Date

“You talked me into this.”

“What’s to fear?” I said. “We just take her somewhere quiet.”

Zhou was a straight-A student. His only flaw was cowardice.

“You owe me. If you hadn’t pushed me…”

He started the car.

Half an hour later in the old classroom the woman stared at Zhou in fear.

“This isn’t kidnapping?” he muttered. “What next?”

No answer.

Zhou turned. Only he and the woman remained.

“Hello?”

He grabbed the walkie-talkie. Only static.

“Where are you?”

In panic he asked the woman, “Did you see another person?”

Not the best opening for a date, Mr. Zhou.

From Guest Contributor Yang Zefan

Woodlands

My emaciated body shook in the cold air. I trembled in the woods alone and I am so hungry and thirsty, my stomach churned.

After my family was taken by the Nazis, and I escaped by sheer fortune, I made my way to the forest hoping to find others. I heard families were hiding in the woodlands, but I lost hope and cowered against a tree waiting to die.

I heard rustling and there stood two men and one woman with guns. They lowered their weapons.

The man with the scar on his face spoke. “Come.”

I nodded and followed.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Secret Green

An endless sea of green washes slowly by as I sit on the bus from Cancún to Mérida. There’s a conspiracy that wants me to believe that the waves of that sea are all same same same. That the leaves are all from the same kind of bush, that the trees all have the same name, that there’s nothing else, no hares on the ground, no butterflies traveling from flower to flower. But I know. The magic of this ocean opens up only to those who respect how long, how very long it takes for the mystery to reveal itself.

From Guest Contributor Isabella Mori

Dirty Talk

She answers the phone and lies on the bed, silk sheets touching her legs.

“I’m ready,” she says.

His mellifluous voice responds through the receiver.

“A student's laundry basket.”

“Oh yeah.”

“A tramp's underpants.”

“Umm, yeah.”

“An abattoir worker's smock.”

“Keep going.”

“A bucket of pig swill.”

“I love it when you tease me.”

“The blocked drain of a slum toilet.”

“Please don’t stop.”

“The mouth of a raw sewage pipe.”

“Oh my god.”

“Untreated bedsores.”

“I’m almost there.”

“A puss-filled boil.”

“Yes, yes.”

“A colonoscopy tube.”

“Yesssss.”

He ends their call and returns to his job running the country.

From Guest Contributor Neil Benad

Late Stage Misanthropy

Clyde keeps his excursions to a minimum. Thankfully, grocery trips, doctor visits, and dating have all become obsolete thanks to the computer. Only his biweekly liquor runs force him outdoors anymore.

His copy of Walden is now so tattered he contemplates returning it to the library and exchanging it for a new one. It's the thought of being confronted by the librarian more than the late charges that deter him.

Thoreau had his cabin, but Clyde finds solitude easier to come by in the city. He's surrounded by people and near constant reminders of why he'd rather be left alone.

Cut

I had my heart set on a buzzcut. My mother forbade it.

But what she didn’t know was I had been raped. Repeatedly. I need this. She relented.

I grabbed my shears and made the first cut, leaping up and down, hands flapping all over in joyous stims. This is what it feels like to be in my body, isn’t it? I grabbed the clippers.

Three stripes gone. Nothing in the world could bring me down.

Five. Every bad thought, every traumatic moment that’s happened left me.

Seven. I couldn’t stop stimming.

Finally, it was all gone.

I’m me again.

From Guest Contributor Grayson Pride

Butterfly

I staggered out of the time machine, wiping blood from my nose. Like Doctor had warned, radiation attacked my brain as time lapsed.

The man I hunted was under the tree. He’d dismantled humanity and our future.

He waved. His chubby cheeks reddened from the sun.

“Look,” he said. Resting on his small palm, a butterfly.

Wrong year. I didn’t expect to see a child.

He smiled innocently. “For you.”

Smiling back, I reached out.

He closed his fingers, and squeezed. A familiar smirk appeared. “Uh-oh.”

I reeled backwards.

No. I am not a monster. I am not a monster.

From Guest Contributor Umi Agawa

Prevail

The Nazis took drastic measures to make me obey their cause. I had been beaten so badly, it took weeks for my swollen eye and broken arm to heal, and that wasn’t the worst of it. They threatened my wife and daughter. If I didn’t do what the Nazis wanted, they would kill my only family.

My parents were shot dead in their home because they hid Jewish friends, and I had been told they begged for their life.

If I continue to refuse, my wife and daughter will be next. I had to prevail; I wouldn’t let that happen.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

The Boat

At summer's end, Marta found her dead brother's phone charging in the boathouse, though she had emptied his pockets herself in May. The screen showed one message, unsent: Don't sell the boat.

She laughed, because the boat leaked and because Erik had never repaired anything before being asked twice.

Outside, pines scratched the roof. The red mailbox leaned toward the road, waiting for bills.

Marta carried the phone to the jetty. Under the seat, beside a rusted thermos, lay fresh gray putty around the seams.

She launched at dusk. Halfway home, the phone died. The boat did not sink either.

From Guest Contributor Niklas Pettersson

The Trouble With Being Born

It was called Oak-something – Oakwood? Oakdale? – Diner. Waitresses, dressed as for mourning in all black, moved through the maze of tables and booths with the dull resignation of fish in an aquarium. Mom was sitting across from me, looking unusually happy. I felt kind of happy myself. Our waitress, a flyblown blonde, came over to refill our cups. She sloshed some coffee on the table as she poured. Mom rolled her eyes. Then I noticed the smell and her skin hanging down in strips like peeling wallpaper, and I realized I was screaming and that she was 20 years dead.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie's latest poetry collection, True Crime, was published by Sacred Parasite in Berlin this year.