A Clowder of Cats

by Bruno Lombardi

Hello Old Friend

I bring distressing news.

Adapa has perished.

You must prepare yourself.

Bako

I stared at the note in silence for a full minute, unable to process what I had just read.

Adapa dead? How? Why?

Adapa was an immortal, just like myself.

And if he is dead, then...

I took a long deep breath and slowly exhaled.

This is going to be a very bad day.

The Grim Work

by Levi Fleming

It smelled of stale humidity outside, like a basement shower stall left to fester. Dank and rot and mold. Fuzzy spores floated like black snow leaving dark streaks on the sky like the walls of a filthy aquarium. Trees rose, dry and naked, black twisted things like burned matchsticks marking the sporefall-buried road.

Two figures in environmental suits trekked through the hostile air and alien landscape like divers walking the sea floor. They marched single-file: the older one one carrying a dinged-up bolt-action rifle took point, the bright red scarf wrapped around his neck shone like a beacon in the murky air for the other to follow, trailing behind in his tattered suit with sewn-on patches of frayed fabric where the Kevlar had buckled.

The man in the scarf stopped and slung the rifle to his back while he waited for the younger one to catch up. Thick and heavy air obscured and reduced the world to shadows and vague shapes beyond the immediate. The edges of his scarf flapped limply, unweaving and fraying from where bits of it had been cut away.

"Quit screwing around," said the man, turning the boy around and checking the valves on his air tanks to be sure that they were as open as they could be.

The young man said, "Is there something wrong with my air?"

Upper Beta Great Alcove Very Happy

by By Ron Fein

“No,” he agreed. “How long do we have?”

She checked her watch. “Almost ten minutes.”

“All right.” Marco cracked his knuckles and flexed his fingers over the keyboard. “How about we start this way: ‘Mom and I—”

“No,” she interrupted. “You don’t need to waste space on things like ‘Mom and I.’ Nate knows it’s from us. You don’t even need to say ‘we.’ That’s assumed.”

“Fair enough,” conceded Marco. “But then why did he say ‘a’ great alcove? If he’d just said ‘with great alcove,’ he’d have saved a character—actually, two characters including the space. That plus the other four could have been an additional word.”

Rada rolled her eyes. “You’re overthinking this.”

“Come to think of it,” he continued, “Nate didn’t use all forty-eight characters. His message is just forty-four.”

A Species of Art

by Brian D. Hinson

My newest client, a short, skinny guy with a pointy face, stood with his arms crossed as I collected crime evidence in his breakfast nook where an empty oak table looked sad next to the window. “It’s not a plant,” Owen told me for the second time. “And it’s worth about forty grand.”

My eyebrows wanted to rise, but I have a good poker face. I charged a twenty percent commission on found items. Plus expenses. This Owen already put up the non-refundable retainer on a credit card. And I intended to call his missing weird thing a plant a few more times just to annoy him.

“You’re a snoop, a real reporter, so why do you need me?” I asked as I scanned for traces of DNA that didn’t match him or his wife or his useless pit bull.

“Other pressing responsibilities. There’s deadlines, stories that pay. This business may not, so I don’t have the time.” He frowned. “Or a DNA…thing,” he added as he pointed to my biologic code decipher that I wanded over his carpet.

Strings

by Chris Scott

The first thing you should know is there’s nothing extraordinary about the kaleidoscope that changes my life. It’s not on display at some strange toy shop that, after making my purchase and then trying to return it the next day, has mysteriously vanished. It’s not discovered in my grandfather’s attic, in an ancient dust-entombed trunk that hasn’t been opened in decades. It’s not saddled with some dark backstory like each person who’s come into possession of it has died in increasingly bizarre and improbable circumstances. It’s sitting atop a pile of other completely identical kaleidoscopes, all manufactured in China or somewhere, tossed carelessly into a bin at the dollar store. Just a cheap piece of tin and plastic. No magic spell, no dark powers. And no string connecting the kaleidoscope to me, and me to the Chatham Juvenile Detention Center. At least none that I can see yet.

The kaleidoscope is an inconsequential part of the scenery when it first enters my periphery under the too-bright fluorescent lights of the store, not calling out to me or anything like that. Mom and Darren are in the next aisle, grabbing some odds and ends, arguing about prices. I hear Darren say “Everything used to just be a dollar here. That was the whole point,” something I’ve heard him say a million times. Mom is too tired to engage after her double shift, and also probably doesn’t feel like arguing about how much stuff should cost at the dollar store again.

She suddenly appears in my aisle, which appears to have a loosely cobbled together “fun” theme involving some toys, some school supplies, and a smattering of Easter stuff.

“Three dollars,” she says to me, and I swear I don’t react in any way, no sigh or flash of disappointment on my face or anything like that -- I know better -- but she immediately relents. “Okay okay, four dollars,” she smiles. This is our little thing at the dollar store. Has been since I was a kindergartner.

Lifted

by Carl Tait

Andy was always startled by the intensity of his hatred for Donald Young.

Hate was not one of his usual emotions. Affection and mild dislike were his typical extremes. He was known for his equanimity, which was an asset for teamwork but a liability when arguing difficult positions.

“I know that Andy disagrees, but hear me out,” Donald was saying. Had the two men ever agreed on anything? Andy couldn’t remember. He couldn’t think clearly because he wanted to smash Donald’s face into the conference table to shut him up.

Until the End of Time

by by E.G Skaar

“What brings you to my bog?”

Christine cleared her throat, spoke as confidently as she could. “I’m here to make a wish.”

“One of love or death?”

“I used the black stone, didn’t I?”

The witch smiled through a twisted mouth of crooked black teeth. “You did.”

All of Christine’s reluctance had vanished upon hearing the witch’s voice. She had already come so far, braved her way through so much. She couldn’t turn back now.

“I need you to kill someone,” Christine said.

Altyssima

by J. Tamsin

Beyond the glass house, the bell chimes for midnight. I unfurl my body, fanning my paws, stretching my legs, dipping my chest until my spine creaks, then leap from my perch atop the potting bench. The chilled dirt floor bites at my toes, the crystalline walls holding barely a trace of the day’s warmth. But the moon is out, illuminating every leaf and petal, gilding every cobweb, and I am on the prowl. For the glass house holds many treasures, and many treasures invite many thieves.

River pixies, mountain nymphs, hobgoblins, even a fire troll once; I’ve come to expect every kind of foot and finger to slip through those silver gates, eager for a piece of the Master’s collection—herbs and roots, seeds and flowers, curated from all over the continent for one purpose and one purpose only: death. But as I round the pots of devil’s tears, heading for the olaurea shrub where I sit night after night, a pair of boots stop me in my tracks, sending a twitch through my whiskers.

Heart Rot

by JR Blanes

Days after we bury Pa beneath the oak tree, strange toadstools break through the bark, winding around the trunk like a staircase leading to hell, where his body tangles with the roots. Already the foliage has shed its discolored leaves into grimy muck. The branches had grayed and peeled like old paint. Peeled like Pa’s flesh when he was close to death.

“Burn it down,” Ma says beside me.

A Grimm Grudge

by Julie Brydon

Dear Brothers Grimm,

Please retract your latest story, Rapunzel. It is libelous and patently false. I should know—I’m the enchantress you demonized.

First of all, Jakob and Wilhelm, I have a name. And no, it isn’t Dame Gothel. The only person who called me that was my mother, and an angry mob burned her at the stake decades ago. By the way, if you were wondering why I live in a tower, that’s why. Towers are fire proof, hard to infiltrate, and easy to defend. I’m surprised they’re not more popular. But I digress.

My name is Berthadette. That’s something you’d know if you’d bothered to fact-check.

Mouth Breather

by Austin Goodmanson

A groan comes from the living room. Something crumbles. The floor shakes.

She doesn’t answer. I text: How’s Anya? The ceiling slopes, forcing me to duck as I move toward the far end. My VHS collection. I don’t let anyone pile junk on them. They still do, though.

She’s putting socks over her doll’s legs, Donna replies.

A new thought: How will you guys go to the bathroom?

They are mermaids.

The Electric Ghostwriter

by R.J. Breathnach

“Just how long did it take you to finish this manuscript?”

Alura Irving leaned forward over her desk as she asked the question. The old man sitting in front of her looked like he was trying to emulate one of the wizards in the as yet unpublished fantasy novel she had finished reading the previous night. As an editor at one of the largest publishing houses in the world, thousands of authors had sat across from her making the case for their books to be picked up for publication and distributed to the literature-hungry masses. Most were young, bright-eyed and eager. They all had an idea, something they believed the world was missing in the material it read. Few of them looked, or behaved, like the man in her office at that moment.

Ernest Quill was hunched over, almost sunken into himself. He had probably been handsome, decades ago. His long hair, and even longer beard, were nearly entirely the colour of bone with only a few specks and streaks of grey running through them. The colouring reminded Alura of a snow leopard, as did his large powerful looking hands that nervously fidgeted with his beard. He was wearing a three-piece suit, robin egg blue, and occasionally his fidgeting with his beard would briefly expose a deep purple bowtie at the neck of his crisp white shirt. Alura could not remember the last time an author had dressed to impress for a meeting with her. These days it was all ripped jeans and sandals and baggy discoloured t-shirts. Those authors were all young, and they swaggered. There was no other word for it, or at least no other word that quite captured their presence. Swagger. A confidence not necessarily backed up by a corresponding level of skill, but aiming to distract from that lack. Ernest had not swaggered into her office. His movements between the door and the chair he was now sitting in would be more accurately described as pottering.

“Two years.” he said in answer to her question.