by Val E Ford “Come with me…” Liam’s voice was scratchy from the tubes that had been sustaining him during the last bout of pneumonia and worsening health. He fumbled to unzip his fleece jacket with the hand that wasn’t holding hers. An image burned itself into Katy’s being. She knew truth when she saw it; it was one of her gifts, to see the in-between spaces, and this was one, this was for her a liminal moment. She had to walk off this bridge alive today. “Not this time, Love.” Katy stared wide-eyed down at the roiling floodwaters, hooked her knees through the space between the metal railings and…

by Kai Delmas I skulk among the roots and fallen branches of ancient trees. My hackles rise at the scent of fungal growth and decay. This is my dark forest and I am its wicked wolf. The mice and rabbits scurry from my presence. They know their fate if they dare linger when I’m hunting. But such tiny rodents would only satisfy the hunger I feel for a short time. I seek larger prey, for the pit of my stomach is deep and hollow. My ears prick up and I raise my snout. The birds’ chirping falls silent and a different song fills the forest. And with it a current…

by David Penny “Listen well, my precious ones, and I will tell you of our Mother, the Goddess of Secrets.” The alley cat nosed more newspaper around her kittens. Cruel wind chilled all their bones. She licked stray whiskers, soothed hungry cries. They clamoured for her story. * * * In the beginning, the world was light. Many Gods, bright and cruel, roamed the land. People were of all shapes and cowered from the God’s self-important wrath. The God of Death was born from necessity and laboured eternally. You see, Death was smaller, less important in those times. He was just, and fair, and implacable in his kindness. Death did…

by Penndry Dragonsworth The lioness had misplaced her sister. Not her pack-sister, pride-sister, or blood-sister; not her hunt-sister, heart-sister, or sister-in-the-mysteries: her sister, full stop. The fact that the lioness had been away at University studying sorcery for the last three years made no difference at all to the matron-mothers when they contacted her through crystal — at great expense and inconvenience they were sure to mention. They told the lioness: “The only tie Contrary claims is yours, therefore you must bring her home.” The divinatory-aunts had named her sister Contrary and either through fate or parental expectations, she lived up to that name with verve and enthusiasm — at…

by Amitha Jagannath Knight Once, I was a human girl. You wouldn’t know it to look at me now, but long ago, when devas and demons roamed the earth, I was a human girl who dreamed of being a dancer. The rains had finished, and the Kaveri River swelled threateningly close to the outskirts of the village. In no rush to return home, I sat idling by the riverbank in the marshy reeds, my toes in the water, dreaming of dancing. I wanted to feel the rhythm of the drums in my body, of the high flute winding around my skin. More than that, I wanted to be free of…

by Allison Thai “God creates out of nothing. Wonderful, you say. Yes, to be sure, but what he does is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.” ~Søren Kierkegaard   The tethers binding his soul were warm yet firm, pulling him up from the bowels of Hell. Impossible. Nothing could escape the downward pull of a fiery eternity, just as nothing in the physical world could defy the power of gravity. Still, somehow, he felt lighter than he ever had before, buoyed by a force that took him past the fire and muck filled with screaming, cursing sinners. Shadows of the damned wallowed in never-ending rounds of punishment,…

by Mercy Morbid The ruins rose out of the water, a line of steel and concrete skeletons piercing the horizon. I sat on the front deck, listening to the whir of the hovercraft engine, my goggles around my neck. The wind stirred my hair into a frenzy and sprayed me with drops of ocean water. As they slid down my gray skin and hit my gills, I felt a rush of excitement. I wanted to swim, needed to swim. I was made for it, a shark chimera with a body designed for hydrodynamics. Patience, I told myself. You’ll get in the water very soon. As the ruins grew closer, my…

by Tessa Yang Revelation 6:17: “The great day of their anger has come, and who can survive it?”   Bull All hail your new lord and conqueror: Bull Shark rises from the ocean with a crown of barnacles on its head, ready to haul you landlubbers back to the steaming seas whence all things good and evil were born. If you’d had to name your fishy overlord, this would not have been your first guess, but keep that thought to yourself. To mouth the words Great White Shark is to hasten your own demise. Bull Shark can be a little testy when it comes to mentions of its bigger, show-offy…