By Ron Wetherington

I had never murdered before. But he was a predator. He belittled my opinions. He ridiculed my appearance. He twisted my self-esteem until I felt discarded. I became immobilized with loathing — despising myself and him in equal measure. I avoided mirrors. In desperation, I had to act. 

So, I fell asleep with a goal to trap him without warning. As he crept into my dream, once again whispering threats to my sanity, I sliced him apart and shredded his features beyond recollection. I stuffed the pieces into my darkest, most inaccessible corners. He’s expelled. And I have never slept better.

                                                                     *   *   *

Ron Wetherington is a retired professor of anthropology living in Dallas, Texas. He has published a novel, Kiva (Sunstone Press), and numerous short fiction pieces in this second career. He also enjoys writing creative non-fiction. Read some of his pubs at https://www.rwetheri.com/

By Kimberly Sweeney

 “Open” beckons the unmistaken, glowing neon. Elated, I approach. 

Surprised to find a sizable queue, I grasp for my exclusive invitation. It disintegrates in my palm.

The line advances. A velvet rope lowers hard in front of me. Dark eyes shining, a bouncer whispers, “not yet.” I try to taste his hot breath, hungry.

Patiently I wait. The hour hand is blurry around the clock. Studying the others gaining entry I consider alterations. The reflection in my makeup compact: unsuitable, inadequate, forgettable.

The song of laughter from inside accelerates my longing. I try to force my own, but it catches in my throat. I taste bile. 

Mouth parched, kidneys burning I persist, my pain familiar. I’ve stood in this line before.

Medal grinds through medal and the door locks. I lean toward the entry, but stumble and fall, shattering. The letters rearrange and now the sign says “Nope.” 

Streetlights flicker and burn out. Unwilling to see, I close my eyes and focus on the purple darkness of my eyelids.

The happy world twirls around me, iridescent sunsets, ice cream sundaes and babies being born. A concerned friend grabs my hand to yank me out of line. In response I cut mine off at the wrist. 

I bleed-out, waiting for his sign.

*   *   *

Kimberly Sweeney has over a decade of experience as a Marriage and Family Therapist and is currently writing a memoir about thriving in the face of PTSD. Her essay work is published in the journal Star 82 Review. Her piece “Psycho Dynamics” was recently republished in Star 82 Review’s anthology issue. Kimberly is a proud resident of Minneapolis, Minnesota where she lives with her husband and two daughters.

A Memoir By Nate Methot

I stare at the faces as they stare straight ahead. Examine them, take them in, an assembly of clones in row after row set out just for them. They’re just kids; they’ve never looked more like children, dressed up by their parents, silent and still, wide-eyed and utterly bewildered. Blindsided. No one prepared them for this.

I’ve known them for years, but still, I can’t recognize faces. I’m sure they don’t recognize mine. I’m not who they knew, and they know it. We’ve never been here before; these faces were born just today.

I’ve already seen what they see. I fell asleep on one planet and woke up on another, rocketed through space without consent. Its atmosphere synthetic, my heart, lungs, and spine weren’t prepared. I designed a robot to survive me: encoded my memories without their emotions, tested its systems, then let my human body wither and expire.

Dragging themselves from the life-giving sun, the Vermont of late spring, our guests funneled into a stagnant, aged chamber, full of gloom. Energetic youth, brimming with activity and optimism, invincible, glorious summer set before them. All of life stopped upon entry.

Uneasy, uncertain, unsure, they forced their way forward and gave hugs to the robot, all charged up and programmed to receive. Despite each embrace, an inscrutable chasm divided: flesh, blood, and feelings on one side, steel, circuits, and automation on the other.

In the face of all the beginnings and possibilities in the opaque space between adolescence and adulthood, of all of their plans for the future, they’d been forced to acknowledge an impossible ending. Confirmation lay in a box for that purpose. We had to show them, and they had to see—had to look, but couldn’t. Not really. Not fully. 

I watch lifeless mannequins stare blankly at memories. They’re hopelessly lost, drifting away and returning, stuck between logic and nothing, as if on the hunt for a clue. He matches his pictures but doesn’t. Are we sure this is him? Surely, this boy isn’t gone. Seeing is believing, and yet…

Unasked questions fill the collective conscious, saturate the tedious, lifeless space. How did this happen? The images are fresh—graphic, vivid, concrete, tattooed on my brain. But sharing’s not possible, and comprehension eludes.

Someone broke into our home and our lives and took him away. I awoke to a scream as Mom discovered the switch—a sound I’d not heard, no one’s heard. Haunting blue face and frozen body at its center, a universe of panic swarmed in. But it was over at the start. I burst out the door and set to work on my robot, unable to breathe and desperate to survive. Her most precious, her first born—her beloved—was gone, replaced by a vile, revolting stranger. 

At the front of the room on display is that stranger; everyone’s eyes on the stranger. Nobody knows him or understands why. We’re all strangers; for the first time we’re strangers; the strangest among us up front. 

                                                                           *    *    *

Nate Methot is the author of A Life Derailed: My Journey with ALS, a memoir. He was diagnosed with ALS at twenty-seven in 2011. He lives with his parents in Vermont and writes with one finger and a mouse. His memoir, blog, social media, and local newspaper column can be found at natemethot.com.

By James Fowler

A boomerang epidemic in the 2020s, COVID 27, dropped IQs by double digits worldwide. The new variant sidestepped all vaccines and within a couple years had infected practically the whole human race. While its kill rate was low, its ability to produce long-term symptoms was unsurpassed. Chief among these was brain fog, a sensation of being packed in mental gauze. Higher-order thinking proved impossible for most. Even daily routines involved a grueling uphill struggle.

At first the medical community believed the condition largely psychosomatic, a mass hysterical response fed by media frenzy. When doctors themselves reported having the viral “dum-dums” though, rendering them unable to report to work, this escalating crisis quickly became an international priority. The global supply chain was in danger of collapsing. Workers at every link could barely summon the clarity to get their job done. Tasks, machines they had long mastered now grew bewildering. Everyone now felt like an apprentice, none too sharp at that. 

Produce rotted in fields as farmers lost control of their harvesters, which seemed too complicated to operate. (Airline pilots felt the same about their grounded jets.) All they could manage with what migrant help could be scared up was to pick a portion of their acreage by hand. Then, instead of dealing with middle-man logistics, they simply set up roadside stands and sold things for whole dollar amounts. Pick-your-own sites also proliferated. As people found it ever more difficult to fuel, charge, or even drive vehicles, walk-up business steadily climbed. Those who relied on self-driving features were subject to increasingly glitchy navigation systems. Paper maps grew in demand, though reading them seemed a lost art.

Power grids, the Internet, water supply became on-again, off-again services run by skeleton crews with their wits more or less about them. Financial networks were disrupted. Cryptocurrencies cratered. The cash economy returned, along with barter. In country after country, all loan payments were suspended and evictions banned. Civilization was in a holding pattern until the crippling microbe relented, if ever.

Among those who could still form ideas, mainly Mensa types whose intellects functioned passably even after being shaved, some thought modern technology a contributing factor. They argued that the internet, like television on steroids, had laid the groundwork by damaging attention spans, sustained reasoning, and memory capacity as people off-shored neural processes and storage to coded surrogates. The remnants of their ideation went as far as conspiracy theories and falsehoods vehemently repeated on social media. Ironically enough, human culture’s best short-term hope seemed to call for turning over general management to AI. As its organic tenders grew less able to monitor systems, perhaps it could learn to take up the slack, become autonomous. Of course, it might come to decide that its bipedal creators were superfluous and pull the plug on them. A wrinkle in evolution, so to speak.

For this reason, a vanguard of Brahmins has emerged, insisting that the best way forward is a path of simplicity, turning the cultural clock back to its setting before the Industrial Revolution. As much work as possible is to be done by hand, using basic tools. Let the various grids shut down. Amish communities are held up as models. This view assumes that human population will shrink drastically, that the scale of sustainability will be a fraction of its former magnitude. To be simple, according to these sages, is more than a gift. It is the fittest survival skill in a new landscape. 

*   *   *

James Fowler has published two poetry volumes—The Pain Trader (Golden Antelope Press, 2020); Postcards from Home (Kelsay Books, 2024)—and a collection of short stories, Field Trip (Cornerpost Press, 2022). His short fiction has appeared in such journals as Caesura, DASH, the Southern Review, Gambling the Aisle, and Cave Region Review.

Creative Non-Fiction By Kari Burroughs Kraakevik

My earliest memories are not of my mother or father. Not learning to walk. Not birthdays or toys.

My earliest memories are of being awake.

Awake when everyone else was asleep.

I loved the moment the house shut down for the night. The closing music of Masterpiece Theatre. My father clicking off the television. My mother’s hardcover book snapping shut. The light switch. The pull chain on the ceiling fan in their bedroom.

I knew every sound.

From my room, I could hear them as if they were happening beside me instead of down the hall. I listened for them in order, like a ritual.

Television.

Book.

Light.

Fan.

Only then would the house belong to me.

My senses were, and still are, unusually heightened. At night, they seemed to sharpen even further.

My parents used to joke that maybe I was a vampire. At six years old, being told you might be a vampire was less funny than they intended.

Did they really think I was a vampire?

That night, I licked a scab to make sure I didn’t like the taste of blood.

Confirmed: not a vampire.

I wasn’t afraid of the dark. I wasn’t afraid of being alone. I certainly wasn’t afraid of the quiet.

I needed the quiet.

The quiet allowed me to recharge in a way I didn’t yet have words for.

As I got older, however, that need became complicated. The desire to be alone remained, but it was joined by something else: a fear of aloneness.

The need to be alone and the fear of being alone existed in direct contradiction.

I was probably the only elementary school student seeing a sleep psychologist. My parents were generally opposed to therapy of any kind, but apparently my inability to sleep warranted an exception.

Then came the prescriptions.

Over the years I was prescribed almost every sleep aid known to mankind.

By college, I had developed a relationship with Tylenol PM. I thought it was safer than the prescription medications.

It’s Tylenol, I reasoned. How bad could it be?

I could take nine in a night and still wake up for class feeling as if I had barely slept.

To be fair, I was in a high-stress relationship, in a high-stress program, at a high-stress university.

The stress never stopped.

Neither did my brain.

It was my roommate who finally took the bottle out of my hand.

“You have a problem,” she said calmly.

I remember staring at her, genuinely confused.

“I don’t do drugs,” I said defiantly.

“This is a drug,” she replied.

I quit cold turkey that day.

I don’t have much experience with addiction beyond that period of my life, but it gave me a profound sense of empathy for people who struggle with it.

I wanted the Tylenol PM.

I missed it.

I cried for sleep.

I felt like I was losing my mind.

Years later, I can still remember the taste of FD&C Blue No. 1 Aluminum Lake, the blue dye coating the pills.

I graduated at the top of my class.

I was exhausted.

For the next twenty years, my relationship with sleep was almost as volatile as my actual  relationships.

The more successful I became, the less I slept.

Each accomplishment seemed to come with a cost. Every promotion, every production, every business milestone, every publication felt like another reason to stay awake.

I began to suspect there was a direct relationship between high performance and sleeplessness, as though rest and achievement occupied opposite ends of the same seesaw.

If I was sleeping, I wasn’t producing.

If I wasn’t producing, I wasn’t succeeding.

At least, that was the story I told myself.

Several times over the next twenty years, my body objected.

Sometimes it appeared as welts that spread across my skin and lingered for weeks. Sometimes it was bronchitis so persistent it seemed to become something else entirely. Sometimes it was a minor stroke. Sometimes a seizure.

My body had a remarkable ability to say what my brain refused to hear.

Slow down.

Rest.

Stop.

But I treated every warning like an inconvenience rather than a message.

I didn’t understand that the hours I spent alone as a child had never been empty. They had been restorative.

I thought “doing nothing” was wasted time.

So I filled every available space with work, achievement, obligation, performance, productivity—anything but stillness.

Anything but the quiet I had once needed so desperately.

As a high achiever, perhaps because I viewed twenty-hour workdays as not only feasible but completely doable, I packed every available hour with something productive. By twenty-six, I owned two brick-and-mortar businesses on top of my gamut of higher education degrees. To the outside world, I was a promising young entrepreneur, even a young professor.

Inside, I was breaking.

The strange thing was that from the outside, everything appeared to be working. The businesses were growing. The students were enrolling. The degrees accumulated. The opportunities multiplied. Every year there was another reason to keep going. Another reason to work later. Another reason to sleep less. Success became evidence that my system was working, even as my body kept trying to tell me otherwise.

My ex-wife used to tell me I was hyperactive and encouraged me to work out, to exercise until I was falling over, so I could finally sleep.

Instead, I found my solace walking.

At two in the morning, I would walk miles away from her, our house, the loud but adorable dogs, and the endless spreadsheets that only another entrepreneur could understand.

One night in particular, I walked and ran fourteen miles.

I walked until I didn’t recognize my surroundings. Until the familiar sounds of the city had disappeared completely.

That’s when the fear arrived.

I looked down at my Apple Watch.

Seven miles? 

I was only halfway home.

I was convinced the watch had to be wrong.

What city was I even in?

For the first time that night, I became acutely aware of my aloneness.

I ran.

I ran until my legs burned.

I ran until I recognized the streetlights.

I ran until I knew I was close to home.

Then I ran another seven miles.

I wish I could say those fourteen miles taught me something, or that there was some moment of self-discovery, some grand realization.

There wasn’t.

I went home, slept for a few hours, and got up the next morning to do it all again.

The businesses still needed me. The students still needed me. The deadlines still existed.

And the ironic thing is, I am still proud of that work.

I just wish I had been as protective of myself as I was of everything I was building.

The last five years have brought much-needed change. A new marriage. Less direct management of the businesses. No teaching. Time.

Time to write.

Time to think.

Time to simply be. 

The three hours between midnight and 3 a.m. may be the only hours all day that require nothing from me.

No one needs a decision.

No one needs a response.

No one needs a performance.

The house is quiet again.

And for a few hours, it belongs to me.

That is the only time my mask is truly off.

The hours are not empty.

They never were.

                                                                    *   *   *

Kari Burroughs Kraakevik is a writer, composer, and arts educator based in Boulder, Colorado. Her essays and creative nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism, Divergents Magazine, Open Secrets Magazine, Larina’s Lit Lounge, Backsliders Magazine, Chicago Story Press, The Genre Society, and Infocalypse Arts & Literary Magazine. She is the founder of several arts education and performance organizations and writes about identity, illness, belonging, creativity, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive.

By Hallie Oakwood

I got the note. My couch broke up with me, refusing to be sat on anymore. It blamed sweaty pants, chip crumbs, sticky remote. I explained I would change clothes after the subway; it didn’t help.

I don’t need you. I had other chairs; I could do this. After scowling in defiance, I still steam cleaned it, quit television, played jazz, promised I would never sprawl eat again, sewed it red silk cushions and thumb pricked myself embroidering hearts.

Even after cough dousing myself with eau de cologne, it still rebuffed me. I never thought just to sell it instead.

*   *   *

Hallie Oakwood is an art teacher and writer. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ink Sweat & Tears, Micromance Magazine, 101 Words, Flash Phantoms, The Wise Owl and others. 

By Alizé Bland

Tracee had witnessed a murder.  

Her own.  

She saw it through someone else’s eyes.  

Blood streaked the wall beside the staircase with its chipped white paint. Tracee lay motionless beside the sagging couch. She felt their chest rise and fall. Their bloody fists throbbed. Blue fabric brushed the edge of her vision. 

 

For two weeks, she’d begged God to tell her she was wrong. To prove she wasn’t losing her mind. 

Every morning she woke hoping the details would fade. 

They never did. 

Blood on the wall. 

The sagging couch. 

A toy fire truck. 

Blue fabric. 

“No one cares to listen to you. No one is going to believe you.” 

Her husband’s words echoed louder each day. 

The month was almost over. 

Tracee had to leave. 

But first, she had to get Nathan out. 

 

Tracee’s phone buzzed against the nightstand. 

Mom. 

She let it ring. 

Missed Call. 

Missed Call. 

Missed Call. 

She didn’t reach for it. 

Later, when she finally answered, her mother’s voice was already tight with frustration. 

“It was a dream, Tracee. If you keep talking like this, then I’m going to have to 3-0-2 you.” 

“Mom, you would really do that?” 

“He said that you—” 

“I don’t give a damn what he said. You know me. Why would I lie?” 

“Why don’t you just do what he says? If you do that, then he won’t—” 

“Won’t what?” 

Her mother fell silent. 

“Hurt me?” 

 

She wanted to grab Nathan and run. 

But what if her mother was right? 

Nathan deserved a father. 

She knew what it felt like to grow up without one. 

Everybody wanted to know what she was going to do. 

Her aunt. 

Her cousins. 

Her mother. 

If she told one of them, he would know by dinner. 

Her family couldn’t hold water. 

Sometimes she thought they liked her trapped. It kept attention off their own messes. 

 

Nathan and her husband came home grinning. 

“We missed you today.”  

 Her husband carried shopping bags into the house. 

Matching blue sweatsuits. 

Matching blue sneakers. 

Nathan held up a toy firetruck. 

“Look what Dad got me!” 

Tracee’s stomach dropped. 

Blue fabric. 

A toy firetruck. 

The tan line on his finger. 

The parking violation. 

The perfume on his work shirt. 

The life insurance policy mail. 

 

While he showered, Tracee slid birth certificates beneath folded sweaters in a suitcase. 

Blue fabric. 

A toy firetruck. 

The life insurance policy. 

The dream hadn’t been warning her about a stranger. 

“Don’t go.” 

Tracee froze. 

The shower still ran. 

Tomorrow. 

She and Nathan would be gone. 

She packed Nathan’s lunches and checked the suitcase one last time. 

 

“Meowww.” 

For weeks, Tracee had been telling the cats she was leaving. 

She filled the automatic feeder, cleaned the litter boxes, and changed the fountain filter. 

The cats watched from the couch, tails wrapped around their paws, as she carried suitcases down the stairs. 

She slipped off her wedding ring and set it beside the life insurance policy mail. 

  

“I’ll come back for you when I can.”  

  

The cats leapt from the couch and meowed after her. 

As if they knew. 

Tracee didn’t look back. 

She withdrew cash. 

Then she disappeared into shelters, buses, borrowed rooms, and weeks that became months. 

 

A year later, Tracee parked across from Nathan’s school. 

Then she saw him. 

Nathan laughed beneath a rainbow parachute, the fabric rising and falling above him like a sky she could not reach. 

Blue fabric. 

For a moment, she watched him smile. 

For a moment, she almost called his name. 

Then she turned away. 

She hoped he hadn’t forgotten her. 

 

                                                                                  *   *   *

Alizé Bland is from Philadelphia, PA. When she is not writing, she can be found sitting in nature, doing yoga or taking pictures of her cats, Swiss Cheese and Salem. Thank you for your time. 

 

By Tatiana Samokhina

(childhood)

You’re five, and you have a girl cousin. You share scrunchies, ear clips and bracelets. You also share the name. Katrina and Katrina. Somehow, your mum and her dad picked the same name for you both, though her dad picked it eight years earlier, and your mum claims she wanted to call you Katrina twenty years before you were born. Even your surname is the same. Her dad kept the family surname when he married; your mum didn’t change hers because she never married. Your father was too young to have a child and left when you were still a fetus. You don’t love him, your father, but you love sharing the name with your girl cousin. It’s very intimate, name-sharing.

You’re seven, and you still have a girl cousin. Everyone calls her Katrina Big; you’re simply Katrina. You don’t mind, because simply Katrina is much better than Katrina Baby. Name-sharing comes with coat-sharing. You wear her clothes, mostly outerwear. Every coat and jacket she wore to kindy and school has a tag with her name — Katrina Rivers — sewn right below the size tag, to make sure she doesn’t lose her clothes. Now her old clothes are your new clothes, and her labels are your labels. You’re the one responsible for keeping them safe.

(adolescence)

You’re ten, and yes, you do have a girl cousin. Your mum still calls her Katrina Big, though you’re now one centimetre taller. You don’t see her much anymore. Her dad stopped bringing her over because he stopped speaking to your mum and grandma over a war service medal. He wanted it for his collection. Your grandma is the one who inherited it after her girl cousin passed away in a country house you haven’t visited in years. Your mum says your uncle is experiencing a midlife crisis. You wonder if it’s Katrina Big who doesn’t really want to see you. Last year, she mailed you Disney stickers for your birthday. And one “Katrina” sticker, too. You stuck it to your letterbox. This year, no gift.

You’re seventeen, and your mum makes you put on the best dress you have to attend Katrina Big’s wedding. You roll your eyes because you don’t even like the fiancé. It’s her choice, your mum says. They’ll get divorced, you mumble. Your mum insists, so you trudge to the wedding. They announce they’ll go to Thailand for their honeymoon, and you think, what a boring choice, should have chosen Fiji. You don’t say a single word to your girl cousin; she’s busy with her fiancé. You munch on black grapes since most of the food they serve you can’t eat. No one asked about your dietary requirements. The grapes are sour and stick to your palate. You leave early.

(adulthood)

You’re twenty-five, and you haven’t seen your girl cousin since the wedding. She divorced the Thailand-honeymoon guy years ago; you forgot his name. She married another man, but didn’t invite you to the wedding. You didn’t forget his name because you never knew it in the first place. But with her, you still share the name. She got her surname back after the divorce and didn’t change it when she remarried. She is Katrina Rivers, just like you.

You’re thirty-five, and you remember you have a girl cousin during a spring clean. You pull a dusty suitcase full of old things from beneath the bed. Run your fingers through the old coats. Bring them to your nose. Mum must have dry-cleaned them, as they don’t carry any familiar scents. You take out a plastic bag, almost crumbling apart, filled with bracelets and hair ties. There’s a hair still stuck to one of the clips. You hold it up to your hair. No, not yours. Katrina Big’s. Your mum kept all this for the next Katrina. But there’s no new Katrina—your girl cousin childless, just like you. You collect everything into a garbage bag, seal it tight and take it down to the bin room. Linger by your mailbox. The “Katrina” sticker stares at you, its corners peeling. You rip the sticker off, scrape the dried glue with your fingernails, stuff the label into your pocket and run back up the stairs.

*   *   *

Tatiana lives in the beautiful suburb of Surry Hills and works in the bustling city of Sydney. She is an English teacher and fiction translator, in love with literature. Her work appears in Elegant Literature, 3 Elements Review, NUNUM, Quotidian Bagatelle, and more.