Recent Stories

Special Issue — Diabolical Thoughts!

This month is our special telepathy-themed issue, guest edited by Ziv Wities!

Welcome to Diabolical Thoughts. You have one (1) transmission pending; to receive it, please hold still and visualize the following items.

“Rattenkönig,” by Jenova Edenson

You told your mother you were going to drive up to Lake Tahoe that Saturday. You didn’t like lying to your mother; but she always asked so many questions. It was easier to tell her something that wouldn’t make her worry. You’d be back before the week was up, anyway—that was how Kim had put it.

“The Hivemind’s Royal Jelly,” by Josh Pearce

The suspect lifts its hands, every movement deliberate and fluid, blood slower than honey. Its left hand jerks to a stop on the end of the handcuff chain and more waxy skin flakes drift onto the table. “You saw somebody who looked like us, perhaps. You have a murder weapon that certainly doesn’t have our fingerprints on it.” When it speaks, a breath of hot air washes over you. You start to sweat. “Also, no one is dead.”

“The Desert’s Voice is Sweet to Hear,” by Carolina Valentine

The desert had been trying to kill her for two days. Gently. Lovingly.

“A Girl With A Planet In Her Eye,” by Ruth Joffre

For the first thirteen years of her life, the planet was silent. No birdsong. No construction. Only the gentle sway of an ocean pushing and pulling against the aqueous humors of her left eye. Late at night, while her parents slept, she often lay awake and listened to the dense water solidify itself, the salts forming crystals, the crystals becoming pillars in a great, cavernous hall populated at first by no one, and then: music.

“The Monologue of a Moon Goddess in the Palace of Pervasive Cold,” by Anja Hendrikse Liu

Being the real moon goddess requires a great deal of clothing and makeup. The real moon goddess must be elaborate, delicate, draped in folds of silk. The real moon goddess must be radiant. In other words, the real moon goddess must be utterly unlike the real moon, which is content in its quiet, rocky existence—cold and gray, gray and cold, just gray dirt and darker gray shadows in the shallow craters, all the way to the horizon where the gray edge meets the black sky.

“Devil’s Lace,” by Julie Le Blanc

The demon and I had been crocheting for hours, in what appeared to be a sliver of space it’d created between Here and There. Around a plush couch floated pale, winter fog that obscured anything more than a few feet past the limits of the cushions.

I’d only ever heard of devils challenging people to chess, or the fiddle, or riddles, maybe. I think this demon had only ever done those things, too, so when I blurted out the first thing that came to my mind, well, we were both kind of stuck, weren’t we?

“Dog Song,” by Avi Naftali

So you want to determine whether dogs still exist.

First, our association of dogs with obedience. Is obedience dog-like? Or is it to do with horses now, or children, or hamsters. “Hamster-like obedience.” Dogs have retreated into the bodies of hamsters, maybe. They have a real knack for learning, we’re told, and for evolving themselves. There’s no reason they couldn’t take this extra step. Or maybe they don’t exist, dogs have never existed.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

“Tell Me the Meaning of Bees,” by Amal Singh

On a sunless morning, in the city of Astor, the word ‘caulk’ vanished.