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…

by Christopher Blake We shadows can be anything: the monster under the bed, the robber, the ghost, the serial killer.  I trained in the darkest nether pits, and now that I’m out, it’s my turn to put the boogie in bogeyman, the knight in nightmare. I coalesce in a dank alley: overturned garbage bins and faded graffiti stained yellow by sodium lights. A textbook shadowhaunt. Blue neon flickers from a diner across the street.  I skulk behind a dumpster, flitting through various hideous and crepuscular forms, listening for a victim. Faint footfalls echo along the windblown street and I watch a man in jacket and toque hunch against the cold,…

by Katie McIvor The dog bus makes its rounds once a year through the lands of myth. Starting in the north, in the early morning – so early it’s barely yet light – the bus rolls up to a middle-of-nowhere sign by the roadside. In the misty grey dawn, in the shadow of the hill which mounts into blackness above, the Cù Sìth is waiting. Its haunches twitch on the wet grass. As the bus approaches, the Cù Sìth emits three sharp, haunting barks, which for miles around cause children to wake from their sleep and huddle in their blankets, sheltering their heads beneath the safety of pillows. The door…

by Renee Carter Hall “Abracadabra,” I whispered, trying to keep my tail from wagging in excitement. I didn’t want to make a bad impression on my first day. “What are you on about?” the grizzled German shepherd muttered next to me. “Just— you know. The job.” “Right.” He gave me a sniff and sighed. “Puppies. They’re sending puppies now.” I was not a puppy; I was a fully grown Labrador. But again, first impressions. I managed to quiet my tail. I had already been disappointed that my training hadn’t included any magic tricks. I’d expected to hop into boxes to be sawed in half, or maybe to disappear behind a…