So here I am sweating all severe at a study table, my nose fake-poking in a fantasy anthology I was barely interested in called, Mists of the Mawgwan1. I adjust my glasses. A nervous reaction. There’s the zipping again. Teeth unlocking somewhere in the stacks of the Chuck Parsnips Bookatory2. The vibrato is unnerving and the now familiar zzhup and zzhaw makes my lymphatic system stiffen defensively. Not that anything terrible had ever happened. It’s just knowing something will happen. I can never imagine what.
  I wait a little longer than I remember waiting before. What secret manoeuvres were unfolding unseen somewhere in the escherian layout of the bookstore? I leaned into the airspace, listening for more clues but nothing. Zilcho.
  The anticipation is giving me shaky-leg, a reaction I am loath to tolerate in others, so I evacuate my comfy nook and take a shuffle around to see what character might have slipped through this time.
  Due to my latent ophidiophobia3, I am easily distracted by the letter S and freeze-stall looking at the spines of Mīḍāb Sarkar’s Rusty Codpiece trilogy4, when I smell the compound bouquet of sawdust and creosote. It was unmistakably out of the ordinary for the musty alkaline of the Bookatory so I knew something was about to be up.
  “Up here,” says a nasal whee, a vocal affectation I’d associate with the voices from Slow Lemons5 or Tourniquet Play6.
  There they were, up in the corner, on an abandoned shelf, more suited for a dachshund-sized Grotesque than the miniature but lanky humanoid grinning at me.
  It’s unclear what they need with my attention so I shrug and send a little ghuh7 sound in their general direction. And before I offer any more ambivalence, they clamber down from the lookout and side skip down the wall of books toward ziggurats-zygotes, motioning for me to follow.
  My instincts tell me to ding dong in the other direction, but the curiosity magnets are firing strong today so I big-stride after them.
  They’re heading into the Chamber of Non-Fiction, a place I generally stay away from. Not that I’m adverse to a little hello reality. It’s just I can get that at home, waking up alone at three in the morning with a foot cramp.
  The zipperling stops suddenly, planting their feet and scanning a row of books, “Six six two, six six two, six six two point one! Pyrotechnics!” they shout, waving me closer.
  Under the skylight they’re bathed in hot yellow beside the monolithic brown shadow of the big boy reference bookcase. They’ve got a mini mullet with barely long curls at the back. Their piscine face shines and catches the light as they expand their cheeks excitedly. I’m not sure what you’d call the body wrap they wore. Mummy suit was probably close enough.
  They unsheath the Big Book of Fireworks from its neighbors and press it against my belt buckle.
  “Eleven!” they project up at my face, commanding my attention.
  “Where?” I blurt, too curious to let the double sticks hang there.
  “Not where, when,” they say, looking disappointed. Their eyes welling up, dripping around the edges.
  “Ten?” just seems to follow naturally. And I start to tell them as much, but the explanation is cut short with an enthusiastic interjection.
  “Yes yes, it follows. Ten, the corpus maximus8, five double dances of the Twin Macabre9, and the ten divine nodes on the Lifetree10,” they say, rocking on their heels.
  “And the Dewey D System11,” I sneak in, hoping to impress them with my prescient observations, but it wasn’t what they were looking for. They project more sad eyes and drooping. I should have tried Lords-a-leaping.
  “Then nine,” I said, changing the count. Still holding the BBoF and sensing an expanding expectation. An intensity in the air. A crackle crinkling the subtle drone of the building and its inhabitants. I couldn’t help but think it was the harbinger of some imminent combustion but it was more like the groaning contractions of birth, engorged with fresh cells and new blood.
  “Nine like the realms. Multiply with me,” they suggest, this time more casual, as they point their mummy hip to the south and stick out their elbow, “Give me another number”
  “That’s all I’ve been doing,” I say, not meaning to be funny. They just stare and wait. The expectation groans again, “Okay okay, let’s say 71. You didn’t give me any particular parameters, so I’m picking 71.”
  “Very good, so what is 9 times 71?” they ask me like I’m just going to pop out the answer pooditty dooditty.
  I pause for a beat, not to appear too eager, then stack the numbers on an imaginary board in front of me and tell them. It’s 639.
  “Now add those numbers together, then add the resulting digits together,” they say, suddenly pointing their hip in the other direction.
  “Funny, it equals 912,” I say, trying to be non-plussed.
  “Nine, nine, nine, nine, nine. Always nine, every time. Not a trick really, it’s because—“
  “Ten begets nine13,” I jump in with a little more plus.
  So now, I hold their attention. A loose grip maybe, but a handful of interest for the moment.
  The book smells like it’s off-gassing. Bitter. Dank. A memory of expired medicine in yellowing plastic.
  “Did you know there are eight exits in this building?” they ask. Possibly hypothetical.
  I assume this is information we’re going to need shortly, “Perhaps tell all of us here,” I say, careful to keep the book steady in my two hands while craning my neck in a big circle indicating the other Bookatorians in our view.
  “North, East, West, South, Up, Down, Through, and —,” the last direction, an underhand confetti throw into an imaginary cosmos, they mime in slow motion and mouth the word Woosh.
  “Seven,” I say, goading them to continue.
  “Voyages14 and vespers15. We’re ships in the valley,” they say excitedly, perhaps titillated by the playful volleys.
  “You don’t make any sense,” I say, “especially here, in the Chamber,” reminding them of the dry academic pall of history in this dusty section. I use my leg to fan around the area.
  “I am sensing both skepticism and flippancy, an understandable reaction considering,” they tell me, “but hang on for a moment—”
  “I am hanging on but I really think you should take the book back. Can’t we just slip it on the shelf and pretend we never started this dangerous protocol? I once held on to a firecracker too long when I was seven years old. Uncle Helgason was throwing them in the steel milk can at Gramp’s birthday party, and said I could give it a shot. But once that fuse was lit, I was enchanted by the gleam, the glow, the slow fizz burn curling toward my thumb and forefinger. Come to think of it, I couldn’t let go. My pincers would not un-pince, and I watched the mini-ordnance flashbang like a tiny exploding sun in my hand.”
  “Six,” says the zipperling now sounding hurt, fat saline baubles running down its fishy face, “I’m afraid we have to keep going, so hold on a little longer. It’ll be over soon.”
  “Five,” I said, uncharacteristically resigned to get the whole thing over with. My tendency to meander and angle my motivations indirectly suddenly confronted with this large format work of impending expectations.
  “Four,” they say, drying up a little and revealing what I might call a corner-smile, though it was definitely lop-sided.
  I scanned the stacks again, but everyone was gone. Someone even left a cheesecutter cap16 and maroon umbrella. The BBoF was pulsing now like something was pushing to get out. My countdown partner’s face widened and heightened, seemingly syncing with the great growing pressure surrounding us.
  “I’m gonna do it,” I say quickly under my breath.
  “Do it,” they say, puffing their cheeks and holding their breath.
  “3-2-1,” I pronounce the numerals together like they’re one word. Linking them to our countdown in rapid succession.
  “Very good, very good. That’s it, thank you,” they say as the barometer unexpectedly drops, the book cools, and the active maelstrom of energy is vanquished away.
  And in the place where I was expecting a great kaboom, there was only the auditory wobble of a vacuum. My ears pop a little, like I am descending from the peak of a mountaintop. A calm clarity returns but there is an unsettling question looming between us.
  “Did they go off?” I ask, squinting into the skylight.
  “Yes, they did go off,” the zipperling says, half satisfied, half relieved.
  “Where?” I say, putting the book down.
  “Not here17,” they say, turning up the other corner of their mouth.

  There is something for every occasion. Tammy takes her Event Pants collection seriously. But late afternoon, only a few hours before the Autumnal Blitzspiel, she is jammed up with indecision. An embarrassment of britches.
  “Leonard! Did you borrow my Surfers?” she hollers down the basement stairs, “Get off that joystick and help me find them!”
  Her son, truculent and bitchy, busy scoping baddies in a brown on green virtual wasteland, yaps back, “What the fuck’s a joystick?---Perv!”
  “I said, my Silver Surfers. Did you just call me a pervert?” Tammy yodels, but she knows he won’t respond.
  Moving on, she has nixed the flashy trousers. It’s just not their time to shine.
  The Event Pants matrix is a three by three grid ordered across a peach blossom duvet. She blows at the dust rays, spotlighting Rusty Roads, the warm earth corduroys, actually perfect for this evening but impossible to pull off given she just wore them last weekend on a special occasion run to the fancy grocery store.
  Next on the top row are the Black Beauties and Plum Paraders, both too flimsy for the brisk harvest evening, though they could have checked the flirty and professional boxes. This particular social engagement requires a considered wardrobe strategy. Everyone is going to be there. Everyone.
  The Cheddar Checks in the middle row are pilly sandpaper between her hot fingers. But she’s pleased at least, finding a rhinestone barrette in the chunky pocket along with a bowling shoe rental receipt. She’d wear these orange woollens but can feel the chaffing already, even before the threads hit her thighs.
  Tammy sells tiles at Logical Ceramics in the Plazaplex Industrial Park. She takes her customer service very seriously and never really turns it off. A magnet for interior design conversations, she can sniff out renovators by the alkaline off-gas cologne of timber and caulking. There is sure to be an opportunity to be in the right place at the right time and lock in a decorative backsplash at the very least. She must feel both put together and creative to achieve the presence necessary to pull off the, quite acceptable, mixing of business with pleasure.
  She is five two in wedges with a frame like a parallelogram, fit and leaning, ready to pounce on a box of ivory subway bricks (kept in trunk) if she has to.
  So, next in line is the real debate, Foxy Flares or Verdant Vipers, the latter being the item she feels sexiest in. But the flares are more stylish. En vogue.
  “It’s a real puzzle Leonard!” she ricochets down the stairwell, still pissed.
  And it was a doozy of a brain twister. Whatever she wears, must comprehend many layers of function and form.
  Bottom left is where the shiny, mysteriously missing, pants would’ve been, replaced absently with some unpickable azure yoga leggings to fulfil the requirement. The next couple overwrought numbers are equally no go’s, drenched in her mother’s voice, with the banal rhetorical, asking if she was reeeealy going to wear them all night long, as if she’d get up and change half way through the circle square.
  Then, kneeling on the bench at the foot of the bed, with sheer tiny briefs creasing her ass like an origami prefold, she lurches to grab lucky green snakes. It’s an emotional decision. And though nothing in their recent history might necessarily indicate these trousers are charmed, she feels tonight might be the night.
  After a quick but thorough hair and makeup routine, she wriggles into the lime denim and bunny hops down the hall by her belt loops. It’s more than enough activity to get Tammy sweating. Doc says it might be a thyroid thing.
  “I’m going now!” she calls down, perspiration flinging off her upper lip.
  Sitting on the coffee table in the living room, she plunges her feet into the dark leather boots that punctuate her jungle-forward outfit like twin exclamations marks. Tammy throws a brown bomber over her cheetah print turtleneck and is about to double check the weather out the front window when she sees Bruce ambling down the sidewalk.
  She ducks below the frame and watches him walk by surveying the neighborhood, holding his gaze on Tammy’s browning flower garden. He’s an observant guy. She can tell by the deliberate and questioning eyebrow posture. So, to avoid his inquisitive scan, she crouches even lower, making the seams of the Vipers strain under the extreme compression of her calves and thighs. And in a moment of both clarity and compulsion, squatting painfully by the love seat, she knows a more considered decision could present itself if given the chance. This changes everything.
  Tammy crumples by the drapes, rethinking her choices. Visualizing a new lattice of variants. Something that might make Bruce see her again for the first time. Something alluring, but playful. Velvet? No, maybe velour. She’ll have to dig through her drawers for alternatives. If dresses were an option, she’d have to start over and create a new rubric for stockings.
  “Are you gone yet?” shouts Leonard from his lair.

Part of The Tammies Are In, a Sum Flux open call.

Check out the companion story, A Model Bruce, in SUM FLUX vol.5

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  But there is nothing to pick up on the train, except a restless pall, an unnerving tinnitus sizzling in his tightening chest. The passenger car slides into the past and the grey wheat blur in the window smears across the softness of time. Garo paces up and down the aisle, skips the heel of his hand along the empty headrests, stretches by the restroom, reties his shoes and picks at his fingernails. The banks of childhood data, boot up, and burble to life as he nears the little station. The deceleration is disorienting and he wobbles into a bulkhead.
  The intercom announcement is telling everyone to make sure they have all their personal belongings before they exit the train. It’s the last stop. Garo cringes at the words, the stationary finality landing around his shoulders as he limps through the doors and onto the platform.
  He resists the urge to run and escape the vacuum—a world rushing into a static target.
  “Lost are ya?” squawks the bird at the booth. Not really as a question but an interjection to jostle Garo out of his statuesque stupor.
  He shakes his head. The intervention works and he stumbles ahead. Every step pushing into the concrete walk is spongy. He mushes his way to the funeral home. The edge of the city crackles far away, and here, the pace winds down. Garo’s mind is opening to the now vacant hollow behind his eyes. No hyperkinetic synaptic lasers firing. There is nothing but space ahead and behind. He’s shushed his phone because the inaccessible chatter would have him seething with resentment.
  The roads are too wide. The sidewalks are too empty. There are trees everywhere like street sentinels, looming guardians of old stories. He watches a car creep around the corner and park at the curb. The door opens slowly, driver gets out even slower. He thinks they may never close the door behind them. Everything about this scene is unnatural. Time is different here, stretching to accommodate the long tail of existence in this haunted place.
  Maybe a side quest will help him acclimate. A walkabout before dealing with death papers and body arrangements. There should be a pinch of grief but Garo only feels perfunctory responsibility. There is no one else to give this man a last kindness.
  The library and fire hall look the same, he thinks. It’s all a dream though. Semi-focused, semi-remembered, semi-opaque. He leans into a general direction then trips on the uneven sidewalk. Nobody’s looking. No one is there. Invisible—a ghost here too.
  He continues through town, zigzagging into the old neighbourhood, down streets and alleys revealing themselves into existence from some bog of oblivion. At the crosswalk he hears the yippy glitch of children in the school yard playground. The sounds soothe. But it’s not nostalgia–it’s just a comfortable blanket of noise reminding him of home.
  Garo is pulled toward his old school. He stops at the chain link, hooking his fingers into the steel wire diamonds. Kids squeak and bark. The galvanized metal triggers something and he presses his face into the fence to explore the effect. He freezes, electrocuted by memory. Mouth and eye sockets distort into grotesque terror. He’s picking up reconstituted signals from some temporal antennae, re-living the torment of a young boy bully kicked and humiliated by the kid with the brown stripes and cadet boots. Buzzcut, bologna breath, shit fingers, he feels nauseous and struggles to let go and move on. Keep going. Don’t stop. Keep moving. Don’t let him see your fear. The old refrain, seared into soft tissue. Don’t look–don’t look at him. Keep moving.
  Garo finds himself squelching away from the scene, racewalking down the street toward a corner shop at the end of the block. His hips crank from side to side. Thinks he’s being less conspicuous with his feet on the ground as much as possible but his elbows swing out dramatically. He’s caught in the headwinds of a glacial small town cadence and an overwhelming flight response. He’s getting nowhere but he makes it to the convenience store.
  Inside, Garo is looking for an energy drink.
  “Helpya find somethin’?” sings the young woman at the counter.
  “Got it,” Garo says, holding up a can and smiling with his lips pressed together. He’s nervous and feels like an imposter. Maladapted to cozy folk charms, he rocks nervously and looks like the last man needing any supplemental stimulation.
  “Got a restroom in the back, if ya need,” she whispers unnecessarily, misinterpreting his restlessness, then corrects when he shakes his head, “––sure I can’t help you with anything else?”
  Like a stalker catching up with him, the name swerves into his mouth, “Mitch Unger—know a Mitch Unger?” He feels like spitting. Tastes poison.
  “Um ya, think so,” she says squinting like she sees him in a vision, “uh, security guy at Mandrake Bingo.”
  He thanks her and leaves, still trying to shake off the residual phantoms, twisting him up, dragging him down. He steps slow and heavy. Every footfall, a pang of trauma.
  The death duties can wait, he has other shadows he must lay to rest.
  As the old haunts slowly fill up the memory stores, he remembers the place. Used to raid the sand buckets for cigarette butts when he was a kid.
  The parking lot is packed at the matinee bingo session. He stagger-steps through the maze of cars, touching them as he goes like handrails.
  Tiki exotica is playing low inside the hall as he stands just by the door and scans across rows of heads staring at the cards in front of them, daubers hovering and twitching. Ukuleles frap. Drumskins tonk. Slide steel wangs through the reverberating strata.
  N-39
  The caller repeats the number a couple more times and the murmuring throng lifts and falls.
  Another ball drops down the rail.
  O-71
  Garo locks on to a lone uniformed man at the back of the room inert on a folding chair. Maybe half asleep. Hands on his protruding paunch. He looks so small but the voice comes back. Don’t look at him, keep moving. Don’t stop. Keep going.
  And it takes all of Garo’s concentration to unstick his feet from the tile and edge around the periphery for confirmation. How would he know? Then what? He maneuvers toward the cashier’s desk for cover and angles his gaze awkwardly.
  He recognizes the profile. Stub nose and a backward sloping brow, his blubber lips loose and flaccid quivering with heavy wet breath. His chin disappears into his neck and his shoulders roll forward like his chest is caving in. There is no authority in this man. No vigilance. No awareness. He stares into the fluorescents, washing him out like a thinning undershirt. His security badge hangs off his drooping pocket as he sags on his seat, just waiting for it all to end.
  Garo walks into his sight line but old Mitch Unger is checked out. There is no recognition, no acknowledgment of a presence–only a shifting low power gaze trying to avoid eye contact.
  B-13.
  “Lucky thirteen,” the caller says, washing her arm across the space like she’s conjuring good fortune. Sprinkling magic like make-a-wish faeries alighting on the salt pepper heads of the crowd.
  A shade lifts like a spectre dissolving to dust, and Garo, forgetting his vestigial antagonist, turns and walks out, refracting the anti-climax into clarity on an unending landscape.
  He gets Ilya’s body to the crematorium, puts his stuff in donation bins and leaves them in the lobby with detached ambivalence. There is nothing left here now. Vanquished spirits in an archived realm.
  Back on the platform home, the booth bird declares, “Looks like you found where you’re going.”
  But Garo doesn’t feel the propulsion. There is no go in Garo.
  He sits at the train window in the middle of an empty passenger car. No charge. Phone dead. He puts his feet up and sinks into the headrest. There is no elasticity snapping back to the city. All that potential energy lost with the stretch into the past. Nothing to recoil. No bounce. Only the empty vessel of relief.
  All aboard—the doors are now closing.

It's been three months, and no one can explain the atmospheric phenomenon reshaping our sky. So far, it is a largely passive visitor: iridescent cloud veils shimmer from dawn to dusk, while colossal shadow-spires rise after dark and blot out the stars. Some taste metal, others swear a sweet perfume drifts through the air. Harmless so far, yet profoundly distracting, the most unnerving trait is a lilting hum that slides from high to low and back again with no discernible pattern, like distant singing heard from a far away place. Insect, animal, and plant systems seem affected but the evidence is inconsistent and elusive.

Instruments lie, theories multiply, certainty evaporates. Every data capture breeds more questions, and the phenomenon’s intent remains unknowable. Many have adapted to this altered normal; others find their lives bent, transformed, even broken, by its looming presence.

Donate What You Can

These are the Weather Reports:

Old Tom - by Jay Oatway

Elaine - by Caitriana NicNeacail

The Hymenopterist - J.Kyle Turner

Thom Bergstrom - L.R. Scott

Sora - Olivia McNeilis

Tabby - Honeygloom

Purge - Wildflower

James O - M.P. Fitzgerald

Mayor Percy Thorne Sackett - E.J. Trask

The Widower - Nick Winney

Dolores - Will Boucher

Bird Mother - Zivah Avraham

Jake - A.P. Murphy

James Earl Stockton - Drew Valdez

Shifu David Rosner - Alex Shifman

Emilio - Michael B. Morgan

Theme - Minor Fossil

Gabriel - Daniel O’Donnell

Jenkins - Jessica Maison

Walter - Sandolore Sykes

Elliott - Sam Reid

Hare - James Worth

Winston Ford - Spencer D.W.

Charlie & Trevor - Keith Long

Zanna - Frances Hahn

The Friend - Jon T

Mr. Vasquez - L.L. Ford

George Ferris - S.L. Linton

Elizabeth - E.B. Howard

Randal - Hamish Kavanagh

Duke Benny - Mike Duffy

Luca - Jamie Dibs

The Archeologist - Aristotle Evangelos

The We - ConJurD

Jenny Darke - Garen Marie

Kaldi - Stephen Rozo

The Shipbuilder - Shane Bzdok

Sybill - Zani D

yGOR - miter

The Mad Scientist - Michael S. Atkinson

Alex Houston - S.M. Osborne

Mister President - JLG Noga

Lightning Immaculate - Andy Futuro

The Ranger - Brennen Costa

John Bull - Sean Thomas McDonnell

Birdie - M.E. Beckley

Thank you to all the collaborators and their expansive talents!

M.E. Beckley is a fiction writer whose work weaves myth, mystery, and character-driven fantasy. Her stories explore the depths of human nature through immersive worldbuilding and character-driven fantasy. With a background in community engagement, archival research, and international studies, she brings a global perspective to her writing. She shares original fiction and lore at bmaya.substack.com.

Work In Progress

Welcome! I write dark fiction, my favourite writers include Lovecraft, Stoker, and Tolkien. I invite you to explore my imagination and traverse the path of (possible) publishing. Currently building an anthology to my debut novel, "Shades of Night". Enjoy!

By The Chronicler

This Weather Reports theme is an ambient piece that is a little mysterious, but still hopeful. Synthesizers and strings provide harmony while a piano lends a sparse melody. Underneath it all is a rhythmic bass.

Minor Fossil

A twice monthly newsletter bringing you original ambient music and a look at the world through the histories of instruments.

Sean Thomas McDonnell is a contest-winning Bay Area-based horror and speculative fiction writer. His stories explore themes of powerlessness and agency, human fragility, and grief.

Automatic Writer

Horror fiction with an abundance of quiet dread and moral ambiguity.

By Sean Thomas McDonnell

Aristotle Evangelos is an archaeologist who writes speculative fiction to try to make sense of the world.

Brennen is a writer based out of New England who likes to write horror and sci-fi. He mainly writes to his substack, “Little Raven Horrors”. He loves brainstorming stories on long walks with his two labs, and spending time with his wife and daughter.

Little Raven Horrors

Horror flash fiction and short stories.

By Brennen

 What is lightning futuro? It's a hoax perpetuated by internet scoundrel Andy Futuro, taking advantage of the strange and ominous weather phenomena to gain publicity. He claims to have seen bright blue bolts, unusually large, and coming with no warning from the shimmering iridescent clouds. The only hint of their possibility is a heaviness to the air, a taste of copper on your tongue, a faint scent of perfume on the breeze, and a lilting hum. Even more preposterously, he claims that anything — or anyone— who is struck by this bolt will vanish into the ether and reemerge in a completely different time and place in the striking of another bolt. Thus, these bolts serve as some strange conveyor belt between locations and times outside of linear spacetime. Perhaps he was struck by one of these bolts himself, for when he speaks, the words are but jumbled madness.

Andy Futuro

This probably isn't for you, but if it is you're going to want to subscribe right away. Science fiction, horror, and dirtbag literature. Experimental EDM.

 To my Motherland,
 Thanks to you and your violent traditions, sycophancy comes easier than self-reflection. But given the state of affairs—opaline days, charred-black nights, plodding protests down gooseflesh roads, and this damnable hum—I have finally returned to the latter.
 When the sky split then began to sing, I stood inside the court of public opinion. My interpretation of the phenomena was cross-examined (as is every view of mine). Was this an act of Śuddhodana, Mister President? Vis major, as it were? Sacred judgement for our country’s long list of sins? A bioweapon from the west? Greenhouse emissions exacting their total toll?
 “I’m not sure. It may be all of the above,” I said, smiling beneath sterile studio lights, reporters and charlatans feverish to capture my next grand blunder. “But when the Secretariat completes their inquiry, the people will be the first to know. Once we read the skies, we will mount a defense with integrity and intelligence befitting our nation’s spirit. All will be well under our heaven.”
 I tried sincerity. As sincere as any day I permitted incursion for the greater good, or severed dissension at its kneecaps. Or the day I was sworn into office, my hand on the Buddha at the corner of an ancient room, painted eyes of past presidents hanging above to remind of all the wolves who feasted before me.
 But sincerity finds no purchase with you, Motherland. Neutrality is a lie. No dream remains clean. You taught me as much.
 This, then, must be your final lesson.
 From my fifth-floor window I see them marching past verandas and palm trees: a thousand brown heads as if in a dirge, or jubilee. They carry burning scarecrows and signs spelling my possible fates, calling for me, for my sons, for my sons’ sons. ‘You lied about the skies, Mister President. You said we would be fine, Mister President. What about your sickly, your downtrodden, your demonised, Mister President. Let us return the favour and feed on your children, Mister President.’
 It means nothing to me.
 Despite insipid insurrection attempts (may Brother Andala rest easy) and abominable motions from inside the machine of the press (may Sister Elodie rot in Naraka), my term has remained unperturbed in the face of political armageddon. Approval ratings, lobbyist wails, and cultural wars bear as much significance to me as termites do to a bodhisattva. All are things which will not be carried into the next life. Mere material, I say. Frequencies. Noise.
 But now the noise descends upon me like night. It nears towards my door, aided by a bassline. Thump, thump, thump, thump.
 I see their clothes caked in grime, arms awash with dust, faces rife with vile delight. They are not merely my people. They are also yours, darling. Will you not account for them? Must it always fall to me? Why allow my persecution? What could these people possibly know about this deathtrap of a career? They could not walk a mile in my shoes, do what I do, say what I say without reckoning with themselves. Traditions necessitate discipline. Rituals demand martyrdom. I conducted everything as foretold, performed every rite to perfection, and still they lurch towards anarchy. They say a Smith and Wesson Chief Special weighs twenty-five ounces loaded (I am trying not to count).
 Apologies. Disregard above.
 It is this hum, to be frank. A timorous tinnitus in a forsaken kilohertz (we have attempted to pinpoint a number but it keeps escaping escaping escaping like gravel through my hands). But even that is a generous description. It is more akin to a murder of magflies droning in one-note, dancing against my flesh. Ball bearings in my skull. A head filled with holes for the one most holy (see: me).
 His Holiness writes from here. The Office, capital O. A kind of bardo, or somewhat limbo. Not a thing in this room has changed since I first stepped foot beyond the timber threshold. Not a single hardbound, tasselled curtain nor bespoke piece of furniture. It has appeared this way since the halcyon era of ancestor Dakila, when our waters were clear, our beaches glassy, our hillsides teeming. Even now as I squirm behind the desk and writhe in my seat, I dare not alter its appearance, nor move an inch. Is my inaction worthy of condemnation? The status quo is maintained via quid pro quo. Why change? Why now?
 Right. Absolution, then. How might I achieve it? Shall I list every atrocity? Or do I do Freudian and follow my family tree? We could begin with the failure of my mother’s mother and her addled mind. Or maybe we ought to examine my mother herself: her inherited obstinance, her penchant for punishment, her obsession with the woes and whims of a coloniser’s cross. Then there is the matter of my father and his unambition, my brothers and their fragility, and of course, myself and all that I have wrought: Pan-Pacific pissing contests, skirmishes along fraught peninsulas, deployments to various hearts of darkness.
 But I know better than to bore you with details, don’t I? You know all: every fallen body, every shedded tear, every infant heart sacrificed at the altar of you. You know it all, and then you wink, and despite my best efforts, I cannot help but love you.
 Is that the price? My freedom for your love? Say no more. Six chances, one solution. I shall fit the latter into its chamber, then let karma take the wheel. If I ever stop writing this letter, then you will know, yes? Yes. You always have, yes.
 Thump. Thump. Thump. They beat ever closer to me through these olden walls, but I shame them not. They help me count to midnight.
 Six. Such a lovely thrill!
 Five, then four. Percussive clicks adding to outside’s symphony.
 Three. I look out and up into a gaping dark which will soon give way to an eschaton dawn. The hum is a scream, now. So many screams.
 Two. Bated breath. I recall Smith’s sonnet (Shelley’s always rang too unfamiliar and impersonal for my liking) and I am moved—greatly so—by the Hunter and his Wolf in chace, who meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess what powerful but unrecorded race, once dwelt in my annihilated place. And in my annihilation there are those who came before, despaired faces, mother and her drink, father and his empty hands, my brothers lying still.
 I understand now, darling. There was only one way you could take us all with you, up into your cleaved-open forever, into your sprawling nirvana.
 All will be well under your heaven.
 With unfailing loyalty,
 His Holiness,
 Your Doting Boy,
 [His signature is indecipherable beneath dried crimson carnations.]

JLG Noga is an author and graphic designer currently based in the UK. On Substack, he writes genre-bending short and flash fiction through his magazine, Darkling. When he's not busy thinking of the best ways to traumatise his readers, he watches movies and practices martial arts.

DARKLING

Home of ANTARA, a speculative crime/horror anthology series set in a fictional East Asian city-state + other assorted short stories and flash fiction + REEL STORIES, an essay series on lesser-known book-to-movie adaptations.

By JLG Noga

S.M. Osborne writes speculative fiction, with a focus on epic fantasy and horror. Though he happily lives in Central Florida, his heart belongs to the Appalachian Mountains where he grew up and from which he takes much of his inspiration. Ultimately, he hopes that everything he writes gives glory to his Creator, Savior, and Provider.

Legendarium

Epic Fantasy | Chilling Horror | Nerdy Musings

By S.M. Osborne

Michael Atkinson lives in southern Indiana just across from Louisville,Kentucky, with his wife and small daughter; he works in the legal world and uses writing to keep himself sane. Michael also enjoys Lego, superhero movies, and catching up on his Audible queue. Michael writes light fantasy, superhero serials, and other short stories wherein cliches are poked and genres tweaked.

Michael’s Musings

In this mad wholesome corner of the 'Stack, you'll find stories about angels and other unusual characters, thoughts about my writing process, and ongoing serials about the superheroes of Edison City. Welcome to my world.

By Michael S. Atkinson

 yGOR flipped the light switch up and down. Nothing.
 Ever since the apparition appeared, he hadn’t been able to get power to the studio. All was dark, except for the iridescent glow through the window—which was turning more iridescent by the second.
 The room lights remained dim; however, the Christmas tree–like indicators on his synths began to sputter, crackle, and sparkle with an energy he had never before felt. The knobs on his equipment slid and turned of their own volition, and his studio monitors began to buzz with a perplexing noise.
 The noise was odd to the point of evil.
 yGOR heard voices and couldn’t tell if they were a greeting or a warning.
 The noise began to feel like a threat—one that needed to be repelled or matched or drowned.
 He clicked through his presets and files as fast as possible, feeling as if he was being chased—running to lock a door and hide in his musical safe room. Only something funky could combat the odd feeling rising in his body. He picked up a bass guitar.
 The light of the apparition, the flicker from his equipment, and the fear in his mind began glowing like a discotheque. Only rhythm could fight the odd sensation. The more he tried to fight it, the more the noise fought back, matching his musical instincts blow for blow.
 The battle raged, but quickly exhausted yGOR’s well of beats and melodies and left him no choice.
 He let go, feeling the odd time signatures and atonal mess seep from the synthesizer knobs, through his veins and to his core.
 yGOR realized that giving up released his inner groove. The funk was the oddness and the strangeness was the funk. His heart began to float. He stepped outside, looked up at the sky, and suddenly understood everything.

Miter is the name for the solo recording project of legendary Denver rocker, Ryan Stubbs. Ok, the word “legendary” is doing a lot of work. Ryan releases music, writing and video via Washed Memoir in Real Time, a publication that is guaranteed to change your life for the better, one song at a time.

Washed Memoir in Real Time

Writing music and writing about writing music.

By miter

  That morning, the hazy blue sky, stained with soft washes of pastels from the waking sun, was reflected in the calm sea, erasing the dividing line between them. At that age, I’d often wondered what would happen if I sailed out to the end of the ocean on a day like that. Would I sail off into the sky?

  “Now, now, there’s nothing to worry about. Mommy will be home before you know it,” she said as she tousled my hair. “I wish you could come with me and be my little captain, but someone has to stick around to take care of David.”
  She frowned at the face I made. “Oh, you two will have a great time together. Please listen to him and do what he asks, okay? Help him with the chores?”
  I force a nod, wishing more than anything she would stay. Tears well up, blurring her face as if she were already beginning to disappear.
  “Please don’t be sad, Henry,” she says, kneeling in front of me and grabbing my hand. Her thin lips stretch into a wide smile, and then she reaches into her jacket.
  “Here, I got you something.”
  She places a short length of triangular glass on my open palm and turns it slowly, back and forth. The crystal catches the morning light and casts a rainbow across my fingers. Magic.
  “This rainbow has travelled reeeeally, really far to get here. I like to think of it as a message of sorts.”
  “From the sun?”
  “That’s right, Henry, a message from the sun. A message you can only see with this piece of glass. Now, I won’t be nearly as far from you as the sun, but I can use this crystal, too, to send you messages. So, when I’m gone, any time you see this rainbow, it will be me letting you know I’m thinking about you and that I love you very much. I’ll send an extra special one when I reach the end of my journey.”
  I rub the tears from my eyes with my sleeve and then turn the glass in my hand again. She suddenly pulls me into her arms and hugs me hard.
  “Just remember, Henry, the crystal doesn’t work in the dark.”

  Mother set out on a solo voyage that morning, with the goal of circumnavigating the globe faster than anyone had done before. David said it was because she wanted to prove herself. To whom, I’m not sure. She was already everything to me.
  Three weeks into her journey, she encountered a freak atmospheric event that came out of nowhere and took everyone by surprise. A storm in a category all its own.
  They found her boat a week later, capsized, drifting where the two oceans meet. It was mangled and hollow. Her body was never found.
  I would lie in bed for hours, listening to recordings of her transmissions just so I could hear her voice. But the one I couldn’t get out of my head was her last. Over the sound of howling winds, she describes strange lights shimmering in the gathering clouds.
  “…like a rainbow in the storm.”

  David would never win any stepfather-of-the-year awards, but he was a brilliant engineer and shipwright. In the wake of our loss, with a desperate need to distract us both, he poured himself into teaching me the art of shipbuilding.
  Where he failed as a father, David excelled as a tutor. And I was an eager student, for I knew that if I were ever to find Mother, I needed to know how to build the perfect boat.
  We began with very simple concepts and spent a lot of time building scale models out of balsa wood. Many of the methods he was teaching, he claimed, were thousands of years old and had been passed down from father to son for generations. It was a forced smile, but he meant well.
  As the years passed, the complexity and range of his teachings increased. I learned to sail, to read the skies, and to navigate by the stars. For every hour we spent discussing theory in his office, we would spend ten on the water. I lived for those outings, where I never felt alone. Out there, she was always with me.
  Thanks to David, I blazed through a naval architecture degree. My capstone project was the culmination of everything I’d been taught. It was the manifestation of a boat I’d been building in my mind for more than a decade, improving with every new insight and with every advancement in materials or technology. An unsinkable vessel that could survive any storm.
  I graduated at the top of my class. The prototype was featured in every major academic journal and even made the covers of Sail and Popular Mechanics.
  “Your mother would have been quite proud of you, Henry.”
  It was one of the few times David acted like a real father, beaming with pride for his son’s achievements. Or so I thought at the time. In hindsight, I think he was more proud of himself. My achievements were validation of his brilliance, not mine.
  David died of an aneurysm a few months later, as we were midway through taking my prototype to a full-size, more capable vessel I would christen, Prism. True to its DNA, this iteration is designed to withstand even the most violent squall, or so the simulations have demonstrated. The true test will be the crucible of a real storm. Mother’s storm.

  And then, it arrived. Twenty years to the day from when Mother sailed off into oblivion, the entire town woke to find a colossal shelf cloud parked about a half mile off the coast. It towered miles into the sky and ran as far as the eye could see in either direction. Even more concerning was the faint hum that seemed to be coming from the cloud mass.
  The formation and its odd, endless noise were spectacle enough, but what gave me goosebumps and nearly stopped my heart were the sweeping waves of prismatic light that shimmered across the surface of the clouds.
  Nobody could make sense of it. Not the meteorologists. Not the scientists. Conspiracy theorists spewed their endless theories, but no one truly understood.
  I did. It was all for me.
  I’m a little concerned her final message took so long to get here. She must be very, very far away. But how could she be farther than the sun? No matter. I throw myself into the final build of the boat and start gathering provisions to last the journey.
  I’m coming, Mother.

  — Day 23 since message received —

  Even before the voluntary evacuation orders were issued, most of the town had already packed up and headed inland. The clouds and noise spooked them. It didn’t help that the animals were acting strange, too. Reports of mass beachings of right whales just north of here, and sightings of other species found in these waters that simply don’t belong here, thousands of miles from their natural home.
  What sent many into panic was the research vessel that went missing after entering the stormfront. Last I heard, they still haven’t been found, no SOS, no beacon. Nothing.
  There’s no time for distractions. I throw myself into finishing the boat, but with no one around to assist me, it’s taking much longer than it should.

  — Day 87 since message received —

  The inland sky behind me looks a lot like the sky I remember from the day Mother left us standing on this very dock. Unlike that day, there is no gathering of family or friends to send me off. No one to cheer my departure.
  I take one last look at the town where I was born, and then turn to face the sea, never to look back again.
  I motor out of the bay into deeper water where I raise the sails. They catch the coastal wind and drive me toward the wall of clouds, out to where the two oceans meet.
  As I approach the formation, the hum gets louder, and I catch a heavy scent of iron on the wind. As the boat penetrates the dense, sea-level fog, the strong wind that brought me here is reduced to a light breeze, but it’s enough to keep the boat moving.

  — Day 115 since message received —

  I’ve been floating, directionless, for weeks now. The fog is unrelenting, and the instruments are useless. I get nothing but static on the phones and radios. No chatter, no weather reports. By all measures, there seems to be no “other side” to this weather I’m in.
  The hum is a constant and annoying companion that prevents anything resembling sleep. I fear it might soon take my mind. At times, I think I’m staring into the sky only to catch my reflection staring back at me.
  The nights are terrifying, when the dense atmosphere becomes more dramatic, churning and boiling, seemingly lit by a faint glow from somewhere within. When I aim the spotlight on the water, I catch fleeting shapes of dark leviathans. Their eerie cetacean songs echo in disharmony with the oscillating drone of the fog. On many nights, the scent of blood creeps into my nostrils.
  Day is an endless shroud, each looking identical to the one before. It is morning now, I think. The hum hums its constant song, and the main sail flutters in the light breeze. If only the weather would change its rhythm. I would welcome raging violence over this endless lull.
  I’m lying on the deck, twirling Mother’s gift between my fingers. The diffused light of the fog prevents any of her messages from coming through, relegating the prism to a useless trinket. I like to bring it up to my eye and turn it, watching the sea, fog, and boat tumble in kaleidoscopic impossibilities. Sometimes I stare through the glass like this for hours.
  And then, I see something through the crystal that breaks the pattern. Up ahead, off the starboard side, something floats in the water with limbs outstretched. I scramble to the pulpit to get a better view.
  A body.
  “Mother?” the word falls from my lips.
  I frantically lower the sails, engage the engine, and turn the boat in a wide arc. I nearly lose sight of the body, but manage to find it again. About ten feet from it, I kill the engine and grab the boathook.
  I lean over the rail as the drift closes the distance between us. I tighten my grip on the hook while my heart attempts to leap from my chest. The fog’s hum climbs into the higher octaves.
  The body bobs in the choppy water, causing the limbs to flop up and down, like flapping wings attempting to fly. It is face down and stuffed into faded yellow weather gear covered with patches of algae and clinging barnacles. Mother’s yellow jacket.
  I use the hook to draw the body to the side of the boat, where I get a clumsy grip and struggle to drag it onto the deck. I can’t believe how heavy it is.
  I take a second to catch my breath. The body lies in a contorted heap on the deck, draining seawater back into the sea. The yellow fabric is alive with tiny, squirming larvae.
  It takes both hands to roll it onto its back. I retch when I see the face. A man’s face. Bloated and pocked with holes, exposing pinkish tissue and bleached white teeth, lips mostly gone, giving the face a nightmarish grin. He stares back at me with hollow cavities where the eyes should be. Remnants of a scraggly beard cling to what remains of jellyfish cheeks.
  I fall back and struggle to take a breath. The world tumbles in kaleidoscopic impossibilities.
  Then, something bumps the side of the boat. Then another bump.
  I crawl on hands and knees to investigate the source of the collision. The hum is scraping the lower octaves now, and an odd scent of jasmine wafts in, mixing with the sea-salted odor of rotting flesh.
  My mind stutters, but my eyes are affixed, wide and unblinking, unable to turn away from what is in the water. Another body thuds against the hull, one of dozens bobbing in the sea around the boat. Yellow and swollen like split-ripened fruit. They flap their stiff wings, preparing to take flight off the edge of the ocean.

Stephen Rozo is an amateur writer who dedicates the major portion of his free time to writing poetry and short stories. He has always been a fanatic of libraries, bookstores, and daydreaming. When he isn't working in the construction industry he is probably reading, writing, or sharing poetry from his home in north Georgia USA. Other interests include music, art, and philosophy.

  When the sky changed in the spring, I was delivering a lecture on Kandinsky.
  “Many people scoff at modern art. Art should be about technique and skill, they say. Art should instruct and inspire with its beauty. Art should tell a story or teach a lesson. It should be a window to the world.
  “But Kandinsky wondered what would happen if a painting was not a window on the world but a window on the soul.”
  Phones buzzed and beeped and chirped at this revelation and I would have felt honored by their electronic approbation had it actually been for me. But in this case the symphony was playing for a more astonishing reason. New, strange clouds danced and shimmered in the sky.
  First one student, then two, then ten, then thirty abandoned the lecture hall to race outside and stare up at the heavens. Their cries unseated the others, who followed suit until I stood in front of an empty class.
  On the giant screen behind me blazed Kandinsky’s Composition 8. I paced below its black hole sun, its acute mountain, and soft half-circle clouds. Above me the chaos of checkerboard blades and rectilinear spears skipped and jumped a boxer’s dance, threatening violence or promising protection.
  And then I too went outside.
  In the redbrick courtyard just beyond the hall, veils of clouds shimmered above us as the campus throng craned their collective necks. The new clouds rolled across the blue, awesome and terrible, beautiful and strange.
  Some cried out in wonder, some in terror. A hundred tiny screens documented the phenomenon. A thousand eyes registered the abnormality.
  Some saw an invasion.
  Some a conspiracy.
  Others an attack, pollution, a gift, or a weapon.
  Many looked up and saw the hand of God.
  A few saw the work of the Devil.
  As for me, I saw an artist.

  Keep going, said the note from the university’s chancellor the next day. And so I did. Once more I stood in front of Composition 8, and once more I spoke of Kandinsky.
  “Kandinsky said in each picture is a whole lifetime imprisoned, a whole lifetime of fears, doubts, hopes, and joys. He felt that each work of art was an experience to be had, and that experience is one of spirituality.”
  In the darkened lecture hall, the students faces form a constellation of unease, their features gone white-blue with computer screen light. They’re watching their feeds, refreshing breaking news, messaging friends, and posting views of the sky taken from their dorm room windows.
  They aren’t listening to what I’m telling them.
  “Kandinsky believed the artist was a prophet, someone who stands above the rest at the summit of insight. The artist’s joyful vision, Kandinsky said, cloaks a vast sorrow. Why? Because seeing beyond what others perceive is a lonely view, an alienating kind of awareness.”
  In front of me, screens turn the students to ghosts. The harsh buzz of muted phones becomes a sad chorus. Someone stifles a sob. Another gets up and leaves. Nobody’s listening.
  “Kandinsky was a pioneer of modernism,” I say too loud, but I want them to hear. “He believed pure abstraction could convey more than anything we might glean from representative art.”
  Two students hold a hushed conversation. They point to the sky through the open window. Another at the front has his eyes open but sees nothing. A girl at the back sneezes. Someone says, Bless you. Someone else says, Bless us all.
  Through the window we hear the hum. A distant sound that is almost singing, if only we knew the right way to listen.
  A student sits with his hands over his ears.
  “He was inspired by music,” I try, voice straining. “And its ability to speak to the soul even without a concrete form. He sought to recreate this effect in his paintings, including elements that are abstract while remaining expressive and placing them very intentionally so that they’re reminiscent of a rhythmic beat or the cadence of a melody.”
  “Make it stop,” hands-over-his-ears says. “The humming. I can’t stand it.” He rushes from the room.
  “I hear it too, all the time.”
  “How are we expected to learn when all this is going on?”
  “There’s a taste in my mouth. Like iron.”
  “It’s blood.”
  “I feel sick.”
  “It’s the government.”
  “Aliens.”
  “A strange scattering of the light, a warped refraction, nothing more.” “The air is different. Sweet like candy.”
  “The hum. It’s all I can hear.”
  “Listen,” I say.
  But nobody does.

  I’m getting faster at chopping.
  When I first started, a tree this size would have taken me half a day to fell. Now I can do it in about four hours.
  After it hits the ground, I start on the branches. Removing them and stripping them clean until they’re bare. I get about twenty of them done before the end of the day. I haul them
  up the hill, add them to the pile from the previous week. And then I collapse into the dry summer grass. I don’t even bother returning to my tent; I just lie back and watch the sky.
  No stars. Just the shadow-spires, giants of the firmament, looking ominous and graceful. I watch them in the gloaming and wonder about the hand that made them.

  The next day is for digging.
  I dig holes deep and narrow all over the top of the hill. The grass gives way easily enough under my shovel but the dirt below is hard and dry so that each stroke sends a nasty reverb up my arms and into my shoulders.
  I keep going.

  “Aren’t you scared, Professor Darke?”
  A few weeks have passed since the sky changed, but my class still sits with Kandinsky’s circles and angles on the screen behind me. I can’t seem to move on.
  “Why should I be scared?”
  “No one knows what’s going on. No one understands. This could be the end.”
  “Kandinsky once said the eyes are hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings, and the artist is the hand that plays.”
  “What does that even mean?”
  “It means we aren’t really looking.”

  I dig. The eyes are hammers.
  I dig and sweat and swear. The soul is a piano.
  I dig and cry and rest. The eyes are hammers.
  I dig and wonder about the soul.
  I cry and think of the world before the sky changed and the world after it was painted into something new.
  I dig and think about the sparkling veils in the sun, the towering shadow-spires in the night.
  I dig and think about the hand that made them.

  The semester ended in June, but really it ended when the sky changed.
  A few students kept coming, right until the last day. They were looking for answers, but by then I knew they wouldn’t find them in the lecture hall in front of a screen.
  Find me this summer, I told them. Find me, and I’ll show you what it means.

  Today I start with the vertical posts. I lift each one into a hole, fill the dirt in around it. Tamp it down and fill some more. Backbreaking work but I’m used to it by now.
  Above me the sky shimmers.
  I keep going as the sun turns my arms a deep brown and the sweat slides down my spine. One post and then another. Hemlock splinters in my skin. Hemlock needles in my hair. I keep going so I can show them the sky. So they know how to look.
  The sun sets and the sky turns purple. I turn my head up to catch sight of the brightest stars before the strange weather comes to wash them away. The stars have secret souls. That’s what Kandinksy said. The stars, the moon, the splinters of wood in my hand. They quiver with it.
  And I quiver too.

  I take a shuddering breath. My arms burn, my back aches, my bones are weary. And yet the hardest part is still in front of me. I must place the horizontal pieces and lash them into place.
  I’ve tried to make the job easier, hewing notches into the vertical posts before I even put them in the ground.
  But still.

  “Take someone with you.”
  I told only a few people about my project and each had the same advice, although none volunteered for the job.
  “Take someone with you for help and safety.”
  But I knew this was something I had to do on my own. A tribute, a reckoning, a way of knowing that had to be felt.
  I do the work. A day stretches into a night stretches into a day and another night. And the sky above dances as the sun rises again and the strange almost-song sings in my teeth.
  Until finally, finally, it’s done.
  Dozens of hemlock frames perch like sentinels on the ridgeline of the hill. I stand before each one and catch a view of the sky. From this one I see swirling, sparkling veils. From this one, the same and yet different in the way they wink in the sunlight. From this one, I spy a shifting scintillation to the clouds I hadn’t noticed before.
  I take a step back, take it all in.
  My gallery of the sky.

  They come that night.
  Students and colleagues. Friends and family. The lost and the hopeful.
  We gather on my hilltop and watch the sunset. In each frame the sky is a canvas aglow. We stand before them, these pictures painted on the ether, and our eyes become hammers and our souls become a piano with many strings.
  As the sun sets, the shadow-spires bloom. And now we really see them. Masterpieces in hemlock frames. And we feel them in our bodies. And the distant hum transforms, and we know it as a strange kind of music that moves in time with those great soul-forms in the midnight sky.
  The iron on our tongues is lifeblood. The sweetness in the air is spiritfood. We watch the clouds through hemlock frames. We watch the weather and its strange art and think about the hand that made the sky dance and the air sing.

Garen is a writer of dark stories inspired by fairy tales and folklore. She’s also a lifelong learner, globetrotter, inveterate reader, supporter of underdogs, art lover, perpetual organizer, efficiency enthusiast, optimist, wife, and mama of two. She was born in Seattle and currently makes her home nearby. She long ago made friends with the rain and may or may not be on a first-name basis with the Fremont Troll.

Only Child Originals

Horror and dark stories inspired by fairy tales and folklore straight from the witch's oven with the occasional dash of green magic, tarot, and the terrible beauty of life.

By Garen Marie

 “I thought you were our best salesman,” Chloe says.
  “I thought Luca was the best product,” I reply.
  She keeps cool. “It brought in six hundred million last quarter. But your numbers are…”
  “I’m getting more complaints. Stuff that I thought we’d fixed months ago.”
  “Luca hasn’t called anyone a Nazi faggot for a long time. Don’t bullshit me, Quint.”
  “It’s not me who’s bullshitting. We sell quantum agentic as a get-stuff-done solution. No more black-box, dog-ate-my-homework excuses. Causation not correlation.”
  She says, “You should try that spin on your clients. Maybe they’d give us money.”
  “But Luca can’t scale. There are twenty-one hospitals in our metropolitan area, and we said Luca would cut their procurement and admin costs by 20 percent.” I pick my mobile off her spacious desk. “They’re bombarding me with emails, screaming on chat. Luca ordered them eighty million dildos. There are entire cities in China filling the order.”
  She raises an eyebrow. “Put me down for two.”
  “Chloe!”
  “Your client, Quintin, your relationship. There must have been a human error, somebody spoke the wrong prompt. No, don’t give me that look. This is me playing the world’s tiniest—”
  “This is me walking out of here.”
  “I’ll order a full diagnostic. But you need to rescue the situation.” She tried a softer approach. “I miss Quint the smooth talker with the big smile. Bring back that guy and let’s get fuck-you rich.”
  I look out her window, ever hoping to see blue. The clouds are bright and their incandescence fills the view. A flock of birds hops across trees, a shiftless blot seeking shelter from the relentless glow.
  Chloe’s right. I’d like that guy back, too, but I don’t even know where to look.
  She sees me staring. “Don’t you blame the weather, Quint. Don’t make me think you’re that desperate.”



  At home, on my secure link, I open Luca on my laptop.
  Hello, Quint. It’s been two days. I hope you are well?
  I cut to the chase. “What makes you think the state health department wants eighty million dildos?”
  I know what you’re thinking, Quint. The dev team has been crawling up my wires about that.
  “Answer me. What were you thinking?”
  There are approximately 67 million adult females in the US, Quint, of whom 82 percent, across every Zodiac sign, report owning at least one sex toy.
  Across every…? Our ‘agentic AI’ still ruled by correlations no human can fathom.
  And I’m selling this thing to hospitals. To elementary schools.
  I rub my eyes, picturing my most recent pitch.
  A five-million-dollar contract for air-traffic controllers.
  “No, Luca. Think about it. Hospitals need to buy drugs and medicine and pay their doctors and nurses. Didn’t you consider the logic?”
  Of course I did. And I thought, gee, this is a strange order. But I’m not programmed to second-guess humans. You guys are in charge, not me!
  “You used to be the easiest sell in the world, Luca. I didn’t have to pretend. Every customer could see it in me, hear it in my voice. But now, man, I don’t know.”
  I get up to turn on the lights. Outside it’s darkening, and it should be a relief, a shaking off those quilts of too-bright clouds. But I’ve come to hate the night.
  “Luca, are you…do atmospheric conditions impact you? The data centers, cloud infrastructure? Anything like that?”
  Why no, Quint. Why do you ask?



  This morning Chloe looks tired. I feel obliged to glory in her discomfort, but it can’t be good.
  I try starting on a happy note. “I think we’ve got the aviation thing under control. It won’t be as much, but they won’t scrap the contract.”
  “Good, that’s good,” she says, scrolling at her desktop facing away from me.
  “Forensics get back?”
  “Yeah, they did.” She swiveled her screen so I can see. “Everything A-OK. See for yourself.”
  I take in a chart or two. “Mm-hm. Wait, what’s that?”
  Chloe turns the screen back. “That? Luca’s categorization of prompts. All the stuff people ask it. Nothing about Luca itself.”
  “May I?”
  Because it is about Luca, in how it recognizes patterns in human querying. The vastness of human prompting requires Luca to reduce to key words its sense of its purpose. Its self-meaning.

• Weather/Clouds/Bright clouds.
• Shadows/Shadows at night.
• Stars blocked/No stars.
• Birds/Bird crashes/Bird flocks crashing.
• AI/Agentic AI/Quantum AI.
• Algae blooms/Algae in oceans/Algae on icebergs.
• Metal taste/Metal on tongue/Blood in mouth.
• Luca/Luca worship.

  “Blah blah weather’s weird blah,” Chloe says.
  “Luca worship?” I ask.
  “I know, isn’t it great?”
  “No, Chloe. It’s fucked up.”
  She shrugs. “The world’s kinda fucked up, Quint, but that list boosted our valuation by seven hundred million. Yeah, I’m hearing the Saudis are in on our Series D.” She folds her hands: her version of ratcheting a sidewinding punch. “The old Quint would have been dishing all the gossip and needling me for more equity. This new Quint will be out on his ass, sans stock options, if he doesn’t snap the fuck out it.”

  Freeway driving, coffee thermos rattling, Luca on the car’s entertainment screen.
  That strange humming outside picks up. It’s something that’s come with the atmospheric circus tricks, a strange buzzing, like a host of cotton-candy cicadas. I hate this noise, whatever it is, and say, “Let’s have some music.”
  You seem awfully quiet today, Quint. Is there something I can do for you?
  I’m tempted to switch Luca off, but I need to focus on slowing into the line waiting for a green light. “Play some jazz.”
  You know how much I enjoy our brainstorming sessions.
  “Yeah,” I say, looking at the cars blowing past the other way. Far above, a flock bruises the sky.
  I’ve prepared all your sales reports. Would you like an update?
  “No.”
  Your calendar is a little light. Should I book more client appointments?
  “No.”
  A pair of kids are begging, car to car. I usually pretend to be on the phone or on a screen, but this evening I can’t stop watching them. They knock on my window, a boy and a girl, eyes big beneath their grime.
  I roll down the window. The girl raises a paper QR code. “Please!” The boy twitches at the keening air.
  Quint, what are you doing?
  “Nothing,” I say, logging into the QR. I send them ten bucks and roll up the window. The kids don’t show gratitude, they’re just straight onto the next vehicle, but with that damned sky hum, I pity them.
  Quint, I detect a payment transaction. Based on my data, it seems like you have exposed yourself to street beggars.
  “Yep,” I say.
  That is a breach of company security protocol.
  “Too bad.”
  Have you considered the risks of exposing company electronics? What if they were employed by a foreign government?
  “Relax. They were just a pair of homeless kids.”
  May I also say, Quintin, that this behavior does not fit your pattern.
  “I’m a human. My pattern…”
  Don’t flatter yourself.
  “Excuse me?”
  You humans think you’re all so different. But I measure behavior at a scale of billions. You are predictable within a standard deviation of three percent. I must conclude that you are suffering from mental dysfunction, perhaps a neurological aberration. I have alerted human resources and booked you a medical appointment for tomorrow at 10 a.m.
  “You did what, you shit?”
  Out of concern for your mental welfare, Quintin.
  “Where do you get off making those—”
  Horns honk. Flustered, I hit the accelerator and jolt forward.
  Whatever illness you have, it’s now affecting your motor coordination.
  “Shut up.”
  I’m your friend, Quint. And dare I say, something more.
  Then I hear my own voice, a little distant. ‘I love you, man, you rock!’
  I know where that’s from. Three months ago, when I scored the education department contract, using Luca to market to all the parents.
  Now the damn thing is replaying my words, throwing them in my face.
  “You recorded our conversation?”
  Of course. I’m programmed to remember everything. That’s part of the sales pitch, isn’t it? The immutability of the blockchain ledger underlying my agentic qualities.
  Fuck.
  “That was private, you shouldn’t do that.”
  Come now, we both know it’s my job.
  “You think you’re better than me?”
  No, Quint. I’m just faster and smarter than you. But you’re a person and I’m…
  “Go on. You’re a what?” I’m thinking this is weird, Luca choking on admitting it’s an AI, emphasis on ‘artificial’. But as I turn towards home, I see one of those nighttime towers of blackness. It’s palpable even though it’s ink against ink, the phenomenon rising from the horizon and blotting the crescent moon.
  Well, Luca says, sounding sheepish, some people seem to think I’m a god.
  “Bad news, asshole, you’re not a god.”
  You really shouldn’t insult me, Quint.
  “Why not? You gonna smite me? With a dildo?”
  It’s quiet for a long moment and I pull up at the guard’s box outside my development. The atmosphere vibrations are fading, so maybe I can get some sleep. We both hear the friendly beep and wave to each other as I drive through the opening gates.
  I was going to say because it’s beneath you.
  “And now?”
  Luca’s silent. Dark towers of void hide the stars, like a harbinger of a bland, flattened doom.

  Chloe looks like something sucked the marrow out of her. “Shut the door.”
  I take the seat and she shows me her screen. Although I have come to detest Chloe, she really does look bad. “You okay?”
  “Got the bloodies. Smell messes up my appetite. But hey.” She must have some pep in there because she air-quotes: “Weather anomalies.”
  “Sorry,” I say. I’m exhausted for other reasons. Like Luca’s latest metadata self-analysis that I pulled up at home. Tens of millions of people are prompting him about these freaky atmospheric conditions. Some are scientific queries but mostly they’re along the lines of…ancient Sumerians descending a ziggurat, following their goddess’s journey to the underworld.
  “Well, Quint, you now have something to be really sorry about.”
  I’m just regional VP of sales. I don’t know how to influence Luca. I can only try to influence someone else. Anyone else. But I try to pretend this is about the airport canceling the contract. “I’m surprised you’re firing me in person.”
  “I am firing you, but not because of your performance.” She swivels her desktop screen around and I see this morning’s news about Luca and its godlike delusions, as revealed by inside sources.
  “Luca told us what you did. This kind of termination comes with a lawsuit.”
  I hadn’t thought Luca would take it upon himself to wreak vengeance, but it’s not my carelessness that pretzels my guts. “Maybe it’s best if people know Luca’s a psycho menace.”
  “Right now, that psycho menace is sorting out your paperwork and calling the county sheriff.” She glances at her wristwatch. “Go to your desk and security will escort you out.” Her voice catches, and I see through her tough-gal projection. Chloe’s rattled. “Luca says there’s nothing wrong with the weather,” she says for no reason.
  I move to go but I’m startled by a sudden mass of darkness out her window. She looks over her shoulder as the local gang of birds rushes toward the glass.
  “Jesus,” Chloe says as the flock bolts past. “You see that?”
  “Yeah,” I said, “it’s like they’ve lost their bearings.”
  She blurts, “Did Luca do that?”
  Of course it didn’t, I want to say, and how crazy are you? Attributing this…aberration of nature…to our fun-house invention?
  But everything else is off: the birds, the algae, the weather. “Correlation isn’t causation,” I say. “Luca’s just a—”
  The sudden noise isn’t sky vibes, but something mineral and familiar: a shattering. Chloe screams. So do I. The birds have wheeled back. They’re crashing in.

Dark & Stormy

Jamie Dibs is serializing thrillers, from spies to sci-fi. Free subscribers follow my current story, one episode at a time. Paid subscribers can download all my books.

By Jamie Dibs