Submission Grinder April Fool’s Recap Number Two

written by David Steffen

In 2020, on April 1st, we’ve had a recurring gag on the site where we “rebrand” by replacing the banner from a list of joke banners that sound kindof like “The Grinder” but pick a different title, different subtitle, and different logo. There were nine banners created by our original banner artist M.S. Corley (with a little help from me with my mad MS Paint skills for a couple of them). See the previous April Fool’s Recap for those original 9 banners.

In case you didn’t happen to be on the site that day or you didn’t have the time to try to see them all, you can see them all here right in this recap.

We started it in that particular year because everyone was extremely stressed with the still-new pandemic, mass layoffs, social isolation, and we thought that if we could make someone laugh it would be a little something good. Since we had the banners we’ve been running the same recurring gag for the few years since then, and people still seem to enjoy them and there’s always someone new finding them.

This year again we are super extra stressed with the *gestures wearily at the everything*, we thought it would be a good time to expand and add more all new banners.

At the time of our last recap, the main logo on the site was a meat grinder:

Title: “The Grinder”
Subtitle: “Milling your submissions into something useful…”
Logo: meat grinder with paper with unreadable writing feeding into it, and loose sheets flying through the air above the text

Since the last recap we have actually changed our main banner a couple of times. We decided that maybe the meat grinder wasn’t the most welcoming image, especially for people who don’t eat meat. For a short while we actually had a logo that was a sandwich (you know, a grinder like a sub sandwich?):

Title: The Grinder
Subtitle: Munching your submissions into something useful…
Logo: sub sandwich, with a toothpick and an olive on top, and sandwich ingredients are flying through the air above the text.

This last for a few months, but we ended up changing the main logo again to a coffee grinder. While, yes, there are people and cultures that don’t drink coffee, coffee is often associated with writers toiling away at their work so the image seemed to fit:

Title: “The Grinder”.
Subtitle: “Brewing your submissions into something useful…”.
Logo: old-fashioned manual coffee grinder, and coffee beans are flying through the air above the text.

Although some of these might be funny, these were actual logos used on the site for a period of time.

The Joke Banners

Again, see the previous April Fool’s Recap for the original nine joke banners. Those stayed in the rotation, but we added nine all-new banners for a total of 18 banners. Every time the page loaded after you took some action it would load one randomly from the 18.

The Grounder

Title: The Grounder
Subtitle: Fielding your submissions into something useful…
Logo: A baseball mitt holding a baseball.

This one is less silly than many others, but the word was actually so close that it made sense to include it.

The Linger

Title: The Linger
Subtitle: Refreshing your submissions into something useful…
Logo: a circular arrow shape, reminiscent of the logo used on most web browsers to refresh a page

This was a joke about the site itself, and got responses from the users on social media like “called out!”. Users of the Submission Grinder track their own submissions on the site, but then each user can also see new anonymized (except for acceptances if the user chooses to show some name) responses from other writers. If writers are anxious about the results of a particular submission, they may refresh the page over and over again. This is something that we see writers talking about pretty often, how it’s hard not to just keep refreshing, so this banner was very relatable for people!

The Minder

Title: The Minder
Subtitle: Caretaking your submissions into something useful…
Logo: The silhouette of Mary Poppins, wearing a hat and an old fashioned dress, carrying a bag in one hand, and flying through the air using an umbrella in her other hand.

The Pomander

Title: The Pomander
Subtitle: Orange you glad we scent your submissions into something useful…?
Logo: A pomander of the variety that is an orange studded with cloves. A slice of orange sits next to it, and loose cloves lie around it

I did not know what a pomander was, though I had heard of them. They were meant to ward off bad smells that were thought at the time to be the cause of illnesses.

But what really sold me on this one was the pair of terrible puns. (Yes the subtitle strays from the usual subtitle pattern, but I think that helps the comic effect by subverting expectations)

The Flinders

Title: The Flinders
Subtitle: Smashing your submissions into something useful…
Logo: Based on the main coffee grinder image, but this one has been smashed to pieces, and coffee beans are lying all around.

This one has been in my head since we did the first April Fool’s run as one that I wanted to do if we did another round. I just think the word “flinders” is funny. I don’t know why.

The Go Mind Yer

Title: The Go Mind Yer
Subtitle: It’s none of your dang business!
Logo: A closed door with cartoon sound lines that imply that the door has just been slammed shut.

As in “Go Mind Yer Own Business”. I like this one in part because it reminds me of my grandmother-in-law who when in a mood would say “It’s none of your damned business” pretty often.

The Gyrer

Title: The Gyrer
Subtitle: Outgrabing your rembishuns into something extructful…
Logo: The mock turtle from Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, a sea turtle/cow chimera with the body and front flippers of a sea turtle and the head, back legs, and tail of a cow.

I do love Alice in Wonderland, and the Jabberwocky in particular. “Gyrer” as in “gyre” from “‘Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe”. And “outgrabing” as in “and the mome raths outgrabe”. The other two nonsense words were portmanteau words of my own devising. “rembishuns” as in “rejected submissions”. “extructful” as sort of a combination of “useful” and “instructive”, but “instructive” is reversed, because your submissions don’t instruct you, they instruct others, so since the instruction is outgoing instead of incoming, the “in” goes to “ex” and becomes “extructful”.

The NANDer

Title: The NANDer
Subtitle: Gotta not catch all them rejections!
Logo: A sphere with a dark top half and a light bottom half, separating the two colors is an image of a NAND gate.

This is a pretty niche geek joke, and my second favorite. I’m curious how many people got this one without me explaining it.

What is a NAND gate?
Logic gates are components in computer engineering and computer software that can be used to cause different behaviors. The easier ones to understand are the AND gate (which will activate if all of its inputs are on), the OR gate (which will activate if any of its inputs are on), and the NOT gat (which will activate if its input is not on). There are also the NOR gate (which is a combination of an OR and a NOT gate, and will activate if none of the inputs are on) and the NAND gate (which is a combination of an AND and a NOT gate, and will activate if not all of the inputs are on). I like the NAND gate best because you can technically build all the other gates if you only have a NAND gate. The image on the sphere is a NAND gate, the two lines on the left represent the inputs to the gate. The single line on the right represents the single output of the gate. The “D” shaped object is an AND gate, the circle immediately after it is a NOT gate, so combined they make a NAND gate.

How does a NAND gate apply to this joke?
Of course the sphere is meant to look like a Pokéball and the subtitle is meant to be a parody of the Pokémon catchphrase “Gotta catch ’em all!”. Writers who are using the site and trying to get published, it can serve them well if they enthusiastically send submissions out in an ongoing basis, you could look at it as a sort of Pokémon creature collection scenario. You expect to collect many many rejections in the course of submissions, which is a normal part of the submission process as frustrating as that can be. The actual catchphrase “Gotta catch ’em all!” could be represented by an AND gate, because you have not met your goal unless all the inputs are activated (if you see “collecting a creature” as a yes/no input). When submitting, you should be prepared to collect many rejections but of course you don’t want them all to always be rejections, so you don’t want to catch all rejections. In the end, a writer can be seen as successful if they get some acceptances, no matter how many rejections they had to get to get there. So, a NAND gate seemed appropriate for this scenario, to have a chance of success you have to be ready to get a lot of rejections but with the goal of not getting only rejections, hence the modified phrase. I thought about simply negating the original catchphrase as “Gotta not catch ’em all!” but I thought it was unclear what “’em” I was referring to, so a slight rearrangement makes it more explicit, with “Gotta not catch all them rejections!” and yes the modified phrase is a little clunky, but in this case I thought it was clunky in a funny way so it was perfect.

The Pander

Title: The Pander
Subtitle: Panding your submissions into something useful…
Logo: A panda bear sitting on its butt, holding a frying pan in one front paw.

This is my favorite one. I laugh whenever this one comes up again. It’s a pander bear! And it’s holding a frying pan! It’s such a terrible joke, and I love it entirely too much, and I hope you either love this terrible joke, or groan at how terrible it is (which just makes me laugh more).

DP FICTION #122B: “The Octopus Dreams of Personhood” by Hannah Yang

edited by David Steffen

Content note (click for details) Addiction, suicidal ideation, body horror

The octopus comes into Shun’s bedroom on a brisk winter morning. It squeezes through the open window and onto her desk, where Shun is filling out an application for a job she doesn’t want just so her day doesn’t feel entirely wasted.

Shun stares at the octopus, and the octopus stares back. It has tentacles as thick as her wrists, which coil and uncoil in constant motion. Plum-dark skin, wet and molten and pulsing. A glinting yellow eye, rectangular-pupiled, watches her in the soft light.

She’s not sure how the octopus got here. Her apartment complex is miles away from the ocean, and even further from the aquarium. But it feels rude to ask where it came from.

What are you doing here? she says instead.

I want to borrow your body, says the octopus.

Why?

To find out what it’s like to be a person.

But it’s my body, says Shun. I’m using it.

So? says the octopus. What are you using it for that’s so important, anyway?

It’s true that Shun has no plans for the rest of the afternoon. It’s been four months since she was laid off from her corporate job, and her last Hinge date ended alone in her bedroom with her vibrator. She doesn’t even have close friends in the area, just acquaintances she occasionally meets for dinner or drinks. No one will miss her if she lends her body to an octopus for a few hours.

And the octopus seems so hopeful, so expectant. Like she could make all its dreams come true, just by acquiescing to this one thing.

Why me? says Shun.

Because look at you. You’re perfect.

Shun hasn’t heard anyone say that to her in a long time. Blushing, she says, how does this work, exactly?

It’s easy, says the octopus. Just say ahh and let me in.

Shun opens her mouth. Headfirst, membrane-slick, the octopus injects itself between her teeth and burrows down her throat.

***

Shun wakes up in a fetal position under her desk, her cheek pressed against the cold floorboards. The octopus is nowhere to be seen.

The window is still open, the world outside wet-whisked and gray. Her skin goosebumps in protest. There’s no central heating in her two-bedroom apartment, and she and her roommate Olivia have to take turns using their space heaters so they don’t burn out the power. She must have missed her turn to have the space heater on.

She checks her phone. It’s 4 p.m. The octopus must have occupied her body for almost five hours. She doesn’t remember those five hours, but they left her with a pleasant aftertaste: like she had no control, and by extension no responsibilities.

There’s a spate of notifications on her lockscreen. She has a form rejection letter from a job she applied to last week: Thank you for considering us, but we’ve selected other candidates to move forward with. Four new matches on Hinge, a girl and three guys, people reduced to profiles; she doesn’t even remember swiping right on them. Two missed calls from her mother, who still lives in the sunny California suburb where Shun grew up.

She calls her mother back.

Did you see the pictures I sent you on WeChat? says her mother.

What pictures?

Your cousin Matthew just got a promotion. He’s a manager now, so exciting. To celebrate, he took us all out to that new Beijing restaurant I told you about last week.

That’s great, Mom.

The restaurant was disappointing, her mother goes on. I don’t know where the owners were from, but I bet they weren’t even real Beijingers. The youtiao didn’t taste didao at all. But that’s not Matthew’s fault.

Shun makes the appropriate noises of sympathy and appreciation. She’s only half paying attention. Mostly she’s thinking about the octopus, about how easily she was able to satisfy its request.

Anyway, says her mother, have you gotten any job interviews yet?

I’m trying.

Trying, trying, says her mother. You’ve been trying for so long. Why did we spend so much on your college tuition, if you can’t even get a job with it? Maybe you can ask Matthew for a referral.

Matthew’s a software engineer, Mom. I’m a graphic designer.

So what? You can learn how to do his job. You’re smart.

Shun zones out and thinks about the octopus again.

Her purpose in life used to feel so clear. She was her parents’ only child, and she always knew they were proud of her. Success was measurable. Report cards and gold stars and gymnastics trophies. How devastating it had been, to grow up and find herself lost; to realize that all those things she’d devoted so much effort to had nothing to do with real life at all.

With the octopus inside her, things felt simple again. When she closes her eyes, she can still taste it, that milk-drunk reverie of knowing she had only one purpose to serve and that she could do it well.

***

Shun leaves her bedroom window cracked open a few inches, despite the chilly weather, in case the octopus wants to come back. To compensate, she wears extra sweaters during the day and long underwear at night.

A few days later, she finds the octopus perched on her desk again.

I didn’t know if you were coming back, she says.

Are you happy I did? says the octopus.

Very much so.

Of course I came back, says the octopus. It was wonderful to be you.

Nobody has said that to Shun before. She feels strangely proud, like she’s accomplished something, even though all she really did was agree to let the octopus in.

What did you do while you were me? says Shun.

A little bit of everything, says the octopus. Can I borrow your body again this evening?

Sure, says Shun.

This time, can you cook something for me? Something delicious? I didn’t get to try any people food last time.

Shun’s surprised that the octopus is bold enough to ask her for more, when she’s already giving it so much. But then again, why wouldn’t she? It’s not like she has other plans, really. Just job applications and video games and maybe a walk to the nearest restaurant, plans so pathetic they hardly constitute plans at all.

She looks up what octopuses eat. Snails, sea slugs, shrimp. Mussels, crabs, clams. A vast array of fish.

She decides to make hong shao yu for the octopus, a recipe her mother only prepares for special occasions, like Chinese New Year or large family reunions. Surely the octopus’s first human meal counts as a special occasion.

She makes the half-hour trek to the closest Asian grocery store and buys two pounds of tilapia, ginger, scallions, soy sauce, cooking wine, a whole jar of chili oil. In the hot steam of the kitchen, she spoons sizzling liquid over the fish, one ladleful at a time, until it’s so tender that the flesh unclasps off the bone.

***

This time, she wakes up at the gym, draped over one of the benches in the back, in an undignified kneeling position. A man next to her lets out alarmingly loud grunts every time he finishes a deadlift. People scroll on their phones at the cable machines, waiting between sets. A couple in matching gray hoodies run on the treadmills together, their feet slapping the moving tape in syncopated rhythm. Nobody pays any attention to her.

Shun sits up and looks at herself. The octopus dressed her in an ordinary gym outfit: sweatpants and a t-shirt. But she’s not wearing sneakers, just her winter boots, which she never usually wears to the gym.

She stretches and feels the ache in her shoulders, her calves, her back. Whatever workout the octopus did, it was a surprisingly punishing one.

When she gets home, Olivia is sitting on the couch, eating a salad and watching a rerun of an old sitcom on the TV. She looks annoyed when Shun joins her. I did your dishes, she says curtly.

Oh, says Shun. You didn’t have to do that.

I literally did have to, actually. The kitchen was unusable. When you cooked yesterday, you used so many dishes and left such a mess.

Shun had meant to clean up, but she hadn’t gotten a chance before the octopus came back. Sorry, she says. Were there any leftovers?

Don’t you remember?

Shun shrugs.

Olivia furrows her brow. I didn’t see any leftovers. You ate it all.

Shun nods. She hopes that means the octopus liked the hong shao yu. If it ate the whole two pounds, she must have done a good job.

You’re so weird, says Olivia. Also, don’t forget rent’s due tomorrow.

Shun thinks sometimes that she and Olivia could be friends, if they didn’t live together. All of her friends live far away, in cities like New York and San Francisco. Maybe it’s easier this way, when she can lend her body to the octopus without having to make up excuses for anybody.

***

When the octopus returns, it doesn’t even mention eating the hong shao yu, except by asking Shun to cook more food next time.

Shun figures it’s a good sign that the octopus is asking for more. As long as it enjoys Shun’s cooking, it’ll keep coming back. It won’t get bored of her.

But the octopus still doesn’t seem fully satisfied. It sits on her windowsill and looks her up and down.

You have all these weird hairs, the octopus says, pressing a tentacle against her arm. Will you make them go away for me?

Everyone has hair on their arms, says Shun.

I don’t like them. My tentacles have no hairs.

Okay, says Shun. I’ll get rid of mine for you.

In the shower, she shaves her arms smooth. Her cheap razor trudges slowly over her forearms, unable to catch everything. Blood beads in the places she nicks herself by accident. Afterward, she takes a tweezer under the bright light of her desk lamp and plucks the hairs the razor missed, one tiny strand at a time, wincing as each one leaves her skin.

***

Shun starts anticipating the octopus’s needs before it arrives. It’s gotten more demanding over time, but she’s gotten better at figuring out what it wants from her, better at keeping it happy.

She dips into her dwindling savings to buy new brand-name sneakers, so the octopus can go back to the gym again.

She goes back to the Asian grocery store and fills up her cart with fresh ingredients so the octopus can sample all her favorite dishes: beef noodle soup, scallion pancakes, pig ear.

She buys exfoliating cleanser and scrubs her entire body, especially her arms, to make sure her skin stays soft and smooth.

The octopus uses her for ten hours next time. And then sixteen. And then a full day. Blank stretches populate Shun’s calendar, selfhood discontinued and resumed. Each time she wakes up, Shun’s rewarded with the sugar-sheened feeling of having done the one thing she’s meant to do.

***

You forgot to take out the trash again, Olivia says. You were home all day, it wouldn’t have been hard.

I just forgot, says Shun. It’s not a big deal.

I’m too tired to do your chores for you, says Olivia. You remember what corporate life is like. My boss put three unnecessary last-minute meetings on my calendar today. It’s like, hello, couldn’t we have accomplished all of this over email?

Shun doesn’t feel particularly sympathetic to Olivia’s corporate struggles right now. She doesn’t like being reminded that even if she succeeds at her endless job search, the light at the end of the tunnel is just Olivia’s brand of misery instead of her own.

Olivia scoops leftover pad thai out of the takeout tub in her lap. She says, are you seeing someone?

Kind of, Shun says.

You must really like them. You’re barely ever around anymore.

I guess I do, says Shun.

But when she really thinks about it, it’s not that she likes the octopus, exactly, or its presence in her life. It’s just that she knows how to make the octopus happy.

She can’t explain that to Olivia, or even to her mother. Her mother left her several missed calls yesterday, while Shun’s body was being occupied by the octopus, but the thought of talking to her mother again feels exhausting, especially since Shun hasn’t submitted any new job applications in weeks. It won’t help to mention that the last company she interviewed with decided not to hire a designer at all, opting instead to generate their graphics with a free AI program.

Instead of calling her mother back, Shun sits on the couch and scrolls through TikTok, which she always does when she needs to relax. A video about child refugees makes her cry, and when it’s over she scrolls on, and a minute later while watching a funny video about a hamster eating a burrito she notices there are tears on her cheeks but she’s already forgotten why.

***

Shun wakes up on the beach, lying faceup on a pile of driftwood. In her mouth, the taste of salt.

She has no idea how she got here. Maybe the octopus found itself homesick while it was wearing her body.

Waves slurp at the shore just a few feet away from her, spraying white mist into the air. It’s an unusually warm day, so the beach is full of families. Children wade in the surf, making suction holes in the sand with their bare feet. Gulls wing overhead.

It’s the type of seascape that makes her fingers itch for a paintbrush. She used to love painting seascapes. She majored in graphic design because it seemed like the most financially sustainable way to pursue her love of art, but after she got her first job she never had time to create for herself anymore, and over the years that impulse atrophied away.

Shun sits up and inspects herself. She’s barefoot, wearing a sweater and jeans. It feels like someone is pounding a battering ram into her skull, just above the right temple. Sunburns cover her neck and shoulders, painful to touch; bruises mottle her left shin.

She has no phone, no wallet. Just a ten-dollar bill she finds crumpled inside her back pocket.

Her stomach mutinies with hunger. The octopus must not have eaten anything in a while. On the closest street, she uses her ten-dollar bill to purchase a family-sized basket of fish and chips and starts shoveling it into her mouth as soon as it’s served.

What day is it today? she asks the vendor.

The vendor looks alarmed, maybe by the fact that she needed to ask that question, or maybe by how fast she’s gorging herself. It’s Saturday.

Shun thinks back. It was a Wednesday, wasn’t it, the last time she let the octopus borrow her body? Or was it a Tuesday? She doesn’t remember. Has she really been possessed by the octopus for three or four days?

She could have drowned. She could have starved. She could have never even woken up at all. Part of her would have been willing to pay that price, but it’s not the part she wants to let win.

She takes the bus back to her apartment and walks inside, ignoring Olivia’s angry queries about where she’s been. She goes to her bedroom, where she steps over the piles of dirty clothes the octopus has left strewn all over the floor. On the top shelf of her overcrowded closet, she finds a box of her old painting supplies. She lays them out on her desk: soft-bristled brushes, a pad of paper, a few thin-squeezed tubes of raw sienna and prussian blue. For the first time in weeks, she closes her window and latches it shut.

***

Shun wakes to the sound of tapping. A soft tentacle against hard glass.

She feels nauseous. Her stomach roils as she sits up. Maybe it’s all the fish and chips she gorged herself on.

The octopus is waiting outside the window, sprawled out to its full length, clinging to the glass.

Shun unlatches the window and pulls it up a crack, just enough to be able to look the octopus in the eye.

What do you want? she says.

You know what I want, says the octopus. I’ve only ever wanted one thing.

It’s my body, says Shun. You don’t get to keep it.

Why not? You don’t like being a person anyway, and I do.

Shun doesn’t protest. She’s afraid that if she does, she’ll be able to hear the lie in her own voice.

The octopus stretches forward. It squeezes itself beak-slim, the way it does each time it enters Shun’s mouth, and in a swift glistening motion, begins prodding at the opening.

Shun slams the window shut. The octopus recoils.

You can’t shut me out, the octopus tells her through the glass. We’re the same, you and me.

Shun opens her mouth to respond, but before she can, her stomach gurgles again. Something churns inside her, a liquid sloshing.

She stumbles to the bathroom. She doesn’t know what it is, she just knows she needs to get it out, out.

She bends over the toilet, gripping its porcelain hips. The ends of her hair pool in the toilet water; she doesn’t have time to tie it back. She heaves, shoulders rising, back arched.

Wound-dark liquid gushes out of her mouth and splatters into the toilet bowl. It looks like blood. But the smell is wrong: less like iron, more like seaweed and sulfur and salt.

The realization cuts into her.

Not blood. Ink.

She looks into the mirror. Octopus ink stains her chin. There are purple bags under her eyes, thin hollows under her cheekbones. Her dark hair frames her face in unwashed clumps.

She leans back over the toilet bowl again, throat gouging, saliva glistening. As the ink leaves her body, she feels a new sort of clenching, an emptying.

Shun wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and flushes the toilet clean. She watches the blackened water swirl down, down, back toward the sea.


© 2025 by Hannah Yang

3035 words

Hannah Yang is a speculative fiction author who writes about monsters, metamorphosis, and feminine rage. Her stories have been published in Apex, Analog, Clarkesworld, Fantasy, and multiple Year’s Best anthologies. She has a BA in Economics from Yale and works in philanthropy research. Follow her work at hannahyang.com or on Instagram at @hannahyangwrites.


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DP FICTION #122A: “The Unfactory” by Derrick Boden

edited by Hal Y. Zhang

Content note (click for details) Mass atrocities

Date: March 10

Hours worked: 8.0

Project: Mama’s Pizza & Pasta

I unmade Mama’s Pizza & Pasta today. Single-story, painted brick exterior, swaddled in garish holiday lights all year round. Same two wrought-iron tables chained out front that I used to pass on my way home from Redondo High, where the old-timers would knock back Morettis and dole out dirty jokes on Friday afternoons. Same Mama, too. Poor lady.

In the cold confines of the unmaking chamber, I donned my gear. Oculars to get me there metaphysically, a wraith on the astral breeze; wrought iron needles to tease out the loose threads of reality; hexed gloves to rip that shit apart. I started from the top, like you taught me. The rooftop exhaust fans, sticky from decades of congealed grease. The rust-gnawed floodlights, the decrepit polyurethane sign—along with every memory of every person who’d ever glanced up at it—backdropped by imported palm trees and a smoggy orange moonrise.

Then, with a flick of my hand, the roof. All the furtive moments from all the high school lovers who made out up there in the midsummer heat. Gone. Then the walls, brick by brick, paint chips flecking from the vanishing surface like pastel scabs.

The kitchen was a labor, all those outdated appliances wheezing in the summer heat. Like you said at orientation, old things are hard to forget. So I pried off my oculars and hit the vending machines. By 2 a.m., the kitchen had never existed. I swept through the dining room on a swell of Mountain Dew-induced adrenaline, vanished the foyer without a conscious thought.

I saved the two tables out front for last. Wish I hadn’t. Like you said on day one: biggest risk in this business is nostalgia.

Anyway, the tables are gone.

And for what? What did Mama do to deserve this? Was it something she said in an interview? A politician she snubbed? A customer she refused to seat?

I’ll never know. Can’t know, by design. The coin-op laundromat is shouldered up against the boxing gym now—not an inch of her old curb-space as proof to the contrary. No hard feelings, right? She’ll be back from holiday tomorrow, won’t ever know what she missed. She’s spent her whole life waiting tables at Gino’s, now, never took a chance on her own business. Mama’s Pizza is gone and nobody’s the wiser.

Nobody but me, for a few more minutes. I can’t help but relish the fleeting privilege of being the only person on Earth who knows that which has never been. By the time I hit the street, I’ll be just like everyone else. A lowly worker navigating a tidy world, oblivious to the gloved hands that tug at threads in my periphery.

When it was done, before I pried off my oculars I swept the block for loose ends. A pizza box skidded along the sidewalk, cruel trick of the pre-dawn breeze. Across the street, in the reflection off the laundromat windows, staring at that fleeting singularity where Mama’s never stood: you. Notebook clutched in your hand, scribbling.

By the time I turned, you were gone.

Just like Mama’s.

***

Date: March 22

Hours worked: 8.0

Project: Perry Park

I’ll be glad to forget today.

I walk past Perry Park every morning. Used to shoot hoops there, back in junior high. Those old chain nets were so satisfying, the way they throttled the ball before letting it pass through, defying time for a single glorious moment.

What will I remember after I’ve clocked out? You say that when a thing gets unmade, the memories don’t leave a void—they transfigure. Details get slippery, new flesh grown over old wounds. Friendships unravel. Blame gets reassigned; prejudices are reborn. The world forgets a piece of itself. What did I used to do after school? Play basketball. Where did I play? The park. You know, that park.

Same for faces. Like the old man on the bench by the hoops. Sorry, guy. Just following orders.

Still, never unmade a person before.

Or have I? How do I explain those dreams, haunted with faces so familiar yet wholly unknown? A brother, a boyfriend, a daughter they never had. Only way to hang onto the unpast is to smuggle your oculars outside, catch an unmaking in progress. But nobody’s that stupid: the unfactory’s punishment for nostalgia is unerring and swift. At least my own past is protected by contract. Aside from incidental details like Perry Park.

I saw you there before work, in the reflection of a passing windshield, kicking around the baseball diamond where the big kids sling dope. Keeping tabs on me in your notebook.

I did the job, boss. Old man’s gone. His nephews never had an uncle, his partner never married.

Now leave me the fuck alone.

***

Date: March 24

Hours worked: 4.0

Project: Rudolph

It shouldn’t matter. They say dogs don’t have souls, that those droopy wet eyes aren’t sad at all but rather our own tragic compulsion to transpose human emotion onto everything we see. These vanity breeds only live seven years anyhow, and fuck you I’m a cat person.

Fuck you, I’m a cat person.

I only need to type it a few more times, and the hangover of memories will be gone from my mind just like they are from Rudolph’s doting humans, and everyone else besides. I shouldn’t have to type it at all, really, because it’s like you said on day one: can’t be sad about losing a thing that was never there. And a dog, to quote my old neighbor, is—

Now, that was unexpected. I probably shouldn’t be writing this part down, but you taught me to be ruthless with documentation. The deed is done: Rudolph the Dog is no more, unspun from the scraggly end of his tail to the tip of his side-lolling tongue. It barely took half of a shift. My mind had already begun the process of remolding itself when the thought I was typing fell right out of my head. When I glance back at what I wrote, it makes no sense at all. What old neighbor? Someone with a dog, I assume, but beyond that…who knows?

A chill runs through my body. I wrack my brain, but it’s no use. It’s okay, though. Just another incidental detail.

Besides, I’m a cat person.

***

Date: March 30

Hours worked: 9.0

Project: Park Manor

Today I unmade Park and West 170th. Strapped on the oculars, pulled the gloves over my trembling hands and vanished a city block. Soup kitchen, pawn shop, four-story affordable housing complex. My biggest project to date, maybe.

The tenants at Park Manor are gone. I work graveyard, so most everyone was asleep. The ones who were out—at the bar or working late shifts—they’ll make my list tomorrow. The unfactory never leaves anything to chance. The ones that were there, I found the loose thread in each of them. Unwove their skin, reclaimed their bones, snuffed out their hearts one by one. Pretty sure the lady in 3C was my sixth-grade English teacher. Can’t be missed if you never existed.

Isn’t that right, boss?

But how many incidental details have I already lost? Why do I search for my car keys when I don’t have a license? Should I remember the name of my first love, or what I wanted to be when I grew up? The faceless mobs that haunt my dreams—are they shadows of an unpast I’ve already erased?

In a tooth of glass from the pawn shop’s busted window, through my oculars tonight, I spotted your reflection. You moved like a listless wraith.

In your eyes I saw the truth.

***

Date: March 31

Hours worked: 9.0

Project: Unfactory, South Bay Branch

The city is emaciated. Gaunt. Hollowed out.

Of course, I have no basis for comparison. The things I unmade were never here. Sure, in some archived unpast maybe there was a bakery wedged between that laundromat and that boxing gym. But that’s neither here nor there. And yet, the seams of this place feel overworn. The streets sag against the weight of people they never held.

Fuck it. Our work here is done. The purpose of it all—whether we succeeded or failed—I’ll never know. I unmade the facility today from a mobile chamber across the street. They’re transferring me up north. New digs, fresh faces. They need a veteran to hold down the line. It’s a dangerous path to walk, between experience and liability. Sooner or later, the risk of a lingering memory will outweigh my upside. Old things are hard to forget.

Isn’t that right, boss?

I followed you home last night, on a hunch. Dusted your prints from the keypad, let myself in while you slept. Found your notebook under your pillow. All this time, I thought you were keeping tabs on me. Waiting for me to slip up. You never liked me. Said I lacked humility. Called me ruthless, as if I wasn’t doing exactly what you’d taught me. All this time, I thought you were trying to unmake me. Until yesterday, when I caught a glimpse of you in a reflection.

Wearing your oculars.

There’s only one reason you’d have your gear outside the chamber, and it isn’t to forget. Only one reason that notebook of yours would be warded against unmaking, all frayed and reality-stripped at the edges.

You’ve been keeping secrets. Grasping at threads of the unpast. Tasting that forbidden fruit, nostalgia.

I get it. Really, I do. I’ve been feeling it too, in the dead space between my thoughts. All those incidental details. When we’re made to forget, it isn’t to clear room for new things. We become lesser versions of ourselves. Maybe someday I’ll be the one haunting the reflections of the unmade. Scrounging for memories of a better past, with familiar smiles and unfamiliar names. But not today.

You see, I read your notebook. The lists, the addresses, the profiles. Everything you’ve directed me to unmake. All the incidental connections to my own life. Every street, building, and park. Every dog, every person.

A brother.

A boyfriend.

A daughter I never had.

Not very incidental after all. Maybe nothing is. The contract is well-crafted bullshit, I guess, and your notebook is more than nostalgia. It’s a confession. It’s everything you took from me, bound up and tucked under your pillow so you can sleep at night. It’s a blueprint for the monster you crafted of me. A monster to do your bidding, to keep your own hands clean.

Problem is, you crafted me too well. So of course I sliced a warded sheet out of that notebook, made sure it found its way into the evidence drawer posthaste. You know I’m ruthless about documentation.

I checked the logs before I strapped on my oculars today. You were the only one on-site, and there was no evacuation order given. The unfactory never leaves anything to chance. Neither do I.

I’m sure you were a pawn all the same, and I should be picking bones with your bosses instead. But I’m cold with jealousy for a life I never lived, and I crave the easy burn of retribution—before that, too, is lost to the enduring sieve of time.

On the bright side, nobody will miss you.

I promise.


© 2025 by Derrick Boden

1890 words

Author’s Note: Sometimes I like to take two unrelated ideas and mash them together. Here, I had idea #1: write a story with a narrative structure that’s menial and dull—in this case a daily work log—but in the context of something horrific. Even the apocalypse needs project managers, right? And idea #2: write a story that raises the question, “Which is worse: to forget, or be forgotten?” By the time I was done, The Unfactory was a little bit of both ideas, a little bit of neither, and hopefully still a little bit coherent.

Derrick Boden’s fiction has appeared in Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, Analog, and elsewhere.  Derrick is a Sturgeon Award-nominated writer, a software developer, an adventurer, and a graduate of the Clarion West class of 2019.  He currently calls Boston his home, although he’s lived in fourteen cities spanning four continents.  He is owned by two cats and one iron-willed daughter.  Find him at derrickboden.com and on Twitter as @derrickboden.


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