In Arcadiam Imus
by James C. Clar
The planet had been catalogued Arcadia-5. Mission Center declared it to have a breathable atmosphere, liquid water and chlorophyl. “No biosignatures beyond flora,” the director quipped just before the mission launched, “it’s a garden waiting for a gardener.”
When the Caravel finally set down on the surface, Captain Lara Cinelli felt the tremor through the hull like a long-held breath exhaled.
“Welcome to our new home,” she announced to the crew as they stepped on blue grass that rang faintly underfoot. It sounded, more than a few reported, like crystal being tapped with a fingernail. The sky was pale gold and a fragrant breeze moved through the nearby trees in slow, almost deliberate waves.
“Captain,” Dr. Ionescu spoke from the ship over their comm link, “I’m picking up a structured sound … something with language-like complexity.”
From the tree line ahead of the landing party, figures emerged. They were tall with skin like polished obsidian veined with light. Their large eyes reflected the crew like mirrors. One raised a vaguely humanoid hand, its palm open.
Cinelli swallowed hard. “We were told …”
“I know,” Ionescu replied. “They were wrong, or we were lied to.”
First contact protocols were initiated in a flurry of excitement and fear. The beings, who called themselves the Azul, communicated via a series of tonal chords and gestures. There was something almost telepathic about it and, quickly, a basic understanding developed between the two species. The Azul welcomed the colonists with curiosity edged with caution. Within hours, the data streams back to Mission Center pulsed with the news.
Five days later, the coughing began. It started with one Azul child, a shudder through its luminous veins. Shortly thereafter, dozens were ill. Captain Cinelli watched as the Azul elders, what remained of them, gathered around the dying, light fading beneath their stone-like skin.
“We brought it with us,” she gestured, “We didn’t know.”
One Azul reached out and touched Cinelli’s hand, “Would it have mattered?”
“It’s a simple rhinovirus variant,” Dr. Ionescu reported, eyes hollow from lack of sleep. “Harmless to us, of course, but to them … The one simple infection we didn’t consider. They have no immunity. Their biology has no analogue.”
The captain stared at the medical readouts. “Can we stop it?”
The ship’s doctor shook his head in resignation and walked away.
It took only a month before the Azul were gone. The blue grass dulled and, already, their cities were being overgrown with forests and vegetation.
Back on Earth, the official narrative was authoritative: “Complete compatibility between the expeditionary team and local fauna. Initial scans confirmed, no sign of sentient life.”
Captain Cinelli argued but to no avail.
“You’re asking me to participate in a hideous lie,” she said during one time-lapsed debriefing session.
“We can’t halt expansion every time we encounter an unforeseen outcome … no matter how regrettable,” the director replied calmly.
"’Regrettable’? We erased a people.”
“Captain, as you are well aware, the work of colonization comes with risks. Besides, we’ll learn from this tragic mistake.”
Human settlers eventually arrived on Arcadia-5. They built cities where the Azul once sang to the wind. Their children ran through the fields.
Lara Cinelli lived out the remainder of her life on the planet. She seldom slept. When she did, she dreamt of dead and dying civilizations. At night, she walked out beyond the lights of the city. When the wind was just right, the grass rang again like crystal. Sometimes she heard voices, beckoning. One night, she followed. Next day, a search party found only her footprints.
James C. Clar is a writer and retired teacher. Most recently his work has appeared in Flash Digest, Flash Fiction Magazine, Bright Flash Literary Magazine, Spank the Carp, Flash Phantoms, 365-Tomorrows, Antipodean-SF, The Yard Crime Blog, Freedom Fiction Journal and, of course, Sudden Flash Magazine.
How to Handle an Open Relationship
By Chris Cottom
As you lug Bethan’s boxes upstairs, agree when she says this doesn’t mean you’re “living together”, only staying until she finds her own place and, as a fast-track graduate, the bank could send her anywhere. Don’t grin like a mook when she hugs you for clearing half your wardrobe for her.
Look cool and unconcerned when she says something over brunch about “both still seeing other people.” Realise this is both a green light and a red one.
Don’t argue when she chucks what she calls your “man-cave duvet cover” in favour of something in Moon Shimmer White.
Trudge round IKEA while any self-respecting Chelsea supporter is at Stamford Bridge, watching them thrash Liverpool. Because it needs two people to choose a futon for when Bethan’s sister Saba comes to stay.
Don’t let on that supper parties aren’t your thing, with Bethan getting stressed and sweaty over crumbed asparagus with saffron yogurt in your “cupboard-sized” kitchen, until the evening when, amid the database wizards and wannabe entrepreneurs, you sit next to Saba.
Keep your voice neutral when you tell Bethan, as she packs for Prague, that it’s fine for her sister to stay until she starts uni in September. If she wants to.
Agree that, compared to a bed, a futon is unnecessarily uncomfortable.
Take the M40 out of London on a sunny Bank Holiday Saturday to picnic at Blenheim Palace, stereo blaring, windows down and Saba’s straw-coloured hair whipping in the wind as she drives Bethan’s beloved VW Beetle.
Wake alone to hear sister hissing at sister. Accept that you can’t tell them apart.
Watch a tear-blotched Bethan stuff belongings into binbags. Say nothing when she shouts you should have known “seeing other people” didn’t mean sisters, didn’t actually mean anybody.
Chris Cottom lives near Macclesfield, UK. His work features in 100 Word Story, Bending Genres, Fictive Dream, FlashFlood, Flash Frontier, Gooseberry Pie, Leon Literary Review, MoonPark Review, NFFD NZ, Oyster River Pages, Roi Fain?ant, The Lascaux Review, and elsewhere. Find him at chriscottom.wixsite.com/chriscottom and @chriscottom.bsky.social
Warts and All
by Patrick Siniscalchi
As quickly as Kayla opened her eyes, the disturbing dreams fled her memory, yet the sense of unease remained. To comfort herself, she reached under the covers across the king-size bed to touch her husband. She reeled her hand back when, rather than the warmth of Nathan’s skin, she felt something cool, damp, and bumpy. Her body sprang into an upright seated position, and she yanked the covers off. Kayla let loose a scream and then stifled it with her hand, for where her husband of ten years should have been sat a large toad.
The greenish-brown amphibian regarded her, his eyes protruding like two half spheres. He took one hop closer and said, “Ribbit.” Her heart raced nearly as fast as his pulsating throat.
Kayla’s eyes went wide as she called out for her husband, who typically woke well after her, “Nathan. Nathan!” With each shout, the toad jumped closer, causing her to retreat and stumble off the bed. She hesitantly poked her head up above the edge of the mattress to find the toad had ventured to her side.
Keeping her stare fixed on this early morning intruder, she called toward the open bedroom door, “Nathan.” The house returned silence as the toad leaped nearer.
With their eyes level, he said, “Ribbit.”
Kayla tilted her head like a confused puppy. “Nathan?”
“Ribbit.”
“What the Hell?” Kayla had long wanted her husband to change back to the man she had married, the driven man who would run four miles before most rose from bed, who did considerate things without being asked, who didn’t hide in his man-cave most evenings—the man she fell in love with. She shook her head at her toad-husband. “This is not the change I wanted.” Kayla held his amphibious gaze. “Nathan, what happened?”
“Ribbit.”
“Great, it was bad enough when you stopped having meaningful discussions with me. Now I won’t even experience your trivial chats.”
As daylight swept into the bedroom, she searched her brain for the cause of this transformation. After a few moments, she said, “Maybe it was that Sylvia down the street. She always wears a witch costume at the Halloween block party.” Kayla chuckled. “The other women and I maintain it was one of her normal outfits, that she has a closet full of them. Several times, I caught her flirting with you.” Her tone grew soft, yet serious. “Nathan, did Sylvia do this to you?”
“Ribbit.”
“I knew it! That bitch, I mean witch!” He took a short hop backward. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” Kayla reached out her hand, palm up, sliding up to his bulging belly. He hopped on, but since one rear leg dangled off, she brought her other hand under to support him. Gently, she stroked his side with her thumb. “There’s got to be a way to change you back.” Kayla fuzzily recalled a fairy tale from long ago about a toad turning back into a prince with a kiss. “I guess a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”
Kayla brought him up to her nose, closed her eyes, and pressed her lips to his cool mouth.
“Ribbit.”
“Oh, you want more. Okay.” She repeated the kiss over and over until she heard her husband’s voice.
“Hey Hon, I decided to get back into running this morning and ran at the park. Then I picked up bagels on the way home. Um, why are you kissing that frog?"
Patrick Siniscalchi is a former electrical engineer living in Asheville, North Carolina, with his wife and scruffy dog. His work has appeared in Bright Flash Literary Review, The Sunlight Press, Great Smokies Review, Suddenly And Without Warning, and others.
Bear on the Road
by John Brantingham
Clare’s in the bus on the way to Randolph High School along with the rest of the cross country team when she hears the bus slow down, hears the bus driver laugh in surprise, and sees the bear ahead loping in a run down the middle of the road chased by the yellow school bus now on a yellow day in autumn with a yellow tag clipped in his ear, by scientists who must have sedated him and tagged him.
She imagines that fear now, the fear of this bus chasing her down, the fear of waking up out of sedation confused as to what happened, and what all these people want anyway. The driver is pacing him. The man says, “The bear’s running at 27 miles an hour.” His voice is full of a cruel music of wonder.
Clare says, “Stop it,” but her voice is swallowed by the noise of the rest of the team, boys and girls who are marvelling at the bear’s speed, down the road.
Coach Bret stands and walks to the front of the bus to watch it run. He says, “Why doesn’t it just run into the woods?”
Clare knows. She can feel it. It’s the unrelenting fear that closes off thought and stops action. It’s the fear where all you do is run and keep running. It’s the fear that drives all movement. She’s never been afraid like that bear is now she thinks. Maybe she will never be as scared as a bear in these few weeks before hunting season opens and the leaves are raining yellow and the bus is full of 30 people cheering on the terror that keeps you loping ahead, so Clare clears her voice and yells, “Stop it!”
She yells as loudly as she can, but the whole team is yelling, and she stands because she needs this to stop. She starts to walk ahead, imagining that she’s going to yank the steering wheel so they go into one of the maples that line the road, but the bear veers off into the woods and the team cheers for it, and she sits down.
It was stupid, she knows, to think that she could or might crash the school bus. She’s stupid for caring about the bear she thinks. She’s stupid because she felt one way and the other 30 people on the bus felt something completely different from what she did, but she knows she’s done with the team.
She thinks that she will quit once this meet is over. She thinks that races are stupid. She was stupid for joining in the first place and everyone here is stupid too. The only one who knows what it means to run is the bear, now disappeared into the maple forest.
John Brantingham is the recipient of a New York State Arts Council grant and was Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks’ first poet laureate. His work has been in hundreds of magazines and The Best Small Fictions 2016 and 2022. He has twenty-two books of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction. Check out his work at johnbrantingham.com.
The Fierce Urgency of Meaningless Work
Creative non-fiction
by R.K. West
Years ago, I worked in Business Affairs for a television production company that no longer exists. One day, we were working on the contract for a particular actor to appear in one of our shows. The contract had been typed up and printed. The actor was in town, staying at a hotel. (Was it the Beverly Hilton, Château Marmont, St. James? I don't remember.) His agent had talked to my boss's boss, and they had agreed on one last change to the contract. We needed to make the change, print the revised contract, and have it messengered to the hotel. That should have been easy, but for some reason, it wasn't.
I made the change to the contract and printed it, but what printed was the old, unchanged version. I tried again, with, of course, the same result. It was odd. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, I thought, and asked my office mate Alan to step in. He had the same problem. We could see on screen the updated contract, but it just wouldn't print. We tried different possible solutions, re-editing the document, saving it under another name, closing it, re-loading it, but nothing worked.
In the meantime, my boss, John, was fuming. He stood behind us, complaining as we struggled with the computer, his neck and face turning pink. He kept reminding us that the contract absolutely had to be at the hotel by 4:00. The messenger was standing by. "Why can't you get this right?" he demanded. I told him that I didn't know what the problem was and that I couldn't think straight because having him stand behind me yelling about it was making me hysterical. He stomped out of the room.
Alan and I continued struggling, but still succeeded in printing only the old version of the contract. Finally, John solved the problem another way. He picked up a pen and a copy of the contract and made the correction by hand. The contract was delivered, but the next day the terms were changed again.
I hadn't thought about that day in years, until something recently jogged the memory. I'm more experienced now, and I can think of things we didn't try that might have solved our computer problem. But without a time machine, my hypothetical solutions to a truly unimportant problem remain hypothetical. And if I had a time machine, I wouldn't waste it on that.
I was fired from that job a few months after the contract incident. ("Your position is being eliminated," John told me.) John died 15 years ago, at the age of 71. I think it unlikely that he ever remembered me or the struggle with that contract, or that it had any real effect on his overall job satisfaction or happiness in life. I also think it unlikely that, as he neared death, he wished that he had spent more energy getting paperwork done on time and meeting the petty demands of people in show business.
R.K. West is a former ESL teacher and travel blogger who sold everything to spend two years on the road and now lives next to the mighty Columbia River.
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