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Issue 135 – May 2026
“Dourglamis,” by Derek Wagner
Dourglamis. The largest castle I’d seen in the flesh. Barreling towards me, it was also clearly the fastest. Great granite legs churned beneath its paving stone belly, crushing everything in its path like a memory of elephants on parade.
A parade I could have avoided.
“Afterimage,” by Anna Zumbro
The bay air felt strange on Domenico’s skin. He’d been here every evening for weeks, but this was the first time in a while — years, really — that he’d taken his body with him.
Issue 134 – April 2026
“The House Knows,” by Meghan Arcuri
I toss the keys on the green Formica counter. I always aim for the same spot: that ugly, little brown ring—bubbled up and cracking—where Bill had once put the scalding, hot coffee pot. I like to cover it up, pretend it isn’t there.
“Hello?”
No one answers.
I set two bags of groceries on the kitchen table; two more remain in the car.
“Can I get a little help?”
Again, silence.
“Davy Jones, Lobsterman,” by Daire McNally
Jim channeled his frustration into hauling up the next chain of pots. The line felt heavy, and he allowed himself to hope; just one more lobster would get the electric company off his back, at least. He pulled, hand over hand, until he saw something snagged on the line.
He paused, staring, while his brain caught up with his eyes.
He was looking at four pale fingers, each one curled around the line for all the world like they were holding on. Jim peered down into the water. An old man stared sightlessly up from beneath the surface, his skin cracked like old seaweed and tinged green with algae, his gray beard moving in the swell like a living thing.
Issue 133 – March 2026
“Jefferson Dines Alone,” by S.L. Harris
Here is Jefferson, talking to himself again. It has happened increasingly of late. The pantograph in the study summarizes his monologue endlessly, and the shelves fill with more and more of less and less. In the great and exponentially-growing library of his private Monticello, the new volumes are not the texts procured and preserved with such care and expense, but his own summaries, and summaries of summaries, and so on into dim infinity.
Worse, the summaries have begun to resemble one another, so that it is hard to tell his summary of the words of Jesus from his summary of the sayings of the Buddha, Eleanor Roosevelt, Rupi Kaur. Perhaps this is just what happens when such a mind is left in the company of such a library and given such a device as his pantograph to write copy after copy after copy. Perhaps it is inevitable that all thoughts will become one thought, all books, all gods, all lives—one. E pluribus unum. All rough edges smoothed away.
“Well Tester,” by E.M. Faulds
“‘Au secours’,” she tried, ignoring him. “No, wait, that means ‘help’.” She licked parched lips. It had been a long time since French class and she’d hated the teacher’s guts. “Not exactly succinct, anyway.”
“Mayday. That’s from the French, isn’t it? M’aidez,” Lucifer offered, overegging the accent to a heinous degree.
Sara lolled her head back over her shoulder to drawl in his direction but avoided actually looking at him. The yellow goat’s eyes in her father’s face were unsettling. “Nice try,” she said. “Means the same thing.”
“Of course. The last thing you want is to attract people here thinking they could help you.” He was leaning heavily on the sarcasm, but it was true. Sara didn’t want anyone to come here.
Issue 132 – February 2026
“We Grow in the Light,” by Riley Neither
The antler people are exceedingly rare, but I’ve made sure my daughter knows about them. Not just as myth or stereotype, but as people like any others. Anyone could be an antler person, and if the velvety nubs of little antlers ever start to poke through her hair, I want her to greet them with ease, acceptance, maybe even joy.
“The History of Coming Out To Your Parents Any% Speedrunning,” by Jubilee Finnegan
“36:15, Coming Out to Your Parents Speedrun [NEW WR]” was uploaded on December 2nd, 2020. The run resembles the average attempt at first, with Kipper rolling high on his DougSkip, allowing him to get an extra bag of gummy worms at the airport. However, where he diverged came at the Parents’ Level. Rather than entering the house and coming out in the living room where the player’s parents are watching Jeopardy, Kipper chose to yell it from the front lawn, saving a sizable amount of time and avoiding the ‘What are you wearing?’ side quest.
Issue 131 – January 2026
“Who Can Hold a Princess,” by Vivian M. Liu
You did not tell Princess Mea. You did not want to worry her naive, sweet heart. There was goodness in the world and it was in her. You told her no one came anywhere near her chambers, even though the assassins had. She was a heavy sleeper who dreamed of princes and knights.
You killed another living being for a girl, and what did you have to show for it?
“The Book of Fading Gods,” by E.M. Linden
The God of Ice—to give them their full title—once echoed through icebergs and glacier chasms. They sang themself awake against a chorus of scraped whale-bone, drowned men caught like blebs in the ice, the splintering of coracles and then ships. Now they’re the skitter of mouse claws in winter, a puddle cracking under a child’s shoe. They’re lucky; they don’t realise how far they’ve shrunk. They still have their tiny glee in violence, their hunger, their righteous fury.
The cold gnaws at my ankles. “Please state your case.”
ice, they say. ice!
I could shave this tiny god into a cocktail. I could melt them with a breath. What I can’t do—never can—is get a straight answer.
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