Every Ending

Needle prick. Anesthesia kicks in. You’re floating, light as a feather, then you fall back into your body. But not in this dream. You won’t wake up again.

Harsh hospital lights. There’s no capacity to sustain you. To build homes in this scorched world. You couldn’t afford them, not even before the natural disasters. Instead, one-square-meter pods in space—compact and cheap—for your brain. For all human brains. Other body parts are redundant.

We need to shrink. Reduce our footprint. The resources have been exhausted.

Before your eyes, the scalpel blurs. Remember that every ending is a new beginning.

From Guest Contributor Bettina Laszlo

Isolated

House manager Morgan came into my room. He sniffed the air and looked disapproving.

“Mrs Towne,” he began, “The Cobra Committee has issued an edict that there are to be no more visitors.”

I didn't mind. Old age had already picked off my friends and family like a sniper.

“And you cannot go out,” he added. “You'll just have to wait here until you die.”

He smiled to show it was a joke. Hilarious. I was truly isolated now. The other residents were deaf or dumb or their brain was out to lunch, or all three.

Then the telephone rang.

From Guest Contributor Derek McMillan

Derek is the writer of "Murder from Beyond the Grave" available on eBay.

Symbiotes

When she saved me from the Caligulan Brain Fever outbreak, I stopped seeing my NUR-5E unit as just a fussy nuisance. Fascinated, I threw myself into learning coding and robotics, and now she’ll never be touched by anyone else.

We look after each other, you see: she keeps me alive, and with my skills I upgrade her, and deal with any viruses or mechanical issues. I’ve outlived all the ‘friends’ who called me mad, and she is decades past her notional service life. We’ll never stop.

“I love you,” I say. “I will always care for you,” she replies. “Forever.”

From Guest Contributor Alastair Millar

Alastair is an archaeologist by training and a translator by trade. His published flash fiction (and social links) can be found here.

Biopsy Results In Ten Days

I want these days to be about more than just waiting. How can they be? Waiting surrounds me, engulfs me, floods me...swirling, fast, faster than I can dog-paddle away... Things will never be the same again, even if, even if... Things will never be the same again, even if the white coats say all is well, even if what I’m awaiting turns out to be snip-snip-and-it’s-gone. I’ve caught a whiff that so permeated my nostrils my neural pathways my brain my heart, its remnants echo into the rest of whatever part of not-forever that I do get to see.

From Guest Contributor Cynthia Bernard

Brain Changes

My mind has lost its stickiness, my thoughts are stalling out. Questions I have no answers for are good for rewiring my brain, they say, weaving it through with logic. So why did I send some drawings to my blind friend? She said, “I can’t see, remember?” “Can’t someone look at them for you?” “Their ability to see doesn’t make me less blind.” I didn’t get whatever it was she was getting at, so I hung up. Maybe I should call her back. I could tell her about the new show at the Drawing Center. She might want to come.

From Guest Contributor Cheryl Snell

Cheryl's books include several collections of poetry, and a series of novels called Bombay Trilogy. Recent work has appeared in journals from India, Ireland, UK, Canada, Greece, and the US.. Look her up on Facebook

Bruno Schulz On The Street Of Crocodiles

The pills I take at night to get to sleep leave me feeling dazed all morning. I stare stupidly at the white screen of my laptop while rubbing my head in a forlorn attempt to stimulate the language center of the brain. I think once again of Bruno Schulz. Only the first sentence of the novel he was writing when he was murdered survives: Mother awakened me in the morning, saying, “Joseph, the Messiah is near...” A Gestapo officer shot him down in the street in broad daylight. It was a kind of hobby, to be honest.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of the poetry collections Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing) and Famous Long Ago (Laughing Ronin Press).

Rainy Day Woman

She was sitting on the bed, crying and feeling “something’s wrong, I should be asking for help,” but she couldn’t remember who or what she should be asking. Everything in her brain was white static. Secretly she wanted to see beautiful color, a purple that vibrates at the very end of the spectrum. Anyone observing her would have probably concluded she would never get away – away from clock faces with Roman numerals, the tyranny of structure, all those people going about their day on a busy street. When something needs water, you water it, you don’t just hope for rain.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie's latest poetry collections are The Death Row Shuffle (Finishing Line Press, 2020) and The Trouble with Being Born (Ethel Micro-Press, 2020).

Faith, Hope, Etc.

The next time you’re caught in a really bad place – the kind of place where people are always asking each other, “Oh why can't they get that baby out of the ground?” – take some frequently used verbs and combine them in a bowl with Hindu magnet incense, a bit of forgotten history, brain fluid, and warm dog’s breath, and then let the mixture sit for 20 minutes, after which you should be able to see a faint glow up there, see it coming over the hill, women wearing sky blue T-shirts that say “Quaker” and waving signs that say “Love.”

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie's latest collections are I'm Not a Robot from Tolsun Books and A Room at the Heartbreak Hotel from Analog Submissions Press.

A Hard Blessing

When the Iron Giant fell from the sky thousands of us died. Thousands of us crushed, frail flesh smeared; muscle, brain and bone pulped. Phosphorus flares turned us to char. We starved and burned and died.

Toppling down from heaven, a hard blessing; we stood in its shadow and begged it to stop. But no ears heard us; they were shut tight to our prayers.

The Giant gouged the earth sending dust into the air choking us. We starved, we fought, we fed on one and other, and we survived. And the Iron Giant lies waiting for us to come.

From Guest Contributor David Rae

Overindulgence

She was tired and had too much to drink. Her eyes drooped to provide the perfect screen for strange imaginings. Time passed.

Chloe jolted awake to a shift in the buzz of conversation, her vision presenting a weird split screen of a now empty hotel bar, a new day’s sun barging through the large windows and reflecting off each polished surface to sear through the fog in her brain: judgmentally bright.

Her clothes smelled of staleness and smoke. Stale vomit prowled the back of her throat.

Chloe waddled to the bathroom, suddenly aware of another need.

She’d open late today.

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid