals that of Chugga’s, and the slight brush of his hand on hers when she hands him the money makes the nerves jump into a jig fit for a leprechaun. His alure is made ever stronger by the fact that their interactions remain the same. No awkward conversations, no pressure, and no risk of change. He even makes good marmalade, though that wouldn’t keep her from visiting his stand.

With today’s purchases in hand, Marina makes her usual trek back to the bus stop. She wasn’t able to buy bananas yesterday since the vendor wasn’t there, a major hiccup in her day, and now the thought of being able to have her favorite fruit once again sends an elated warmth into her stomach. It’s 7:26, and the 7:30 bus is always exactly on time, so she sits down on the Taco Bell ad-covered bench to wait, pulling the bunch of bananas from her crocheted shopping bag to enjoy one in the meantime, imagining it’s a burrito supreme. 

Just as Marina finishes peeling the taxi yellow fruit, a quickly approaching figure catches her eye. The marmalade man is in a hurried jog, coming closer to Marina with every encroaching footstep. Her fist tightens around the phallic food, and her eyes widen as the marmalade man reaches her. She stands to face him, but she can barely breathe, her worst fear now unfolding before her. 

The marmalade man gives her the same smile as usual, but this time, words follow it. He reveals his name to be Justin, and he wants to go on a date with Marina. None of this information finds a home in Marina’s long-term memory. Her ears strain to comprehend what they just heard, but the electric ringing being sounded inside them keeps them from retaining anything. The blush that coated her cheeks only minutes ago at marmalade man’s stand has now returned, and it spreads to her still ringing ears, the color rivaling the homemade maraschino cherries from the old man’s produce stand. Panic… Breathing…Panic. The bus is still not here, providing her with no escape. Panic. Breathing. Panic. Marmalade man is staring at her, waiting for her answer, or, at the very least, her name. Panic, breathing, panic. No words leave her mouth. She checks her watch. 7:31 AM. The bus is late. Marina grabs her bag as she stands from the bench, her peeled banana in her left hand. She turns to the left, the direction of her apartment, before looking back at the marmalade man. Instead of a smile, she nods, leaving him behind and avoiding the chaos that has been her morning. The marmalade man watches as she walks away from him, but soon, he too leaves the bus stop. Moments later, the late 7:30 bus arrives to the scene, the only proof that Marina and the marmalade man were there is the bunch of bananas on the bench, abandoned and missing a single banana from amongst its ranks. The bus driver leaves his empty bus. He takes a banana for himself. 

                                                              *    *    *

Madison Hankins received her Bachelor’s degree in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing at the Mississippi University for Women. She recently received her Master’s degree in English Creative Writing at the University of Southern Mississippi, where she is now pursuing her PhD in English Creative Writing. She has been writing her entire life, but only recently been trying to get her stories published. Her work as appeared in Zoetic Press’s NonBinary Review and Alphanumeric.

By Cal Asher

The dark hit me first.

Not suddenly. Not violently.

Like something that had been waiting long enough to be certain.

Before sound. Before breath.

The room felt heavier than it should have, as if winter had learned the shape of walls and settled into them. I lay still, already aware that whatever was there did not need to announce itself. It had come into a place that knew it.

Then the sound arrived—

a slow, deliberate slap… slap… slap

of flesh meeting flesh, close enough that I felt it more than heard it. The rhythm didn’t rush. It didn’t hesitate. It carried the confidence of something that knew it would be answered.

I tried to move and found I no longer belonged to my body.

I tried to open my eyes.

Nothing obeyed.

Something stood beside the bed, close enough that its cold sank through skin and bone, not reaching for me, not threatening—just occupying the space as if it had always been entitled to it.

A shape pressed itself into the darkness where the light should have been, dense enough to feel, indistinct enough to refuse form.

And the pounding continued—steady, patient—

as if it were syncing my heartbeat to its own.

Then—

Not with sight.

Not with thought.

With memory that felt older than breath.

The shadow didn’t threaten.

It just waited, fist pressed into palm,

like it was giving me a choice I’d already made before this life ever began.

Outside, the snow whispered its high, frozen frequency—

that deep-winter sound the world makes

when it holds its breath for something coming.

And under it all, vibrating through my ribs,

was the truth:

I hadn’t been visited.

I’d been found.

The air thickened.

My lungs locked.

My spine burned.

My pulse fell in sync with the rhythm of that pounding:

slap—slap—slap

Not violent.

Not warning.

A summons.

My chest tightened as if a strap were pulled across my sternum,

turning every soft part in me brittle, breakable, temporary.

And yet—

I felt something in me rising to answer.

It wasn’t pounding to threaten me.

It was warming its hand.

Testing its strength.

Calling itself back into shape.

My mind didn’t beg or question.

It just said one thing, clear as steel:

Finally.

Because what stood over me wasn’t a stranger—

it was the part of me I’d spent years locking in the dark,

now stepping out to claim what I had no right to pretend was gone.

The shadow hadn’t entered my room.

It had stepped out of me.

A twin built in the dark—the part of me that never bowed, never softened,

never forgot what it was made for.

It was standing over me like a verdict.

And I felt it settle back into my chest,

like it was choosing where to live now.

The room is still when I wrench myself awake.

My wife sleeps beside me, untouched.

Whatever came wasn’t meant for her.

It came for the part of me that still had a heartbeat.

And it’s still here—

coiled under my sternum,

listening to my pulse like it’s deciding whether to keep it.

It didn’t come to warn me.

It came because the winter outside

finally found its mirror in me.

Because the dark recognized its blood.

And as that presence locks itself beneath my ribs,

cold fingers closing around the center of who I was,

the truth cuts clean as a blade fitting between bone:

I didn’t wake up.

I was taken.

And the one who opened his eyes

was never meant to sleep.

*   *   *

Cal Asher is a fiction writer whose work explores psychological tension, interior collapse, and the quiet violence of restraint. His stories favor implication over explanation and lean into the darker edges of human experience. He lives in the United States.

By Chip Houser

When the cops showed up at Barrett’s party, Evan ran upstairs and hid in a closet. More a D&D guy than a party guy, he didn’t know what else to do. He slid behind a tangle of dresses and hangars, glad for once he was skinny. Blue and red lights strobed through the bifold door slats. He was sitting, back against the wall, sweating a little, trying to breathe quietly, when someone pushed through the clothes.

It was Tammy Wilson.

“Occupied,” Evan whispered.

“I know.” She laughed, a soft, warm sound among the labyrinth of dresses. She was close enough that Evan smelled her strawberry hairspray. He pressed his elbows to his sides, hoping he didn’t stink.

“Don’t worry about the police, this happens every time.” She slid down the wall next to him and pulled her knees to her chest. Their shoulders touched. “Barrett will promise to turn down the music and keep everyone inside and they’ll leave.”

“Okay,” Evan said, “now I just feel silly.”

“I think it’s cute. And it gives us a chance to talk some more.”

The gemstones on her sandal straps made tiny kaleidoscopes across her tan feet. Even her feet were cute. His sneakers looked shabby and humongous.

Hours earlier, when Evan arrived, Barrett had waved him in and said the keg was in the kitchen. He was filling a plastic cup with tap water when Tammy walked in.

Evan didn’t really know Tammy. They had honors trig together but didn’t talk outside of class. She ran with the popular crowd, with people like Barrett, whose parents were in Florida for the week.

“Hi Evan!” she said warmly, setting a cutting board with a block of cream cheese covered in green jelly, Ritz crackers, and a round-ended cheese spreader on the granite island.

“Hey,” he said. “What’s that?”

“A hostess gift.”

Evan shook his head. “Barrett’s a guy.”

She laughed, like he was joking. “That’s what it’s called when you bring something as a little thank you. My mom grew up in the fifties. She worships Emily Post.”

“It’s 1985.”

Tammy shrugged. “She says it’s good practice. She has a point. And it soaks up the booze.”

“Is it good?”

“I made it.”

He felt like he had to try it. He spread a section of cheese and jam onto a cracker. “Wow, that’s” —he slapped his hand over his mouth— “really spicy.” He sucked down some water. “But good.”

She laughed, but gently he thought. “It’s the jalapeño jelly.”

He’d never heard of jalapeño, it sounded as exotic as it tasted. He liked it and made himself another. “This stuff rules.”

They chatted about trig, then the usual junior year stuff: colleges, majors, all the applications. She laughed more than she did in class. She was different from what he’d expected, not aloof at all, and easy to talk to. Smart, of course, but also funny and kind. Once, she touched the corner of her mouth to let him know he had some cheese there.

As the night wore on, they drifted into separate conversations, separate rooms, but he kept thinking about her, how easy their conversation had been. She looked like she was having a blast, moving easily among different clusters of people—playing quarters on the dining room table, dancing to the hypnotic synth groove of Tears for Fears, chatting and laughing on the living room couch. So he was surprised when she followed him into the closet, where they sat together, talking and talking and talking, comfortable enough with each other that being alone in a dark closet didn’t seem strange at all. Comfortable enough that, when she slipped her hand into his, it felt like the most natural thing in the world. Neither of them noticed when the flashing lights stopped.

*   *   *

Chip Houser’s flash can be found in the Chestnut Review, Molotov Cocktail, Pulp Literature, and many other literary and speculative markets. “Dark Morsels” from Red Bird Chapbooks collects some of his many micro- and flash fictions. Say hi @chiphouser.bsky.social and find story links at chiphouser.com.

By R. Hugo McIntyre

When Death came for me, I was looking through old pictures. Old pictures from when people actually printed their photos and pasted them into unwieldy books where they turned yellow from being under plastic and stuck to the paper when you tried to move them.

Of course, I knew Him. It. She. I’d been expecting Them. That didn’t mean I was ready to go, though.

He just appeared in my apartment living room. Well, like a locked door would keep Him out, anyway. I was still in my pajamas, but if that didn’t bother Him (Her, It, They), it didn’t bother me.

Death was like static. Like you hadn’t tuned in right to the radio frequency or like one of those channels on the TV that didn’t work – in the olden days, I mean, when people watched a cathode ray tube. 

There wasn’t any noise – just whatever-it-was on top of the body couldn’t settle; it cycled through appearances. If I had to guess, I’d say they were all the different ways all the different cultures saw Finality. Different genders, even different species. Yama, angels, a death bat, the requisite skeleton. There were others I didn’t recognize, including some that might not have been from an Earth culture. 

That was interesting but looking at Them was making my eyes hurt. I went back to staring at photos and turning the pages. 

“How do you do that?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the photos. Funny to be worried about getting a headache when Death was waiting for you. Patiently, I hoped.

“Do what? The aspects?” Her voice was like a mishmash of a lot of voices, and I could hear under-voices speaking in other languages. Had to concentrate a bit to hear the voice speaking to me.

“No. I mean, you must have to get around a lot,” I said. “How do you manage that?”

“Obviously, there’s more than one bit of me,” It replied. “Though some of me haven’t been used in centuries. Some Death incarnations and Deities don’t have living believers anymore, but they did, so what they believed in still exists. To an extent.”

I grunted and turned another page.

“So,” They said. “Ready to go?”

I snorted. “Is anybody?”

I heard the rustle of fabric as He shrugged. “Some, but it’s not a big deal.”

My eyebrows went up. “How’s that?”

They moved over to one of the chairs and sat down. Not sure if They walked or glided. Hard to tell when my eyes stayed on the photos.

I heard the chair cushion sighing under Death’s weight and more rustling as though He was making Himself comfortable. Weird.

“The process,” It informed me, “takes as long as it needs.”

I risked a quick glance up. The head was still cycling through aspects. I looked away again. “What does that mean?”

“We are between moments, I guess you’d say. In one moment you are alive, in another you are not. We can stay here for as long as it takes you to accept the next moment.”

I leaned back on the sofa and crossed my arms, thinking that over.

“Okay,” I finally said. I patted the cushion next to me. “Would you like to see my photo albums?”

As They got up to move, I remembered my manners. “I have tea. Or coffee. Which would you like?”

                                                                    *   *   *

Robyn McIntyre is a writer of literary and speculative fiction whose work explores loss, moral weather, and the quiet consequences of living alongside things we fail to notice. She is drawn to stories that trust the reader, resist easy resolution, and let meaning accumulate through implication rather than explanation. Her writing often sits at the edge of genre, using speculative elements not as spectacle but as pressure—ways of asking what remains when certainty erodes. She lives in Oregon, where she reads deeply, thinks carefully, and believes good food and a happy dog are reasons for living.

By Lisa Leinberger

The coat check ticket slipped from the thrifted jacket’s lining as if it had been waiting for the right moment to reveal itself. Tessa watched it flutter to the ground and land at her feet, a small, faded square of paper that felt more significant than it should have, like an invitation.

She lifted the ticket and turned it over in her fingers, feeling the years in its soft, frayed edges. It seemed shy in her hand, worn to the point of disappearing. The faded ink revealed just enough for her to read the name of the venue: The Lantern Room. She didn’t recognize it, yet the name tugged at her with the weight of something half-remembered.

The name lingered with her like a whisper she couldn’t shake. The Lantern Room. On the sidewalk, with the wind nudging at her coat, she slipped out her phone and searched for it, not knowing what she hoped to find. 

The search page blinked back at her with a kind of finality. No results. She tried again with the city name added and again with a different spelling, but each search dissolved into the same blank screen. It was as if the world had forgotten about this place. The ticket in her hand fluttered in the breeze as if urging her on. She typed one last phrase – “The Lantern Room closed.” This time a list of results unfurled before her. 

Her finger hovered over the first link as anticipation rose in her chest. She clicked it and a short community notice appeared which revealed that the Lantern Room had closed its doors years ago. But the name lingered with her, faintly insistent, as if inviting her to look further. Tessa scanned the page again, slower this time, until a line near the bottom caught her attention: It was The Lantern Room’s last listed address. She wasn’t planning to go, not really, but the next thing she knew she was adjusting her coat against the wind and starting off in that direction. 

Leaves twirled around her in the crisp autumn wind, brushing her ankles as she passed windows glowing amber in the early dusk, her footfalls a steady rhythm on the sidewalk. A single leaf skittered ahead of her as if acting as a guide. As she walked, she considered why she was even going. A forgotten scrap of paper shouldn’t matter, she knew that, but something inside her- longing, curiosity – wanted to see the place where it had once belonged. 

The GPS on her phone told her she was close, and as she rounded a corner the Lantern Room finally came into view. As she got closer, the state of the building became impossible to ignore. It looked hollow and forlorn and had clearly stood vacant for a long time. The windows were papered over with yellowed, brittle newspaper that hung in tattered sheets. The downspout clung to a corner of the roofline as if in a desperate attempt to hang on. The whole building felt as if it was waiting for someone – anyone – to notice it. She tried to imagine the place illuminated and pulsing with life but felt as if she had arrived too late for something she had never been a part of. 

Slowly, she crept toward the door and peered inside through a tear in the tattered newspaper. A small stage crouched in the corner; a single chair stranded in its center as if waiting for a performer who never returned. Faded drapes hung in tired folds, their once-rich color drained to a pinkish grey. Above them, darkened light fixtures sagged like relics from a more opulent era. Along the far wall, a bar stretched into shadow, its surface veiled in a thick layer of dust. The whole place echoed the feeling of the coat check ticket itself – forgotten, suspended, waiting. She touched the edge of it now, and it nudged her forward. She tried the door, expecting resistance, and was surprised when it easily yielded with a rusty groan. 

She stayed at the doorway, the dim room unfolding before her. Something about the stillness echoed the quiet weight of the ticket she carried, as if both held the same unfinished story. She lingered for a moment, then slipped the ticket back in her pocket. Whatever story lived there wasn’t hers to finish. She stepped away, carrying only the faint murmur of someone else’s evening. 

                                                                 *   *   *

Lisa Leinberger is an emerging author whose primary focus is flash fiction and short stories. She was born in New Jersey and currently lives in Pennsylvania. When she is not writing she enjoys reading, embroidery, painting, and fitness. 

By Atif Nawaz

The truck stopped just before dawn.

No one spoke at first. The engine died, and with it the thin illusion of movement that had carried them through the night. Beyond the headlights lay a narrow stretch of frozen earth, unmarked except for tire tracks that vanished into fog. Somewhere ahead was the border—no gate, no fence, only a post and a man with a stamp.

They had left Jalalabad two days earlier. The road had been generous at first, then cruel. Snow gathered in the corners of the truck bed like something alive, creeping closer to their feet. Each passenger carried what could be carried: a bundle of clothes, a document wrapped in oilcloth, and a memory which folded carefully to avoid breaking.

There were seven of them.

Hakim Khan, once a deputy in the Ministry of Agriculture, sat closest to the driver’s cabin. He wore a wool coat too fine for the journey and kept his hands folded as if still accustomed to desks. Beside him was Maulvi Rahmat, a thin man with a salt-white beard who murmured prayers whenever the road dipped sharply. Across from them sat a trader with quick eyes and a school teacher whose glasses were cracked down the center.

The only Pakistani among them was Yusuf, a young man sent by a relief organization. He had learned quickly that papers mattered less than patience.

At the far end of the truck sat Amina. She kept her shawl pulled low, not out of cold but habit. 

No one had asked her story, and she had not offered it. They knew enough already—or thought they did. That she was from Kabul.That her husband was dead. That she had once worked at the radio station, reading announcements before the music began.

It was enough to make her suspect.

When the truck stopped at the post, Hakim Khan cleared his throat. “This should not take long,” he said. “The officer will see our papers. We will be through before sunrise.”

The border officer appeared from the fog as if summoned. He wore a thick jacket and carried a ledger. He examined the group slowly, his eyes resting on faces, then hands, then bundles. When he reached Amina, he paused.

“You,” he said. “Come forward.”

He leafed through her papers then closed the folder. “You will wait,” he said.

“For how long”? Hakim Khan asked.

The officer looked at the truck, then back at Amina. “The manifest for this transport cannot be cleared while an unverified person is on board. If she signs a declaration of her previous affiliations, the record is settled and the truck moves. If not, you all wait until a tribunal arrives. 

That could be days.”

They were led to a low building near the post. Inside, a stove burned weakly. Time settled into the room like dust. Morning came and went without announcement.

Amina understood the weight of the pen. To sign was to become something permanent: a name attached to suspicion, a truth rewritten for convenience.

“I will not,” she said quietly.

The group waited through the afternoon. Hunger sharpened their tempers. The trader paced. The schoolteacher removed his glasses and wiped them repeatedly, though they remained cracked. By evening, the arguments began.

“It is only a paper,” Hakim Khan said. “Everyone knows how these things work. He just needs a name for his ledger so he can let us pass.”

Maulvi Rahmat spoke of necessity. “God tests some so that others may pass.”

Yusuf said nothing, but his eyes followed Amina with a quiet urgency. She listened without answering. Night came again. The stove burned lower. Finally, Hakim Khan approached her.

“You have no family with you,” he said gently. “We do. Children are waiting.”

Amina looked at him. “And when they ask how you crossed?”

He did not reply.

At dawn, she stood. “I will sign,” she said.

The officer returned, surprised only briefly. He placed the paper before her. She read it once, and then signed her name carefully, as if it belonged to someone else. The stamp fell hard on the page.

Within the hour, the truck was moving again.

Amina remained behind.

No one spoke as they passed through the post. Yusuf avoided looking back. Hakim Khan adjusted his coat. The schoolteacher closed his eyes. From the road, the border looked exactly as it had before—empty, indifferent.

The truck disappeared into the fog.

Amina folded the shawl tighter around her and waited for instructions that did not come. The wind crossed the pass without regard for names or papers.

*     *     *

Atif Nawaz is a writer from Pakistan whose work explores the human costs of historical and geopolitical shift. The Arithmetic of Crossing is inspired by the complexities of the Afghan-Pakistan border during the Soviet-Afghan conflict.

By Freya Ye

Speeding through the streets until your soles burned, you tightened a grip on the suitcase clattering behind you with your whole life on its rollers. One wheel hadn’t been quite right since knocking against a curb several blocks back, and your heart lurched at each ill-timed pop and scrape. It would make sense to turn back now. The place you left barely qualified as a shoe closet, but it had someone to share the bed with each night, to need and be needed by, to plead and prove yourself to—which was almost like love.

Past midnight, lights painted the streets in acrylic strokes, dashing the city with cold blues and acid yellows. Frost stippled windshields and wire fences. Tomorrow—today—should be the first day of spring, but for now each step crunched on salt and snow. Each breath rose in hot white curls. Tears singed your eyes as you ducked under the bus shelter and pried uselessly at the push timer, begging the heater to work, but the infrared slabs hung stoic overhead. Now it would really make sense to turn back. Somehow, every step you had taken in life had led you further away from yourself, with every attempt to find the way back flinging you even further still. If you weren’t frozen solid by the time the bus came, you would leave the city you knew, trading the grief of holding on for the grief of letting go.

And then?

Slumping under the overhang, you squinted ahead where urban grids blurred into smog-smeared periphery. Come morning, you could wake up who-knows-where doing god-knows-what with devils you didn’t know, going spectacularly right or wrong in ways you could never imagine for which there would be no one to blame but you.

Behind, fire escapes cross-hatched facades of steel and stone in the direction you had come. Faces you might know flitted down dim crosswalks and passed under the bleeding eyes of traffic lights: people you had tried to be enough for, ghosts you had given so much to bring back to life that you had become one yourself. Come morning, you could wake up in bed next to someone who was almost like love, stringing the same thoughts into the same stories that made love out of almost-love and meaning out of sunk time. Soon, everything meant something meant something else meant nothing, and you would find yourself comparing bus tickets online at some absurd, sleepless hour like now, weighing the devil you knew against the devil you didn’t.

Amber eyes turned the corner, punching tunnels through the smog. You screwed your eyes against the glare as the bus belched and moaned around the block, hearing the gravelly crunch of tires as it lolled against the curb with a sigh. When you opened them again, the faces you might know were gone, swallowed by the molten haze of headlights.

Some things weren’t worth waiting for. Some minds did not mean to change. Enough was enough was enough was enough.

One foot first. Then the next. Doors hissed. Coins clattered. A few other wacky wayfarers dotted the aisles of the coach, and you stomped off snow before joining the club. Inside, hot air plugged your ears like wool as you sunk into a seat near heat vents and sprawled gratefully across the grilles until you all but cooked. Your whole life on rollers bumped against your knee as the bus pulled out, and things stopped needing to mean other things.

Moments were moments. Ghosts were ghosts. Almost-love was almost love.

The lines and nodes that cinched all things loosened and dissolved. Time became moments and thoughts etched no stories. The liquid gleam of streetlights sped and slurred outside the window as the vehicle eased into a steady swing. Cheek tilting into glass, your head felt unnaturally heavy as your eyes began to droop. This moment had rehearsed itself in your head more times than you could count, but in no iteration had you ever nodded off first before it occurred to you to look back.

Come morning, you would wake.

*   *   *

Freya is a scientist-in-training who can’t stay away from writing. She needs to know why people do the weird things that they do, and science doesn’t always know either. Catch her on IG @your.no1.fannn