Dreams Of Fallen Ashes

He didn't ask.

He just slid on the shoe, and that was that.

Granted, it was all a huge improvement from my previous position – a dizzying improvement. I had to keep reminding myself that everything was real, everything was fine, that I truly was in a fairy tale. And granted, I had asked – no, begged – to go to that dance in the first place. If I hadn't –

If I hadn't, I would still be wearing sturdy leather shoes, sleeping in warm ashes, and dreaming.

Not here, undreaming, with ankles caught in sharp chains of diamond and gold, watching others dance.

From Guest Contributor Mari Ness

Be Easy

Tomas nervously made his way to his seat at the very back of the lecture hall. He'd originally staked out this spot to avoid being called on during class discussion, but if it afforded him the opportunity to surreptitiously glance at his neighbors' test answers, that was just a happy accident.

He prayed this final was easy. He needed an A on the exam to ensure a passing grade. Failure meant his dreams of medical school would be over.

The first question contained the word "Gluconeogenesis."

Tomas stood and walked out of the classroom. The world needs car mechanics too.

Maxwell

When Maxwell slept, he always dreamed of chocolate. According to his psychoanalyst, this was a long repressed association he had with the candies his mother gave him as a child. His medical doctor insisted it was a result of his chocolate allergy (technically three different allergies to milk, nuts, and soy, but who's keeping track). His wife believed it was a sign he should get her a Valentine's Day gift (collateral damage be damned).

Maxwell visited a dream analyst. She said chocolate represents an indulgence, and his subconscious was telling him to live life.

In other words, death by chocolate.

Ripped To Bits By Ghosts

I moved into my workshop, with a gas-ring and pair of chickens in a cage. I needed no assistants. I watched the sky from a hilltop laboratory, harnessing the lightning.

In reality I sleep under the stairs in my friends’ flat. He’s a motorcycle courier, she’s a receptionist. I work where I can, wherever the agency sends me, seven days a week. If I’m ill I rely on her noticing and bringing me soup or something. I have a notebook to record my dreams. Huge flights of geese turn furrows through the red November skies. Worlds can barely contain me.

From Guest Contributor Geoff Sawers

The Dark Arts

If I look different, taller or fitter, it may be because a kind of prisoner swap has taken place. Somehow I’ve wriggled out from under the extreme judgments of a cold, tyrannical god. I’m still me but not the same. My failures suddenly seem less painful, viewable in retrospect as a series of valiant gestures against the authority of received narratives. Indigenous names for places have been restored, our pale winter bodies renourished. And so we lie down together, she and I, consumers of dreams, while angels dabble in the dark arts and the sniper kneels at the corner window.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is author of the poetry book, The Dark, available from Sacred Parasite, which will also publish his book, Akimbo, in 2025.

Two Ottos

By the time he awoke that Saturday morning, Otto was exhausted. It was another night of running dreams – of being on a treadmill, getting no place fast. And, then, of the treadmill ratcheted up to greater and greater inclines.

How much more could he take?

Painfully, step after step, he stumbled into the kitchen. Were his feet blistered?

There, in the cage on the counter, was Little Otto, his hamster.

And on the ridiculous hamster wheel.

Little Otto's legs moved faster and faster.

"Stop it."

But Little Otto only sped up.

"At least wipe that damned smirk off your face."

From Guest Contributor David Sydney

Microplastics

Too small, too tough, the forever stuff. Five millimeters to a nanometer, all recycle cheaters. Polyethylene is not green. Debris in the sea, in the sand, on the land, in the air. The minuscule plastic molecule – drink it, breathe it, absorb it. 200 thousand microplastic molecules in you every year. Perfect hair, revolutionary skincare – just vain dreams ruining streams. All the sales promotions on lotions and potions, laundry soap, shopping bags, and tags. So much trash; it’s the sin of the bin. It’s hard to be a container abstainer, a nature campaigner. This is the mess we’re in.

From Guest Contributor K Mayer

Sentinels

With the heavens above, eyes perceive blackness below. The silhouettes of lonesome silos dotting a barren landscape gives way to perceptions of ancient obsidian obelisks, sentinels erected by the offspring of some long-forgotten civilization, sating deities of seasons past.

Against a moonless night, one can appreciate the unencumbered band of the Milky Way, glorious gold and white light from hundreds of thousands of stars, blues, oranges and reds, sparkling beacons of potentialities adorning the night sky.

I repose beneath a blanket of starlight, and the encircling melody of coywolves lulls me to sleep as I long for dreams of you.

From Guest Contributor J. Iner Souster

Vernon Dreams Of Love

Vernon had a mighty fine vision of a better life. Though the East had been kind to him, his yearning for adventure in the Wild West was powerful.

He dreamt of wide-open prairies and a sky lit by a million untamed stars. Somethin' he'd only read about in books. The drawings of them big ol' mountain ranges plumb near took his breath away.

Unbeknownst to Vernon was the expanse of Manitoba, sometimes called âpisînikan by the Cree, which means someone who rises from the dead. Soon, his easygoing lifestyle would be disturbed as hordes of undead settlers blocked his path.

From Guest Contributor J. Iner Souster

A Closed Time Curved Loop Time Traveler

As a closed time curved loop time traveler watched in horror at the death of mankind. He wondered. Was it always thus? A learning simulator bent on self-destruction? From one reality bounce to another, pray for peace. In the end, God wins all games. Why? In a Dyson Sphere or Solomon’s statement, there is nothing new under the sun. And that which the author of life has given, so he shall take. Multiple dimensions exist. And every twist and turn of the story of life is taken. What about the dreamers? Even their dreams come true somewhere within a simulator.

From Guest Contributor Clinton Siegle