The Authenticator

by Greg van Eekhout

My face surprises her when she opens the door to her trailer, but I’m not surprised by hers. I know what I look like. I’ve got the best nose money can buy, but rubber’s no match for bone and flesh. I used to wear glasses so the frames would cover the seam where the nose meets the little bit of bridge I have left, but glasses are a pain in the butt since I lost my ears, so I don’t bother with them anymore.

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In the Woods Behind My House

by Nicolette Barischoff

They were just some seventh grade kids who hung around the handball court and pretended to be playing all the time so no one else could use it. Nate had no idea why he’d told them about his griffin.

He just said it, out of nowhere, like it was something he had just remembered. “So, in the woods, behind my house? There’s a griffin.”

That was how these guys talked, Eric and Dash, and Jackson and all of them. They just started right in with anything that happened to them like it was something they’d just now found in their pocket: “I smoked the fattest fucking blunt yesterday… you guys should see the lazer tag arena I built in back of my dad’s house… you know I already got my pilot’s license? I don’t even need to learn to drive.” And then they’d smash a cigarette under the toe of their shoe, waiting to be challenged.

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Winter Jinni

by Tim Pratt and Heather Shaw

The day I emancipated Izzy, in the lull of winter break when the students were mostly gone visiting their families, the boss had left a jumbled box of his latest decorative scroungings, and my job as manager included finding a place to put them. After we closed and cleaned up and I shooed out my best barista Jade, I opened up the box.

There was a red Fiesta tea pot that would have been pretty if not for the inexpert glue job someone had used to repair it, but maybe I could turn it so the crack wasn’t visible. There was a French press, pretty standard, except the glass was cobalt blue, which I’d never seen before. The last thing was the best, though: a brass dallah, the traditional Arabic coffee pot. I’d often listened to boss go on about the origins of coffee brewing, and he’d talked about the perfection of the dallah, a design unchanged for centuries. Basically it resembles a fancy pitcher, with a bulbous hourglass shape to the body, a curved handle, and a crescent-shaped spout that looks kind of like a bird’s beak. This particular dallah was old, the brass darkened by age and patina, but its entire surface was intricately filigreed with images of flowers, clouds, curves that might have been water, and spikier curves that might have been fire. The thing was a work of art in a coat of dust.