Alien Landscape

Photo by Matthew Ansley on Unsplash

by Nina Munteanu

Blika gaped at the wilderness through the tear in her spaceship. She had barely cleared the jagged mountains before penetrating the dense forest canopy. Giant trees had saved her life, but they’d also torn her ship open as it tumbled through like a rock.

The forest throbbed with a racket of hoots and twitters.

“Where have you taken us?” Blika accused her ship.

Blika had been traveling the universe for seven cycles, smoothing disputes, cultivating order, refining tangles. Wishing she could return to a home that no longer existed. A world that had tamed its land and water only to see chaos destroy it all. Now she was lost in the heart of this savage wilderness….. far from the city of the Tamar who had pleaded for her help against their slaughtering invaders.

Blika lept to the soft ground from the dead ship. The air, heavy with moisture, lurked like a forgotten memory. Trees towered over her like columns in a vaulted cathedral. Their thick overstory eclipsed any view.

She found the tallest tree for vantage and grasped its smooth bark ready to climb. Inhaling sharply, she backed away in confusion. The bark had tingled as though touching back! It stirred a sudden deep memory of home. She reached out again. This time there was no throbbing and she wormed her way up. Blika broke through the tree’s crown to a spectacular view. Below the sloping forest lay a pristine lake, flanked by young snow-covered mountains. Azure water sparkled like a bed of saphires, reminding Blika what those like her had given away for progress.

The city she’d glimpsed before the ship took them off-course was no where in sight. She was lost.

She beheld the rugged beauty below her and inhaled a world of exotic fragrance. Blika had forgotten the wild splendour and abundant pristine waters of home—before everything was paved over. This could be such a place. A place where she could breath deeply.

Foresaking her mission for a moment, she closed her eyes and thanked the forest.

We’re pleased you enjoy us.

The multi-timbral voices had come from inside her!

It’s been so long since someone has touched us with their soul…We apologize for destroying your vessel and we hope you will still help us.

“You…destroyed my ship?”

We sent you an urgent message. Regrettably it destroyed your ship’s operating system.

She blinked, still confused.

The city dwellers do not understand us. They wish to build more cities to house their swelling populations and they have started burning and cutting so many of us, notably our sages.

At last she understood. The distress signal had come from this magnificent forest. They were the Tamar, and they were endangered by those intent on building more cities.

She smiled. “I can help you.”

Thank you.

Blika wasn’t lost after all. She’d finally come home.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Credit: first published in the 2019 ekphrastic flash fiction anthology The Group of Seven Reimagined, edited by Karen Schauber.

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist, novelist and award-winning short story author of eco-fiction, science fiction and fantasy. She teachws writing at UofT and writesfor various magazines, including essays on science and futurism. Her short work has appeared in Neo-Opsis Science Fiction Magazine, Chiaroscuro, subTerrain, Apex Magazine, Metastellar, and several anthologies. She currently has 10 novels published and several non-fiction books on writing and science. Her book Water Is… (Pixl Press)—a scientific study and personal journey as limnologist, mother, and teacher—was Margaret Atwood’s pick in 2016 in the New York Times ‘The Year in Reading.’ Her award-winning eco-novel, A Diary in the Age of Water by Inanna Publications, is about four generations of women and their relationship to water in a rapidly changing world. Her eco-novel Gaia’s Revolution is currently in production with Dragon Moon Press.

&mbsp;

The Control Room

by James C. Clar

The dunes had shifted, exposing a jagged line of concrete and twisted steel. Henderson adjusted his goggles against the glare. “Moscow,” he said. “The old maps place it around here.”

Feldman laughed as he slid down the slope. “Every ruin, the first thing you say … ‘could be Moscow’. Always turns out to be someplace else. Moscow is further northeast. Kiev is a better bet.”

“I’m not sure this is even a city,” Anya remarked as she crouched at the edge of the breach. “It looks more like an industrial site.”

They widened the opening. Finally. Feldman hauled out a pane of glass fused into a blistered sheet. He held it up to the sun; light refracted strangely through the pocks and ripples.

“Rapid heating and cooling,” he observed.

By dusk they had unearthed a stairwell. The metal steps were misshapen, as though sculpted to conform to an otherworldly aesthetic. There was a dry, metallic taste in the air.

Henderson spat into the sand. “The priests are right. Some of these places are cursed.”

That night they huddled around a fire. Sparks drifted upward into a pewter sky. Demirovic shivered though the air was warm. “Call it what you want,” he whispered. “These places give me the creeps. I wonder if it’s worth it.”

Feldman coughed into his sleeve, surprised at the flecks of red. “If it’s Moscow, it’ll be worth it. Think of the artifacts buried there.”

Anya poked the fire absently with a stick. In her other hand she held a small shard taken from the pit they had unearthed earlier. The object was cold to the touch but it seemed to glow faintly as though it possessed some inner warmth.

“No fire did this,” she said passing the shard to Feldman.

Feldman’s eyes were fever-bright. “Imagine the power. It may still be here waiting for us to claim.”

They awoke at dawn. Overnight, the wind had deposited a fine ash across their blankets. Henderson’s skin had begun to itch and blister. The others were unaccountably weak and dehydrated. Still, they moved back to the stairwell, drawn by dreams of riches and inexhaustible power.

For five days, fighting an illness that they all assumed was the result of an ancient curse, they excavated an underground vault. Its heavy metal doors lay twisted outward. Beyond lay an inner chamber.

Demirovic spoke softly thorough blistered lips and teeth that were coming loose. “I’ve heard of places like this. They’re called ‘control rooms’.”

Anya shambled weakly forward. She traced her hand over a warped metal plaque affixed to one of the door frames. Its stamped symbol was barely visible. She took it for an ancient hieroglyph. The symbol was a trefoil consisting of three equally spaced blades radiating from a small central circle. The blades increased in width as they moved away from the middle.

They stood at the entrance to the chamber. Henderson, with the last of his strength, activated a glow stick and went through the doorway first. The others followed. They edged sideways, backs to the nearest wall. Together, they slid down and sat, exhausted.

Henderson brushed fallen hair from his shoulder. He raised his arm, illuminating their surroundings. On the wall across from them, the treasure hunters beheld what, at first, they took to be reflections of themselves. It was Feldman who understood first. They weren’t reflections. The strange figures on the wall were silhouettes of people … people dead for centuries. Somehow their images had been absorbed by the paint and plaster of the wall. The curse was real. They’d never leave the control room alive.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
James C. Clar divides his time between the wilds of Upstate New York and the more congenial climes of Honolulu, Hawaii. In addition to his contributions to Sudden Flash, his work has also appeared in The Magazine of Literary Fantasy, Antipodean SF, Bright Flash Literary Review, Freedom Fiction Journal, MetaStellar Magazine and 365 Tomorrows.

Inefficiency

by Jeff Kennedy

I was ready to leave the bodega after Eric tried his mark for the third time. The 666 tat was pulsating light red. No reason he couldn’t get his smokes, but the register kept beeping.

“This ain’t working man. Let’s go.”

The monkey demon grabbed Eric’s arm and scanned it again. Still with the beeping. The demon screeched and shrugged his shoulders.

“Show him another ID. Maybe he can just look it up.”

Eric fished around until he found his old Ohio ID and handed it to the demon.

Somehow, I thought the apocalypse would be better managed than this.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Jeff Kennedy is a 2025 Pushcart nominee and past Thurber House and Erma Bombeck essay contest winner. Jeff’s short form writing has appeared in publications such as Maudlin House, Everscribe Magazine, Flash Fiction Magazine, and Bright Flash Literary Review. Read his recent work at www.justanotherdamnblog.com and follow him on Bluesky @jkennedy60.bsky.social

 

A Sky Stitched with Stars

by G.R. LeBlanc

Maya stood at the ocean’s edge, gray-streaked locks twisting in the wind, the tang of salty mist filling her lungs. The pendant around her neck weighed on her like an old, rusty anchor. She clawed at it, struggling to banish memories of his lies and betrayal, until it slipped free into the breaking foam, releasing the life her young, naïve self had once clung to.

She’d give anything for the chance to turn back time, to experience the magical melody of whale song again—to feel it reverberate through her body.

Memories flooded her mind: the vibrant colors of coral reefs, the sound of the ocean waves, and the salty tang of the sea.

Maya…

Scanning the waves, she wiped her cheeks and, as if drawn by a magnet, waded out into the frigid, shadowy water.

She dove under, letting the current carry her until it pulled her into its inky darkness. Her chest constricted as she struggled, limbs flailing to reach the surface.

Let go…

Maya stopped fighting, let her thoughts drift and surrendered to the sea. Something deep within her shifted, then she heard it: the mystical lullaby of whale song. Its tendrils wrapped around her, set her cells tingling, humming, unraveling, then reweaving. The cold faded as her burning lungs quieted, soothed by the rhythm of the sea.

Maya’s tail sliced through the water, laughter bubbling from her lips. She twirled, basking in this forgotten, delicious surge of freedom.

Ripples stirred nearby. Hope and uncertainty churned in her chest. Her sisters emerged from the murk, their gazes wide, their untamed, sea-glass-adorned tresses shimmering in the moonlight.

With palms pressed to her cheeks, Maya blinked back tears. She had assumed her sisters had already moved on. Their safety depended on it. But they were here before her, and as beautiful as she remembered them—Neve, Ondine, Brina, and Seraphine.

One by one, they gathered close, tentative hands caressing her face and hair. The weight of Maya’s journey wordlessly passed between them, weaving itself into their shared memories.

And then, under a sky stitched with stars—where nothing mattered beyond this moment—Maya finally exhaled.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
G.R. LeBlanc is a haiku poet, fiction writer, and managing editor of The Hoolet’s Nook, an online publication dedicated to short-form writing. In her downtime, you’ll often find her puzzling over NYT word games with a chai latte in hand. Learn more at https://sleek.bio/grleblanc.

 

I Saw It Coming

by Michael Gigandet

Until that electrified instant, that explosive moment with us standing there with our goofy grins in front of all those people who came to tell us goodbye, I would never have condoned punching a woman in the nose. But, since it was a teenage girl who delivered the blow and this woman had it coming to her, I guess it was okay.

One minute the woman, all dressed in white with sparkly bling draped down her floor-length gown like icicles on a wedding cake, was standing there with that self-satisfied smirk on her face, and the next she’s in mid-flight backwards, her hands up like she’s going to catch a beach ball and her stripper heels sailing over her head in different directions.

She rocked around several times in that giant lamp shade of a gown with her legs in the air dangling like the ringer in a bell.

The crowd immediately got silent, which is saying something considering all those people were cheering and roaring just before the punch. I could hear her crown rolling around on the stage like the wheel off a wrecked horse cart. The spell was broken when the woman’s shoes hit the ground. Thump! Then thump!

We’d been through a lot. Pretending to help the girl return to her home country, the woman and that con artist boyfriend of hers had deliberately set us out on a grueling expedition where our lives were in peril at every curve in the road. We’d been attacked and trampled by wild animals, set on fire on one occasion, drugged near to death, tormented with death threats from a psychopath and even kidnapped and tortured by said psychopath who swore she was going to kill us all by the most horrible means possible. We only escaped because the girl killed the psychopath. So, it’s easy to understand the girl’s fierce reaction when she realized that the woman had sent us on a fool’s mission to cause the death of her political competitor. We trusted her, and she used us!

“Dorothy you’ve had the power to return to your home all this time,” the woman said. “Just click your heels three times and say ‘There’s no place like home.’” Dorothy looked stupefied. We all were.

“That’s it?” Dorothy asked.

“Hm hmmm.” I can still see the woman’s self-satisfied smirk.

“I could have done that all this time?” Dorothy asks.

“Hm hmmm.”

“You knew this all along!” Dorothy shouted, but it wasn’t a question. You’d think a woman with magical powers would’ve seen that right cross coming, but apparently, seeing the future was not among her special skills. Call me brainless, but even I could see that punch coming.

“Where’s that wizard?” Dorothy said, shaking out her hand. I could tell this wasn’t over.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Michael Gigandet is a retired lawyer in Tennessee. His stories have appeared in Bending Genres, Quarencia Press, Great Weather for Media, Syncopation Literary Review, Pure Slush and The Hong Kong Literary Journal. He is being nominated for a Pushcart Prize this year. His published stories are available here http://michaelgigandet.com. He administers a music page on Twitter/X at @motobec810.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Credit: originally published online in "Bending Genres" Issue 26 on June 7, 2022

 

The Magician and the Bounty Hunter

by Jennifer Monsen

Lirah crouched along the roof's edge, studying the crowd below. She'd followed the Magician through the dusty palaces of long dead empires and alien gardens, the railways of the past and the skyways of the future. But if her intel was good, then this city was her quarry's home. Mundane enough on the surface; a sea of umbrellas and middling technology. If this world had magic, she couldn’t sense it.

There. She almost missed when the Magician stepped into the street. His clothes were uncharacteristically non-descript; his hair messy. She was not fooled.

The Magician darted through the streets, playing a game of leap frog with the rain. Lirah scrambled to keep up, jumping from rooftop to rooftop. She missed her own world, where gravity crystals made a run like this easy as dancing. But unlike the Magician, Lirah was bound to whatever magic framed her current world. No cheating.

Marks never look up. The Magician wasn't looking around at all. He charged ahead through a dozen near collisions, until—

He'd dashed into the road. Unnoticed, a box shaped vehicle sped towards him. The crash was inevitable. Lirah expected magic; she wasn't surprised when time froze, raindrops pausing midair like glass marbles. But the Magician was also frozen.

Another caster? Lirah looked around, realizing that she was unaffected.

A polite cough from above broke the stillness. Marks never look up. Lirah raised her head.

The Magician floated in the air above her, clad in silver-blue, arms crossed behind his head. His grin was smug.

So, her intel had been good after all. Too good.

“You shouldn't be in the same time twice.” Lirah growled, not bothering to aim her crossbow.

The Magician beamed at her. “I worried you wouldn't make it.”

He was playing with fire. “If you break this timeline, you could crack the world tree. Even you wouldn't survive that.”

“Oh, I'm not breaking anything.” The man flipped down so he was standing beside her, almost nose to nose. “This is exactly how I remember it.“

Arrogant, cocksure—there was a reason the bounty was so high. The Magician broke all the rules. He dragged magic between worlds like an invasive species. It should have been impossible. Lirah couldn't even use a simple flame spell in this world: here he was, playing with higher level Chronomancy. She needed a way out of this without a world ending paradox.

“You remember dying in the street?”

“I remember—” he grinned, “a beautiful woman dropping out of the sky to save my life.”

“No.” Lirah said.

"You have to.” The magician shrugged. “Or don’t, and let the timeline shatter. If you think that’s the better option.”

He was right, Lirah realized. Letting him die here would be a paradox, one that affected too many timelines. She couldn't risk that.

She wouldn't get paid.

The Magician reached for her. She jerked back but all he did was pull something midnight purple from behind her ear. He handed it to her, gallantly. It was a small stone. Lirah's hair began to float away from her face. Oh. Oh. A gravity crystal. A working gravity crystal.

The Magician winked. “Payment for your services.” He sighed. “Must be going. Time will start again any moment. But don't worry, we'll meet again very soon.”

He was gone in a burst of light. Around her the raindrops were starting to move—slowly, at first, but she didn't have long to decide.

Lirah sighed, and jumped down from the sky.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Jennifer Monsen works as a music therapist by day; by night, she is a writer with a bent towards the strange and fantastic. Currently her focus is custom murder mystery parties. Her first love is storytelling in all forms; her second love is pizza. Find her at: https://jentellingstories.blogspot.com/

 

Polly Ticks

by K. P. S. Plaha

Oliver felt the forest was weird when a pair of wooden double-doors with huge knobs appeared before him. A mayhem of voices could be heard from the inside. A bold sign read: “State Cabinet. Enter if you May.”

He knocked and the doors creaked open revealing a garden of colourful things that turned out to be sticky-notes.

“Power to the people,” read one, “lower electricity prices now!”

“For the people, of the people, by the people!” brandished another, “Faster Internet!”

A woman draped in flowers over her silky gown sat on the far fence facing an angry circle of crowds.

The guard startled him: “You May sit down. After all it’s the month of Maying!”

“Don’t you mean the month of May?”

“Maybe.” smiled the guard, “It’s a free country as long as you can pay your way.” He laughed conceitedly, then began humming: “Pay your way in May, they say. May you pay your way every day.”

Oliver sat down on one of the many benches. The old lady next to him gave him a quick glance when a voice boomed from somewhere: “Citizens, it’s the Question Hour, and we will take only the odd questions.”

Oliver exclaimed: “Why?”

The old woman gave him an amused look: “Cause we’re an oddience and May is an odd month with an odd number of letters in it!”

“Oh!”

“Can we have May the fourth declared a public holiday?” someone asked.

The floral woman scoffed: “Must be an alien from the Empire. I may or may not consider it!”

The questioner sat down in dismay.

“We have had enough of Demo-cracy! Will the final version be released soon?”

“It may or may not.” came the reply with a warning: “Beware, those are two strikes already. A third and you are all out.”

“What's happening?” Oliver was puzzled.

“She’s just been voted in and this is her first press conference.”

“But I don't see any journalists–”

“Silly boy! The citizens are pressing her for answers.”

Oliver shook his head, then asked: “But why is she on the fence?”

“Well,” replied the lady, “She is the Mayer after all.”

“Don’t you mean Mayor? And what’s with the flowers she wears?”

“Oh, you’re so dumb! Those are Mayflowers, my dear.”

Oliver nodded unknowingly. “Is she a good Mayor?”

“Who knows! It’s only the first of the month. But she’s a Mayonese so she might do fine.”

“Mayonnaise?”

“Same thing, really. By the way, the army guy who came to March was terrible.”

Oliver decided he didn’t understand elections. Besides, he had to find his way out of this crazy place. He stood up to leave when the old lady cautioned him: “Be careful of the exit poles ... oh, and the ticks!”

“Ticks??”

“Yes, the Polly Ticks. They get under your skin, suck your blood, and you don’t realise until it’s too late. Hard to get them out then!”

Oliver left with the guard’s song following him: “This May, no dismay. No mayhem, this May, ahem!”

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Kanwar lives in Sydney and loves doing the write thing. He writes flash fiction, mostly. Kanwar also likes to shoot and hang things, as in photography and painting. He taps a keyboard and pushes a mouse for his "day job".

 

A Necessary Gamble

by Alexandria Cook

Click!

A cacophony of groans and cheers filled the room.

The woman across from Hera released an audible sigh of relief as she lowered the revolver, her forehead beaded in sweat. Although the two hadn’t exchanged a word, Hera gathered from the boisterous audience that her opponent's name was Red, presumably because of her mop of ginger hair.

Light from oil lamps danced off the revolver's barrel as Red slid it across the table—a bell clanged for the fourth round.

The crowd surrounding them went silent. Hera's hand shook as she lifted the gun, grip slick with their combined sweat. The cold muzzle of the revolver felt good against her temple, a macabre relief from the humidity of a flooded world.

Every cell in Hera’s body screamed as the hammer clicked into place. Red watched while chewing her thumb, her expression begging for it to be the final round.

Hera shut her eyes and took a shaky breath as she pulled the trigger.

Click!

The roar of the audience, stuffed like sweaty sardines in the small room, threatened to burst Hera's eardrums. She could only gawk at their reveling.

Hera felt nauseous as she slid the revolver across the table, the next round would be a fifty-fifty. The bell clanged again.

Silence fell as Red's calloused hand reached for the revolver.

For a long moment, the woman stared at the gun in her hands, as if debating walking away. They weren’t prisoners, but playing the game was the only way to stay.

“There’s only room for one.” They’d been told as the revolver was set down between them.

Hera wanted to bolt, but she knew outside the doors of the antique shop was nothing, a never-ending ocean. The floating Town Square had been the first thing she’d seen since her city had flooded. It was an eclectic collection of buildings connected like one giant, inhabitable raft. Hera knew she’d rather die than return to drifting aimlessly, and by the look in her opponent's eyes, Red felt the same.

Red took sharp breaths, tears budding at the edges of her closed eyes while she raised the revolver to her temple. As she pulled the hammer back, her breathing steadied. When Red opened her eyes, she wore a strange, dreamy expression. The woman looked at Hera with distant, tear-filled eyes. A soft smile pulled at the corners of Red’s mouth.

Bang! Thud!

The acrid smell of gunpowder filled the room; Hera was frozen, now more acutely aware of her existence. A suffocating feeling rushed over her as blood pooled on the table, dark as the depths of the never-ending sea.

After a moment of silence, a commotion erupted once more. Men and women settled bets. Those who lost complained; those who won celebrated. None attempted to move Red's body.

Hera barely noticed the rabble; she didn’t celebrate. Instead, she was transfixed by the peaceful expression now permanent on Red’s face. Hera couldn’t remember if she’d ever smiled like that.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Alexandria Cook is an endlessly curious aspiring author from the rainy state of Oregon. Tales of cryptids, fairies, and all forms of the supernatural inspire her. She enjoys exploring human nature through the lens of fantasy or horror. When she's not writing, she's procrastinating.

 

A Precautionary Tale of Late Night Studies

by Amelia Weissman

It was no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence when I first noticed it. I thought it was just a stray pencil mark, an impression of graphite left from one of the countless incidents in which I had chucked my writing utensil across the room in frustration. Studying for any amount of college final exams leaves most students in such a frazzled state that there should be an Olympic event for whomever accomplishes the most amount of physical damage to property thanks to the sadistic whims of their professors.

I most certainly would have been a finalist on that podium, so the mark on my wall wasn’t exactly remarkable - until it started to grow. Amid the constellation of other javelin-thrown pen and pencil spots, that one was the only one that changed.

Distracted from the microbiology text I was supposed to be reviewing but didn’t feel particularly inclined to at the moment, I licked the tip of my finger and scrubbed at the dingy wall to take the spot out. But it wouldn’t budge.

The smudge reminded me of mold, and I began to wonder if maybe this decrepit old building finally was falling apart at the seams. Then I witnessed an impossibility that made me start to question the wisdom of too many late nights mixed with copious amounts of coffee. The blemish, as big as my pinky nail, pulsed.

Like a gruesome heartbeat or the labored breathing of an undead creature, it was blatantly apparent that the spot on my wall was animated.

I turned away from the blasted thing to refresh my sight with something not quite so alien, but an insane physical itch commenced in my brain. Not a psychological manifestation, I could actually feel the gray matter in my cerebellum twitch in irritation as if a mosquito had injected its bothersome venom straight through my bony skullcap.

I whipped around to stare accusatorily at the damned black mark on my wall because I knew it had done this to me. The size of my fist now, the inky depths of its hateful pulsations seemed to laugh at my ire.

For as much as the thing repulsed me to the point of nausea, invisible tendrils of magnetic attraction pulled me closer to it. My legs walked robotically toward the wall until my toes were kissing the baseboard.

Being in such proximity to the thing, now the approximate size of an open textbook, I saw that it was not real but it was also more real than the dorm room trappings around me and the impending misery of tomorrow’s microbiology final. An insane urge to embrace the blackness while simultaneously feeling the chemical overload of cortisol and adrenaline screaming at my body to run trapped me at this infinite threshold.

The spot was not patient, however, and yawned open wide like a massive set of jaws until – well, let’s just say I didn’t have to worry about that test anymore.

While my disappearance left many baffled, eventually the novelty of the case died away.

Now it is a new semester though and there is a new inhabitant of my old room. She seems very studious, and I haven’t noticed too many of her friends coming over to visit. By the looks of her textbooks, she’s most likely a chemistry major which means a lot of late-night studying and paper writing which is good because I’m getting more than a little hungry.

I can’t wait until finals.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Amelia Weissman is a mom of six with her Master's in marine biology. She has been published as a scientific writer in research journals and as a fiction writer in Starward Shadows Quarterly ezine, Black Hare Press Anthology Year Four, and SpecPoVerse.

 

Feruna Gatlin dreams of another life

By Daniel Christensen

Being a three inch tall cyberpunk fairy ain't easy, not in a city like New Old Bedlam.

Ever since that brilliant madman Von Edsol Cartwright had cracked the dimensional rift tech, universes had been spun together like a tie dye shirt.

Orcs with nose rings and bioluminescent tattoos arm wrestling minotaurs in a cantina orbiting a brown dwarf star by equal parts sciences and magicks, New Old Bedlam got pulled into at least ten galaxies before winding up here.

She'd heard of at least 90 thousand Earth variants and easily half of them sounded like a paradise to Feruna. If only she could put together enough scrit to book a reasonably safe wormhole transit.

Maybe she should let that runt cyber dragon Kebrex take her on that date after all. She could sweet talk him into a lil bit of unsanctioned verse hopping, maybe.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Daniel Christensen is an author of poetry, science fiction, high fantasy and little blurb stories that bubble up out of dreams. His writing has recently been published in The Last Stanza Magazine, Harrow House, Four Tulips Magazine and Lunchbreak Review.

 

Dude, did that elf just go through a portal?

by J. Needham

The elf was even hotter than his pictures in the dating section of the LARP app.

Cassian had long red-gold hair, seamless elf ears that must have cost a fortune, and a green tunic cinched with a belt that made Lauren's SHEIN-purchased alchemist costume look cheap. Overall, he fit perfectly with Lauren’s Legolas-fuelled teenaged bisexual revelation.

She waved. “It’s me, Lauren! From the app.”

“Ah! My fair maiden.” Cassian waved back and practically glided over. “Cassian Riverrun, second son of the Great Uniter, hailing from the Cherished Lands.”

“Gosh, I’m so bad at roleplaying.” But Cassian was a natural so she played along. “Uhm, Lauren Black from Middlelake Township? House beside the only Arby’s?”

“Rejoice!” Cassian beamed. “Lauren Black of the Final Arby’s, how good to see you. I’ve crossed the Great Tree’s branches to this mortal realm to finally meet you. You enchanted me from the first moment I was given a mortal device and saw you upon the Kingsbury Fantasy LARP application.”

“Ha, you’re good at this,” Lauren said with a grin. Weirdly good. “Well, how’s about we do that whole date thing?”

Cassian took her hand, eyes glistening (was that rainbow eyeliner?). “I would love nothing more.”

They walked in stride, stopping at stalls as Cassian appraised every piece of jewellery.

“It's quite impressive that you’re an alchemist at such a young age. You must be, what? Two hundred years?” he asked.

Lauren tapped the potions superglued to her belt. “Twenty, close enough. And you’re—?” Way too pretty to be real. He looked like he modeled eyewear.

“Two hundred and thirty, though I can assure you I have ample experience uniting warring factions and preserving the forests.”

“Ha… yeah. But for real though, what do you actually do?”

Cassian blinked. “Are you disappointed I’m not an elven warrior?”

“No, it’s,” weird that he was cagey about his real job, but whatever, “totally fine.”

“Excellent!” He lifted up an Evenstar necklace. “Then please, Lauren Black, accept this as my token.”

“Uhm, thanks?” Lauren pulled it around her neck.

“Huzzah, the courting gift has been accepted! We shall go then to be wed.”

“Pardon?”

Cassian turned and with a flick of his wrist summoned—

Lauren choked. “I-Is that a portal?!” An elvish forest city shone through the sparking oval.

Cassian held out his hand. “To the Cherished Lands, my beloved!”

The LARPers around them stared as if this was a performance, but Cassian stepped in and actually went through the portal.

It was real?!

“Wait. You’re an actual elf?”

Cassian frowned. “Of course? Are you not an actual alchemist?”

“No?!” Lauren threw her hands up. “Cassian, all of this is pretend. It’s fake!”

“Oh…I see.” Fat tears welled in his eyes. “How foolish of me.”

“Wait, no. I meant the roleplay festival, Cassian. I didn’t mean the—”

Cassian drew his outstretched hand back, the portal closing around him.

“—date!” she finished to empty air.

“Wow,” an off-brand Witcher whispered to a fairy, “they really upped the budget this year.”

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
J. Needham is a cryptid who lives somewhere in the North with their fiancée and evil little dog. They love writing about queer people—both the heroic and morally grey kind. BLUESKY

 

The Stream Nymph

by Howard Brown

The hike up Pebble Creek trail was a bitch, a climb that left the two friends fighting for breath that day in early September of 1986, as well it should, considering they were at around 7000 feet and neither had been in-country long enough to acclimate. Still, they humped the climb without complaint, knowing full-well what lay waiting once they passed the 6k marker, left the trail, and bushwhacked down thru the brush and dead-falls to stream-side.

***

They’d discovered Pebble by accident a few years before, having fished Slough Creek for two days, then heading over Bliss Pass and back down the Pebble Creek trail just to avoid the monotony of coming out of the woods the same way they’d gone in.

At a certain point on that trek, one of them had said, “Okay, let’s see what sort of dinks there are in this little, piss-ant stream.” But to their surprise, the fishing was superb; not exactly the hogs they’d caught in Slough, but healthy enough Cutthroat, and in prodigious numbers. So, when the fishing slowed elsewhere, they always came back to Pebble.

***

And that’s what had brought them back on this particular day. The fishing was every bit as good as they’d anticipated and by two o’clock, they were ready for a break. They ate some lunch, then continued to sit and let time slide, filling the long, pregnant moments with idle talk. There was no rush; they had the whole afternoon out in front of them. And there was the dope they’d scored the night before in a Cooke City bar which they had yet to sample.

It proved to be some heavy-duty weed and after a few tokes they were content to lean back against a fallen log, listen to the murmur of the stream, and watch the banks of cumulus drifting across the autumn sky.

“Jesus,” one of them whispered at length, spotting movement on the far side of the creek. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Looks like a blond chick with a fly rod to me, dude,” the friend replied, coughing as he exhaled a final lung-full of smoke. “And she ain’t wearing nothing but a fucking fly-vest and a pair of Tevas.”

“Far out,” the first man added, sotto voce, then called out across the stream, “Having any luck, honey?”

The figure paused, turning. “Haven’t really seen anything worth casting to,” she shot back, as an incredibly long, forked tongue darted out from between her lips and snatched up a moth fluttering just above the surface of the water.

***

In all the years that followed, the two friends reminisced endlessly about their encounter with this creature, which they came to refer to as the stream nymph. And while they could never quite bring themselves to believe she’d been anything other than a hallucination—a bizarre apparition from a shared dope-dream—they never found the courage to make their way back up the root-bound trail to Pebble Creek again.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Howard Brown is a retired attorney who lives with his wife, Ann, and wily feline, Stormy, on Lookout Mountain, TN. His short fiction has appeared in Louisiana Literature, F**k Fiction, Crack the Spine, Pulpwood Fiction, Extract(s), Gloom Cupboard, Full of Crow and Pure Slush.

 

What Matters

by M.D. Smith

The sun hurts. I never knew it could.

It presses down like a heavy hand, squeezing the moisture from my skin, searing where there was once cool salt. I miss the sea. The soft embrace of current. The lull of waves. Down there, I knew where I was.

Now, all I know is the sand—coarse, dry, clinging in all the wrong places. My limbs are stiff—heavy. I try to move, but the grains scrape and suck at me. I am marooned.

It happened fast. A wave larger than usual tossed me upward, far beyond the reach of the tide. I thought it would come back, reclaim me. It always did before. But not this time. This time, the sea left me.

Around me, others lie still, scattered like forgotten thoughts across the beach. Some are smaller. Some, larger. None move or speak. We are quiet in our suffering, though our silence screams.

A fiddler crab scurries by and I sense his sympathy, but there’s no way he can help.

Above, gulls circle. One swoops low. I curl what I can of myself inward, bracing. But the bird veers away. Not hungry yet, perhaps. Or maybe waiting. I can wait, too. Not forever, but a little longer.

I remember the reef—shadows of passing fish and the glittering shimmer of sunlight through water. I remember the tug of the moon in the waves and the comfort of the ocean floor beneath me.

The sun climbs higher. My skin tightens. If I could scream, I would.

Then—footsteps.

Soft, rapid thumps in the sand. Human voices. Not the deep thunder of the adults that sometimes stomp through here with their careless boots, but lighter, quicker tones. Two of them. A boy and a girl.

“Look at all of them!” the boy says. “They’re everywhere!”

“I told you,” the girl answers, her voice edged with something that feels like sorrow. “The tide was rough last night.”

They walk carefully, weaving between my stranded kin. I feel their shadow fall over me. The sun fades a little. My skin sighs relief.

The boy crouches. A fingertip touches me—warm, soft, curious.

“What are they?”

“Starfish,” the girl says. “They got washed up and stranded. If they don’t get back to the water soon, they’ll die.”

I want to scream again, but now from hope. She knows. She understands.

The boy frowns. “There’s too many. Hundreds. We can’t save them all.”

“No,” she says, reaching down, “we can’t.”

I feel her fingers close around me, lifting me from the scorching sand. The air brushes against me, cooler now. I dangle for a breathless moment. The sea is there, just ahead—shimmering, alive. I can hear its gentle calling as small waves splash on the sand.

Then the boy speaks again, hesitant. “But what’s the point? I mean, there’s just too many. How can it matter to throw just a few back?”

And the girl pauses.

I hang like a prayer.

Then she steps forward and flings me gently, lovingly, into the surf. The water greets me like an old friend. It folds around me, welcomes me back into its cool arms.

As I sink and settle, I hear her voice behind me, faint but clear.

“Well… it matters to this starfish.”

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
M.D. Smith of Huntsville, AL, writer of over 350 flash stories, has published digitally in Frontier Times, Flash Fiction Magazine, Bewilderingstories.com and many more. Retired from running a television station, he lives with his wife of 64 years and three cats. Web Page

Ghosts

by Selene Ibarra Rubio

Rain pattered on the train’s roof as it glided through the hills surrounded by crumbling mountains. I observed the other souls on the train- a pale little girl with a hospital gown, an elderly man with a missing arm, and a female with numerous slashes. And I- my tattered suit, bloody violin case, and bloody thighs with dangling skin and exposed bone- couldn’t remember how. I’d asked the charred man ahead. He said that was common for new souls. He told me I’d remember eventually as we voyage on the never-ending train ride; but I still felt I’d forgotten something.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Selene Ibarra Rubio is an eighteen-year-old woman. She is currently attending San Jose State University for a degree in mechanical engineering. She also has an upcoming story publication with Collective Tales Publishing in their new anthology "Darkness 102: Lessons Were Learned."

 

A Griffin’s Ransom

by Catherine Brown

I crouch, hidden in the dragon’s garbage pile. It reeks of fresh blood and ancient decay. Her snores reverberate off the stalactites and the phosphorescent walls of the cavern.

I mustn’t fail. Her gold is my cherished griffin’s ransom. I creep past the hollow ribcage and snaking spine of an elephant.

Cramming gold in my pack, I take only what I can lift.

Silence. My knees tremble. Her left eye opens, revealing my distorted reflection in her inky pupil. It wasn’t a snore. It was a purr. She’s not purring now.

I grab my pack and unsheathe my sword.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Catherine Brown’s flash and short fiction has been published in Havok Magazine, The Offbeat, The Veggie Wagon Journal, and a 2 Elizabeth’s anthology. Her short fiction has been a finalist or placed in multiple writing contests, including the grand prize in the Chanticleer Book Awards SHORTS Contest. Website: https://www.chbrownauthor.com/

 

Time Zone

by Nina Welch

The bartender at Zelda’s, est. 1955, is a time traveler. Eighty-year-old Betty enters the bar at twilight and magically turns 21. She steps out and she’s ancient. She goes back in and orders a martini from the handsome bartender and is intrigued by his questions.

“What do you know about life?”

“Not much, I’m only 21 or am I?”

“Do you have any sense of time?”

“What do you mean?”

“Time in between.”

“I feel strange.”

“Like time standing still?”

“Is this the in between zone?”

“Yes, do you want to come go with me?”

“Not out the front door.”

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Nina Welch’s short stories, Green Lizard Lounge, What’s Your Opening Line, and Good to Go, have been published in Literally Stories 2024 Anthology. Her poetry was published in Rats Ass Review, Aaduna Press for National Poetry Month, and Girls on Film and Fandango-8 chapbooks. She graduated, Cum Laude, from the University of Arizona in 2001 majoring in Media Arts. She lives in San Clemente, California and is a contributing writer for the San Clemente Journal.

 

Not a Fairy Tale

By Guylaine Spencer

Close to a large forest there lived a young woman…

No, let me start again.

It wasn’t a forest. It was a city park near the waterfront … with weeping willows, a beach, and a children’s playground. There were walking trails, too, that used to be popular with all kinds of folks. These days, though, it was mostly only the “residents” of the park who came here.

The woman wasn’t young. She had to be at least fifty. She lived in the park under a tarp held up by giant recycling bins and pieces of lumber she’d stolen from the neighbourhood. Or “borrowed”, as she liked to say. She’d accidentally burned down her last tent and was waiting for another one to be donated.

One day, she was stumbling along the sidewalk and spotted the Glow. It was purple and pink and about the size and shape of a man’s body and it just hovered in the air a few inches off the ground, in front of a boring apartment building.

She’d seen the Glow before, in the same spot, but had always ignored it. Nothing good comes from following things like that, she thought.

But this day, she was feeling sorry for herself—even more than she usually was. She hadn’t been able to sell anything (or anyone) and therefore was missing her special medicine.

So, when she saw the Glow, she decided to walk towards it. And then she walked into it.

Immediately, things started getting freaky. She’d seen visions before but this was unreal. The walls of the apartment building disintegrated in front of her eyes. For a second, she saw a flash of concrete and metal rods and heard clanging and drilling and men yelling at each other. Then, as if she was watching a movie, she saw a pile of stone and brick rubble appear. Finally, the last image firmed up and she was standing in front of a brick building with three stories, multiple gables, and fancy wooden trim. A stone staircase led up to the front doors. A sign on the wall read: House of Refuge. Without thinking, she walked up the steps and stood on the landing, too afraid to knock.

Suddenly, the door swung open and revealed a short, stout girl dressed in a floor-length gown with an apron and cap that looked like it might be a costume for a play set in the last century.

“Yes?” the girl demanded. “Well? What do you want?” When the woman didn’t answer – speech seemed to have abandoned her – the girl repeated, “Yes? Who sent you?”

When the woman still said nothing, the girl sighed and said, “Alright, then, you can’t speak. Or won’t? Well, come along, you’re lucky, we have a bed. Someone died last night. I’ll take you to Mrs. Sturdy. She’s the house superintendent. She decides who can live here and who can’t. You look like a good candidate … I have to ask, though. Where did you get those clothes?!”

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This story was inspired by a building called the House of Refuge that used to stand near the waterfront at the foot of John Street in Hamilton, Canada. It was one of several buildings set aside for the poor in the early days of the city.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Guylaine Spencer’s fiction has been published in The New Canadian Stories Magazine, CommuterLit and Literally Stories. Website: https://guylainespencer.wordpress.com