Coda

He followed the familiar tune through the fog: strings, horns, that impossibly sweet voice. The gloom lifted to reveal the girl, singing her heart out under the spotlight, invisible orchestra in accompaniment. He cried tears of joy, felt love, and also something not quite love.

"You sing it to me every night in my mind. But it sounds so much clearer now. Why?"

She smiled sadly. "Can't you guess?"

*

"Is he dead?" The reporter watched the killer's body inside the execution chamber.

"Yes."

He peered closer. "What does he have to smile about? He murdered that girl right on stage!"

From Guest Contributor Clay Waters

Mystery Hour

A 9-year-old girl trick-or-treating in a black-and-white Halloween costume got mistaken somehow for a skunk. The lead detective on the case is borderline Asperger’s. Covering an entire wall of her grubby office is one of those conspiracy theory maps, with all the pins connected by strings. “I’ll break anything in order to figure out how it works,” she’s famous around headquarters for saying. Her brisk confidence irks male colleagues. “Go away,” one shouts, “and take your shitty forest!” She can’t hear him. She’s out in a far corner of the city collecting evidence of the refulgence of pearls of blood.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of Spooky Action at a Distance from Analog Submission Press. He co-edits the journals Unbroken and UnLost.

A Netflix Original

Two Scandinavian dudes set out in a vintage VW microbus to prove the secretary-general of the United Nations was the victim of assassination. But then, by accident, they discover an attempt to eliminate entirely the smoking of cigarettes after sex. The Scandinavians meet a leader of an underground militia who says that while that’s his signature on the document, he didn’t write the signature himself. I got to be honest, I was expecting more: maybe a “crime wall,” with photos and red strings and so on; maybe the angel of death promising in a mocking tone to stay in touch.

Howie Good is the author most recently of What It Is and How to Use It from Grey Book Press. He co-edits the journals Unbroken and UnLost.

Swan

Why such sorrow for the swan on the water? Why is it her head is hung with such woe? The moonlight lines her with silver as she glides ripples atop the placid pond. And there are banks of passionflowers that glint their crimsons through the night. Had I been that swan, never would you see my nape so weak and crestfallen, so inwardly curved like tendrils at winter’s start. Because there are other swans on the pond with dispositions just the same. And if I swam my sadness to theirs, perhaps our troubles would combine like violin strings and bows.

From Guest Contributor Man O'Neal

Calendar Sex

Cellos make little nicks in the dark and we breathe together. The afternoon was a failure. This plain gesture, togetherness, makes quick use of industrious forgetfulness. I cannot keep you behind this gate beyond the third movement. We mean to create more than one monologue to accompany the flutist. The children upstairs, our occupancy momentarily set. I position your fingers behind my neck as talisman for strings. The tent is down. This igloo explodes into every shard of routine that has, before this moment, set what stands for you and for me, aflame, sparks falling into pockets, to the ground.

From Guest Contributor Kelli Allen

Kelli Allen’s work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies in the US and internationally. She is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee and has won awards for her poetry, prose, and scholarly work. She served as Managing Editor of Natural Bridge and holds an MFA from the University of Missouri St. Louis. She is the director of the River Styx Hungry Young Poets Series and founded the Graduate Writers Reading Series for UMSL. She is currently a Professor of Humanities and Creative Writing at Lindenwood University. Allen is the author of two chapbooks and one flash fiction collection. Her full-length poetry collection, Otherwise, Soft White Ash, arrived from John Gosslee Books in 2012 and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.