Starlust

Professor Dutton had a theory that the problem with the universe was the stars. They were too greedy, and lusted after everything, until they imploded and became black holes. If we could distribute all that energy a bit more judiciously, so that it didn't bunch up so egregiously that the stars began consuming everything around them, then we wouldn't have to worry about the heat death of the universe. According to his calculations, it was also the fault of the stars that the universe was forever expanding.

"And thus, I present my plan to destroy every star in the galaxy."

Orbits

She flips her glasses onto her hair where the shine is slippery. It falls back down to her nose, plastic lenses smudging. She goes for a drive wearing the blurry wedge and thinks she must be imagining the sight of two moons in the sky. One higher than the other, they supervise the intersection. "That was just Mars approaching Earth," her husband says tartly. He’s quite the mansplainer but she knows a defunct theory when she hears one. She’s seen for herself that it’s possible for the sun to set while the moon rises on anything else, anything at all.

From Guest Contributor Cheryl Snell

Cheryl's recent fiction has appeared in Gone Lawn, Necessary Fiction, Pure Slush, and elsewhere.

A Theory Of Justice

The medical assistant asked in a flat, toneless bureaucratic voice how I would describe the pain. Stabbing? Aching? Sharp? Dull? She entered my answer on the form, but without showing any actual concern. A philosopher once said – or should have – that a society is only as just as its treatment of its most vulnerable members: the old, the sick, the poor, the institutionalized. Using a dropper, I strategically place .50 milliliters of Triple M tincture under my tongue. I wait fifteen, twenty minutes, and then gray-clad troops burst from the treeline with a rebel yell. The tongue is all muscle.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of Failed Haiku, a poetry collection that is the co-winner of the 2021 Grey Book Press Chapbook Contest and scheduled for publication in summer 2022.

The Bad News First

Every morning there were dumpsters full of newborn babies. Every evening there was one brown shoe at the side of the road – with, some said, a foot still in it, tapping. I developed a theory that we were all just the debris of a distant explosion. By then I knew no one was coming to save me. Even the letter carrier would regularly ask for proof I was who I was before handing me my mail. As I took my driver’s license out of my wallet, little white spiders would fall from somewhere and melt like snowflakes in her hair. From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie's latest full-length poetry collection, Gun Metal Sky, is due in early 2021 from Thirty West Publishing.