Their Changing Bodies

by Alaya Dawn Johnson

Judy had been painfully aware of him since her arrival two weeks ago, when she had seen him across the mess hall. They talked a little, but Judy hadn’t been prepared for his appearance or his popularity. She hadn’t expected him to change quite so much.

Judy had first met Brandon last summer in the woods of rural Michigan, at an institution the promotional brochures called Better Image! for Teens. The kids sentenced to this energetically punctuated camp had referred to it as the Penitentiary, but Judy’s sister Alice had more accurately called it Fat Camp. Judy came home thirty pounds thinner and possessed of a first kiss that had admittedly also encompassed some of her cheek. Still, at sixteen she had finally accomplished several of her goals in life: a) meet a boy, b) talk to the boy, c) impress him with her knowledge of esoteric subjects like grafting apple trees, and, finally, d) mack on him like crazy.

If pressed, Judy admitted that perhaps she still had a slight distance to travel until she fully accomplished d). Even though Brandon had attempted to insert his tongue in her mouth, the reality of it wagging wetly in the air had so disconcerted Judy that she turned at the exact wrong moment, thereupon forcing Brandon’s tongue to slither over her cheek until he realized what had happened and put it back in his mouth. How, she asked Alice, does anyone make out with so much spit? Alice just shrugged and said you got used to it.

Judy hoped she would get used to it.

Fruit Jar Drinkin’, Cheatin’ Heart Blues

by Patty Templeton

Cazy Tipple and Balma Walker were the two finest bootleggers for a god-step or more. The only two that lived in the Rotgut, instead of on its edge.

Balma hadn’t always hated the sour, sorrowing guts out of Cazy, but times changed with the rain.

Ten years and a piece with the same two hearts in a three room cabin and there’s bound to be here-and-there altercations. Balma’d call Cazy a no-good-jar-tipper, and Cazy’d have a sip and a swallow and name Balma a brain-big-hollerin’-bitch. Balma’d throw the grits and biscuits at Cazy and the frying pan after. Cazy’d bite a brushed-off biscuit and tell Balma how fine it was. Fairly soon, the two were hot eyes over hot coffee and the stills would have to wait until the sheets had another ruffle and wet.

But this time, Cazy’d done enough wrong for Balma to prop the grudge on a pulpit and preach.

The Interior of Mr. Bumblethorn’s Coat

by Willow Fagan

Mister Bumblethorn slept through the morning, as he usually did, rising from his dry-as-dust bathtub just after noon. He stood in the weak light of the shaded window, his massive blue coat rumpled but still imposing. He did not even remember getting into the bathtub the night before, much less falling asleep in it. He yawned and shook out his arms. An antelope or a gazelle, tiny as a beetle, tumbled out of his coat sleeve and splatted on the floor below. Mister Bumblethorn studiously ignored this.

Bleary-eyed, he walked across his tiny apartment to rummage through the cupboards, finding no food except some stale crackers. Worse, his water flask was empty as a thimble; he held the thing upside down for a full minute and not a drop appeared, not a whiff of moisture.

Mister Bumblethorn sighed heavily. Into the blank space of his empty stomach, memories began to flow like saliva. Once, adoring folk had
thrust gifts of cheese and honeycakes at him wherever he walked: through the streets of grand Abadore, through the humble thoroughfares of nameless hamlets. Fingers shaking, Mister Bumblethorn rolled himself a fat spliff of redleaf. No matter how little the peasants had, they shared their suppers with him and refused any offer of payment. Damn it, light already. After all, he was–Ah, there it was, that sweet smoke filling his mouth, translating the stream of memories into a language as meaningless to him as the clicking prayers of the insectile priests in their hive temple on Wingcleft Avenue, his old life grown as insubstantial as their flowery incense, drifting away in the wind.

Balfour and Meriwether in The Vampire of Kabul

by Daniel Abraham

It was the third of December in 188-, and snow swirled down grey and damp upon the cobblestones of London. Meriwether paced before the wide window of the King Street flat impatiently. Balfour sat before the roaring fire, correcting a draft monograph he had written on the subject of Asiatic hand combat as adapted to the English frame.

“I cannot understand how you can be so devilishly placid,” Meriwether said at last.

“Practice,” Balfour grunted.

“Every winter it’s the same,” Meriwether said, gesturing at the falling snow. “The darkness comes earlier, the cold drives men from the roads, and I have this…stirring. This unutterable restlessness. The winter traps me, my friend. It holds me captive.”

A Window, Clear as a Mirror

by Ferret Steinmetz

Malcolm Gebrowski returned from his job at the stamp factory to discover his wife had left him for a magic portal. He stared numbly at the linoleum
floor of his apartment’s walk-in kitchen, all scuffed up with hoofprints, the smell of lilacs gradually being overpowered by the mildewy stink of the paper plant next door. All that was left of eight years of marriage was a scribbled note on the back of the telephone bill.

He’d crumpled the note in his fist without thinking. He smoothed it out against the refrigerator to read Julianne’s last words again:

Malcolm,
Remember when I said you could sleep with Dakota Jewel if she ever dropped
by? I sure hope so. ‘Cause if you had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sleep with the most beautiful movie star in the world, I’d want you to take it. And remember when you said that if I ever found a magic portal, I could go?

Guess what? A magic portal opened.