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

By Yash Seyedbagheri               

I wipe down the mahogany table. The cloth squeaks and shrieks. There are still too many little scratches and blemishes. Too much history. A series of zigzagging lines.

My sister, Nan, puts a hand on my shoulder.

“It looks nice, Nicky. But why don’t you take a break? You’ve been cleaning for an hour straight.”

My other sister, Colette, nods.

“You can’t get all the blemishes out, darling.”

I grunt and keep wiping. I have to make this table resplendent. Mom promised she’d join us this year. I know that sounds crazy, and I should grow up, since I’m twenty-six, but still. I think of her crooked grin, the way she doesn’t just walk, but saunters with attitude, making a space all her own. I’m more of a waddler.

Colette’s phone rings. I push the cloth harder and harder. The scratches stare up at me.

“What?” she says. “Again? Really, Mom?”

Words rise, a miasma of incoherence. A buzz.

“Nick’s cleaned things up for you. Did you know that? He’s killing himself for you here. I told him not to bother, but he’s still at it. You should be here for him.”

More words. I think I make out a “sorry.” I can’t tell.

“Why spend it with someone else, Mom? What the hell?”

She hangs up. Slams the phone down on the table, and sighs.

“I’m sorry, Nicky.”

“Why the fuck aren’t I good enough? Why aren’t we good enough for her?”

They both pull me into a hug; I love my sisters, but I miss Mom’s energy, her dirty jokes (especially the one about Hitler working at Costco). I miss her promises; they’re something to cradle, at least. 

But at least I feel my sisters’ arms, strong, never wavering, the scents of soap and perfume and Camels and family.

When they let go, I look at where Colette’s slammed the phone down. Another scratch.

*   *   *

Yash Seyedbagheri (he/him) is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA fiction program. His fiction has been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes. Yash’s work has been published in Flow Magazine, Prosetrics The Literary Magazine, and Ariel Chart, among others.

By Karen Zlotnick

My mother’s ghost appeared to me three whole years before my mother left. 

Sitting over a cup of tea, I told my mother about the visit. I wasn’t too shaken, but I was a little concerned it meant something ominous. I was nine, still putting a drop of milk and a cube of sugar in my tea and stirring it with a tiny spoon, the way my mother taught me.

My mother smiled, what was left of her red lipstick bright across the lower half of her face. She asked me if she looked good in ghost form and glanced at her frosted nails. It was obvious she didn’t believe me, so I kept the rest of the visits to myself.

*

My mother’s ghost visited often. 

Sometimes she’d appear in my mid-awake state, just before I’d use the back of my hand to prevent my drool from wetting the pillow. I’d feel her arms wrapped around my shoulders. She never spoke, but one time she lay down facing me and put her breezy hands on my cheeks and looked into my eyes in a knowing way. Other times she’d catch me off guard, when I was coloring or Barbie-ing or trying on my mother’s spike-heeled pumps. She came to me silent and warm. 

My mother asked me why I stopped wearing my cardigans. I said I outgrew the look, but the truth is I was always warm.

*

My mother had patience for me and listened to my relentless storytelling and detailed ramblings about my latest drawings. She took me to the art supply store and indulged me with markers, colored pencils, crayons, and professional-grade sketchbooks. She pretend-introduced me to imaginary museum-goers as The Artist in Residence.

My mother’s ghost often stood over me while I drew, nodding and caressing the back of my hair. It wasn’t distracting at all. 

One time, over a cup of tea, my mother commented that my hair was particularly silky. If you only knew, I thought. Then she told me the marker stains on my fingertips made it look like I’d touched a rainbow.

*

One night, my mother’s ghost made a rainbow appear in my bedroom, only one end of it slithered behind the ceiling fan instead of landing on the floor. With a long, billowy finger, my mother’s ghost pointed to it and smiled so big that her lips touched my closet door. It was the first time I ever spoke out loud to her. 

I said, “I love it.” 

I couldn’t have imagined it, but her smile got even bigger.

*

My mother’s fading was slow at first. She complained of back pain, took pills to relax her muscles, and slept a lot. I visited her in her bed, bringing her new drawings, new stories.

One day, my mother’s ghost stood with me in our bathroom after my mother accidentally left out a bottle with this on the label: Use as needed. We stared at the bottle together.

That night, my mother’s ghost lay down next to me under my covers. She warmed my feet with hers, and before she had to leave, she grabbed socks from my drawer and slipped them over my toes. I wore those socks to school the next day; I didn’t even mind that they were a little stretched out from sleeping and dreaming in them. 

*

My mother made a joke about how thin she’d gotten, how her jeans might fall right to her feet if she didn’t wear a belt. Eleven years old, a fashionista with an artist’s sensibility, I convinced her to let me help her shop for new jeans, but right after she parked the car under the sign for The Cheesecake Factory, she panicked and thrust the car into reverse. My mother didn’t know it, but her ghost’s hands were on the steering wheel along with hers. I fell asleep with my head on the window.

We didn’t talk about it—the panic, the drive home. Instead, I sat on the edge of her bed and told her my newest story in which a young child had to walk a tightrope over a lake. In the lake was a school of child-eating fish, and on the shore was the warm embrace of two of the child’s favorite teachers. Also, the lake was purple. 

When I showed her the drawing for my story, my mother’s bottom lip quivered. I didn’t know how to respond, but my mother’s ghost helped my mother to close her eyes and rest. I slid the drawing out of my mother’s hand, went to my bedroom, and used a black marker to blot out any fish that could eat a child.

*

My mother’s body didn’t give out until I turned thirty, but she’d faded from me by the time I was twelve.

Often with her ghost by my side, I visited my mother in the facility where they kept her clean and calm. I liked that she seemed peaceful, even when I was old enough to understand that “as needed” had become her way of life.

My aunts—Dora and Dolly—stepped in where my mother had left off. Dora, a food chemist, taught me to resist sugar, to drink my tea black, to have one bite of a cookie instead of the whole thing. And Dolly, a successful textbook illustrator, read every single story I wrote, poured over each sketch with loving, instructional eyes.

*

Right before my mother completed her suicide, my mother’s ghost guided my hand in a drawing that would become central in my third children’s book. 

A child walks over a colossal bridge which is in danger of collapse. In the sky, ghostly clouds hover. In the water below, fish form an expansive net in case the child falls. On the other side, two women stand ready.

*   *   *

Born and raised in New York, Karen Zlotnick lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband and their Newfoundland dog. 

Some of her work has been featured in Pithead Chapel, Typishly, jmww, Stonecoast Review, and Moon City Review. In addition, one of her stories was nominated for Best Small Fictions.

 

By Maria Warner

“DO NOT ENTER”-bold black letters flare against neon-yellow ribbon stretched across my front steps.
 The immediate area is cordoned off with caution tape. Neighbors and delivery drivers are being turned away for everyone’s safety.

We’ve been instructed not to make any sudden movements.

My husband, Mike, and I shelter in place. We stay away from the windows. Mike sits in a recliner reading his book, The Northern Spy. I fidget on the floor, trying to relax, failing at my yoga-corpse pose. Deciding to take matters into my own hands, I slither down the hallway from the kitchen to the laundry room, army crawling along the floor. I pull a black shirt and maroon pants from the dryer. A ski mask, forgotten since our last mountain trip, lies on a shelf. I slide it over my head.

Leaning against the wall, I try to devise a plan. Think. Think. Think. I tap my forehead with my palm.

Ah-ha. I stuff four washcloths into my pants and stick the roll of tape in my mouth. Inching my way back to the family room, my progress stopped when Mike stuck his foot out.  

“What are you doing?” he asks as he flips a page in his novel. 

“Silencers,” I say, waving the washcloths. 

He rolls his eyes and returns to reading. 

MacGyvering a chair, I wrap a washcloth on each leg securing it with the duct tape.  I slide it back and forth a few times to ensure it’s soundless.

“Psst,” Mike whispers. I turn to see his eyebrows raised in disapproval.

“I want a closer look,” I say. “I need to know what we’re dealing with.”

“Don’t cause a disturbance,” he says. “We don’t want to irritate the professionals.”

I waved him off. An inch at a time, I rise from my crouch until my eyes meet the glass pane of the front door. I scanned the yard for the two people who wrapped our deck in caution tape.

They are nearly invisible in their khakis, camouflaged among the evergreens. A flicker of light. Their binocular lenses trained-on me.

“Oh,” I gasp.

They point with authority, motioning for me to look down.

There, tucked deep inside our evergreen wreath, rests a cradle of twigs and down. Four junco chicks-fuzzy, fragile, their throats pulsing with hunger-stretch their beaks toward the sky, pleading for a miracle that will come in the form of their mother’s wings.

I stop breathing.

All the noise, the caution tape, the silent commands fall away. What remains is something ancient and holy: new life, small and trembling, asking to be fed.

My bird-loving neighbors hadn’t sealed us in to keep danger out. They had created a sanctuary-so these tiny, sacred hearts could keep beating, undisturbed, into the world.

                                                                   *   *   *

Maria Warner is a memoirist and flash fiction writer whose work explores transformation, resilience, and the unexpected turning points that reshape a life. A former corporate professional turned artist and storyteller, she draws inspiration from family memory, sobriety, and the natural world to uncover moments of quiet revelation. She is the author of Family Camp: S’more Than a Vacation and her work has appeared in Isele Magazine and other publications. When she’s not writing, Maria is a pastel painter, hiker, and lifelong learner based in Arizona.