A Kiss Eternal
by Matt Hollingsworth
CONTENT ADVISORY for suicide.
Sunset. Far below, waves crash, and I’m talking to my wife Melissa, who’s dead and gone because a year ago, she jumped off this sea cliff.
A clinking sound, and a little girl in a nighty emerges from the woods, same strawberry-blond hair as Melissa, flowing in the air as if she were underwater, weightless. She’s hugging a cinder block, bent over by the weight. From the block hangs a chain, down to an ankle shackle, her feet bare, blistered, bloody, and on her neck, she has the same heart-shaped birthmark as Melissa. Before I can stop her, she lumbers past—click clack—and straight off the cliff.
She plummets.
Hits the waves like a bullet.
I can’t let anyone else kill themselves in this cursed place. So I jump after her.
Down. Down. Down. The moment lasts a million heartbeats, and I remember Melissa, the pair of us be-bopping around on Eurail passes, pedaling past Holland’s canals and tulip fields, tidy rows—gold, white, pink—the sky a deep azure; Melissa, radiant in her wedding gown, feeding me cake, and the sugar melts in my mouth, then it’s gone; Melissa, organizing her pills into tidy rows—gold, white, pink—the look on her face broken. Was her final moment like this, containing a lifetime? In that other life, did she find happiness?
When I hit, the water is concrete, breaks me. I sink. Hold my breath. Ribs ache. Frigid saltwater burns my eyes. Vertical tangles of kelp surround me, sunlight cutting through the underwater forest, sea motes aglitter like gold dust, and there’s the girl, swaying in the current like more kelp, a serene look on her face. I pump my legs, swim to her.
Behind her, a man giggles bubbles. Also weighed down by a cinder block. Next to him, a woman, a crab claw jutting out of her mouth. And more people. The entire kelp forest is people, all anchored to the bottom, all smiling, clothes billowing off their barnacle-encrusted bodies, fish nibbling at their eyeballs.
And here beside me—the girl, she’s my Melissa, all grown up, and she whispers my name clear as an echo in a conch shell, and I kiss her, and my ribs don’t ache anymore, and the saltwater doesn’t burn my eyes, and she sucks the breath from my lips and hugs me and never lets go.
Matt Hollingsworth is a neurodivergent human and award-winning color artist for Marvel, DC, and Image Comics. His prose has been nominated for Best of the Net and Ellen Datlow’s The Best Horror of the Year and has appeared or is forthcoming in Interzone, Tales to Terrify, Uncharted, and Bourbon Penn.
In a Heartbeat
by Elliott Fielding
Dispatch wakes me for a courier job. It’s a donor heart, which means a four hour countdown. I’m up and out the door, instant coffee in hand, in under seven minutes.
Ground transportation is the backup plan or I would’ve had more warning. Mountain weather is wild and high winds grounded the air-medical helicopter. The wind is gusting still, pushing my car around as I drive to the hospital.
Once I have the heart in hand, safe in its special transport cooler and documented with pages of paperwork, only three hours remain on the cold ischemia countdown. Snow is falling now, sweeping sideways across the road. I don’t need my coffee: the adrenaline keeps my eyes wide.
When there’s two hours to go, my hands are cramping, clenched tight on the steering wheel. Dispatch lets me know that I-70 has closed behind me. Traffic, already thin, gets lighter as people exit the interstate, pull over to the shoulder, or slide off the ice and into drifted snow.
One hour left. It’s a race: miles versus minutes—scalpels prepped and poised in Denver. I think about the heart next to me. I call it “the heart” but it’s a life I’m transporting. It’s the donor’s past and, if I can get there in time, the recipient’s future. I lean forward, take the middle of the empty highway, and accelerate, snowflakes flashing white in the beams of my headlights.
It happens on a curve. I don’t brake hard, I know better, but I’m crossing lanes, sliding sideways toward the drop-off and there’s no traction. At the last moment my wheels cut through softer snow to grip pavement inches from the guardrail and I’m swerving back to center. My heart is beating hard. I think of the donor, name unknown, who died in a heartbeat at age 30, maybe on this very road. I make a choice. I slow down. I pull over. The only life I’m carrying now is my own.
Elliott Fielding is a Colorado scientist and emerging author who weighs phrases and measures words. Xyr short narratives have appeared or are forthcoming in ScribesMICRO, MoonPark Review, The Examined Life, Five Minutes and elsewhere. https://elliottfielding.carrd.co/
Baptism by Falling
Fight or flight.
But she can’t fight gravity.
A splashing crash shocks all her senses. Where is she? This isn’t Momma’s hospital… or Prickly Pear State… or Burgers. She’s in her car, moving past trees, but this isn’t the road.
Gurgling and sucking sounds bubble from the engine. The car tilts downward as it moves forward. Cold water swallows Cynthia’s toes, ankles, legs–
She tries to open the door, but the water pressure keeps it closed.
Cynthia’s mind panics, but she doesn’t have time for that. Her body takes over. Hands unbuckle the seatbelt, and then fingers press the buttons to roll down the front windows, which begin sliding open with an electronic hum. Cynthia lifts her legs into the seat, preparing to climb out as soon as she can, but the window stops opening halfway down. Then the passenger side window rattles, stutters, and stalls too.
Cynthia’s fingers move to the buttons for the back windows, but the plastic only clicks with no response.
It’s too late. She’s lost power.
Her best chance of escaping the sinking car is through the passenger side window, so she splashes over to it. There is not much space to squeeze through, but it doesn’t look impossible. Water pours onto Cynthia as she clings to the top of the glass and tries to push it farther open. Fails. She shakes it with the hopeful frustration it might break or loosen. It doesn’t budge. Then, face pressed against the car ceiling, she takes the deepest breath of her life, and the river replaces the last of the air.
Cynthia reaches her arms, head, and neck out the window. She squirms and manages to shove her chest through. Pushing with her legs against the seat, and pressing her hands against the top of the door, she fights to squeeze her hips free, bruising like a masseuse applying too much pressure, like being smashed, ripped, but it’s either possibly tear herself in half or definitely drown.
She thrusts through the pain, encouraged by each inch of progress. It hurts worse before it gets better, but the digging and scraping finally release, and she swirls into the current.
Desperate for air, she tries to swim to the surface, but…
She can’t find it.
Water burns her eyes, and the same grayish green shades everything. Tumbling through the current, her smothering hair disorients her further. She flails her limbs in an attempt to gain control, but this exhausts her and fills her chest with fire.
She strains her eyes, unsure of up and down, but for the first time, she sees something different.
A golden glow.
Hope.
That’s all she has left, so she spends her final energy to reach the compass, the emblem, the cure – whatever it is, it is all.
Kayla Cain teaches high school English and journalism in Central Texas. Her passion is inspiring young people to read and write through example. Read more of her work at kaylacainauthor.com.
Time Finally Gets Fed Up
by Eirene Gentle
Time used to shrug it off. The defamation, bargaining and fear but it’s sick of the lies. Time doesn’t march or stand still. It hasn’t stopped, not even once. It’s had enough of blame. Illnesses aren’t its work but people’s own decisions or luck or who knows what, Time isn’t a seer, it’s just not at fault. Time isn’t wasted and can’t be spent. It’s always money with humans, money, money, money which is never Time, no matter how much people say it. Which is another thing, Time doesn’t heal. Not anything, ever. It’s not interested in your problems. Or you. Time isn’t God, or even god. It would leave all humans in a vat of tar to stop them crawling all over it, chopping it into seconds, minutes, millennia, whatever, but Time doesn’t have power, or tar, or vats. It possesses nothing and doesn’t want to. Time can’t be served. It has no say in your confinement. Or freedom. It won’t go back, not with serums or cells, cold-freezing or plasma. Time has no sense of direction and barely made it to the complaints office. There was a long line and it had to take a number. “It’ll be a while," they said, right to Time’s face.
Eirene Gentle writes, mostly little, usually from Toronto, Canada. BlueSky: @eireneeleni.bsky.social
Another Curry
by James C. Clar
The moment Paul Blaine boarded the train in Delhi, he felt an enormous sense of relief. No, relief was not quite the right word. As the train pulled away from the station, it was closer to elation. Fifteen years in India as a colonial bureaucrat and he was finally going home. In Blaine’s opinion, the Empire had five years left here, and that was it. Independence would come, followed by chaos. Anyone who imagined otherwise was a bloody fool. The Jewel in the Crown. What nonsense! Not even the prospect of the forty-eight-hour journey to Bombay, or the long sea voyage home, could dampen his spirits.
That evening when he entered the dining car, he was pleased by the familiar spectacle of imperial comfort. Here was the white linen, the polished silver, the crystal glasses and the liveried waiters moving with military efficiency. The sun might be setting on the Empire but, by God, it could still run a railway.
A man with a flaming red mustache waved him to an empty seat. “Join me, if you please. I’m Baldwin. I managed a tea plantation in Assam.
“Blaine,” Paul replied. “Civil Service.”
“Heading home?”
“At long last.” Blaine spoke as one who had been released from prison.
Baldwin laughed. “So am I. Thirty years among tea bushes. I scarcely remember what England looks like.”
They ordered dinner. Both men chose the beef curry and a bottle of claret.
“Funny thing,” Baldwin offered. “After decades in India, curry’s one of the few things I’ve come to appreciate.”
“The subcontinent’s only contribution to civilization, in my view.”
Baldwin raised an eyebrow but smiled diplomatically. Plantation life had apparently taught him tolerance.
The two men spoke of monsoons, railway strikes and the peculiar melancholy of leaving a place with which one has become, however reluctantly, accustomed. Baldwin described the rolling green hills of Assam and confessed that he would probably miss them terribly.
When the curry arrived, both men dug in enthusiastically. After several mouthfuls, however, Blaine frowned.
“Something wrong?” Baldwin inquired.
“Beef tastes a bit dicky.”
Baldwin took another bite of his own. “Perhaps a touch … but hardly the worst thing I’ve eaten over here.”
They finished their meals along with the wine, coffee and dessert. The rest of the evening passed in the smoking car amid week-old newspapers, whiskey, soda and cigars. By bedtime, Blaine felt vaguely unwell. He blamed the alcohol.
During the night he was awakened by violent cramps. He was not alone. By dawn, much of the train seemed afflicted. Everyone, in fact, who had ordered the beef curry was miserably ill. Several passengers, including Baldwin, required hospitalization when the train reached Bombay.
Blaine, fortunately, recovered quickly. By the time his ship sailed, he felt almost himself again. The investigation that followed was perfunctory. Spoiled meat in a tropical climate seemed the most likely culprit.
On the train’s return journey to Delhi, the supply steward locked himself inside his quarters. From deep within a drawer, he retrieved an envelope stuffed with banknotes. Smiling, he counted. No one had ever become ill before. There had been complaints, but complaints were common. Still, caution was now required. Another incident too soon might attract greater scrutiny.
The steward put the envelope away and reflected on the wonder of India. Here, with the right partners, even death was profitable. From now on, though, they’d stick with their usual suppliers, underpaid hospital workers and unscrupulous hostel managers. No more securing product right off the streets.
Blaine, for his part, arrived home safely. It was a long time, however, before he fancied another curry.
James C. Clar is a writer and retired teacher. Most recently, his work may be found in Bright Flash Literary Review, Flash Digest, 10x10 Stories, Freedom Fiction Journal, Topiary Stories, Antipodean SF and The Magazine of Literary Fantasy. More of his writing is also available at A Condor’s Quill.
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