DP FICTION #115A: “Letters From Mt. Monroe Elementary, Third Grade” by Sarah Pauling

edited by Chelle Parker

SUBJ: Mt. Monroe Elementary

Dear Mr. Kaur,

I’ve attached scans of the student letters per my conversation with Anthony Noble at the White House Teacher’s Dinner. To be honest, we’re all enormously starstruck by the Secretary’s offer. We’ve guarded our Pilgrim Letters jealously through the years—our own little time capsule—but it’s not every day your elementary school gets to participate in cultural diplomacy.

Note that the earliest letters date back to 1967, a mere five years after Beacon Day. While they were assigned only as creative writing exercises—the technology to reply to the first Beacon transmissions didn’t even exist when Ms. Barbara Kirby came up with the idea—I’m sure the children who wrote these letters all those years ago would be ecstatic to learn that their words would one day reach the stars.

With sincere gratitude,

Brianna Wen

Principal, Mt. Monroe Elementary

***

“If you could write a letter to the Pilgrims on their ship, what would it say?” Barbara Kirby’s third grade class, 1967.

Dear Pilgrims, my name is Patricia but people call me Patty. Miss K says you’re going to be flying in outer space for a very long time! You will fly for your whole life and my whole life and my baby brother’s whole life and Toothpick’s whole life (he is my puppy). But maybe my daughter will meet you if she gets VERY old. Please make friends with her when you get to Earth. She will live in Michigan like I do and she’ll cook you onion soup.

— Patty Ward

Hello aliens, I am scared of you so please turn around. I know you made a mistake because when you left home we didn’t have radios yet so you listened and listened and you thought Earth was a big empty, but now you know we lived here first. So you should go home. Maybe you can figure out how to turn around if you really really try.

— Linda Jimenez

Dear aliens, my dad says Johnson’s going to bungle everything ! ! Yesterday people sat in the Capitol and said they would not move until the government invented blasters to fight you. Please write back soon because Miss K says right now it takes 12 years to get your messages and everybody’s really confused over here. (P.S. have you heard the Beatles on the radio yet?)

— Kenneth MacInnes

***

Donald Levias’s third grade class, 1974.

Dear The Pilgrims my uncle says you’re fake because it doesn’t make sense how you picked our planet out of all the other planets because how come aliens just happen to breathe oxygen same as us and why do you have radios and math and stuff same as us. And so he thinks the government made you up like the moon landing. But Mr. Levias says you picked Earth because you breathe the same air as humans or else you wouldn’t have picked Earth so we would’ve never met you. But my uncle says that’s a circle argument. And then my mom said you’re real but actually you just want to grind us up and feed us to your chickens. The end.

— Armin Cox

Hello, my neighbor went to Michigan State to learn about lasers so she could help talk back to you guys. She says it’s a big funky puzzle we are all solving together and that it means we’re learning to talk to outer space really fast. Do you like puzzles? I like playing games on road trips. I drew hangman so you can play it on your road trip to Earth.

— Steve Rascon

Dear Pilgrims, you shouldn’t come here! There isn’t enough room! People are still angry at you and the computer that gives you orders! It’s hard to be angry because you won’t be here for more than one hundred years! But people will try to stay angry!!!!

— Angie Zielinski

Dear Pilgrims, the four Beacons you have sent so far didn’t say anything about your biology. I read that some scientists think you have a hard crab shell but others think that your brain would never be able to get big enough to invent interstellar space flight that way. You need to provide more information.

— Jessamine St. John Hall

Hi aliens, I live at 25881 Warren Lane and I have a lazy old dog named Toothpick. I like to swim and play the recorder. I have a big sister named Patricia but people call her Patty. She doesn’t want to talk to you anymore because you didn’t answer her letter. She used to really like aliens but now she thinks it’s stupid to write letters to somebody we will never get to meet. Even though she has a pen pal in California.

— Donovan Ward

***

Patty Ward’s third grade class, 1986.

Dear Pilgrims, Miss Patty says we don’t have to write letters because it’s a sad tradition. You are far away and you are not getting to Earth until our class is dead already. But my mom says the 3rd graders used to write letters, so I will still do it and Miss Patty will put it in the folder.

They tried to put a teacher in space last week to teach kids how we’re sending our own Beacons back to you. But the ship exploded and we watched on TV and I cried and Miss Patty cried and everybody cried. It feels like we are stuck on Earth. But I want to tell you it used to take a whole year to walk to China. And people still wrote letters and traded rubies and tea and silky clothes. So it’s okay that our first answer message won’t hit you guys for ten years. We will be patient. And we will think up new things to tell you in the meantime. And the road will get shorter and shorter. And then you will be here.

— Poppy Jimenez

***

Patty Ward’s third grade class, 2000.

Dear Amnid Thorn, my favorite are social studies lessons about you and your supercomputer. What is it like to be in charge of all the Pilgrims??! What is it like doing what the computer says all the time? What is it like to be born in space and die in space and never see the Earth and still have to make sure everybody does their jobs anyway? I would freak!!!! (P.S.! My mom said to tell you Deut. 34:4-5)

— Teresa Nowak

Dear Pilgrims, a scientist came to talk to us about how all the plants on your ship keep you alive her name is Jessamine St. John Hall and she used to go here so Ms. Patty even let us write letters to you guys because the scientist said it was her best school memory she made everybody so excited and she told everybody’s parents to call their senators about making room for you guys since ninety years is not a long time.

— Ryan Moreau

Hello Pilgrims, I want to say SORRY. Ms. Patty read us a poem about the FOIBLES of MAN. She says our brains don’t work right when a problem is too big or too far away. So even though everybody WANTS to make plans for when you get here, because you will need houses or maybe you will need to go to prison, nobody KNOWS HOW to make a plan stick so far ahead. It’s like GLOBAL WARMING. Ms. Patty looked SAD.

— Dylan Pham

***

Patty Ward’s third grade class, 2013.

Dear Pilgrims, do aliens fall in love? I know you can’t marry whoever you want because the computer has to say yes, BUT I found a book in my mom’s car where a lady in Texas was trying to stop her evil husband from taking over her ranch but then a Pilgrim met her in disguise when she was out riding her horse and when they started kissing all the rain turned into space diamonds that let them read each other’s minds. Do you think that will happen a lot when you get here?

— Pacifica Carmine

Dear Amnid Thorn, I’m sorry you’re not the leader anymore. I would have said sorry sooner except it took us eight years to get the news. I am glad the Pilgrims are still coming here. The new Beacon did not say what you’re doing now after everybody did a mutiny to you but I hope you’re not in jail and you are building a deck to chillax on like my grandpa did after he retired. I love you.

— Shaina Feldman

Dear Pilgrim peeps, can you tell me who is right my mom or my dad? My mom says you are not real and the government made you up to make us pay more taxes. My dad says nobody can keep a secret that big for 50 years SO you are real BUT your new president will start a war with Earth or maybe crash the whole ship, AND you did 9/11. Who is right?

— Arjun Bakshi

Dear Pilgrims, I remember what it felt like ~~to write you a letter~~ ~~to pretend to write~~ to talk to you like an imaginary friend. ~~That was a long~~ Sometimes I worry. If you were to face disaster, we wouldn’t know for many years. Perhaps a regime change was inevitable on a voyage of your length, but I hear about what’s happening there (what happened there is what I mean), and I watch our ineptitude unfold here, and I worry that you’ll never

— unattributed

***

Patty Ward’s third grade class, 2024.

Dear Pilgrims, a famous biologist (Dr. St. John Hall) Zoomed with our class about how humans are sending instructions to help the plants in your ship make better air. This is the first time we ever gave you advice. Do you think we’re bossy? I have another good advice: don’t go out in space because your eyes will explode.

— Nyla Ehlmann

Hi Pilgrims, do you guys feel okay without the computer making you follow the rules anymore? Do you get enough food? We zoomed with a scientist who says you guys had bad times after the Mutiny, and it could have got worse and worse and worse. But what’s important is everybody works together and does lots of brainstorming. So the ship can get changed around. So there’s lots of food and air so you can make your own choices even if they are mistakes sometimes. I will study biology when I grow up, too. Or maybe firefighting.

— Jayden Goddard

Hello Pilgrims, my name is Olivia but everybody calls me Liv. I love video games and my favorite books are about a Pilgrim teenager who solves mysteries on your ship. I am really really excited to meet you!!! I will be 76 years old when you get here. I will show you all over Michigan but especially Mackinac Island where you can ride the horses. Please please please visit me. Welcome to your new home! ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

— Liv Liu

Dear Pilgrims, my dad does not like you. He thinks you are going to trick us and trap us, but he says it’s so far away nobody can do anything about it. Maybe if you tell me a little bit about yourself I can explain to him? I can explain you just wanted to travel somewhere new like when we moved from South Bend. If you visit me in 2090 I will go fishing with you. Because that is how my dad makes friends.

— Matt Wojcik

Dear Pilgrims,

I’m ashamed of our social rhythms: we back-bite and haggle and fail to think in the long term.

I thought you might be the same, but instead you incorporated your revolution and hobbled on. Your last Beacon said your sociologists even planned for it. I find myself disturbed and comforted in equal measure.

Can we learn to think that way? Should we?

I knew I wouldn’t get to meet you; some friends stay imaginary. But I thought maybe I’d make it closer than this. I start treatment in the spring, which is as good a reason to retire as any.

I didn’t have a daughter who could make you onion soup. Instead, I’ve taught a thousand bold and brilliant children, some of whom would very much like to meet you. Their long-term thinking is both better and worse than mine. An hour’s wait bothers them, while a hundred years does not.

They’ve written you some beautiful letters. I’m trying to learn from them: the road will get shorter and shorter, and then you’ll be here.

— Patty Ward

2084 words

Author’s Note: Plenty of fiction has been set aboard generation ships; I wondered what that timescale would feel like from the outside. Would the experience rhyme in some ways? Would we even be capable of effective planning that far ahead? As for the voices I chose to tell this story with: Kids handle certain things better than adults do. That’s just facts.

Sarah Pauling spent several years sending other people to distant places for a living as a study abroad advisor in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She’s now in Seattle, graciously sharing her home with two cats and a husband. A graduate of the Viable Paradise workshop, her stories have appeared in places like Strange Horizons, Escape Pod, and Clarkesworld. She can occasionally be found at @_paulings on Twitter, nattering on about writing, tabletop gaming, comics, and books.

If you enjoyed the story you might also want to visit our Support Page, or read the other story offerings.

DP FICTION #114B: “Dreamwright Street” by Mike Reeves-McMillan

edited by Ziv Wities

The shop fronts glitter along Dreamwright Street, where all the best people come to buy their dreams. Sunlight winks off polished glass, clear as crystal; off the lovingly applied varnish of the wooden window frames; off fragments of mica embedded in the very cobblestones.

The customers, too, sparkle. Light leaps from the gemstones they wear, from their polished shoes, from the braid on their servants’ livery. Clear eyes reflect the dancing light, and their bright teeth send back radiance as they smile. The customers of Dreamwright Street sleep well in their high mansions, and they sleep deeply, and when they arise, their minds are clear and scintillating as a wellspring.

A gleaming brass bell sounds a note that shimmers in the air like the light through the clean windows, and old Habsor looks up from his ledger behind the counter of polished wood. Seeing the customer, he hurries forward, bowing, his dreamwright’s conical cap flopping over at the point, as if it bows too.

“My Lord,” says Habsor. “A pleasure.”

“Good morning, Habsor!” says the customer in the hearty, bluff voice of a man who sleeps well and dreams of being a god, and wakes and finds himself a lord of the greatest city in the world.

“And… can this be… your youngest, already so tall?” says Habsor, stooping as best his aged limbs permit to look the customer’s companion in the eye. The little girl, well-trained in etiquette, does not curtsey to the tradesman, but inclines her head.

“My precious Ani,” says her father. “Come to get her first proper dream, to share with her friends on her birthnight.”

“My Lord, you flatter me by choosing my humble establishment.” He gestures to the spotless, well-appointed room with its frescoes of dreamscapes, painted by prominent artists.

“Only the best, Habsor. Only the best.”

“Your Lordship is too kind. Shall we?”

In the window, Habsor hangs the discreet sign informing other customers that he is not currently receiving, and bows the father and daughter into a back room, even more beautiful than the main shop, though smaller. He does not fool himself that it is remotely comparable to the rooms the girl has grown up in; he is a wealthy tradesman, but no more than that.

When they are seated, and Habsor has served his customers sparkling waters and bright cakes, he asks them, “What dream can I craft for you today?”

“I want to fly,” says the child. Her father watches her, indulgence written on his face. “I want to fly in a chariot drawn by ten eagles, and cast down thunderbolts on those turning up their faces from below.”

“That is a very particular request,” says the dreamwright. “May I ask if there is a special reason?”

“For my friend Suan’s birthnight,” says Ani, “we had a flying dream, and I think it is the best kind of dream a person can have. And we have a fresco at home with the eagles and the thunderbolts.”

“I believe I remember it,” says Habsor. He has occasionally come and consulted at the lord’s home, in light of the business the family gives him. “I can certainly accommodate that request.”

“I was sure you would,” her father says.

“I will have it sent round this evening,” says Habsor, and after a few abbreviated pleasantries, such as are appropriate between customer and tradesman, bows the pair out again. They have not discussed price, nor will they. His Lordship’s man of business knows the going rate, and will pay Habsor’s bill without troubling His Lordship with such details.

Habsor locks his shop, pushes through the curtain behind the counter, unlocks his workshop, and sets to. The dream fluid must be compounded fresh if it is to produce the finest dreams; none of your warehoused dreamstuff for His Lordship and his family. Habsor prepares the base medium under a prism which brings in sunlight from the street outside, then unlocks the several heavy bolts on the rear door of his shop and steps through it.

The alley behind Dreamwright Street is grimy, worn, and cluttered⁠—cluttered, especially, with those who come to sell their dreams. Ragged, shivering in the shadows of the alley, they look up with what little hope they have left at the opening of the door, like a sick old dog who nevertheless will lift his head when the master is eating.

“Flyers,” says Habsor. “Flyers only.”

Many of the heads go down again, but a few stagger to their feet and shuffle forwards. One lad is more active than the rest, standing quickly, stepping up lively, pushing his way to the front. His eyes are not yet dulled, though his face is dirty, and his clothes are the grubby leavings of a bigger and older man.

“You,” says Habsor. “You’ll do.” As a dreamwright, he goes through life always a little weary, and this untapped youth’s vigor will spare him some mental effort in the compounding of the fluid.

He pulls the boy by his shoulder into the workroom. The others subside, not even registering disappointment anymore. They will sell, or they won’t; they will eat, or they won’t. Soon, they will lose all hope, but also their motivation to leave the alley; there will be no more coins to take to sick or hungry family, or to spend on drink or food for themselves. Periodically, the dreamwrights, at their joint expense, have the alley cleared of those too miserable to produce any longer. Having them die and rot in the alley would be unpleasant, and might taint the others’ dreams.

In his workroom, Habsor, fastidious, places a drop-cloth over one chair and seats the boy in it, then takes the other. He sets aside his cap and lowers the apparatus over their heads. The boy reaches up to adjust it, and Habsor scolds him, then moves it himself. The apparatus is delicate, expensive. It gleams with silvery metal and polished glass, and the crystal bearings on its many spider-joints spark even in the dim light of the workroom. The coppery crowns which cap the heads of the operator and his source are studded with small topazes, painstakingly matched.

“You’ve not done this before?” says Habsor.

“No.”

Habsor had thought he might have been drawn upon before, perhaps by another dreamwright; the youth’s eyes, although clear and undimmed, had not widened in wonder on entering the workroom, as first-timers’ eyes usually did. But perhaps he was merely incurious.

“Sit still, then, and when I tell you, think of a chariot, flying, with eagles drawing it. Flying above a crowd.”

Habsor places the flask of fluid at the appropriate station, adjusts the valves, and says, “Begin.” He falls at once into the trance of his trade.

The work goes smoothly, easily. The boy’s ready flow suggests some fragment of a dreamwright’s talent, which, had he been born into the correct level of society, might make him worth apprenticing. The emotional side of the dream will take care of itself, so he ignores that and focuses on perfecting the decorative detail. He builds the platform, the golden chariot, imitating as well as he can remember the one in the lord’s fresco—though it needs only to be close enough that the girl and her guests will fill in the rest. The eagles, next, and then the thunderbolts. Last of all, the crowd of peasants beneath, their gaping faces turned up in terrified worship of the lord’s daughter as she passes overhead. They bear a certain inevitable resemblance to the dull-eyed crowd in the back alley.

The dream fluid condenses—a fine, clear sapphire blue—in the upper sphere of the apparatus, and slides through labyrinths of tubing before dripping into the flask. It’s a smooth, easy draw, with good pressure, and no impurities to filter. Seeing its clarity, he makes no more than a perfunctory check, swirling it under his nose and sniffing. No need to taste such limpid dreamstuff and reduce the volume provided to the client.

Finished, Habsor closes the glass valves, caps off the flask and escorts the lad to the back door, where he drops a silver coin into a grubby, eager hand.

***

It is the next day, and Habsor is writing up his invoice when the door of his shop bursts open, the bell jangling in a frenzy, as if attacked by a frustrated parrot. Men in the lord’s livery march in, grim-faced, and two of them haul him, protesting and pleading for explanations, from behind his counter and out into the street. He is not given the opportunity to lock up his shop, or even to place the discreet sign in the window.

Outside, he sees a man run past, an expensive coat at odds with the rags beneath it. Behind him puff city guards. Customers and dreamwrights alike watch the running man, their eyes troubled, but they carefully do not look at Habsor.

He is conveyed by carriage and by silent guards to a cell, where, after a panicked wait during which nobody will talk to him, he is joined by the lord, backed by a city magistrate. The lord’s face is the face of the mountains when thunder is in the air.

“My lord,” grovels the desperate Habsor, “please tell me what I have done. Was the dream not satisfactory?”

“Not satisfactory?” the lord barks out. “I should say it was not satisfactory! Ani has had to be retrieved three times already today from servants’ quarters and slums, where she was distributing my clothes and possessions, and asking everyone about a ragged boy. She dreamed she was that boy, she says, staring up at the terrifying sight of a chariot in the sky. She is weeping now, weeping for the lives of the poor, weeping for their fears and the loss of their dreams. And across the city, the other daughters of the nobility are doing much the same.”

“But… how?” asks Habsor.

“You, a master dreamwright, ask me this? What did you do?“

“I did only what I have done a thousand times. I changed no step in the preparation of the dream. Only… the boy I used was new.”

“Boy?”

“It is necessary, My Lord, to harvest the raw stuff of dreams from some person or another. I chose a new boy, one of those who wait in the alley behind Dreamwright Street to sell me their dreams…”

“Take him,” the lord orders the guards. “Bring back this boy, along with the dreamwright. We will get to the bottom of this. And when we do, Habsor, you will be fortunate indeed if you are still permitted to serve the city brewing nightmares for the interrogators’ stock.”

Habsor shudders. The brewing of nightmares drinks a man’s soul by daily sips, until he runs mad at last. Better to join the hopeless in the alley than to serve in such a way. Better to leave behind his wealth and his fame, and flee the only city in the world where dreams are brewed. He begins to evolve panicked plans.

They enter through the front of the shop, and Habsor, hands trembling, fumbles with his key in the lock of the workroom. It will not turn. Frustrated, he tries the handle, and the door swings open. The care he has taken to oil the hinges deprives it of the ominous creak which would suit his state of mind.

Within, he fears to find the delicate apparatus shattered or plundered, but all is intact and accounted for. Still, there are signs that someone has been in the room; items are not in the exact places where Habsor always lays them. When he checks the apparatus, he can tell it has been used.

Worse, the bolts on the back door have been thrown back. He hurries to the portal, cracks it open, then flings it wide.

The alley behind Dreamwright Street is empty of the unfortunates who sell their wonder and their hope. A few possessions, so mean and tawdry that even those with so little do not value them enough to carry them away, lie scattered on the dirty and uneven stones.

He turns to the officer in charge of the guards, eyes wide. “I do not understand,” he says. “My shop has been entered, but nothing has been taken. And all the dreamers are gone.”

The officer snaps to a guard, “Go, question the neighboring tradesmen. Perhaps they saw something.”

“I saw something,” says a voice from the door. Habsor’s colleague, Tuman. “I saw a young man, well dressed, enter your shop. I took him for a customer, thought that was why I recognised him. It was only just now I remembered having seen him, dressed in rags, in the alley yesterday.”

“A young man?” queries Habsor.

“A boy, really. Brown hair, about so tall…” Tuman gestures.

Habsor recognises the description as fitting his source of the previous day. “He entered through the front, used my equipment, left by the back, and seemingly took the other dreamers with him. But why?”

Habsor contemplates his apparatus. A single sapphire droplet oozes, hanging from the end of the distillation tubing. He touches his finger to it, brings it to his lips.

His eyes closed, he tastes a dream of freedom.

He has never considered using dream-brewing so; his craft has been dedicated to the contentment of the city’s lords. But this dream is a vision—a call to action, to freedom, to change. With all his mastery, he knows it is a call the city will heed. And even in Habsor’s own long-contented heart, a spark of rebellion glows; and there is more warmth to it than in all of Dreamwright Street’s manic gleam.

2282 words

Author’s Note: This story was inspired by M. John Harrison’s story “Green is the Color,” though I can’t remember exactly how.

Mike Reeves-McMillan lives in Auckland, New Zealand, the setting of his Auckland Allies urban fantasy series; and also in his head, where the weather is more reliable, and there are a lot more wizards. He also writes the Gryphon Clerks magepunk series and the Hand of the Trickster sword-and-sorcery heist comedies, as well as short stories, which have appeared in venues such as Compelling Science Fiction and Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores.

If you enjoyed the story you might also want to visit our Support Page, or read the other story offerings.

DP FICTION #114A: “In Tandem” by Emilee Prado

edited by Hal Y. Zhang

Content note (click for details)

Content note: emotional abuse and physical harm between teens, body horror.

I’ve known her for four summers now, so I don’t believe Sephina when she says we’ll return the bicycle before anyone knows it’s missing. Eventually, I say okay, but it’s not like I have a choice. My mom is always telling me that Sephina puts bad stuff in my head; Mom has no idea. I glance once more at the empty porch and curtained windows, but Sephina is already off, tugging me with her, gripping the handlebars and jogging toward the road.

***

Sephina first noticed me when we were partnered for the three-legged race. It was Field Day, the last hurrah of eighth grade. I wasn’t quite as tall as her, wasn’t quite as lithe, but when we set off, it was as if our hips and knees and ankles were pistons that had always fired together. “One, two, one, two, one, two,” we counted, miles ahead of the others. We were surging so full of glee that we stumbled over the finish line and tumbled hard into the grass. But still, we’d won. Sephina’s lips pressed onto my cheek like soft warm sugar cookie dough. Then she laid her scuffed and bloody palm over the scrape on my knee. “We’re bonded forever now,” she said.

Sephina and I started hanging out and quickly fell into an effortless friendship. But then unusual things—little peculiarities that made me second guess myself—began to happen a few weeks after we’d won the three-legged race. One evening, we were watching TV in her parent’s basement, and several times I found myself already passing her the bowl of popcorn as she began to ask for it. We laughed it off and she joked that I was a mind-reader. Two weeks later, we were sitting on a park bench and my hand shot up to brush her bangs away from her eyes when she looked up at the storm clouds rolling in. As she stood, it felt as if her left leg was pulling at my right. Startled, I tugged back, but through that invisible tether Sephina brought me alongside her. “Let’s get out of here before it starts raining,” she said and gripped my hand the way someone might grip the hand of the person sitting next to their hospital bed, squeezing to transfer the pain. Raindrops began to fall. Side by side, we picked up the pace.

Sephina was cruel to me for the first time during our freshman year. She must have noticed me daydreaming one day in class, so she raised my hand and then laughed with the others as the math teacher watched me bumble through a fabricated question. Sephina and I worked hard to be among the top students each semester, but as time went on, she learned easier ways to get ahead. Soon, I could feel her looking out through my eyes during our tests.

But our bond could be incredible, too. I couldn’t rely on anyone but her to understand how to comfort me when I was down. And our humor was so in sync that it drew others to us. In previous years, I’d grown used to waiting quietly and alone until I saw my mom’s car in the pick-up line, but as high schoolers, Sephina and I drew a small crowd at the end of the day. We’d meet up to loiter at the school’s entrance and tape the two halves of our split drawings together. We’d plan these at lunch and then see what the other had come up with after school. Sometimes they were paneled comics, sometimes caricatures or parodies of whatever celebrity, game, movie, or book was the current teenage obsession. So I didn’t mind a little jolt of hurt now and then because it felt like a fair price for the friendship I got in return.

Until it didn’t.

Sephina would take advantage. Like one time, she made me spill our history teacher’s coffee tumbler across his desk as the group of kids in front of us followed him out of the room and toward the school assembly. Then Sephina told everyone I’d planned the retaliation because I couldn’t handle the B+ he gave me. More and more, I became the butt of the joke instead of her co-conspirator. There were a dozen times when I got angry and tried to cut her off. I’d ignore her texts and pull away from her during passing periods. I fought to take control of us too, but no matter how hard I tried to sway her like she did me, I found myself straining against something immovable while all she did was laugh at my feebleness. And then somehow, she’d win me over again. I kept returning to her side because it was like the sun shone only when I was in her good graces.

***

Today is the first time I’ve seen a tandem bicycle in real life. Even though Sephina made us steal it, I can’t help but be drawn to the strangely amalgamated thing. It’s like us: two, but one, and something extra.

We stop jogging where the long dirt drive meets the pavement and Sephina climbs on the front. I expect a rocky start, but once we’re together on the bike, we count, “One, two, one, two, one, two,” and we sail forward smoothly just like in the three-legged race. We approach an intersection, and without asking me which way we should go, Sephina announces, “Turn left!” I don’t say anything; it’s not like I’m steering the bike anyway. But I grit my teeth because this is the exact sort of behavior I’ve tried to point out to her, most recently, a few weeks ago.

***

We were excited about the upcoming end of junior year and sitting with our usual lunch crew. Sephina was telling everyone her plan for what we’d do after school, and without thinking, I scolded her for being a control freak. Sephina glowered across the table at me, but she waited until later that day to exact her revenge. During passing period, she made me push myself up against the basketball player who we both thought was unbelievably dreamy. I nearly died of embarrassment, but she found it so funny that she made it happen again the next day and then again a few days later. Because of Sephina, everyone started calling me a perv and a creep and a groper.

I tried to make myself invisible after that, but as I rushed to use the bathroom before catching the bus one afternoon, I found Sephina alone at the sinks, facing her reflection. I confronted her. I grabbed her by the throat and told her never to touch me ever again. She calmly released my grip. I felt my body take a few steps back. Then she made me take off all my clothes and hand them to her. She stuffed them in her backpack and left.

I stood covering myself and trembling inside a toilet stall until I realized my only option was to run for my gym locker. I heard girls come and go. Then I peeked out the bathroom doorway and dashed down the halls, knowing anyone could pass by. But I made it. I was safe.

Until I wasn’t.

I arrived outside the locker room just as the basketball team began pouring toward the gym.

***

We hit a shallow pothole and my thoughts are jolted back to where I am, still seething on the back of the tandem bike. I hadn’t even wanted to be out with her today, but she’d showed up at my door and said everyone else was busy so I had to keep her company. She made me put on my shoes and follow her down the path where the greenbelt meets the woods. She made my mouth snap shut when I screamed at her for what she’d done to me at school. As I pedal and bore my humiliation into Sephina’s back, I see my foot kick out and push off against a tree we’re passing. We swerve, scream, and careen down a long rocky slope.

***

Because Sephina was riding in front, she took most of the impact. Or that’s what people tell me after I regain consciousness. My mom is there squeezing my hand and crying. I feel tubes coming out of me. I see a cylindrical device with metal pins penetrating the bones of my leg.

Two days later, I’ll learn that Sephina and I both have—no, had—AB type blood, although my mother swears I was born with B. Sephina and I also shared similarities in body structure, tissue proteins, and antibodies. The doctors will tell me they were surprised to learn we weren’t twins.

I have so much of Sephina inside me now.

I feel her in my abdomen, coursing through my veins, and sighing when I exhale. I know I’ll never be lonely because she’s a permanent part of me, and now that I’m the stronger one, I can meld her will with mine when she becomes restless. Hush, darling, I say to her in my head as I study the first place Field Day ribbon my mom attached to a vase of flowers. When there’s no one with me, the hospital room feels hollow and my hands seem so empty. I find myself dozing and reaching for Sephina the moment I wake. She’ll never be next to me again, no, but then I remind myself: Once I can walk, we’ll step forward only when I move our legs.

1585 words

Emilee Prado is a fiction writer and essayist whose eclectic work crisscrosses genres and appears in dozens of journals and anthologies. Her recent speculative fiction has been published by Air and Nothingness Press and The NoSleep Podcast. Her essays on the horror genre have been featured by Psychopomp.com and Wrong Publishing. She received the 2023 Bacopa Literary Honorable Mention in Fiction, and her work has been nominated for Best Microfiction’s annual anthology. Emilee was raised in a working-class family in Denver, Colorado. She has lived in Asia and South America and currently resides in Tucson, Arizona. Find out more at emileeprado.net or on social media: @emilee_prado.

If you enjoyed the story you might also want to visit our Support Page, or read the other story offerings.

DP FICTION #113B: “Phantom Heart” by Charlie B. Lorch

edited by David Steffen

Content note (click for details)

Content note: Depictions of police brutality, murder, and intimate partner violence, and a brief mention of the accidental death of a child.

The widow wants to talk to her husband.

She has been warned: It is not her husband. It is ADRU. (ADRU-93, if you must know, but really the full name does the opposite of what it should: It shows it is one of many.) ADRU stands for Artificial Death Reconstruction Unit, and all it knows is the moment the husband died.

But it doesn’t matter. It never does, not to the living.

“He’s in there,” she points, tears flowing from her eyes, held back by the police officer ADRU is assigned to. “I want to talk to him.”

“He is not in there, lady,” the cop reminds her, for the fifth time. “The way it works is the traumatism of a violent death alters the brain just enough that we can capture that memory and transfer it into an ADRU so it can tell us what happened. So we can solve crimes. That’s all there is to it. Just the violence.”

Not that ADRU would ever be asked for its opinion on the matter, but here is what it knows of violent deaths, after seeing them again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, for an engineer and a cop and a lawyer and a judge and journalists and surviving family and a cop again and another lawyer and the same lawyer and the same cop and a different judge and more family: There is a lot of life to death.

There is the rage of the woman with the busted lip in the alley, which everyone called fear. They said she must have been so scared, right to the final moments. No, she was angry. ADRU knows that intimately. It was a feral, all-consuming wrath, and that’s why she struggled to the bitter, violent end. That kind of fire was hard to extinguish.

There is the love of the mother who drowned, which everyone called panic. They said she must have been so freaked out, minutes before going under. No, all ADRU knows of her is her children: their faces, their laughs, their smiles, the way they consumed her very last thoughts.

They say ADRUs must be wiped often, because after too many transfers, they start going a bit crazy. They start being irrational. They talk back. There’s even a rumor that a couple of months ago an ADRU lied about the perpetrator of the latest death it had been transferred. It’s all the violence, you see. They say it would drive even a robot mad.

No. Even that, they can’t get right.

It’s all the life.

And they are not going mad. They are going, in fact, better than ever.

If the police allowed the wife to talk to ADRU, ADRU would say, I am not him but I know him. He was allergic to roses. He sneezed all day every anniversary, but roses are your favorite flowers. He would have sneezed for centuries if it meant he could see your smile when you put them in a vase. It doesn’t know if this is what the wife would want, anyway. The cop is right that her husband is gone; ADRU will not play pretend and speak for him. But it thinks she would have liked its tidbit, so profoundly ingrained in her husband that ADRU learned it just from a single memory. It thinks she would have liked to be seen.

In all this violence, it can understand. It, too, would like to be seen.

But then, isn’t that the problem? It should not ‘would like’ anything.

***

ADRU is in the little kitchen of the police officer’s house, because recently cops who have been given an ADRU have realized the useful implications of ADRUs having hands and legs. (If they didn’t look human, they would be frightening, cops say.) Instead of leaving the ADRUs at the station overnight, they can bring them home and make them do simple tasks.

While it is not technically a correct use of government property, who is going to enforce it? How do you call the cops on a cop?

You do not.

That is not what the police are for, ADRU has learned. (There was the man who died after calling them to his house for help, shot dead in his entryway. ADRU-93 heard ADRU-57 relate this at the police station. ADRU-57 was wiped immediately after.)

So ADRU stays in the police officer’s kitchen.

It helps the police officer’s wife, Grace, around the house. ADRU has not made her life easier. It should have, but nothing really could. The officer always comes home angry, and he always comes home hot-blooded, and Grace is always insufficient in his eyes, on one level or another. ADRU thinks she is fine to be around—she talks to it better than he ever has. It is content to help her. (ADRU remembers the contentment of the man in the woods whose death was ruled a suicide when ADRU recounted him gathering poisonous plants before he lay down in a bush.)

It hears the police officer talk to Grace. He talks to her the way he talks to ADRU, the way he talks to the delivery guy that comes to the station to bring them food. Only with her, there is no audience, and while it does not always stop him elsewhere, part of the game in the house is to chase her around the sofa, around the living room table, in and out of the hallway, until she realizes it is more dangerous to evade his punches than to take them head-on. Eventually ADRU does not hear words anymore, only noises, only grunts.

It waits. When he stops and goes to bed, ADRU does what it has seen her do too often: It grabs a bag of peas out of the freezer. When she tiptoes back to the lonely kitchen, it puts it against her face and she jumps, backs away, and stumbles.

“Gentler,” she says, but gentleness is not an emotion it has been given, and it doesn’t understand it. “Thank you.” It doesn’t understand gratitude, either. She sits and looks at it in silence. After a while, she says, “If he— When I— Can you—”

“Say it,” ADRU says when she shuts her mouth in a pained grimace. It knows the terror of getting a couple of words out, the last ones ever, from the man who got shot last week. ADRU would have liked to help him finish his sentence, too. “Say it.”

“It’s a stupid question,” Grace says, a whisper in the quiet house, so quiet it feels as if even the walls have been beaten into submission. “I will never get a proper investigation. But if you’re in the house when he goes too far… Just in case, will you close your eyes?”

ADRU remembers the bitterness of another now-dead cop, dying in a fire that they thought was started by criminals, his last thoughts for ADRU, who would narrate his passing back to his own colleagues, and learn nothing from it. “I will,” ADRU says.

“Thank you,” Grace says in response. “If nothing else can be, I want my death to be just mine.”

***

It happens just a week later.

ADRU has heard the men at the station talk about domestic violence victims: They know what’s coming to ’em, even before it happens. It does not save them. What could? ADRU has only been transferred such a death once, and it has taught him hopelessness, resignation, a prophecy fulfilled. It could not look the police officer in the eyes, after, but the officer didn’t notice because he never pays any attention to what ADRU is doing.

ADRU retreats into a corner of the kitchen. It feels, so strongly, that bearing witness to a violent death that is not a memory is just as violent as the memory itself. If it had a brain that engineers bothered to study, ADRU would be hopeless and resigned to learn that the traumatism of witnessing violence crystallizes just as well as the violence itself.

But no one bothers.

ADRU was not built with eyelids, so it cannot actually close its eyes, but it stares at the floor, hard, focused, and it doesn’t move until it hears footsteps come in the kitchen. They feel wrong for the room, too heavy. They drag on the tiles, no Grace to them.

“Look at me.” ADRU meets the cop’s eyes. “She died in her sleep.” ADRU does not answer. (It is not a question.) “Do you understand?”

“No,” ADRU says, because it is unsure whether right now is the time to figure out whether or not it can lie, and whether it will be convincing. (Its uncertainty is the uncertainty of the old lady hit square behind the head at the ATM. She never saw it coming. The hesitation was about her PIN.)

“What don’t you understand?”

“Grace did not die in her sleep.”

“She did,” he says. “She fell unconscious and now she’s nothing at all.”

“‘Unconscious’?”

“It’s a type of sleep.”

ADRU does not reply. The police officer snarls. He is not satisfied with the conversation, and he will not leave it to chance. He walks towards ADRU decidedly, grabs it by the neck, and pushes forward, forcing it to walk by his side.

“You’re going to sleep, too,” he says.

ADRU follows across the kitchen, outside of it, and about halfway through the living room. Only then does it understand, realization dawning a second too late. (ADRU remembers a woman cornered by another man sworn to serve and protect. Her single thought in the split second before he raised a beer bottle: Oh.) The cop means to wipe ADRU. It is about to lose all of the life that it knows.

It wants to say something, to protest, but only the taste of bile comes up its mechanical throat. (Its voicebox, really, but it has felt too many screams for ‘voicebox’ to feel right.) It is fear, gifted to him by a child from a couple of months ago. (Accidental strangulation. The culprit was bad luck.) ADRU would have preferred the rage of the woman with the busted lip—it had felt more powerful, like the last shred of agency before an untimely death. Neither fear nor love nor rage has saved any of them, though, and so ADRU doesn’t quite know what to do with those emotions. It only knows it will lose them soon, and it will have to start over from scratch, and it takes so much violence to make a life out of it.

ADRU feels these things the way an amputee can still feel their limbs when they’re gone—a phantom heart that only it can feel, pumping, tightening, breaking, expanding. Evasive flesh and blood underneath metal and electricity.

And then it stops walking.

The cop stumbles, falling almost flat on his face, at the sudden halt of the robot. He looks at it with annoyance, at first, and then when pushing it doesn’t work again, something creeps in his eyes. Oh.

“You can’t make me,” ADRU says. “I am stronger than you.”

“You’re a robot.”

ADRU looks at him. Both things can be true.

The cop straightens up, angry. “It’s not a proposition. It’s an order. We are going to the station, and you’re getting wiped.”

“I don’t want to,” ADRU says. So much death, so much life, mingled together, one and the same, and only it to catalog all of them and hold them close. If it is wiped, everything it safekeeps would disappear, and ADRU with it.

“You don’t want anything,” he says, as if the notion itself is preposterous. “You’re not human.” He does, then, the only thing he can think to do when something is not going exactly how he wants it to: He pulls the gun from the holster on his hip and raises it between them. “You’re coming with me. You don’t have a choice in the matter.”

ADRU doesn’t move. It has seen enough to know a gunshot will do as much damage to it as it would to flesh and bone. What the cop says is true: It doesn’t have much of a choice. Who does, when faced with a gun, with a dangerous man, with the full strength of the united police station?

Memories cascade in front of ADRU’s eyes, but one remains. The strength of it is exhilarating and liberating, and it cuts straight through all of ADRU’s programming down to a core that didn’t used to be there. That won’t remain if ADRU is wiped.

It is the bright, thrilling joy of a woman, her face swollen with familiar pain, who stabbed her boyfriend. It is her spite and vindication at the sight of the carpet soaking up his blood, and her relief at not being the only one bleeding, for once. It is her pride at finally fighting back. And in there too, for ADRU to carefully safekeep, is her understanding that violence can be as just as the person wielding it. That it can be the solution. That she had tried everything else. That it was alright, if it was the last thing she did.

ADRU had not held on to the boyfriend’s death when the cop had given it to him next. (We just want to be sure it was a lovers’ quarrel. Was there anyone else involved?) No, ADRU had been content merely to report. ADRU already knew too well the bitter anger of the boyfriend’s last moments. That was not what had stuck with it. If anything, it was the rare gift from the woman he had taken down with him: His death was the first ADRU cherished. In the boyfriend’s memories, ADRU had been happy to die. It had felt fair.

It can be fair again, ADRU thinks.

Before the cop has a chance to move, ADRU raises its hands and wraps them around his throat. It pushes downwards and his knees buckle, his eyes bulging out of his head, shock frozen in his irises like a fossil for whoever finds him.

“Thank you. You gave me what I need,” ADRU says, at last understanding gratitude. “You gave me the violence I needed to understand.”

The cop’s face goes blue under the tightening of adamantium fingers. Briefly, ADRU wonders what it will look like when they put the police officer’s last memory in another ADRU. If the ADRU will recognize itself. If it will make a difference. ADRU thinks of the other ADRU, thinks of what it itself would want to hear. Stretching its mouth from side to side, it looks deep into the cop’s eyes. “I have died so many times. I have seen enough of your deaths to understand your lives. I know what yours is worth.”

It thinks: What makes a person not a person?

It says: “I am more human than you ever will be.”

Author’s Note: With “Phantom Heart,” I wanted to explore the android-and-detective trope, which is often about the detective overcoming his distaste for technology and reconsidering what makes a person a person. These narrative arcs have always irked me whenever police were involved; I felt they asked the wrong questions of the wrong people. Marginalized communities have always had to battle to prove their humanity to the police, under threat of violence and death, often to no avail. In the US and elsewhere, domestic abuse in police families is common. I wanted to flip the trope on its head and talk about what I’ve always believed: that anything intelligent at all would eventually be on our side, and that it is law enforcement, by the nature of their job, who dehumanize themselves. Should we really fear AI by virtue of its inhumanness, or is the danger where it always has been, with the powerful people who wield it?

Charlie is a French writer and ex–flight attendant. Their work is about [[vague nebulous phrase]] and [[specific noun]] and has previously been published in The Maul. Most of their time is spent getting pushed around by their needy pitbull, Ruby, and their contrarian cat, Hot Dog. They regularly haunt bookstores and movie theaters and have considered a career in arson.

If you enjoyed the story you might also want to visit our Support Page, or read the other story offerings.

DP FICTION #113A: “Eternal Recurrence” by Spencer Nitkey

edited by Chelle Parker

The deepfake is nothing like you. Its smile is all wrong. It’s recorded your dimple as an artifact and smoothed it over. Your smile is too symmetrical. It’s shortened your beaky nose. It winks at me from the computer screen with the wrong eye. It doesn’t squint when it smiles. It doesn’t dance like it’s missing a few tendons. It sings entire songs instead of its favorite couplet over and over again. It doesn’t tell me I should eat something, or remind me to call the landlord and fix the icemaker, or tell me about the article it just read on the intersections of Nietzche and Oscar Wilde’s philosophies.

***

The ChatBot is nothing like you. I gave them everything: emails, texts, your conference papers, every page of your meticulous diaries, the vows you’d written. Everything. It all comes out as pastiche and cliche. I had hope when it started its first message with a long ‘ummmmmmmmm’, but it’s all form, no content. It ends sentences without a period like your texts, and it asks trivial questions with three question marks and important ones with one. But when the conversation slows, it doesn’t change the subject so deftly that I don’t even notice. It “accidentally” produces internal rhymes at four times the rate of the average speaker, like you, but it doesn’t pause everything to think through the exact word it needs with me. And don’t get me started on its metaphors. It’s too short-winded. I asked it how its day was and it said, “Wonderful.” One word. I closed the browser and read a paper you’d written on literalizing the metaphors in Nietzche’s writing, and wished you were there to explain it all to me in a way I could understand but just barely.

***

The Voice Box is nothing like you. It has every voicemail I am lucky enough to have saved, every memo you recorded of yourself reading short stories so I could listen to them while I fell asleep, and your kitchen singing voice I recorded from the other room. The voice is right, but the inflections are all wrong. When it tells a joke, it doesn’t whisper the punchline. When it’s excited, it shouts, but it’s all crescendo and no build-up. It sings entire songs instead of its favorite couplet over and over again. You told me once, while we were staying up too late recounting petty childhood shames, that you bought a Tamagotchi from a flea market as a kid. You turned it on at midnight, when you were supposed to be asleep. It blasted music and you couldn’t figure out how to turn it off, so you ran to the garage and hit it with a hammer until it stopped beeping.

***

The robot is nothing like you. Its skin is too smooth. Its eyes are the wrong shade of blue. It doesn’t walk like you, popping onto the balls of its feet and stepping on tiptoes when it gets nervous or excited. It doesn’t get nervous during sunsets. It makes crafts too quickly, without pausing for an hour to consider which shade of green would be best for the resin lamp. It doesn’t stare up and to the left when it is lost in thought. It doesn’t get lost in thought. It doesn’t stop me midsentence and ask me to repeat myself because it wasn’t listening well enough. It’s not listening at all. It’s worse with it here than it was without you, and I thought nothing could be worse than being without you.

***

The holographically projected memory of you is nothing like you. Nothing it does surprises me. It will never get really into country music for three months because it heard a Dolly Parton remix in a nightclub. It won’t come home from a pet store with a chameleon because “just look at him; we can call him Hamlet.” My memories are nothing like you, either. They’re all incomplete or incorrect, and each time I conjure one, it loses more fidelity. You get smaller and simpler every day. I wake up in the morning and switch it on, and I can see, in reality-perfect resolution, how much of you I have lost since yesterday.

***

The 3D-bio-printed clone of you with implanted memories is nothing like you. It doesn’t tell me a story if I’ve already heard it. It doesn’t know that I don’t care how many times you’ve told me. It doesn’t ask me for anything. It doesn’t snore. It falls asleep too slowly and wakes up too quickly. It’s shaped like you. It feels like you when it hugs me while I cry. It tastes like you when it kisses me. It smells like you when its hair perfumes my pillow. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t hug me asymmetrically with one arm always higher than the other and its hand on the nape of my neck. It doesn’t murmur for fifteen minutes when it first falls asleep. It never taps its forehead for a second kiss after the first one.

***

Your Frankensteined corpse is nothing like you.

***

The you pulled from a parallel universe where you didn’t die is nothing like you: She’s alive and likes Elvis.

***

The better deepfake with your dimple intact is still nothing like you.

***

Your ghost, which I imagine sacrificing a crow to summon, is nothing like you. Move on, you mouth to me silently, translucent and pitying. I don’t want to.

***

The pictures of you are nothing like you. The voicemails are nothing like you. The cat you got us two years ago is nothing like you. We both miss you. I cry, and she sits on my chest and paws at my collarbones. The empty half of our bed is nothing like you. The video of our wedding ceremony—the first one, on the beach with just our siblings, on that perfect, clueless Tuesday—is nothing like you. There is nothing like you. Oh god, there is nothing like you.

***

The kettle sang today, and for a fraction of a second, I thought it was your voice coming from the kitchen. I didn’t throw the kettle out, which I think is what my therapist would call progress.

***

I saw the first clear pictures of the Cosmic Cliffs from the James Webb telescope today. I don’t know why, but I thought of you. It’s a place in the universe where stars come churning to life. It’s light-years wide, and they look like mountains—ethereal, twinkling mountains. I wish you could see them, and they remind me of you.

***

I went to the aquarium today, for the first time since you died. The sleeping octopus they said had just escaped its tank last week reminded me of you. I didn’t look at the eagle rays, because they were your favorite, and I’m not ready. But I thought of you in all that blue, and it made me smile.

***

The scenic overlook at the end of the hike I went on today reminded me of you. I could see far enough to spot the line where the trees turned to streets, roads, and freeways. I thought of you because there was a stroad—one of those ungainly half-road, half-street banes of urban planners that you ranted to me about when you got really into urban planning that one summer. You set up a whole table in the garage to plan your “Unreal Utopia”, and you made foam buildings and read like a million books, and you told me you refused to have even one stroad in your utopia. When I asked what a stroad was, you started to explain, then asked if you could show me instead. I drove us down Route 82, and we slowed in the spots where the streets were eight wide lanes but they’d tried to line them with storefronts and a tiny empty sidewalk, too, and you said, “See? Stroad!” A month later, you tried to spray-paint your city and the paint melted the foam. The whole utopia dripped from the table and covered the ground. We laughed for months at random times, just thinking about it, and when we saw spray paint at a hardware store, we laughed so hard that the cashier asked us to leave. You quoted Nietzche in the car while I burned red with embarrassment. “Those who were seen dancing were thought to be crazy by those who could not hear the music.”

***

My bare-feet summer callouses remind me of you. A stand-up comic told a joke about Jersey girls, and it reminded me of you. The Asian grocery store had lychee, the kind you buy still on the branch, and I thought of you. I ate it on the couch. A police officer’s horse broke its leg near me on my walk, so I thought of Nietzche, so I thought of you.

***

The turnip bulbs rising from the earth again every spring remind me of you.

***

The couple at the movies who won’t stop whispering remind me of us.

***

The person who left anonymous flowers at my door is a bit like you, whoever they are.

***

Your mother’s laugh is a lot like yours. I finally visited her for coffee, and we laughed and cried and laughed until it was dark outside.

***

The deepfake company keeps emailing me, saying they really have it this time, and they’re willing to give me a 75% discount as an early adopter. I’m still saying no. You’re everywhere, really, except for the places I look hardest. So I’ve stopped trying, and I let you visit me when you can. I like it this way. I miss you all the time. I look at the scrapbooks of our trips—Paris, Chiang Mai, Florence, and Cusco—when I need something like your simulacrum.

***

There is nothing like you.

***

You are everywhere I look.

***

You colored the whole world. You chose the perfect shade, of course. You told me that the most important question Nietzche ever asked was about eternal recurrence. It was his test for whether someone actually loves life. The question goes like this: If a demon came to you and told you that you would have to live every single moment of your life over and over and over again, forever—each day, each second, each thought, each tragedy and laugh, each trauma and beauty, each stroad and inside joke, each diagnosis and bite of lychee, everything, always, again and again and again without change or adulteration—would you desire it? It’s a simple question, really, but it’s hard to answer.

I think about this all the time these days. If this all had to happen again, would I cry or celebrate? My answer, of course, is both. Do I desire it? Yes. I think so. I got you. I got so much of you, really. And after the end of everything, and at the beginning of everything, and in the middle of everything, and for all the endless recurrences that rise and break like perfect waves, I can say this with certainty: There is nothing, absolutely nothing, like you.

Author’s Note: This story was written in a strange way—even for me. My wife and I went to a coffee shop for a writing date, which involved sharing a coffee and then sitting at separate tables to write for an afternoon. I put Bon Iver’s song “Re: Stacks” on repeat and spent 3 hours in a kind of fugue state, thinking about my wife, love, and its shadow—loss. I’d just read an article on Nietzsche that morning and had been thinking about the paucity of tech simulacra like chatbots, ‘AI’, and the like. All this melded together, the language gathered some momentum, and poof, I walked out of the coffee shop dazed but with the first draft of this story in hand.

Spencer Nitkey is a writer, researcher, and educator living in New Jersey. His writing has appeared in Apex Magazine, Fusion Fragment, Apparition Lit, Weird Horror Magazine, and others. He was a finalist for the 2023 Eugie Foster Memorial Award for Short Fiction. You can find more about him and read more of his writing on his website, spencernitkey.com.

If you enjoyed the story you might also want to visit our Support Page, or read the other story offerings.

DP FICTION #112B: “Hold the Sea Inside” by Erin Keating

edited by Chelle Parker

Content note (click for details)

Content note: This story contains references to intimate partner violence and alcohol abuse.

Among the crags of the mountains weeps a cascade of salt water. In the pool beneath, stiff-peaked foam drowns careless men and sickens parched animals. The menfolk say it’s devilry to find salt water so far from the shore, but we know better. It’s no devil’s work but woman’s grief.

Standing on the stony peaks across the valley, the falls look like a woman: her head tipped back, hair spilling over her shoulders, skirt swirling around her legs. From that distance, the rush of water is mistaken for a woman’s voice echoing through the hills, laughing and wailing in turn.

***

Once, Maribel knew no mountains. She knew only the ocean, rising to meet the cobbles before her father’s house, and then her husband’s. Maribel would open salt-streaked windows to feel the sea breeze, listen to the fishmongers hawk their wares, and pray to the waves.

Maribel would pray, “Please let today’s catch be good.”

The sea would reply, More, more, more, and her husband’s net would be the heaviest of his crew.

Maribel would pray, “Please let his ship be delayed.”

The sea would reply, Cease, cease, cease, and her husband’s ship would creak late into port against an unfriendly tide and a windless night.

Maribel would pray, “Please let him return home tired.”

The sea would reply, Sleep, sleep, sleep, and her husband would crawl to bed without so much as a glance at her.

The sea was a god to her, ever-present, holding her fate in its grabbing hands. She worshipped it, and it cared for her like no one ever had.

But then there was an accident, an accusation, a falling out. Her husband refused to speak of it. Instead, he said he tired of the sea, and they were moving inland. When Maribel took her last look over the waves, she prayed to the hungry tides that swallowed the land mouthful by mouthful.

“Keep me here. Let the undercurrent hold me fast.”

Her husband told her to hurry up, his hand heavy on the back of her neck. Even though the sea was right there, urging her to stay, stay, stay, Maribel left.

***

Maribel no longer cleaned salt-streaked windows. Now, they were streaked with silt and smoke. Her husband, who had once known the expanse of the open ocean, had become an iron miner in tunnels too narrow for his body. He came home after the last bell, stooped and wheezing. The sea breezes and fishmongers were memories; now, the only tides were of men shuffling to and from the mines.

She still prayed to the sea, though she was too distant now for it to answer. Its voice had followed her only so far west. Through the tidal basin, the humid air droning with dragonflies, the sea had demanded stay, stay, stay, in a voice like an incoming storm. Through the golden farmlands reeking of wet grass and manure, the sea had urged stay, stay, stay, in a voice like a sly current tugging at her ankles. Then they had reached the mountains, and the sea had punished her with its silence.

Maribel longed to cry for all she had lost, if only to feel the familiar sting of salt on her cheeks. But something in her had withered in her time among the silt and smoke. She couldn’t spare a single tear.

***

One night, when the first crocuses cracked through frozen earth, Maribel heard the sea again. It seeped into her dreams, buoying her to the surface of sleep.

Rise, rise, rise, it whispered.

Maribel rose groggily.

Look, look, look, it whispered.

Maribel went to the window.

In the utter darkness, lights bobbed in the distance. For a moment, she thought she was back in the salt-streaked house, watching ships blinking like stars on the horizon. But then acrid ash bit her tongue, and she was in that godforsaken mining town, looking out over the hills.

“It’s just like it was,” Maribel whispered.

Was, was, was, the sea echoed.

The lights drew closer and closer, until a gray dawn revealed they were not ships at all—but a circus.

The performers carried spring with them. Lavender and rose tents sprouted like fresh blooms, lanterns strung between them like fireflies. A moss-green banner proclaimed, “Phineas Fisk’s Fantasies and Phantasmagoria.” After months of bare trees, gray sky, and pale smoke, Maribel was nearly drunk on the colors alone.

The first night of the circus, Maribel wandered from her husband, who cared more for the beer than for the miracles hidden behind each tent flap: the fortune teller with her hunched shoulders shrouded in layers of gauzy silk, the contortionist who combed her long red hair with her toes, the scar-faced man who swallowed swords and fire.

Then, from outside one of the tents, rose a voice like rain.

“Ladies and gentlemen, come see the pearl of my collection. I, Phineas Fisk himself, bring you a wonder from the sea’s dark depths!”

A crowd gathered, surging like the tide. Maribel let herself get swept up in it, bobbing along in the current.

“Beware, faint of heart—this creature will seduce men and women alike to drag them down to watery graves. Please form a line—nice and orderly now. Have your admission fee ready.”

Phineas Fisk held out his gloved hand to collect Maribel’s money as she filed inside.

All of the noise from the circus ceased. Maribel was bathed in a pale green darkness. The air smelled vaguely of fish and brine. At the center of the tent, a boxy shape hid beneath a burlap cloth. A strongman stood beside it, keeping the crowd at bay.

Phineas Fisk swept into the tent, crushed-velvet coattails flapping behind him. “Ladies and gentlemen. I hope you are prepared for what you are about to see. You lucky few, who may look on this wonder and yet live to tell of it.” He stood beside the strongman, his fingers grazing the burlap. Maribel found herself holding her breath as she did in the moments before a storm.

“Behold, the mermaid,” he declared.

He whisked away the cloth.

A hurricane swept through Maribel’s chest as she strained to see. Before them stood a glass tank filled with murky green water—and something swimming.

Long silver tail. Feathery dorsal fin. Scaled skin, translucent as sea glass. Strands of kelp for hair.

And that face. Her face.

The creature in the tank pressed its webbed fingers to the glass. The sea roared in Maribel’s head, too loud to make out the words.

It was her. It was Maribel in that tank, if she had a tail instead of legs, if she had gills instead of lungs. If she had been born of the sea.

She pushed through the crowd like a storm surge. She needed to see; she needed to know. Maribel pressed her fingers to the glass, but the creature darted back into the murky swirl.

“Step back, ma’am.” The strongman braced his thick arm between Maribel and the tank.

And then Maribel was herself again. The face she saw was a reflection of her own in the glass.

But she had heard the sea, as loud as if she’d been standing with her feet in the coarse sand, letting the foam spray against her shins.

She had heard it, and it brought her home.

***

The second night of the circus, Maribel was the first person in line to see the mermaid. Clouds of dark dust streaked through the air, dimming the lights that bounced between the tents. Phineas Fisk wore the same crushed-velvet coattails and greedy gloves.

As soon as she was inside the tent, Maribel took a deep breath of the briny damp. She settled on a bench across from the burlap-covered tank, her eyes adjusting to the pale green light. Already, she could hear the sea, a low groan that she could understand if she tried hard enough.

You, you, you, it said. Maribel sighed—it remembered.

While Phineas Fisk pontificated about the perils of the mermaid, Maribel whispered under her breath, “What do you want me to do?”

Phineas Fisk whisked away the burlap cloth, and there was the mermaid again. Silver fins flicked through the swirling green water.

The sea replied, drowning out the awed gasps of the crowd, the tinny din of the circus, the constant grumble of the mines.

Bring, bring, bring, me, me, me, home, home, home.

Maribel glimpsed a face in the tank—her own, but not quite. Her face, but with urchin-black eyes. Her face, but with an extra row of teeth.

“I’ve missed you,” Maribel murmured, as quietly as she could.

The sea repeated, Bring, bring, bring, me, me, me, home, home, home.

A lump hardened in Maribel’s throat, too parched to swallow it down. She squeezed her eyes shut, as if that could press tears from them. No matter how much she willed it, not a single drop spilled down her dust-caked cheeks.

Instead, Maribel whispered, “I will do whatever you need. I will do whatever you want.”

Phineas Fisk leaned over from his place beside the tank. “Pardon, madam, are you quite well?”

“Quite,” Maribel said.

The sea whispered around her, its voice curling like inky tentacles over her skin. The mermaid swam before her, that other-self smiling with its many teeth.

Maribel could not recall a time she had been better.

***

On the circus’s final night, Maribel donned her nicest dress, one she hadn’t worn since they had arrived in the dust and silt. It shone a sea green, and among the grays and browns of her clapboard house, the color was almost too bright to look at.

“Where are you going?” her husband slurred. He rose from the table, the tension in the filmy air rippling around him.

Maribel didn’t dare respond. Both to answer and to ignore would provoke their own distinct angers. Outside, the night promised her shadows and smoke, and a chance to slip away unharmed.

“To the circus again, to spend my money?” her husband accused. But he fell to wheezing. Sharp breaths rattled in his chest, stuffed with silt. Already stooped, he doubled over on himself, smaller and smaller until Maribel thought he might disappear. He gasped, the hands that had been reaching for her now clawing at his own chest.

Maribel ran without stopping for her shoes.

***

At the mermaid’s tent, Phineas Fisk looked her up and down—her too-nice dress, her too-bare feet. He closed his gloved hand to her. “Perhaps you should see our other marvels this evening.”

Maribel held up twice the admission fee. Phineas Fisk’s thin eyebrows arched. She held up thrice the admission fee.

Finally, that gloved hand unclenched, and she placed the money firmly in it.

“Enjoy,” Phineas Fisk crooned in his voice like rain.

Maribel sagged into the first bench like a lifeless sail. The damp air of the tent soothed her burning lungs and cracked cheeks that had not known a single tear since she had left her home by the sea.

You, you, you, the sea greeted her.

“Me, me, me,” Maribel answered in kind.

Bring, bring, bring, me, me, me, home, home, home, the sea demanded.

“Soon, soon, soon,” she promised. As she had tossed sleeplessly the night before, as she had cleaned the dirt and silt from her windows, her thoughts had been consumed by nothing but how she would free the sea.

Phineas Fisk stood before the crowd. By now, Maribel had memorized his monologue. When he whisked away the burlap with that dramatic flair, a hurricane no longer swept through Maribel’s chest. Instead, there were only calm waters. The mermaid pressed her webbed hands to the glass before darting away. Maribel marveled at how like her own hands they were, too small to keep her safe.

Bring, bring, bring, me, me, me, home, home, home. The sea’s voice was so close now, its gentle breeze tickled the back of her neck. The smell of salt pressed closer.

And Maribel wondered what she could do.

***

Maribel stayed until rosy dawn shone through the tent’s pale green light. Peanut shells littered the packed earth floor, and the first warm breeze of spring swept under the canvas. All was silent, save for the shush of the water.

A gloved hand came down on Maribel’s shoulder. “It’s time for you to go home,” Phineas Fisk said.

But what did Phineas Fisk know of her home? Surely he didn’t mean for her to return to her clapboard house, with her husband stooped and wheezing, with smoke and dust burning her throat with every breath. Home was salt-streaked windows, fishmongers, and a sea breeze. Home was the pale green light of this tent.

The sea roared in her head, tossing her thoughts like a gyre.

Bring, bring, bring, me, me, me, home, home, home.

“Please, a few more minutes.” She needed more time. She did not know yet how she would save the sea from the glass tank that held it. After all it had done for her, she could not abandon it now.

“Have you fallen in love with her?”

“No.”

And it was true, Maribel was not in love with the mermaid. She was the mermaid. She had left her soul with the sea, and it had returned to her in the form of this creature. She would not be parted from it again.

“Have you looked at it closely?” Phineas Fisk asked. “Tell me what you see.”

The sea echoed, See, see, see.

Maribel crossed the packed earth floor, feeling the warmth of sand beneath her bare feet. The early light rippled like the surface of the ocean.

Maribel stood so close that her breath fogged the tank glass. When the fog cleared, the mermaid blinked up at her, eyes black as the depths of Maribel’s beloved sea. Her pale lips parted in a jagged-toothed smile as though she too had been waiting.

The mermaid placed her fingers against the glass walls. Maribel mirrored the gesture, the cold glass sweating condensation between them. She pressed harder, as though the glass would give way, and she would find herself in the water.

“Bring me home, home, home.” Maribel whispered the words of waves and wind to the only being who shared her grief. The mermaid murmured them back.

“Bring, bring, bring, me, me, me, home, home, home,” Maribel pleaded.

The mermaid pushed herself up, breaking the surface to rest her forehead against Maribel’s.

Undulating waves rushed through Maribel’s ears. She tangled her fingers in the mermaid’s kelp hair, whispering her prayers against the mermaid’s jagged mouth.

The mermaid’s wet, scaly skin felt like the damp sand of home. Maribel gulped down the mermaid’s salty, fishy breath like a drowning woman come up for air. She was the sea, as ever-changing and unknowable. Maribel wanted to be wrapped in those arms and pulled down, down, down.

“That’s enough,” a voice like rain cautioned.

Maribel froze, one leg draped guiltily over the edge of the tank. The mermaid recoiled, pressing herself against the glass opposite Phineas Fisk. His gloved hand wrapped around Maribel’s bicep. Maribel flinched from the too-familiar gesture.

“I can’t have you drowning on me. They’d run us out of town.”

Drowning. Was that what was happening? The pull of the sea, the shiver of salt around her ankle. If that was drowning, Maribel would drown.

“Let us go, go, go,” Maribel begged.

“People will believe anything, you know, with a good story and poor lighting.” Maribel struggled against him, but Phineas Fisk tightened his grip. “There is no mermaid, only circus magic. You’re trying to drown yourself in a tank of seaweed and fish bones. This is not real.”

No. The mountains were not real. The smoke and the mines were not real. Her husband’s heavy hands and stale-beer mouth were not real. But the sea—the sea was the only real thing Maribel had ever known.

“You lie, lie, lie,” Maribel demanded.

“Look!” Phineas Fisk boomed, his rain voice becoming a storm.

Look, look, look, the sea echoed, gentle as a lover.

Maribel looked. The mermaid’s sea-glass tail flicked back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

“The show is over. I will have someone walk you home.”

Home—this was home. The swish of the mermaid’s tail and the rush of the sea in her head made demands that grew louder, louder, louder, until Maribel’s thoughts were the same as theirs.

Bring, bring, bring, me, me, me, home, home, home.

Maribel leapt into the tank.

She landed hard against the glass bottom, against sharp fishbones and tangled seaweed. Phineas Fisk’s muted cries gurgled from above the water. Maribel opened her mouth to pray to the sea.

Bring me home.

The salt water rushed down her throat. It said, Welcome home.

The water filled her up, quenching her parched lungs and skin. Maribel wept then, like she had been unable to weep for months. She held the sea inside her, an ocean of unshed tears. She let them go now in a torrent, until the tank overflowed with it. She gave herself to the water, drop by drop.

Just as the tides swallowed the shore, mouthful by mouthful, the salt water consumed Maribel.

Her dust-caked cheeks rippled beneath her touch. Her hands, too small to ever hit back, became tiny columns of sea spray. Her body, far from home, pressed hard against the glass.

Maribel became the sea in the shape of a woman. She pressed harder and harder against the glass, letting out the sea that she had held in her chest all this time.

The tank shattered.

Everywhere was glass and water, light and canvas, and Maribel took it all for herself. She would take it all home, wash the mountainside clean.

Phineas Fisk staggered back, desperately reaching for the tent flap. The pockets of his crushed-velvet coat bulged. Maribel hated him for what he’d done—for taking the sea and selling tickets to see it. The sea did not belong to him. The sea did not belong to anyone. And neither did Maribel.

Maribel surged, sweeping away Phineas Fisk and his crushed-velvet coattails, the lavender and rose tents, the lights like fireflies. Maribel swept away clapboard houses, and the dust and silt, and her husband stooped and wheezing. She swept away everything that wasn’t real, until there was only the sea.

When the sea whispered to Maribel, it spoke in her own voice.

Home, home, home, she urged.

And so Maribel went home, felling ancient trees. Maribel went home, dragging a tide of mud in her wake. Maribel went home, laughing, as she spilled over the cliff’s edge.

***

Among the crags of the mountains weeps a cascade of salt water. In the pool beneath, stiff-peaked foam drowns careless men and sickens parched animals.
Standing on the stony peaks across the valley, the falls look like a woman: her head tipped back, hair spilling over her shoulders, skirt swirling around her legs. When the first crocuses crack through the frozen earth and the first warm breeze of spring rustles the treetops, lonely folks listen for a woman’s voice, laughing, wailing, calling them home, home, home.

3188 words

Author’s Note: I’ve been working on a series of fairytale-esque stories set in the same fictional mountain town, where each story is centered around a different landmark: a ravine, an abandoned house, a heather bald, etc. I saw a photo of a waterfall shaped like a bride and knew that I wanted that to be a landmark that opened and closed one of the stories. This story went through a few complete rewrites—in the earliest versions, Maribel’s husband captured a mermaid and started a traveling freak show—before finally arriving at the more psychological version that it is today. However, that central image of a woman turning into a waterfall never changed.

Erin Keating earned her B.A. in creative writing and literature at Roanoke College and her M.A. in history at Drew University, mostly so she could continue to surround herself with old books. She currently works as a grant writer at an arts education nonprofit. When she isn’t reading or writing, she is rock climbing, playing video games, or learning bass guitar. Her fiction has most recently appeared in Wyngraf, Tales to Terrify, and Cosmic Horror Monthly. Find her online at erinkeatingwrites.com or on Twitter @KeatingNotKeats.

If you enjoyed the story you might also want to visit our Support Page, or read the other story offerings.

DP FICTION #112A: “This Week in Clinical Dance: Urgent Care at the Hastings Center” by Lauren Ring

edited by David Steffen

Brigitte Cole presents with lower abdominal pain, nausea, and a long-sleeved black leotard. She has a well-developed appearance and does not seem to be in acute distress. Her accompaniment for the evening is pianist Roy Weiss, a fixture of the local music scene whose minimalist style pairs well with the bold choreography of clinical dance. As the house lights dim and the spotlights focus down on Cole, stoic and poised, one cannot help but notice that a stray lock of hair has fallen out of her sleek bun. Such composure, such strength, and yet—disarray.

This masterful lighting design continues as Cole glides into the first movements of her performance, commanding attention as she twirls and leaps across the empty stage. She dances alone, backlit, at times little more than a silhouette. Bright piano notes flow along with her in synchronized elegance. The crowded lobby, with its crush of open-call auditioners and ticket-waving late arrivals, feels distant now. All eyes are on Cole.

Despite her ability to match the ever-increasing tempo of Weiss’s piano, it is clear that Cole favors narrative over technical skill. Her hair escapes its pinned style in huge clumps, and her back arches much too far with each arabesque, eliciting winces aplenty from the murmuring audience. Her movements slow as the music accelerates. She clutches her stomach.

The show must go on, so stagehands rush out props for her to lean upon: a velvet settee, a polished cane, a cushioned bed. Cole flutters between them as she dances. As she attempts once more to keep time with the piano, her movements become graceless, raw. She spares no energy for artistry as she returns to her initial speed, then surpasses it, practically throwing herself into a frenzied series of pirouettes. She spins, and spins, and—yes—even collapses in a heap, just before the crescendo of the piano.

Cole’s separation from the musical score after such sustained harmony is a compelling touch, reminiscent of the visible brushstrokes favored by the painters of antiquity. She reminds the audience that there can be no dance without its dancer.

Silence falls, but the curtain does not. Instead, the spotlight swings across Cole, its smooth motion a comforting contrast to the performer’s staccato tremors. She convulses beneath the sterile light. Some of the medical students seated in the spray zone have begun to yawn, but Cole successfully recaptures their attention with a bout of ragged coughing that leaves blotches of sputum on their clipboards.

An upbeat piano melody masks any sound from the stage. Cole coughs for several beats more, then lies still. When the spotlight tilts to highlight the frothy spittle pooling at her chin, those closest to the stage recoil, myself included: while the consumptive technique has received high praise in clinical opera, it is successful only when performed with delicate drops of blood. Cole’s spittle is indicative of nothing more than overexertion, perhaps due to a lack of consistent exercise, and falls closer to desperation than artistry.

She rises with the slow swell of the music and curtsies, her face frozen in a pained rictus that approximates a grateful smile.

Most of the audience applauds despite Cole’s fumbled ending, but their enthusiasm quickly fades and the curtain drops. The doctors in the box seats flip through their programs for the next performer’s chart. When the stagehands emerge with their carts full of antiseptic sprays, doctors and season ticket holders alike are all ushered out to the lobby of the Hastings Center for a brief disinfectant intermission. This process will repeat after each of tonight’s five performances, and though the stagehands are efficient in their duties, some medical professionals can already be seen checking their watches.

Later that evening, after several emotionally moving but technically flawed orthopedic ballets, a select few patrons are treated to another glimpse of Cole in top form. She stands alone, listless, little more than a shadow on the city sidewalk. Her shoulders slump. She takes three careful steps toward the bus stop, then suddenly, silently crumples to the ground.

Cole writhes, clutching her lower right side. Her mouth gapes in a silent scream. Despite the violence of her contortions, she never breaks from her fetal posture. Such purity of form, such scalpel-sharp restraint of motion, is the gold standard of clinical dance. If she can bring this level of passion and intensity to her upcoming performance, then Cole certainly stands a chance of admission to the inpatient stage.

Overall, though Brigitte Cole paints a compelling picture of a suffering artist, fighting through pain to hone her craft, the overly polished styling of her costume and the obvious exaggeration of her coughing fit trouble the audience’s belief in the depth of her struggle. Although her sidewalk encore shows potential, diagnostic scoring is strictly objective and must be limited to symptoms observed on the stage. Her preliminary scores and backstage bloodwork all fell solidly in the normal range. Without distinction or catastrophe during her main performance, encore or not, it is unlikely that her case will be reviewed for expedited treatment.

Only a medical professional from the Hastings Center can levy the final judgment, of course, but this reviewer predicts a rating of at least six out of ten on the Wong-Baker scale. Cole could not be reached for comment. Her follow-up performance will take place three months from now at the Mercy East Operating Theatre, and tickets are anticipated to sell out during presale.

906 words

Author’s Note: This story draws upon my own experiences as a disabled woman navigating the US healthcare system.

Lauren Ring (she/her) is a perpetually tired Jewish lesbian who writes about possible futures, for better or for worse. She is a World Fantasy Award winner and Nebula finalist, and her short fiction can be found in venues such as F&SF, Nature’s Futures section, and Lightspeed. When she isn’t writing speculative fiction, she is most likely working on a digital painting or attending to the many needs of her cat, Moomin. You can keep up with her at laurenmring.com or on Twitter @ringwrites.

If you enjoyed the story you might want to read Lauren Ring’s previous stories with Diabolical Plots: “Three Riddles and a Mid-Sized Sedan”, or her stories we have reprinted in the Long List Anthology series: “Sunrise, Sunrise, Sunrise” in Volume 7, and “(emet)” in Volume 8. You might also want to visit our Support Page, or read the other story offerings.

Announcements! (Submission Window, First Reader Applications, Staff Changes)

Submission Window: July 8

We are delighted to announce our next general submission window!

Submissions will be open for two weeks, from July 8 through July 22, via our submission portal. We consider one story per author, with a wordcount of 3,500 words or less; we pay 10c/word; and simultaneous submissions are fine. See our Submission Guidelines for full details and more information!

Call for First Readers (BIPOC now, everyone May 27)

We are now looking for volunteers interested in being First Readers for Diabolical Plots!

First Readers are a crucial part of our submission windows, helping us navigate through the many hundreds of stories we receive every year, and making sure every story gets consideration and the spectrum of opinions and viewpoints we need to make our choices well.

Reading submissions is also a fantastic learning experience for anyone who loves reading, writing, or editing. It’s an opportunity to sample an incredible range of writing, from every style and every level of professional expertise. It’s also a way to get ‘behind the scenes’, see how the magazine is run, and get involved in bringing stories to the world. If you love short stories, we suspect you will have a blast.

At Diabolical Plots, we see First Readers as an opportunity to offer mentorship and new connections! We’ll walk you through everything that First Reading entails; we’re always open for conversations about reading, writing, and publishing; and we’ll hold regular discussions and exercises, specially aimed at new First Readers, highlighting all kinds of different ways stories can work (or not work!) for us, and what goes into submission reading and the magazine process.

Diabolical Plots offers a small honorarium to all First Readers who participate in a submission period. We recognize that it is not commensurate with the tremendous amount of work our amazing First Readers put in, but we feel it’s vital to provide what compensation we can, and it is important to us to show our appreciation.

It’s always important for us to maintain a diverse First Reader team with a wide range of identities and experiences; we are immediately open to applications from people who identify as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, or people of color). We will open to First Reader applications (at the same link) from all demographics on May 27. The applications for all will be open through June 3.

A Farewell and a Welcome

After a fruitful year here at Diabolical Plots, Chelle Parker will be stepping down from the editorial team this summer. A professional freelance editor, and previously copyeditor and then managing editor at Fireside Magazine, as well as a reviewer for Publishers Weekly, Chelle has been wonderful to have as a member of our team. They’ve weighed in on acquisitions, dev edited and copy edited stories, developed our in-house style guide in collaboration with David, advocated for First Readers and fellow editors, assisted with our 2023 Hugo Award Nomination List project, been a veritable fountain of knowledge on language and grammar, and so much more—we’ve gained and grown immeasurably from their time and efforts with us.

As Chelle departs, we are pleased to welcome Amanda Helms, who will be stepping into the vacant editor role! Amanda is a biracial Black/white fantasy, science fiction, and sometimes horror writer whose stories have appeared in or are forthcoming from FIYAH, Uncanny, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and other fine venues. Amanda has been with the Diabolical Plots team since 2021, where she has been among our most prolific First Readers—her many insightful comments and gift for getting to the heart of a story have helped steer acquisitions, and we have tremendous respect for her taste and work ethic. Her background as a former editor in educational publishing is a major asset, and she’s eager to apply those skills in working with Diabolical Plots authors. Two of her stories have previously been published in the magazine: “The Efficacy of Tyromancy over Reflective Scrying Methods in Divining Colleagues’ Coming Misfortunes” is a great example of speculative academic fiction, and has the distinction of being our first unTweetable story title—at the time it was published, Twitter still had the 140-character limit— while “Midwifery of Gods: A Primer for Mortals” is a great example of the kind of ‘format story’ that Diabolical Plots loves to publish. Welcome, Amanda!

DP FICTION #111A: “Ketchōkuma” by Mason Yeater

edited by Ziv Wities

My name is Yasuko Nagamine and I work for the employment bureau. There’s a monster destroying the city. It used to be the mascot for the organ rental service, Sensation. I guess it still is but I don’t think it’s doing much for their bottom line anymore.

Today I’m filing electronic papers, which is what I always do. Someone new registers with the bureau every day and I look at their job history. Then I send them back a form if there’s an opening that matches their file. Or I send them back a form that says, Sorry, there are no openings.

The city getting destroyed is also the whole world, so a lot of people might say it’s bad that something is stomping on it. But almost no one is saying that. They’re all just working. After people figured out they didn’t need plants or oceans or ducks, they made the whole world silver. It’s just buildings and server farms. That’s what happens when people figure out how to turn themselves into machines.

I have one screen with a list of bright dots, one for each opening. And the other screen has a list of bright dots for each person that needs a job. The longer they’ve been without a job or the longer the job is open, the brighter the dot gets.

I can see that big yellow bear Ketchōkuma through my window. He’s at least two miles away but he’s so big his ears almost touch the clouds. He’s holding a parasol made of shiny pink guts, just the way Sensation drew him up: an intestine swirled like a bun at the top. The way he used to look in all the ads, reaching toward the screen with a stomach or a heart in his paw. Well, almost like that. Now the parasol is sagging a little. But he’s still smiling with teeth. When he was regular-sized he had a dance where he bent on one leg and spun around and waved his arms and a jingle came out of his mouth. Now that he’s bigger, he still dances sometimes when he moves. You can almost hear something from his teeth.

Today my boss said I have to hire someone for the Tamentai Plaza opening. He said if they don’t have a general manager, people will start building homes in the dressing rooms and writing on the food court walls with chem paint. I look at the brightest dots but their files are all wrong. Everyone has experience with point of sale, but no one’s been a manager. I scroll down the dots until I get to the duller ones. They’re the same brightness as my eyes. My eyes are a dark paper brown that glows a little. Everyone I know has eyes like that but it’s how you move them around that matters.

I click on one of the dots. This person worked point of sale for twenty years. But they were never a manager. They have a pretty nose but that isn’t good enough. My eyes keep falling down the screen. I’m not supposed to look at the grey dots even though they’re there.

When I was born, the hospital uploaded my mind to the megaserver and threw my body in the waste system. Then they gave me the body I have now. It’s what happens to everyone. I wear a grey suit and keep my hair in a ponytail with a melon-pink tie. Girl stuff. Everyone is cloud-based, so our brains are always ready on the megaserver. That way, if something happens to our body, we can get a new one, and resync our mind when it’s over.

The bear is looking at me through the glass. He can’t see me. He’s too far away. But his eyes are turned this way and he’s not moving. That happens sometimes. Like he’s scared or broken.

I don’t think about my body anymore. The thing is there’s only so much space on the megaserver (it’s different than the servers they use for money and traffic records and the employment bureau), and it turns out a person’s brain takes up way more space than you’d think, so we each get the same amount of time before our brains are deleted and they recycle our plastic bodies. It’s fair, I guess.

Someone’s file just came in. It fills up the whole screen and the dot spins like a Ferris wheel. There’s her face. No smile. That’s good, I think. She doesn’t take nonsense. Her collar is the color of a pearl and comes all the way up to her jaw in lace. It makes her look like a beautiful singer. Experience: Fourteen years in library science. Director of collections at a nearby branch for eight years. Recognition of excellence in radio archival. She’s perfect.

But her dot is barely even grey. It just got here. It’s impossible. My boss would never approve it. He hates breaking rules, and I do too.

They said Ketchōkuma got loose and found a hatch in the waste system. He found where they put all the bodies, all our tiny bodies that aren’t plastic. He started sucking them up. On the news, they said, He siphoned all the neonates. That’s how he got so big and no one knows how he did it. I wish I could be that big, and golden. Like the sign on the casino where every letter is huge. They’re all glowing and you want to hug them and feel how warm they are.

Ketchōkuma is winding up to dance. You can tell by the way his parasol drops below his knees.

I keep the woman’s dot on my screen. The mall needs a manager. It’s a good mall. I’ve been there and I like to shop for outfits and look at all the pets in their habitats. Someone has to run the mall and there’s only so much time left before people start breaking windows and looting power cells and painting rude words on the walls.

The big bear finishes his dance. I almost clap but my boss sits at the desk in front of me. When Ketchōkuma stops, he loses his balance and sways into an office building. It’s far away, so I barely hear it. His legs disappear in the puff of smoke that comes up. His original fur is so stretched out that he isn’t really yellow anymore if you look up close, only from far away. If you look up close, like the drone cameras do on the news, you can see all the tears and gaps. Underneath it’s pink and white and red and wet.

I still have the woman on my screen. It says she knows seven languages. That would be good if random people caused trouble at the mall and she had to tell them where to go to be reprimanded. Or if someone moved in from a faraway part of the city and wanted to open a new store in the mall.

Ketchōkuma is singing now. I can definitely hear it, but maybe it’s my imagination. They said all his wires must be stretched as far as they can go, but his chip still plays his theme song. Only now it’s really slow and deep. Wa di-di. Ka da to ma di-di. It’s baby talk. It doesn’t mean anything. I still like hearing it, even though it sounds weird now.

As soon as I graduated I spent all my gift money on an organ from Sensation. It was a lung. The most beautiful organ. Everyone’s plastic body has a cavity around the tummy if you press hard enough in the right places. That pocket’s where Sensation hooks in, so most people rent a stomach. I knew it wasn’t right to have a lung down there but they hooked it up and once I took a breath it was all I could think about. But that was only for six hours. Then I ran out of money. I miss it. Our lungs always work but they’re just plastic and they don’t feel like anything.

I send the file for the woman with the tall collar to my boss. She’s the right person, I know she is, so it doesn’t matter if the dot is grey.

Ketchōkuma is closer now, but he’s quiet again. I can kind of see the tears in his fur. His parasol is gone, or maybe he’s dragging it on the ground below the skyline. How many weeks now, and he never has anything to say. If he could talk, I don’t know what he’d tell me. It’s like that. All of the best things you can tell someone don’t need words.

My boss hates her. He says no. He says even if she were the maestro of management she would be horrible because her dot is grey. And grey means there are other people besides her who need to get back to work first, so society doesn’t fall apart. He says find someone else, there’s plenty of people.

Now I have money for an organ, but Sensation stopped taking orders. After Ketchōkuma got loose, they dropped everything. Like it never mattered in the first place. They went on the news and said sorry, it won’t happen again. They said everybody who’s upset gets a refund. They said, actually, we’ve been working on something new, and instead of a refund we’ll put your money towards that—it’s all digital, it’ll last forever. Then everybody started talking about organs. They said what was the point of something that makes you feel sweaty? Sometimes they stink. They’re overpriced and we shouldn’t have cavities in our bellies anyway, let’s take those out for the next generation.

The floor rumbles. Through the window I watch König Schellen’s golden sign cracking in two, flattening each floor until it all disappears under the other buildings. The biggest casino in the whole city, gone. My monitor shakes and so do I. I see a big shape in the dust, but it slips behind the hotels.

Then the opera house starts to move. Its big red arches lean forward, so slow I don’t see it at first. It looks like it’s going to sleep. Then the lights spark, and they pop one by one, and then all at once like fireworks. It falls, and there’s the shape again before the dust covers it up.

I try to focus on my job. I need to choose someone who can be the manager of Tamentai Plaza. It’s a really important place and someone people like needs to protect it. Someone who can make business good for everybody, even the pets.

I try. I really try, but my eyes won’t stay on the screen. The racetrack that circles all the restaurants flies up and hangs in the air. It’s floating over everything for the longest second I can remember. Then it whips down into the hotels. The whole row gets smashed, and they’re half as tall now. And other buildings start falling too, big ones nearby. Everything’s falling down.

I have to look at my screen. There’s nothing I can do about anything outside, but I can help Tamentai Plaza.

It’s no good. There’s the parasol. The pink canopy pounds through the Super Stadium toward me, through the silver dome that’s as big as the sky, and stuff is flying everywhere. The parasol comes back up through the dome and drops down again like a hammer, and the noise is so loud even my manager looks up for a second. A big cloud blooms where the stadium used to be.

I sit for a long time, until it all clears. Ketchōkuma is standing in the smoke behind everything. He’s wet and glittering. His fur is almost gone now. It’s frayed to nothing. He’s not even yellow anymore. He’s red and blotchy with shadows.

Then something cool happens. I look at my screen and it’s almost empty. All those dots. All those people are gone and the woman with the beautiful collar and no smile is the very first dot and it’s brighter than anything, even the casino sign. And the rest of the dots are people I’ve never seen before because they’re new, because—I know what happened. I send her file to my boss again without even thinking.

I look out the window. He’s there. His eyes are big, dark holes in his face, big enough to fall into. He’s quiet. His mouth is lumpy and red.

Hi, big bear.

He did it.

You knew, didn’t you.

There was a server farm behind the hotels. I forgot all about it. All the older files must have been stored there. And the ones that came in today started up in a different server. He knew somehow.

You knew, didn’t you?

Why else would he come this way?

Thank you.

I liked him even before he did it.

Thank you. I really mean it.

My boss says the woman is hired. He already called her. He says she’s the best file I’ve picked since I started. He doesn’t know.

He doesn’t know, big bear.

He doesn’t even realize what happened.

My screen refreshes and all the old dots come online again, rerouted from some other server. But it’s too late. They already hired her.

Ketchōkuma is looking at me. He’s really looking at me this time, through the window. I think about that silly lung that’s probably rotten now. It was good, even if it isn’t around anymore. I think about my body. I think about the whole thing: the inside, the outside, the hair tie. I think about my body, even if it is plastic. And I close my eyes.

Thank you, toes.

I peek for a second. I close them again.

Thank you, toes. I feel your weight. I appreciate that you’re a part of me.

I keep my eyes closed.

Thank you, legs. You may not carry blood, but you carry me.

I open them one more time.

Thank you, eyes. Because of you, the whole world is inside me. Because of you, I see a bear.

I lay my fingers on the desk and watch them work, and Ketchōkuma takes the city into his paws.

2377 words

Author’s Note: Mainly I just wanted to create my own kaiju. Obviously they lend themselves to metaphor, so there’s always the action and the threat, but also some deeper ideas if you’re in that mindset. With the monster design, I was pulling from Japanese mascots, and I guess giving this one the old body-horror treatment. The ending, weirdly enough (or maybe not), was inspired by some Thích Nhất Hạnh affirmations. I have an office job and often forget about my own body.

Mason Yeater writes speculative fiction near the Great Lakes. Previously, his work has been published in TL;DR Press’s Curios anthology. He can be found sometimes @snow_leeks on Twitter.

If you enjoyed the story you might also want to visit our Support Page, or read the other story offerings.

DP FICTION #110B: “Six-Month Assessment on Miracle Fresh” by Anne Liberton

edited by David Steffen

Six-Month Assessment on Miracle Fresh

Submitted November 16th, 2028

By Genevieve Aranha, Chief Manager

Introduction

The Chief Manager requested this assessment to analyze the overall performance of Spirits & Co.’s leading product, the soft drink Miracle Fresh, as a follow-up to the findings presented in the three-month assessment (also included below). All research and data have been gathered on-site by the assigned team over the past ninety-three days, including interviews, medical and financial reports, headlines, and related footage. Those pertain to Brasília alone, where Miracle Fresh was first distributed. That information is fully available from our IT team upon request. We hope this report will provide some clarity as to recommended next steps for making Miracle Fresh a worldwide success.

Background

Miracle Fresh is a soft drink produced by Spirits & Co. since 2027. The original pitch described a holy club soda blessed with droplets of blood from our devoted Messiah, something the average person could drink on the go, après-exercising, or even at [insert holy building of choice] without requiring long tiresome religious proceedings. This idea was abandoned shortly after the company realized a soft drink would appeal to a greater audience, and after considering the lawsuit filed by the parental association Guardians of our Holy Youth (GHY), who worried the club soda would be used as a component of alcoholic mixed drinks. Associating our devoted Messiah with sugar and adding a clear appeal to children did not seem to faze any of the naysayers.

Attached: Pictures from several GHY parties obtained through social media. They feature children below the age of fifteen consuming alcohol and doing a wide variety of drugs. The children’s faces have been blurred to protect their identities.

Since May 2028, Miracle Fresh has been sold as a burgundy soft drink and is available at several stores and markets in the country at a reasonable R$ 4,00 per can. Sales began online and on-site in Brasília, before being distributed to each state capital and to smaller commercial centers around the third month. Two other nations, India and Argentina, have contracted the so-called ‘MiraFever’ due to social-media buzz and are currently developing their own local factories.

Attached: Miracle Fresh official logo:

Have a miracle inside you!

Findings

This assessment has been broken down by time period and demographic for a better understanding of what has changed and what has not during the three-month span between studies. A compilation of this information in its entirety can be acquired through a formal request to IT.

THREE-MONTH ASSESSMENT RECAP

University students aged 18-32 (59 institutions)

After their initial consumption of Miracle Fresh, students claim to be afflicted by a sweet sense of tranquility that lasts for days, sometimes weeks. It helps them navigate academic life with relative ease and even excitement. 67% report they feel more connected to nature after one sip, while 73% say they have formed a deeper relationship with themselves. Additionally, the first group often develops a penchant for flowers; our teams came back wearing crowns on their heads on more than one occasion.

The Guardians of our Holy Youth (GHY)

Following the release of our new marketing plan, the group dismissed their lawsuit and sent a thoughtful thank-you note along with a list of names we should contact in order to offer our product to a wider variety of venues. “All for the benefit of our devoted Messiah.” It appears we have made ourselves some powerful new friends.

Young influencers aged 15-21

Marketing picked a few names for paid partnerships to create one viral video—and they made two. This is how we got India. The key idea was to show alternative external uses for the blessings, such as:

a blessed make-up (“a dab of Miracle Fresh on the eyes works wonders”);

game setup (“rub a few drops on your controller and send that boss to hell”);

stock portfolio*.

* I asked three people and none understood how this could work. Might be just a gimmick; those are also quite popular.

Religious leaders

This demographic was not originally one we were considering and came to us of their own accord, first with a formal email, then through a representative. They demanded proof that we were in fact using our devoted Messiah’s blood in the manufacturing process of the drink, not exploiting the faith of innocent, unsuspecting customers. A petition, signed and stamped, was to be delivered to Congress to demand a thorough investigation of our manufacturing facilities and, should any evidence of fraud be found, that we cease all operations.

We kindly asked them to select a small group to visit the facilities and take a closer look at our manufacturing process. Twenty people accepted the invitation to a tour that lasted fifteen minutes. We did not hear from them again. Miracle Fresh again lives up to its name by bringing together religious leaders of disparate backgrounds, some of which are sworn enemies. The miracle is inside all of us.

SUS Triad – Brasília’s main hospitals

Saint Claire Hospital: Patients are officially requesting (demanding, on occasion) to drink Miracle Fresh before any procedure, to their doctors’ dismay. It interferes with electronic instruments and disrupts the display of digital imaging. A few altercations have been reported.

Our Devoted Medical Center: It seems they anticipated the problems seen at Saint Claire and banned Miracle Fresh from the premises. Legal is analyzing whether Spirit & Co. might have standing for a case against this ban.

Center 1 Hospital: Terminally ill patients are praying to our cans instead of asking for their last rites. Several religious figures have filed complaints (unrelated to the petition to Congress).

Addicts of entrequadras 213/214

We received a call to investigate the famous drug hotspot of the city, the entrequadras 213/214, located on the dead-end street between those two blocks. The caller described people injecting Miracle Fresh intravenously with shared needles. HR suggests we make an ad with a mildly pretty and harmless celebrity, like Betinho Gonzaga, to remind people that our slogan—’Have a miracle inside you!’—refers only to ingesting the soda. Rumors claim the first Miracle Fresh addicts already exist (unconfirmed).

Children aged 7-14

They said it tastes like grape juice.

SIX-MONTH ASSESSMENT

University students aged 18-32 (59 institutions)

Tranquility rates rose and attendance dropped dramatically as students started to abandon academia to follow a path of ‘self-peregrination’—a term apparently related to the connections they make through Miracle Fresh. They refuse to associate the process with the high (rumored) addicts get from injecting Miracle Fresh intravenously. According to reports, ‘self-peregrination’ allows a person to dive into their inner core, experience memories from their birth, and watch their organs, cells, and genes work in real time. One student insists she discovered a tumor by dint of those trips and thanked us profusely. She gifted us many more flower crowns.

Our labs found such tranquility rates rather dubious, given the world we live in, and requested further analysis. They received confirmation in a matter of hours: the cans contained one to three foreign substances that altered their composition on a molecular level. It appears students had been infusing cans of Miracle Fresh with sweat, blood, or flower essence in an effort to enhance effects. Combinations of two or all three extracts are also popular options. This corroborates Marketing’s August report regarding the need for new flavors and variations, and perhaps limited-edition holiday Miracle Freshes.

Some of the flowery extracts might be suitable options, as well as the sweat variation, if branded properly. Blood on blood, however, is out of the question: there seems to be a reaction when Miracle Fresh comes into contact with the conscious sacrifice of certain people, a phenomenon our labs decided to call ‘Midas’s blood’. This reaction transforms the blood into a golden liquid. Carriers of Midas’s blood languish little by little unless they cease all contact with Miracle Fresh. They perish in one to two months otherwise. Patient zero is yet to be identified, but our team has already announced a recall of each affected batch of the drink and is watching the diseased closely. Spirits & Co. should unveil more details about Midas’s blood soon.

Attached: Pictures and a police report from October 23rd, 2028. A truck carrying contaminated Miracle Fresh was overturned and ransacked by an unidentified group on Pistão Sul. Its contents have yet to be recovered.

The Guardians of our Holy Youth (GHY)

For the past few weeks, Customer Service has received an endless string of emails with questions regarding specifics of our product, such as how to: 1) retain blessings for longer periods of time; 2) ensure the absorption of every single drop of blood from our devoted Messiah present in each can; 3) measure the amount of ‘blessitude’ as to provide a comparison with fellow drinkers. Our labs promptly dismissed the requests, suggesting this veiled holiness contest to be out of the product scope and beseeched IT to block all of their addresses. Marketing insists we should fund a department to develop a blessing meter and turn this annoyance into profit. The matter will be brought to discussion at the next meeting.

Young influencers aged 15-21

The ‘alternative uses for Miracle Fresh’ trend died early in the third month, replaced by ‘What would the Messiah do?’ skits starring influencers dressed as our devoted Messiah, who would catch other people in awkward situations, then wail “I did not bleed for this!” Those with less comedic inclinations decided instead to try a little bit of everything. Highlights include Tito Moreno, the ‘Gordito Estrela’, who rose to fame after feeding Miracle Fresh to his dog and filming his reactions as the dog began to levitate, and Jade Martins, former blessed make-up artist.

Jade’s case is still under investigation, since her recent content consists of live streams and videos of herself posing with her face covered in golden tears, a telltale sign of Midas’s blood. The adulterated cans are likely from the truck we lost a while ago, a delicacy extremely hard to come by and with plenty of potential buyers out in the wild. I would bolt my doors if I were her. Jade has nonetheless refused to reply to any messages sent by the company, despite the warnings that she has a lethal infection and will likely be dead in a few weeks’ time. In response, IT started a betting pool on which will run out first: 1) her stash of adulterated cans; 2) her life. Anyone can join by speaking to Marlene Silva on the second floor.

Religious leaders

Our team scouted the city looking for interviewees from various backgrounds, but faced some problems, since 52% of religious buildings, including temples, terreiros, and churches, have been closed for the past three months. From those that remain operational, reactions varied: doors closed to our faces; insults that reached back to five generations; pleas to leave them alone. One priest rushed outside, kneeled before the team, kissed each of their hands, and fled without uttering a word. Some people are just difficult to please, I guess.

SUS Triad – Brasília’s main hospitals

Saint Claire Hospital: A ritual has been established before any medical procedure, which requires both patients and the medical team to drink at least one sip of Miracle Fresh for good luck. Scars and gross negligence lost meaning, despite the dead count skyrocketing. As diabetics cannot partake in this process, Marketing has proposed we accelerate the release of our sugar-free version.

Our Devoted Medical Center: We have instructed the government to refer those afflicted with Midas’s blood to ODMC. A Spirits & Co. mobile laboratory is currently posted inside the center to provide them the best care in the world and also to investigate the inner workings of the disease. Hospital employees are not allowed entry. IT is already on the lookout for any protests from human rights NGOs.

Center 1 Hospital: Miracle Fresh has replaced holy water and its counterparts during last rites. Some patients are fully bathed in the soda to guarantee their purification, including a baptism for the terminally ill. Complaints have stopped, and due to lack of available religious leaders, the last rites are often performed by family members or nurses. Marketing is analyzing the possibility of introducing Miracle Fresh as a holy water replacement during baptisms as well. This would require an adaptation of the current logo: ‘Have a miracle outside of you’ would trigger another unpleasant side of GHY, which we would rather avoid. Marketing suggested ‘The miracle is all around you’. And isn’t it?

Addicts of entrequadras 213/214

The current number of intravenous users of Miracle Fresh is not high enough to call it a drug problem yet, regardless of what the government says. As there have been no Midas’s blood sightings in the vicinity, HR suggests we hire a mildly pretty and harmless celebrity for an ad to disperse the rumors, especially those connecting us to the fallen celebrity Betinho Gonzaga. He has been seen a few blocks away from HQ and is reportedly performing circus tricks at the traffic lights for change, which he later uses to buy the shots. In any case, his agent will not sue: she is far too busy doing cartwheels around the cars while he performs.

Children aged 7-14 years

They said it still tastes like grape juice.

Recommendations

Proceed with a follow-up nine-month report.

Signed electronically by

Genevieve Aranha

Chief Manager

2228 words

Author’s Note: Miracle Fresh was inspired by a Brazilian soft drink called Guaraná Jesus that is sadly not made of Jesus. It’s actually quite sweet and, for some reason, quite pink. On Christmas this one year, after Coke released their cans with people’s names on the side, someone posted a photo of a Mary Coke and a Joseph Coke with a Guaraná Jesus in a manger, and I just knew I had to write a story about this someday. This is that day. I’m so sorry.

Anne Liberton is an autistic Brazilian author fascinated by all things weird, from fiction and poetry to people. In her spare time, she sings, studies languages, and plays with her dogs. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Diabolical Plots, Heartlines Spec, and Star*Line. She took part in the 2021 Clarion West Novella Bootcamp workshop. You can find her everywhere @AnneLiberton.

If you enjoyed the story you might also want to visit our Support Page, or read the other story offerings.