The Captive River

By C.T. Muchemwa

It was Siba’s eighteenth birthday, but instead of having a party to celebrate, she was standing by the Zambezi River in a thin, white, cotton slip, shivering despite the hot October sun. It was Commitment Day, the day she would be given to Nyami Nyami, the River God, to be his concubine.

Nearby stood four Basilwizi singing a doleful song, their voices shrill in the still, stifling air. The women looked sinister in their long white robes and headscarves. Around their necks, they wore wooden statues of Nyami Nyami, the signs that they were the chief servants of the River God. Basilwizi oversaw all religious ceremonies of the BaTonga people, including today’s. Every year, in the peak of the dry season, they took a girl to the River God’s lair to appease him before the rainy season. They had done so since the dam wall was completed in 1957, separating Nyami Nyami from his wife, Mweembe; if they didn’t, Nyami Nyami would abduct girls. It was better to sacrifice them willingly than to have the people of Kariba investigating their disappearance. This was the fate that life had given Siba when she was named one of the Chosen as a baby, to die after serving as Nyami Nyami’s concubine.

But the bold will find a way to subvert their fate. (Continue Reading…)

A Thousand Echoes in One Voice

by Deborah L. Davitt

You’ve snuck through doors that should have been locked to get here. Here, the subway station is silent, the kind of silence that comes deep underground, isolated from the hum of the human hive overhead. No electric lights. No neon. No vibrations. No voices. Not even a breath of moving air.

You’ve been in many such stations before; you’re ready, prepared. Heavy backpack of gear digging into your shoulders. Fingerless gloves, a frayed duster, steel-toed boots, the tread of which echoes back dully from the walls.

Sunlight streams in through skylights overhead, leaded panes set in loops and whorls like fleur-de-lis. The gold of the ancient brickwork warms to your touch, and the tunnel curves off into the distance like the spine of a living creature.

But the tracks lead into darkness. They always do, except when you’re on the trains.

You dig out the map you’ve been working on. As frayed around the edges as your duster. As your sanity sometimes feels. You check the red line against the violet one. Past and future, twining around each other. Check it against the faded map on the wall. The actual metro line map wouldn’t have been a help, but others have been through here. Others like you. They’ve left paint on the map, sketching in the track lines that they’ve mapped. Some of them tally with your own. Others trail off towards destinations that might not even exist. Some trackers are like that — they set up false trails. Give false information, to keep others away from what they’ve really found. You’ve done it yourself, once or twice.

And of course, some destinations that used to exist, don’t anymore. It’s the way things are.

This station’s been unused for decades, or so it seems. It’s a piece of the past, locked down forever. You can’t see signs of anything more recent than 1955. No debris, no crumpled beds of old newspapers used by rats or bums.

The few homeless that have broken past the locked access doors never make it far into the system. It’s from one of them that you first heard about the abandoned tunnels. You remember it as if it were yesterday, and in a real way, it was — a yesterday that’s lasted a thousand years. Wild, disordered hair, concealing the face beneath a nondescript hat. A checked shirt, probably picked up at a Goodwill, or from an unmonitored donation bin — you’ve worn the same, many times. An overcoat so weathered its original color had faded to gray, swallowing the figure. The clothes, the miasma of homelessness, erasing, effacing, all signs of identity.

But tight fingers caught your wrist. “You’d best be careful which stations you get off at, down there. Set a step wrong, and you’ll find yourself far from home.” (Continue Reading…)

The Morthouse

by Maria Haskins

In her forty-two years on God’s wide Earth, Gerda has read no books other than The Bible and Luther’s Small Catechism, but once, after Sunday service, she heard the sexton say that there are places where the dead traverse a river after death, paying a boatsman to ferry them across the water. Gerda knows such a thing must be either blasphemy or fable, and she knows for certain the dead will find no passage here, not this far north in Sweden, not in January when both the creek and inlet by the village lie frozen, the murky, brackish waters of the Gulf of Bothnia slumbering below windswept ice.

Here, in winter, the dead go nowhere at all, not even into the ground. (Continue Reading…)

Yung Lich and the Dance of Death

By Alex Fox

My Christian name was Thomas Kanfor but ever since that bastard wizard rose me from the grave I go by Yung Lich. On that moonless night he spoke some words from a tattered grimoire over my naked, somewhat-recently-dead corpse and voila, here I am. He called me a “Young Lich”. When you’re newly risen you don’t remember much else (other than the maggots), so I took that as my new name. I changed “Young” to “Yung” because I think it reads a bit fresher, and when you’re trying to break into the hip-hop scene, you gotta be fresh (though my body is not).

People can’t tell I’m dead unless I remove the mask. They think it’s part of my act. I stand outside of Times Square with my whole getup — long, black, hooded cloak, a ghastly off-brand Scream mask, an old gnarled branch. I lean and spookily sway and try to hand out my mixtapes. I mean, shoot. If there’s one cool thing about being given a second chance it’s that you know what’s important and what’s not. I never had the gall to pursue a career in music while living. Nah. Wouldn’t pay the bills, wouldn’t make my mom proud. But now? I’m free to be me . . .

“Want my mixtape?” I wheeze in my dry-as-sawdust voice to a small group waiting for the crosswalk. I extend a robed arm, a white CD in my hand. Across the front is the Sharpie-scrawled label Yung Lich — The Dance of Death. They hardly look my way, and don’t seem to appreciate my pestering.

A man shoves my arm aside and fingers an earbud out of his ear. “Ain’t no one got CD players anymore, pal. Try Soundcloud.”

The crosswalk changes and the folk quickly scramble across the street. My arm falls, dejected. Even though in this “life” I can pursue my true interests, that doesn’t mean anyone is interested in what I have to say. Been standing here for weeks on end and only four people have taken my mixtape, and I think only to be nice, as I saw two of them toss the CDs in the garbage once they crossed.

And what that man said rings true: not that many people have CD players these days. Guess I’m slow to accept change, but I know I need to adapt if I want to get my music out there. I’ve got an old laptop. I can look into Soundcloud — it’s something to go on, at least.

I gather my things and hobble to the Corner Café. They know me there. They let me use the Wi-Fi even though I never buy coffee. I don’t need to eat or drink much, or at all, really — tends to leak out of my swiss-cheesed stomach.

A few people idle in the café, and they look up as I open the glass door, a small bell tinkering to announce my arrival. I keep my head down, my hands well within my long sleeves, even as I hold the obnoxiously tall wooden staff. The staff double-bangs the bell as I amble through, loud as a cymbal crash, and I shrink into myself.

“Sorry, sorry,” I mutter. Wooden chairs creak as the patrons turn to watch me, this weirdo in the horror getup. I try not to pay attention to them. I mosey on to my usual corner, sit, and pull out my laptop. Soon I’m forgotten, like all the other freaks of the city.

On my laptop screen glows a text file with the lyrics of my finest work, “The Dance of Death.” I read it once, twice. (Continue Reading…)

Mama uat-ur

By Z. K. Abraham

Pressing her forearms against the first-floor window’s metal frame, Temesghen watched aegean-blue waves splash against the concrete walls, searching for another flash of the being’s presence in the sea below. The stars were partially shrouded by the clouds; the sky was a milky greenish swirl like rotting leaves and tree sap, while the taste of sour algae and salt hung in the air. In the distance, several tall, concrete structures loomed: the Stacks, all that was left in a now-drowned world. Every Stack was the same inside as hers — at least, that’s what the overseers assured them. No way to tell for sure, since they weren’t allowed to sail or swim to the other buildings.

A flicker in the sea below: she perked up, but it was only a silverfish. The yellow beam of a flashlight danced over the waves. Temesghen dove to the ground, cursing herself for losing track of the time between patrols. The guards opened the windows above, searching for any illicit activity in the water, their torches passing over the windows of the lower level where she now hid, hoping she’d left no trace of her presence. A bloom of sweat drenched her chest under a loose tunic. Pushing down gurgling nausea, she leaned back against the gritty stone wall and crouched as still as possible. Wandering alone at night on the upper floors was considered trespassing, punishable by only a few months malnutrition and some light torture in the barracks, but those who went down to the forbidden lower floors were often never seen again. Her elderly parents were hard of hearing; she was able to sneak out without disturbing them. As long as she wasn’t caught by the patrols now, no one would ever find out about her desperate desires. (Continue Reading…)

In The Woods Somewhere (or Stories Never Leave)

by Victor Forna

Gods Slap Those Who Summon Them.

We shouldn’t have been there — but we were, hiding behind the kola-nut tree, peering into the silver night, parents worried over our empty beds back home, and that’s why we can tell you today, beside this fire, how the old god was summoned from underneath the earth. Pa Yamba, who had changed his name to Peter —

To Ruben.

Don’t interrupt me.

But we’re both telling the story.

Whatever. Pa Yamba, who had changed his name to Ruben, was the only one who opposed the invocation. “These things always go bad,” he said. Bai Masim, chief of traditions, gave Pa Yamba a reply: “We prayed to the god that those priests brought from their lands, we prayed to his son, we even used their shotguns. Has any of that helped us against these – these – what’s the word?” The catholic stayed quiet, blinking too many times. During his silence, we sighted Thara coming out of a nearby hut. Thara wasn’t even a —

You don’t know that. What does it even matter to the story? And, if she wasn’t a virgin, tell me, would her blood have accomplished the summoning? Tell what needs to be told, or I will take it from here.

You could never tell this story better than me. I only mentioned that so they’d understand why the god slapped Thara when he arose. Anyway, before all that, Thara walked naked, hugging herself to cover her breasts from the cold and the lustful eyes of the elders —

They didn’t look at her that way. Come on.

Whatever. The elders led Thara to a small, rectangular pit. Bai Masim showed her how she must stand over it: feet apart, and resting on the longer sides of the opening. Thara stood so for a while, then her blood, streaking down her legs, began dripping into the pit. One. Two. At the third drop, Bai Masim started chanting an uncanny tune, flinging his feet before him like a rabbit in want of freedom from a snare — (Continue Reading…)

The Consequences of Microwaving Styrofoam

by Leah Ning

We meet when we’re sixteen, and the Spark pops bright orange between us the moment our eyes meet. I don’t want to be friends with her. She’s strange and aloof and unkind. But the Spark is the Spark, and everyone saw it, so soon I’m alone. No one else wants to be friends with her either, so they draw away from me by association.

Now she’s the only one who’ll share a lunch table with me. We sit as far apart as possible, me with my sandwich dripping jelly onto the plastic bag I’ve placed carefully beneath it and her loudly slurping microwaved tomato soup from its Styrofoam bowl. I think about telling her she shouldn’t microwave it and don’t. Maybe if it kills her I won’t have to bother with her or that fucking Spark.

It occurs to me that maybe I, too, am strange and aloof and unkind. It also occurs to me that maybe she’s not the reason no one wants to be friends with me.

I search for ways to get rid of the Spark in incognito browser tabs, rubbing at wrists that weren’t sore before we Sparked. Google just brings up dry Wikipedia pages on the first appearances of the Spark fifty-seven-point-five years ago and chirpy blog posts by Spark-bonded best friends for life who just can’t get enough of spending time together. I pretend to gag even though I’m alone in my room and it’s 2 a.m.

Yeah, my Spark was definitely an excuse for my “friends” to get away from me. (Continue Reading…)

Lockdown Around the Christmas Tree

by Heather Shaw & Tim Pratt

What a colossal crapstorm of a year, the third year of infinite garbage in a row, ever since the lockdowns started. The walls came down around Mischa in March 2020, and here they were, still standing, tall and impenetrable, for Christmas 2022.

Then the man in red showed up, and made his offer, and everything changed . . . but before you can understand all that, you need to understand how Mischa ended up alone for the holidays, when seemingly everyone else in the world was out kissing strangers under mistletoe and drinking from communal punch bowls and breathing unventilated indoor air with all their out-of-town relatives again.

Mischa had gotten a kidney transplant in January of 2020, donated by their cousin, which meant they were alive, so that was great, but they were also immunocompromised, which meant when everyone else decided to play pretend that the pandemic was over, Mischa didn’t have the option of joining the game. They had to keep living in reality.

And what a reality it was. It turned out Mischa’s partner didn’t like having a sick lover-slash-housemate-slash-best-friend who’d need help in recovery, so she bailed right before the surgery (and right around the holidays), meaning when the pandemic lockdowns started two months later, Mischa was living alone, taking immunosuppressants, and stewing in a constant broth of anxiety and fear and loneliness. Getting sick and dying alone had been abstract worries for the far future, but now they seemed like immediate possibilities. Mischa’s family lived thousands of miles away, and though their Mom offered to come out and help, Mischa could tell it would be a hardship for her, and lied and said they’d be fine. Then the plague hit, and Mischa was glad they’d declined. (Continue Reading…)

[Note: This is Part 2 of a two-part novelette. Visit our previous post to read Part 1.]

The Science and Artistry of Snake Oil Salesmanship

by Timothy Mudie

PART TWO

Portico. Threshold of the frontier. Jewel of the prairie. A town of graded roads and running water. At least, it had been in the nicer parts, where the rich folk lived, devising their schemes to fleece the desperate men and women passing through on their way to make a living on the frontier. A living that would become much harder once they were taken for whatever meager belongings they had. And no one batted an eye at that. But try turning it around and conning the rich for once, and suddenly you’ve gone too far and get declared persona non grata. Fair play, Al has learned, to his unending chagrin, is not a virtue held by the city mothers and fathers of Portico. His own father least of all.

On the way to town, Al tried to disguise himself with what sparse implements he could lay hands on. With the same knife he uses to play-battle Snake, he lopped off hunks of hair and crudely fashioned them into a push-broom mustache that he affixed to his upper lip with pine sap and prayer. He considered trying for a full beard but couldn’t commit to shearing off all the hair on his head. His hairline has been receding for years; no need to encourage it into a full retreat.

He is supposed to wait his customary one and a half days after Snake begins menacing the town — snatching livestock, hissing and snapping threateningly at passing stagecoaches, the old standbys — but Al’s impatience gets the better of him. This isn’t some newly erected settlement; the people of Portico will fight back, and hard. Despite Al’s warnings, Snake doesn’t truly savvy what she’s in for: doesn’t realize that this town may well outmatch them both.

Al rides into town at full speed, wagon clattering along the uneven dirt until he gets close enough that suddenly the road is graded and even and the wheels fairly slide along it. Snake is nowhere to be seen, hopefully hiding somewhere, biding her time between attacks, ensuring she is seen by enough people to cause panic but not so many as to put her in immediate danger. It’s a dangerous balancing act, their game. The trick to getting people to drink the snake oil is convincing them to fear the snake but trust the salesman. (Continue Reading…)