A Ghost Among the Mangroves

By Naru Sundar

They must have executed me while I waited in the mangrove shadows. Here, amidst the cicada trill, amidst the basso rumble of distant ships in the Trincomalee harbor. The Seiko at my feet, my brother Vasanthan’s parting gift, lies broken. Its broken hands mark my passage into this juddering, flickering, solitary awareness.  I am but one ghost, with not even Vasanthan for company, no matter how much I want him to be here.  But how can that be? Sri Lanka must throng with ghosts, hundreds and thousands of them, monsters and innocent both.

And which am I?

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Crickets Sing for Naomi

By Eden Royce

“If these danggone crickets don’t stop following me,” Naomi grumbled as the insect bounded out of the path of her wedge heel. Another of the bugs scuttled across the top of her foot, its spiny legs pricking her exposed skin. Under the streetlight, moths danced in the circle of brightness on the otherwise dim road. Heat ebbed from the asphalt, making her wish she’d worn flip-flops.

For months, the insects had followed her around. At her parents’ house, one had even jumped out of  her pocketbook onto the hardwood floor. While her mother screamed and leapt onto a chair, her father had chuckled, scooped up the invader, and placed it outside.

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The Dauphin’s Metaphysics

by Eric Schwitzgebel

“—which suggests possible applications, if the cobbler is much younger.  Don’t you think, Miss Professor?”

The Dauphin sat twelve rows back—teenage heir apparent to the throne, playing at Academy student—smug smile, a ring of vacant seats around him, his speech casually slurred, ostentatiously humble with plain quill and standard-issue student gown (expensively pressed).

I intended my gaze to crucify him.  Softness to students is a graybeard luxury; a young woman can only be hard.  All the more so, I was sure, in this particular case.  I nursed silence to the edge of discomfort, coiling the spring.  “It is a thought experiment that depends on immaterial souls transferred by miracle,” I said.  “There can be no practical applications.”  I paused again, as if gathering my thoughts.  “Or do you perhaps mistake yourself for God?”

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Asymmetry

by Kendra Fortmeyer

She arrived at his apartment ten minutes late and discovered that she was already there.

The woman was a champion worrier, but this was something she had not thought to worry about. She had considered: is this a date, is this not a date, am I ready, is he a psycho/rapist/murderer who is going to drug/rape/murder me, what if I am a bad kisser, and even what if dinner makes me gassy and he leans in to kiss me and I let one rip and the whole evening comes down around our ears.

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The Wizard of 63rd Street

by Shane Halbach

2016

Russell walked past the Check-’n-Go and the cell phone shops on either side of it. It was cold, and the bare branches of the leafless trees reached up to snatch plastic bags from the sky.

He paused at a bit of graffiti low down on the brick of the abandoned corner building. Someone had written, “CA$H MONEY”. Most folks tuned that stuff out, and even if they didn’t, they wouldn’t see any significance in this particular tag. But Russell did; he recognized it for what it was. It was a pretty good one too: even folks who knew what to look for might have missed this one.

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Ravana’s Children

by Ian Muneshwar

It was the end of a summer that burned through Queens quick as a fever, and Jamie couldn’t sleep. He twisted in his sheets, kicking them to the bottom of the bed, and watched his box fan. The blades made ribbons of the streetlights and cast sharp-sided shadows that chased each other across the walls.

Outside, his parents were fighting.

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Sigrid Under the Mountain

by Charlotte Ashley

After Esja produced sour milk three days in a row, Sigrid knew she had a problem. Leaving the pail of greenish milk next to her stool, she trudged off in the grey light of the early morning towards the barley field at the verge of the woods; the new field she had cleared only this spring. When your cow spoilt on the inside, she knew, that only meant one thing: mischief.

She found the door nestled in the mud between the last row of barley and the half-completed fence. Made of scavenged barrel-boards and twine, it could have been mistaken for a junk heap if not for the flotilla of little footprints surrounding it. Sigrid lifted the artless trapdoor a few inches just to be sure and was rewarded with the warm stench of burnt rabbit pellets. She dropped the door and staggered back. Kobolds.

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Blood Stone Water

By A.J. Fitzwater