The Hunter, the Monster, and the Things That Could Have Been

by Leah Ning

You find the dying woman-thing in an alley, breathing her final wet, rasping breaths in a heap of white trash bags that seems more like a throne.

Everything tells you to run: twenty-four years of instinct, the government monster information pamphlets, the hard, practical voice at the back of your head that sounds a lot like your monster hunter girlfriend.

And then the woman-thing looks up. Her dark, scaled cheek drags on the distended belly of plastic that makes her pillow. Her chapped lips part and she says, in a voice like acid and smoke: “Eiko.”

That should make you run, too. Things that know your name and shouldn’t are firmly in “get the hell out and don’t look back” territory. But something in her voice hooks into the bottom of your soul and tugs.

You walk into the alley and she reaches for you. Her fingers are too long, dusky and scaled like her face. You shiver when they rasp over your cheek, your hair. Your heart pounds. You should run. You should run now. (Continue Reading…)

Tusker Blue

by Lalini Shanela Ranaraja

You still remember the first time Hailé visited the pharmacy, because that was the day the rogue battle elephant overturned the village water tank and flooded five stores on Sacred Heart Road. The pharmacy was one of them, and you were bailing it out with a plastic jug, swearing a blue streak, when the bells jangled over the door. Without turning, you shouted, “As you can see, the pharmacy is closed today!”

“Please help me,” begged a voice hoarse with smoke, and you plunged your arm into the yellow water and cursed Raj, as you’d done frequently since the wedding, for leaving you to handle customers along with everything else. “If you just walk to Trincomalee Street, the surgeon’s office will be opening soon — ” (Continue Reading…)

Resurrection Rum

by Stephanie Malia Morris

After Kraus’s The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch

ALBEMARLE COUNTY, July 1927: WANTED! One ROBERT HOWARD for the MURDER of JOHN LITTLE. Physical description: NEGRO MALE of lightish hue, aged SEVENTEEN or EIGHTEEN, of LOW STATURE and AVERAGE BUILD, head PEANUT-SHAPED with CLOSE-CROPPED hair. Known to dress above his station in GENTLEMAN’S SUITS, outrageous HANDKERCHIEFS, and WING-TIPPED SHOES (stolen, all). Wanted also for the illegal possession and transport of RESURRECTION RUM across county lines. KNOWN ASSOCIATES: a gang of six or seven Negro rumrunners both MALE and FEMALE variously aged TWELVE to NINETEEN (descriptions, sketches below). DANGEROUS BY ASSOCIATION. REWARD $100 for information leading to hideout and/or capture. Suspect known to be ARMED and HIGHLY DANGEROUS. DO! NOT!! APPROACH!!! Report all sightings to the Albemarle County Sheriff’s Office at the following address: —— (Continue Reading…)

The Next Dead Wife

by Jeanna Mason Stay

Every time a new wife crosses my husband’s threshold, I tell myself this time will be different. This time I’ll go free.

As her body falls to the floor, I’ll seize my opportunity. As her soul rises from her body, I will snatch what should be mine — no cliched tunnel of light, just a doorway into the afterlife. But it will be my turn this time, my door. I’ll take it before she can.

Not that I’ve been able to yet. When the moment comes, I am frozen in place. I can only watch as she enters the door and disappears. And I hate her for it. (Continue Reading…)

Oops! All Swords

by Jessie Roy

Blackness, and a ringing in your ears, and the smell of ozone, frankincense, woodsmoke. Something’s happened. An accident. A magical accident.

But you’re conscious, and your heart’s beating. You’re alive, probably. That’s a start.

Vision returns in sparkles, resolving into blinding lines of glitter. You squinch your eyes almost shut as the image clears. It’s your master’s workshop, sort of. Bookshelves and scroll racks, salt-crusted alembics, a human skull perched on the mantelpiece above the motionless flames. Your master in the doorway, caught in the moment of hanging up his pointed hat. But through the haze of your lashes, swords gleam from every surface. Huge zweihanders pierce the countertops; miniature bodkins velvet the floor. Scimitars cross the door, trapping your master in a cage so tight you can see a few white beard hairs at his feet. (Continue Reading…)

The Day of the Sea

by Jennifer Hudak

When the Sea came to our village, she was an old woman. She arrived when the water crested and draped over the earth, its salty fingers pushing out offerings of sea glass and bladder wrack. Her dress trailed behind her, hair tangled with kelp and tentacles. No one doubted that she was the Sea. Everyone was disappointed.

We’d all heard tales about the power of the rising ocean, how it leveled towers and returned rock to sand. How it would destroy everything in its path in order to make its way home, to our village. In those tales, the Sea was a warrior, beautiful and terrible, slashing her way across the continent, swallowing everything in her path. Even when gossips at the market began to whisper about nearby towns swallowed by salt water, about boats crushed like kindling and bones strewn across the ocean floor, even as the smell of salt wafted on the breeze, we did not seek her out. We waited for her to come to us, as the stories had foretold. (Continue Reading…)