Hybrid Children Lunchables

Bio Lab meat? Are you eating your Uncle Fester’s cancer DNA? Bio lab fish genes are spliced with cancer to create a quick-growing mermaid that is evil. Hybrid children being eaten by everyone in this realm. Shame on evil. Bio Lab meat with chicken? Did you eat chicken man? Or a cow and human? Did you eat a Minotaur?? Who is speaking for the Hybrid children of this realm? Did Orc originate from a hybrid pig human escaping a bio lab meat factory? Did you eat your own flesh today in this weird reality where the law says it's okay?

From Guest Contributor Clinton Siegle

Steering Law

A man lost his dog, but the cat lets him walk her. Connected by the dog’s old leash, they walk. The man explains the world as they go: this leash is our curve of pursuit, he says.

What’s that? The cat, having no crystal ball or even a decent pair of glasses, might wonder.

See those ants? Each walks at the same speed toward the ant on their left. The curve of pursuit is the curve traced by the pursuers.

Never one to grovel for place, the cat assumes a posture identical to the man, and pulls ahead of him.

From Guest Contributor Cheryl Snell

Cheryl's new series is called Intricate Things in their Fringed Peripheries.

A Non-random Universe

He was a firm believer in the order of things; a conscious universe. He was well versed in Newton’s 3rd law and the law of ‘what goes around comes around.’ He had reduced life to a mathematical formula.

He'd lived his life being painstakingly good, always looking over his shoulder for karmic mis-steps. He would do good and be amply rewarded by a benevolent divinity that was weighing his every action on an eternal balance.

He died with hurt confusion in his eyes, his pain-wrecked body mangled and torn. Had he gotten the formula wrong? Was there even a formula?

From Guest Contributor Minerva Athena

Love Triumphal

Mother hides me in the closet.

You won’t go back to that school. I’ll deal with that asshole father.

She smells of lavender perfume and sweat. Not like Dad with his Old Spice, calculated aroma, who mocks Mother. Arranges my future with Headmaster Edgar. Harvard, law.

Men bang at the doors. Buzzwords waft into my musky space: “Custody arrangement,” “Legal orders.”

Fuck off. Mother’s words hold firmness, edge.

Footsteps draw near, unpleasant pounding.

My mother tells them I’m her son. I’m someone who needs love.

I absorb that word, so foreign, while she spars, words rising.

Love. What beautiful form.

From Guest Contributor Yash Seyedbagheri.

Yash is a graduate of Colorado State University's MFA program in fiction. His work is forthcoming or has been published in journals such as 50 Word Stories, Silent Auctions, City. River. Tree. and Ariel Chart.

Miss Plum In The Bedroom With The Candlestick

Crime was common back then, and the law itself often criminal. Nobody was safe from the thugs prowling the city. It took constant and wearying vigilance to survive. If I happened to fall asleep, I’d wake up afraid. I think I was afraid she wouldn’t be there, peering out through a crack in the curtains. Why you here? I asked the first time she appeared. She just gave a fuzzy, fragile smile. The ambiguity was intentional. When you leave details out, it opens up possibilities for what can be – an ancient tree whose entwined branches support 34 brilliantly burning candles.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie co-edits the journals UnLost and Unbroken with Dale Wisely

Pigeons With Pants

In an effort to eradicate the disease carrying pigeon population from the city, the mayor signed into law an ordinance requiring all pigeons within the city limits to wear pants. His hope was that they would be forced to flee the city as they did not possess the dexterity necessary to fashion their own clothing. He underestimated the pigeons’ solidarity and the ordinance instead sparked an uproar in the garmentless pigeon community. The pigeons quit their jobs as letter carriers in protest and decided to focus their efforts solely on their cynical hobby of defecating on large man-made objects.

From Guest Contributor, Sean Franklin

Orts And Ends

The Orts law went into affect after the famine of '26, criminalizing the failure to consume even the tiniest morsel of leftover food after a meal. The first offense was punishable by up to ten years in prison.

Lawmakers had failed to anticipate certain side affects of the statute. Pet owners were forced to finish their pets' meals. No one enjoyed having to eat orange rinds or rice paper wrappers, but they were considered edible and therefore included in the ordinance.

Yes, these first world problems still existed despite the 70% reduction in the world's population during the decades-long food crisis.