1Vol. 2 - Issue 3 - The End, Part Two - December 2023

Bloodletters From The Editor

004

Flash Fiction
A World Ends, A World Begins by Jamie Lackey

021

Weekend, Ruined by Christi Nogle012

No Greater Sorrow by Alexis Powell031

Short Stories
Because You Could Not Stop For Death by Kay Hanifen

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Harvest by Ann Yihyang Kim

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After 'After' by Jessica Lilien

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Rooted: An Infernal Romance by Asa West045

Seeking Bad Boys for Fun and Adventure by Jay Whistler

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PoetryBreath Between Battles by Beth Cato and Rhonda Parrish

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Other Neighbors by Jennifer Maloney

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Autumn Harvest by Crystal Sidell

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Author Biographies

051

Credits

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The Quiet Ones - Vol. 2, Issue 3 - December 2023
“The End, Part Two”
© The Quiet Ones Literary LLC, 2023
First Published in New York 2023 by The Quiet Ones Literary LLC
The authors of the individual stories retain the copyright of the works featured in this anthology
magazine.
The stories contained herein are works of ction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are theproduct of the author’s imagination or are used ctitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living ordead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this production may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, ortransmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, recording, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise
without the prior written permission of the publisher and the copyright owner.

The Quiet Ones
PO Box 193
Burnt Hills, NY USA 12027
www.wearethequietones.com

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BLOODLETTERs
from the editors

Welcome to the End, part two! From demons to man-eating grasshoppers, plagues of lice to acidrain, we’ve got eleven new stories that will make your skin crawl. Within those eleven tales, you’ll also nd
poignant explorations of what it means to say goodbye. To a loved one. To life. And sometimes, as morethan one narrator discovers, to a lie. But when we say that YOU make The Quiet Ones possible, we
promise that's no lie at all.
As 2023 draws to an end, it also marks the end of our second full year. We wish to extend to you
our endless gratitude for reading, submitting, and sharing, and being a part of our scary little magazine's
success.

Endlessly,
Emily Young and David Fey
Co-Executive Editors of The Quiet Ones

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HARVEST
by: Ann Yihyang Kim

The Rains come the third week of the month. Always. It’s always been like that. Or, at least, it’salways been like that for me. Mom and Dad used to tell me stories about what things were like before
the Annihilation. Before bombs blacked out the world. Before the Rains and their acid. Things had been
green, and there had been so much food and water that people had thrown entire containers of it away
just because they could. But that was a long time ago, and now we have the black earth, the Rains, andtheir acid.
The acid is always clear. Dad told me that the rst time they came, everyone thought it was
just water and stepped right into it. I know it still haunts him, how he saw those people die. He screams
in his sleep sometimes, and I tell him it’s okay until it actually is.
For me, though, I like the Rains. I know I’m a weirdo, but I do. They only hurt you if you step out
into them, and they only like to eat esh and plants, kind of like human beings. As long as you stayinside, the Rains will leave you alone. You don’t mess with them, they won’t mess with you. It’s that
simple.
Besides, we owe a lot to the Rains. Without their acid, the Holes wouldn’t appear. Without theHoles, we would have no way of reaching the other dimensions. And without the other dimensions, myparents — our whole colony — would have starved out a long time ago, and I never would have beenborn.
The Holes appear when the Rains stop. When I was a kid, I used to imagine a big, angry monster
clawing at the air until it cut its way into one of the other dimensions. I know, I know. There is nomonster. But still. That’s what the Holes made me think of. That’s still what they make me think of. Big,dripping gashes all clawed out and hanging in the air.
I step out onto the wet, black earth and breathe in the clarity. The acid is powerless now that thelast drop has fallen from the sky, and I splash through puddles of it. I used to jump in the puddles when I
was a kid. Mom hated it when I did that. She’s always paranoid the acid will be different one of thesedays and eat me alive. But I know better. I don’t mess with the Rains, so they won’t mess with me. That’s
the deal, and I keep my end of the bargain.

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I step up to one of the Holes and adjust the weight of my bag. I was only fteen when I went
through my rst Hole. Mom was crying so much that day. It kind of ruined the moment. I had wanted tosoak it all in, really feel my rst step in a job I’d always known I’d be great at. But there she was, justcrying away like she had some good reason to. If she’s too scared to go out and harvest for the colony,then the least she could have done was stay strong for me. But she’s never been strong. I get that from
Dad. He’s always been supportive of me harvesting. And four years later, here I am, already a level-three
Harvester.
“Maple.”I spin around. “Oh. Hey, River. Where’s Forest?”“Right here!”
My heart feels like it’s going to oat up out of my chest and into the sky like it always does
whenever I see Forest. He has the build of a true Harvester. Medium height, lean, muscular. Crazy strong
and crazy fast. He was born to be a Harvester, just like me.
River, on the other hand, well … I’ve always thought that she should be something else. She would
be better off as a Mender or a Mechanic. She’s smart. Ugly and mean, sure. But smart. If she switchedjobs, I’m sure she could work her way up and make as much as a Harvester someday.
Forest smiles at River as he runs up to us. She only nods in response. I’m the leader, so I can’t rollmy eyes because it would be unprofessional. But I roll them on the inside. River is always so curt andcold. She’s practically made of ice. Might as well call her “Ice River.”“What’s so funny, Maple?” Forest asks.
“Nothing.” I wipe my smile off my face. “Let’s go.”I step through the Hole then signal for Forest and River to follow. We stay quiet as we scan the new
dimension we’ve stepped into. It’s beautiful in its own strange way, like all the other dimensions. This
one is a large, round space that’s connected to other chambers through different tunnels. The oor,
walls, and ceiling are made of smooth stone. Big ovals perforate the stone so that it looks like we’re
inside a hunk of stone cheese. Except each oval reveals turquoise water, so it’s more like we’re insidestone cheese submerged in an ocean. Things are swimming around in the water. Some of them aresmall, de nitely sh. But most of them are big and look a lot like sharks.
“Perfect,” I murmur. “Forest, come help me with the sh. They have a good amount of meat onthem. River, go check if the water is clean.”

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I hold the glare she gives me until she backs down and does what she’s told. Forest and I take out
our blades from our bags and ank one of the turquoise ovals on the side of a wall. We try using driedmeat from a past harvest as bait, and it works well. We catch a dozen sh before River returns.
“I’ve checked everything,” she says, panting. “All saltwater. Nothing to drink.”“Okay. We’ll harvest more sh then head back. Hopefully, we’ll nd water in another dimension,” I
tell her.
She glares at me again.
“I think River could help us sh, Maple,” says Forest. “You know how hard-pressed her family is.
Just let her sh and get more commission for herself.”
Something softens in the way that River looks at Forest. I cross my arms on the inside and try not togrit my teeth. I check my watch.
“Let’s just get going,” I tell them.
I ignore their protests. I know the colony doesn’t have enough meat these days. I’m not stupid! But
we need water too! They shout that our hour isn’t up yet, that we still have thirty minutes left until thisHole closes up. I tell them that the sh here aren’t that big anyway and that there are other dimensions
to explore, which is true.
I lead them out of the Hole and step back onto the black, wet earth. The Hole shrivels in on itself
until it disappears, leaving nothing but the air it had ripped. I lead my team into a different Hole. Gravel
crunches under our feet as we step into the new dimension. It’s dark here, and I can’t tell if it’s night or if
we’re in some kind of huge, enclosed space. A giant structure towers up to our left and stretches on into
the distance. It looks like something in a textbook Mom showed me once. I think it was called a “Roman
aqueduct.”“There isn’t any food or water here. It’s just a wasteland,” River says.
I roll my eyes openly this time. “Do you know what that is?” I ask her. “It’s called a ‘Roman
aqueduct.’ It’s supposed to carry water from one place to another. There might be water here.”“I don’t hear any water,” River growls.
“I agree with River. Let’s move on,” Forest says.
I place my hands on my hips. River acts up like this every once in a while, but I know how to shuther down. My dad didn’t raise me to be a pushover, after all.
“Can both of you tell me who’s in charge here?” I ask them.
“Not this again,” River mutters. She turns away from me.

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Blood shoots up to the top of my head. “What was that?”
River hesitates. There’s a familiar speck of fear in her eyes. Then something blazes up within them.
“I said, not this again,” River snarls.
“River,” says Forest.
“No! I can’t just stay quiet anymore! Maple, I am not going to go through another cycle with you
barking orders that feed nothing but your pride. I’ve told you once, I have told you a thousand times.
We have hundreds of different Holes to choose from. If one dimension doesn’t look good, we should
go to another and harvest as much as we can there instead of wandering around for an hour in a deaddimension and going back empty-handed! We only have three days before all the Holes close up again.
We can’t afford to dilly-dally, so stop being such a dumbass!”“Don’t you dare talk to me like that.” I’m so angry that I’m shaking. “Don’t you dare! I’m the leaderof this team. Me! I was appointed! So who’s the dumbass, hm? Who’s the real dumbass who failed toget appointed?”“You were only appointed because your daddy is an Engineer, and you’re his little princess!” River
shouts.
I hate it that I can’t speak for a second. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare talk about my dad like that!
My dad … my dad contributes to the colony. Your dad just rolls around in bed all day!”Her eyes blaze. She takes a step forward, and I take a step back. I suddenly remember how quickly
she can draw her dagger and the power of her kicks. Her punches sent me into the ground more thanonce during Harvester training.
“River, Maple, calm down!” says Forest.
River ignores him. “There’s no water here,” she tells me. “And unlike your daddy, my parents got
stuck in the Mines and their bodies paid the price for it. We can’t keep wasting time like this, and I can’t
let you keep another commission from me. I have to feed my family!”For a second, all the re in her goes out and instead, there’s a desperation so raw that it seems to
make her bleed. Then the moment passes, and the re roars back into life, burning up what little pity I
had started to feel.
“We are leaving. Now!” she says.
“No! I refuse to —”River throws her bag aside and takes another step forward. I take another step back. I feel myself
running around within myself, not knowing what to do, growing smaller as River grows bigger. Then I lift

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my head high and remind myself that I have more dignity than her. I shuf e through my bag and pullout my notebook and pen. I start scribbling down everything River just said. I plan on showing all of it to
the Head of Harvest.
Forest puts his hand on mine to stop me from writing more. “Maple, come on.”“I’m just doing my job.”“Let her write it!” River shouts. “When the Head comes to talk to me, I’ll tell him about all the waysthat Maple has failed us! She almost got you killed last time, Forest. Remember that, Maple? Remember
how your expert leadership almost got him crushed?”
I run around within myself again as everything replays in my mind. I had told Forest to stay put,and the bridge above him had collapsed a second later. It was River who had sprinted forward andtackled him out of the way. It was River that he had gazed at with shining eyes.
“We don’t have time for this,” I tell them.
I shove my notebook and pen into my bag then march back toward the Hole. I avoid looking at
River because I know that a true leader keeps the peace and looking at her would only instigate her tosay more hostile things. The Hole shrinks shut behind us once we step back onto the black earth. I
choose a different Hole and step through it. Forest and River look at each other before following me.
We walk into a long, wide hallway made of awless white marble. Facing us at the end of thehallway are three elevators with iron accordion doors. Some kind of liquid oats within each elevator.
One elevator is lled with green liquid, another with purple.
The last one is lled with black.
“We need to leave,” Forest says suddenly. “Something’s not right.”
River immediately turns around and starts walking back to the Hole. Blood hits the top of my headagain. I hate that her back is turned toward me. I hate that she’s leaving without my permission. I hate all
the ways in which she can move quicker than me, think quicker than me. And I hate — I hate — theaffection that warms Forest’s eyes right now as he recognizes the trust that she has in him.
“We’re staying,” I say.
They stop in their tracks.
“What?” says Forest.
I draw myself up. “We are staying. River, you were whining about water just a few minutes ago.
What do you think that is?” I point to the liquid in the elevators.
“That’s not water!” River snaps.

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“I didn’t say that it was!” I exhale sharply. “It’s not water, but it’s been a long time since we’ve
harvested soft drinks. It’ll be a treat for the colony.”
River opens her mouth. I put my hands on my hips because I know she’s going to start arguingwith me again. Then I stand there and watch as Forest lays his hand gently on her shoulder andmurmurs something into her ear.
“I know what I’m doing.” The growl in my voice surprises even me. Then it feeds the strength I
know I have, the strength I inherited from my dad. “And you are going to take orders whether you like itor not. Both of you. Because you’re right. My dad is an Engineer. And he could have your families kickedout of the colony in the blink of an eye!”I spin around and start marching toward the elevators. I ignore the fear in Forest’s voice as heshouts warnings to me. I take out a canteen from my bag and stop in front of the elevator with the green
liquid. I pause because suddenly, I’m scared. The liquid is bright green like radiator uid. I wonder if
Forest is right.
I shake my head and tell myself to stop being such a pansy. I tighten my grip on my canteen andstick my arm through the accordion doors. I wait for something to happen.
But nothing does. The liquid is cool against my skin. Harmless. Forest and River remain frozen stiffwith the fear that I’m impervious to. I withdraw the canteen and sip the liquid. It’s sweet and bubbly.
“You’re right, River. It’s not water,” I say sarcastically. I guzzle the liquid then let out a content sigh.
“It’s soda.”
They approach me with halting steps. I nish drinking what’s in my canteen as they start harvesting
the green soda too. We ll up a gallon each before moving on to the purple liquid. I stick my arm all theway in and withdraw grape soda. I drink a full canteen of it and tell them they should too. They only lookat each other then keep on lling.
We approach the black liquid last.
“I think we have enough,” Forest says. “We can’t carry much more anyway.”“I’m with Forest,” says River.
“You’re not ‘with’ anyone,” I hiss. “We’re taking this too!”
I grab an empty canteen.
“Maple —”I thrust my arm into the black.
It’s not cool like the green and the purple. It’s not even a liquid.

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Something grips my wrist.
And then I’m grunting and pulling and tugging on my arm as whatever has me starts reeling me
in. It yanks me forward. I yelp as I crash into the door. River and Forest grab me and shout things I don’t
understand. I start crying. It twists my arm then wrenches. I start screaming. Somehow, I know it’s hungry.
“The Hole!” Forest cries.
He points at the Hole. It’s shrinking!
“But it hasn’t been an hour yet,” River breathes. She stares at the Hole, then at the blackness
pulling me in. “Maple, what have you done? What is this black thing?”“We’re getting out of here!” Forest shouts.
My heart shrinks into the size of a cell as he grabs River and forces her to run with him back to theHole. I shriek as my arm is snapped in two.
“Wait, Forest!” River cries. “Maple —”“If the Hole closes, we’ll be stuck in here forever! I won’t let you die because of her!”He pushes her through the Hole rst before throwing himself through too. I scream because I’menraged. I scream because I’m terri ed. I’m sweating and struggling, kicking, pulling, and crying as theystare at me through the shrinking Hole. There are tears in River’s eyes. There’s something cold in
Forest’s. A growl rumbles out of the blackness before the Hole closes and disappears.
The thing inside the black lets go of me. I pull my arm out and scream as I see my own blood andmuscle. I stumble backward as the elevator door opens. Two eyes open in the black, each as big as myhead.
My terror won’t let me speak above a whisper as I ask, “What are you?”
A wide grin appears. It’s full of sharp teeth.
“Why, I make the Rains and their acid, my dear. I control the Holes. And I’ve been waiting for you
to nd me. I’ve been waiting a very long time.”
It walks out of the blackness with heavy footsteps.
It smiles as I scream and scream and scream.

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WEEKEND, RUINED
by: Christi Nogle

On Thursday afternoon before the boys got home, Mira was already thinking about the weekend—
Roddy’s swim practice, and she thought they’s go to the farmer’s market, maybe t in a little date nightwith her husband Jerry. She washed the dishes and looked out the window, across the lawns to thepond where the white swan drifted. Couldn’t quite see the black one. She leaned toward the window,
not paying attention to the glasses in the dishwater.
When Mira looked down, the soapy water had turned pink, and when she lifted out her hands, theright one just gushed. Seeing the blood coming out of the pinkie side of her hand, she swooned, felt
pain, cried out. Clutched the dish towel, hurried to the bathroom. Red splotches on her apron, on thebathroom counter, the oor.
She splashed the cut with alcohol. “Oh, it hurts,” she said to no one. But did it, really?
She found gauze and antibacterial gel. Really ought to have wrapped up the hand. If she’d done
that, none of the rest would have happened.
The blood was still gushing too much, though, so she turned on the tap and turned her handunder it. A sound came like bacon sizzling, and all of a sudden the entire hand quit working. That’s the
only way to put it. The blood stopped coming out, the ngers wouldn’t work, and Mira couldn’t feelthem.
“Oh, it hurts,” she said, feeling the deep falseness of it in one sense and the other sense in which it
was true. Because this was like pain, this confrontation with a gash, a ap, not bleeding. Very much like
pain, this glimpse of steel beneath.
“I should call Jerry,” she said, but didn’t do it. Didn’t make any move to call. She touched the ap,
pushed it in. She lifted it up and saw the inside of herself.
You are told what the inside of you looks like — and have seen images of it as well, in biology
textbooks, surgery videos, or what have you. Even if you’ve never seen inside a person in your whole
life, you know what it looks like. Or you think you do.
It’s not supposed to be steel, cables, plastic-looking stuff. It isn’t.

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Mira found herself backing out of the bathroom to sit on the edge of the bed, her right handwrapped loosely in gauze and her left hand grasping scissors. She took off the apron to nd spots on
her pale blue dress.
“Oh, that will never come out. I guess we’ll be doing some shopping,” she said to the empty
house. She thought of Roddy. Was he like this inside as well? Was Jerry?
No, no. Just her. She was certain.
This explained so much. Her ambidexterity, her perfect health, perfect memory. The way theytreated her, too. Without looking, she brought the scissors down into her leg. No pain. For a long time
she stared into the bathroom, moving the scissors. No pain until she looked down at the blood, but it
stopped owing soon. It was only on the surface. It was only there to fool her. She parted the gory aps
and saw inside to the same cords and plastic tendons.
It was a long time before Jerry and Roddy came home. She had time to slough off all her skin. So
much sponge-rubber it was, lled with plump pouches of blood like the pouches of juice inside anorange.
She feared taking a shower without any skin, so she used all the good towels wiping andpolishing. It was quite a sight: the red bloom on the bed, the gory pile of skin and hair, the robin’s egg
towels (her favorite color, so they said) blotched and stinking, never to come clean again. She found her
way back to the bathroom mirror. Overcome by the truth there, she stared.
But it really was getting late. She found the rubber gloves and worked through the last of thedishes.
“Honey, I’m home,” Jerry called from the entry after a while.
“I’m tied up in the kitchen,” she answered. He needed a reason why she hadn’t met him at thedoor, didn’t he?
“Roddy’s playing down the street. He’ll be home in time for dinner, though. Maybe we can —”He had come into the kitchen. She did not turn away from the sink.
“What have you done,” said Jerry to himself. Not a question for her. He sounded sad. He came toher, held her shoulders. She had no skin to feel it and knew only because her body pressed down. She
smelled his malty end-of-day smell but could not feel any sensation in his touch. It made her sad.
“Does Roddy know?” she said.
“Of course not, and he won’t.”“My hand broke,” she said.

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“We’ll get it xed. We’ll x you all up, good as new.”“And the master suite,” she said, turning. “I ruined everything in there, I. . .”But Jerry wasn’t touching her now. He held his hand up to silence her. He was on the phone, andin a moment he asked his mother to take Roddy for the weekend.
Off the phone now, he explained that their weekend was shot. She would have to pull up the gorycarpet and install the new, and by that time the hand and skin and towels would be delivered, andthey’d have to put all of it back how it had been. Jerry would make sure she didn’t remember any of
this.
His expression was grim, annoyed.
“Has it happened before?” she said.
“Never quite so dramatic, but yeah,” he said, turning back to the garage. Now he had to drive thekid all the way across town.
“I better get started too,” she said, but she didn’t move. She thought maybe she would nevermove again.

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BREATH BETWEEN
BATTLES
by: Beth Cato and Rhonda Parrish

when the snow fellcovering the blood, freezing the viscera
it brought cold enough to pause the battle
give us a break from the carnage
give me a break from the casting
to take a breatha nap
a mealbut peering out from my tent
I can clearly see the footprintsof the tireless spirits
who await the battle's conclusion
heedless of cold they stalk the snow
ignorant that they pace upon
their own broken bodies
they cannot ght now
yet still they muster
ever ready to scream triumphfor queen and country
a horn calls me forth
to resume my rituals and cantrips
ice crunches underfootmy prints deep with my mortal weightand I wonder
how many more will I be able to guideto the lightto restpeace
before I join the ranks of those
whose steps leave no markfi

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SEEKING BAD BOYSFOR FUN AND ADVENTURE
by: Jay Whistler

Where are we going? Good question, my friend. The answer is a bit long. You might want tobuckle your seat belt and take your hand off my thigh while I explain. It’s hard for me to keep my eyeson the road with your ngers traveling northward like that.
It all started about eighteen months ago. I’m sure you remember it, too. For me, the whole thingbrought back childhood memories I wish had remained buried. But here we are. Anyway, this will all
make sense when I’m done, I promise.
At the beginning of everything, when I looked out of my apartment window and saw my rst
swarm of grasshoppers ying over the neighborhood — 46 million strong, according to Doppler radar —it reminded me of that scene in the rst Indiana Jones movie when he and Marion, his ex, get tossed
into the viper pit. “Why’d it have to be snakes?” he wonders.
Same, Indy, same. Why’d it have to be grasshoppers? Send me a crush of cicadas, or praying
mantises (mantii?), or hell, a billion earwigs. I would take any of those, even all of them at once, if itmeant I could be spared the horror of grasshoppers.
Why do I hate the little fuckers so? Brian Kelly. Also a little fucker (and the rst in a long line ofboys, and later men, who thought my body was meant for their amusement — but that’s another story).
Now that I look at you more closely, you kind of remind me a little of Brian.
Oh please, I’m not one of “those girls” who plans to lure you in and #MeToo you. Don’t get yourboxers in a bunch.
Anyway, back to Brian Kelly. All these years later, I can recall with vivid horror the mayonnaise jar,empty of gloppy white goo but brimming with Melanoplus sanguinipes, disgorging its contents onto
my ten-year-old head. The Jurassic creatures scurried and scuttled into my t-shirt, and from there into
my shorts and underwear. They wriggled into my ears and clung to my nearly waist-length braid, thebarbs on their legs snagging and trapping them in my hair. No amount of jumping, shaking, orshrieking could dislodge them from their hiding places. Once my mother came to my rescue, and thetwo of us had nally subdued the last beastie, I noticed the dark streaks of “tobacco juice” they’d spit all

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over me. Little rivulets of the brown, stinky secretions covered my scalp, face, neck, back, and chest, likesome pest-produced Jackson Pollack on my esh.
So the mass out my window that day? Four hundred sixty thousand times larger than the
Hellman’s jarful? It’s no wonder I decided it would be the end of the world, despite what scientists
predicted.
And yes, you’re right, how can we trust anything this administration says? After the rst deadly
attack last summer, at Burning Man, of course we were all thinking it, even if Homeland Security said
they had a plan. I mean, here’s the thing: how can the government eradicate thousands of swarms
across the entire country, armies of insects capable of devouring an entire sixty-thousand-person
festival in less than two days? You saw the footage. The horde left nothing but bones and inorganic
material. People, pets, that pop-up llama farm on the grounds — all wiped out by miniature munching
mandibles.
So no, I don’t think the government has a plan. They waited too long to react, the in ghting inCongress preventing anything from happening because one side had some pie-in-the-sky plan thatwould rack up trillions in national debt, and the other side refused to see this as an inevitable outgrowthof climate change and the destruction of natural habitats and arable farmland. Because of course there
is no climate change, they said. Like they said there is no such thing as evolution.
Are you saying you still believe evolution isn’t real, after everything we’ve seen? The evidence isright in front of you. All you have to do is look out the windshield. Locusts evolved to eat esh because
their main food source has all but run out. We suspected as much when livestock began disappearing
in the plains states a few years ago, when cattle were feasted upon in the concentrated animal feeding
operations in Texas and Oklahoma. But we ignored the warnings. By the time every living thing at
Burning Man was annihilated, it was too late.
Okay, let’s say you’re right and the government did have a plan, that the plan was to create thedeadly droves. I saw on your pro le how you think Covid was a “plandemic.” I’m not saying you’re right,
but let’s just say that because of both situations, I have no faith in our elected of cials to protect us
because they are too busy protecting their place in the halls of power.
Oh, don’t give me that look. I didn’t mean to turn this all political, though in truth everything ispolitical. You do know this, right? The point is, we have to nd ways to protect ourselves, don’t we?

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And my apologies. I truly wasn’t trying to make you feel stupid. Do you get that a lot? Yeah, notsurprising. Some women can be real bitches like that, showing off their intellect. Sure, sure, you could
call us insecure in that regard. But let’s get back to business here.
When I realized our national situation was kind of like Covid had been all those years ago, I knew it
would be crucial to nd ways to adjust to the new normal. And after Covid, I also knew I couldn’t live a
cooped-up life again, to exist in a state of constant terror. But don’t most women (regardless ofwhatever your de nition of woman might be) live in a state of low-level fear as a baseline anyway? Like
when we walk in a parking garage to get to our cars. When we have to ride the subway after midnight,
alone. When we go on a rst date.
Wait…you didn’t know that was a thing? Sorry, but I am not your human Wikipedia page. Go
google the stats. I’ll wait. . .

We good now? Welcome to the conversation, pal.
Anyway, as I was saying, what does the new normal look like for me, or for other single women?
We all had plenty of time to navel gaze and ponder in those early days, didn’t we? One of my rst
thoughts centered around what I mentioned earlier—not wanting to feel claustrophobic all the time. So I
decided it would be important to nd ways to be out in the world yet protected. No vaccines, masks, ormini Mace (or, in this case, Raid) cans attached to my keyring would work for our current pandemic. Like
all women, I was going to need a man, right? So TA DA! You’re the man.
For today, at least.
You’re welcome.
I was also going to need a Zombie Apocalypse vehicle: Extra gas cans, a ame thrower that would
make any military buff army-green with envy, and bullet-proof glass.
Hey, how did I know whether a ock could break through regular auto glass? I’m only a dumb girl.
Better safe than sorry, amiright?
I also stocked up on MREs and water puri cation tablets, if I ever found myself stranded
somewhere. That’s what’s in the foot locker in the cargo area back there, in case today’s journey doesn’t
go as expected. Not that I’ve planned to travel far a eld, of course. But it’s important to be prepared.
Those vermin can pop up out of nowhere, you know. By the way, we’re almost there.
Yes, I do have a point. Don’t rush me. My next step was to update my online dating pro les. I’moutgoing, adventurous, and seeking a friend for the end of the universe, blah blah blah. It’s been great,

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meeting all these new people, taking some day trips I might never have been brave enough to attemptpre-locust invasion. And when I can take out part of the threat (how much do I love my amethrower??),so much the better.
Oh, please stop lecturing me. Of course I know it’s a drop in the ocean, or a single hopper in thehorde, to use a more apt metaphor. But it’s what I can do to feel as if I have regained some control inthis Dumpster re of an existence we’re currently living in. Case in point: see that massive black cloud?
Another swarm.
I think it’s headed this way.
No, no need to panic. Like I said, I am fully prepared to deal with this. I’m good. Relax. We’ll stop
the truck here and let it pass over us. There’s not much for them to attack in this area, so we won’t behere too long.

Anyway, where was I? Right, getting out in the world while simultaneously reducing the threat tomy survival. When you responded to my online pro le with, “Here I am, babe! What are your other two
wishes?”, I suspected you might make a good companion for one of my adventures. And when we had
our rst online chat and you asked if I was as bangable in person as in my pro le photo, I thought, “Thisguy could be the one!”
But what really clinched it? When you got in my truck today and told me I was a nine, but I could
easily be a ten, if I were on my knees. Those words sent delectable voltage zinging through nearly every
nerve ending in my body. I could barely wait to be alone with you in nature.
Yes, I’ve been watching the cloud, too. They’re close now. Could you hand me the gun in the
glovebox, please? Just in case. Of course I know how to handle this. Why wouldn’t I? I shot a cigarettefrom between the lips of my last date without even ruf ing his hair.
But seriously, I’m so thrilled you are on this adventure with me. While the grasshoppers are thestuff of my childhood—and let’s be honest, my adult—nightmares, they have become an amazing
resource for taking back my power. You are part of it, too, friend. Your sacri ce will make the world thatmuch safer. So you have a choice to make at this point, and don’t take too long to decide, because thetime is nearly here.
Your choice is this: you can get out of the truck of your own volition and make a run for it, hoping
you can sprint faster than they can y. Or you can take a bullet to the head and I shove your corpse into
their path. One or the other. What’ll it be?

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Now, now. Don’t fret. I’ve been assured that it’s quick, more like a snack than a meal. They will
make swift work of you. You won’t suffer.
Much.

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by: Jamie Lackey

There is a black cat, asleep on my lap. Sometimes curled delicately, nose tucked under paws,
sometimes sprawled like a star sh, threatening to slip between my knees or sideways onto the cushionnext to me. The cat is sometimes young, sometimes old, sometimes still, sometimes twitching indreams. But always there, keeping me pinned to my chair.
When it’s time, the cat will get up. And I will follow.
But there’s no need to rush.
My sister is at the stove, stirring sugar in milk, waiting for it to boil. Wood scrapes against
copper, the sound gritty with undissolved sugar. She keeps her eyes on it, drawing careful gure eights,
then circles, then gure eights again, making sure it doesn’t scorch or stick or burn. Three cinnamon
sticks sit on the counter next to her, ready to be added once the milk boils.
When it’s time, my sister will glance up, perhaps at the cat as it darts across the room, andbubbles will rush to the surface, turning smooth white liquid to foam. She will add the cinnamon and lift
the pan away from the re. Once it’s steeped, she will strain it into the three unmatched mugs that sit on
the table behind her.
But there’s no need to rush.
Our third sister sits shivering on the hearth, holding her hands out toward the dancing
ames. The re is strong and the room warm, but she is cold, frozen right to her core. Her body is longgone, lost beneath the ice that creeps further out over the ocean with every passing moment. When her
spirit found her way home, she slipped in under the door like a draft. We could get few details from her
ghost, just a garbled account of fear and ight and human violence.
She had always been the kind one, the curious one, the forgiving one.
We did not start the winter. It began naturally, like any other season. We did not create thefrozen wind, the stinging snow, the crushing ice, the burning, numbing cold.
We have simply allowed it to continue.

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A WORLD ENDS,
A WORLD BEGINSIt will end when the cat gets up, when the milk boils, when three sisters share hot, sweet,
spiced milk.
And if every human dies before that, well, all things end. Something else will ll their niche,
eventually. Even this winter will eventually give way to spring.
But there’s no need to rush.

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AUTUMN HARVEST
by: Crystal Sidell

The star-stitched canvas proffers a bounty of pin lights
tonight as the moon, peeking behind wisp-clouds, unpeels
its mandarin-orange glow. We are children still, stilled
by wonder and jacketed by innocence, naïve
to the rabid creepers and rotting crawlers that hide
beneath the festive ground when the sun comes out to play.
Strolling through these woods, on this chilly September eve:
Crunch. Crunch. Our unschooled imaginations believe it’sracoon paws on detached twigs and desiccated leaves.
We tug on annel sleeves from cold — not fear — unawarethat even opossums steer clear of here on such autumn
nights when loose soil stirs and twisted roots unlatch theirunhallowed store. Crunch. Crunch. No-named things tearing limbs fromlimbs. Swallowing then scenting. Long jaws angling high. Blooddripping; vampiric lust increasing. But the shadowsare concealing. . . We traipse along not knowing, we are
the harvest that will satisfy their needs. And it will
be our blood that spatters on these scattered forest leaves.

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BECAUSE YOU COULD
NOT STOP FOR DEATH
by: Kay Hanifen

You sit at the kitchen table, and I sit beside you. The daytime soap opera plays in the background—
one that you watched with your mother as a child. These actors have been changed out so many times
that you hardly recognize them, nor do you pay any particular attention to the plot. You’re playing
solitaire, and I sit beside you. We don’t acknowledge each other. Not yet, but you will see me soon.
Until then, I sit beside you and I wait for you to see me.
Days blend into one another, marked only by the different caregivers who do the householdchores and make sure you get three square meals as you watch your soap operas and play yoursolitaire. You ask them, “Where’s Jo Sanderson?”
And they have this sad look in their eyes when they reply, “She’s in the next room, Connie.”
And a few minutes later, “Where’s Jo Sanderson?”“She’s in the next room, Connie.”
The name Jo Sanderson is important to you. It conjures images of cigarettes and martinis andlaughter at sunsets. Jo should be with you. Where is she?
“She’s out at the moment, Mom, but she’ll be back soon,” a familiar woman replies.
Mom. You are a mother to two lovely girls. You see them now in the hall, their hair in pigtails andtheir penny loafers scuffed. They laugh and chase each other, Violet grabbing her younger sister,
Justine, and tickling her until she’s breathless. Your children are with you. Your daughters sit beside you,talking about their days and how their children are doing, but they’re too young for children. Aren’t
they? Through the door, you can see them in the next room as they once were, all big hair and middle
school drama, their hearts broken over some boy.
You have regrets in your long life, but you will never regret bringing them into this world. Your
children are in the next room and they’re beside you, existing at all stages of life at once, and you
sometimes struggle with which versions of Violet and Justine you should be paying attention to. You
focus on the adult version of one, her smile slightly forced as she struggles to make conversation withyou.
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The backdoor opens behind you, and a boy of about eight and a girl of about six enter. They bothstare at you as though you’re some kind of caged and pacing animal, like you’d bite them if you had thechance. And if I had the teeth, you think, as your tongue slides across your dentures. Something about
these children is familiar. Signi cant to you somehow, but you cannot place how, so you ask, “And youare?”
The children look to one another and the woman beside you — Violet? — says, “These are yourgrandchildren, Aiden and Hannah. Say hi, kids.”
The boy, your grandchild, waves. “Hi Grandma. Hannah and I just wanted to grab a bowl for
raspberry picking.”“Why don’t you stay a while?” Violet asks, looking pained. It’s her. You know this is her. Responsible
Violet always taking care of others. “Tell Grandma about your summer vacation so far.”
The boy whose name you have already forgotten—it’s on the tip of your tongue—studies his shoes
while the girl looks like she’s about to cry. “It’s good,” he says. “I like that you live near the woods andthe swimming pool has a waterslide, which is really cool.”“What about you, Hannah?” Violet asks.
“I miss my house,” she mumbles, “and my friends.” The boy elbows her and she shoots him a glareas sharp as their mother’s. “What?”“Be nice,” he hisses.
The little girl looks down at her feet and mumbles, “And mom’s old room is cool, I guess.”
There might have been a time where you would have been hurt by the behavior of these children.
Your daughter certainly seems offended on your behalf, but your attention is already drifting back to theversions of your daughters in the next room, a pair of little girls dressed in their princess themed
Halloween costumes and eager to go Trick ‘r Treating.
I understand your grandchildren, though. These children have not yet come to know me the waythat your daughters have. They don’t know how to respond to someone whose memory is as ephemeral
as cigarette smoke.
Cigarettes like the ones that Jo used to smoke. Marlboro Reds with menthol avor. You tell herthat those things’ll kill her, and she always responds with a laugh and says, “The funny thing about life isthat no one gets out of it alive.”
She sits beside you at the kitchen table, but it’s not your table. This is in a different house, adifferent life. “Connie, we can’t keep doing this. I love you, but this place isn’t right. Come with me.”

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“I can’t,” you say, your heart breaking worse than when your dog, Peanuts, was hit by a car. “Momand Dad need me here to run the shop, and…and…” You aren’t sure why you don’t just run away with
Jo Sanders. You cite your responsibilities, but that isn’t the true reason. Truthfully, you’re afraid. What if
this doesn’t work out? What if you get all the way to New York or California or fucking Timbuktu andthen learn that you gave up everything for a life as a miserable outcast?
Jo’s eyes ll with tears, but she doesn’t say another word. She simply kisses your hand. It feels likea kiss goodbye. It isn’t, but you don’t know that at the time.
The imprint of her lips on the back of your hand burns even now. You ask, “Where is Jo
Sanderson?”
And the boy replies, “Grandma, Granny Jo died two years ago.”“Oh,” you reply, but your heart feels like it’s been thrown into a trash compacter. Jo is dead, but
your hand still burns with the kiss.
If you could see and hear me, I would tell you that she’s not gone. She’s sitting beside you evennow, waiting patiently for you to be ready. After the children leave, she whispers in your ear, “I’m in thenext room.”
You do hear this, and you smile as you shuf e your cards for another game of solitaire.
Sundown is the worst part of the day. As light fades to darkness and shadows stretch and form
grotesque shapes, you nd it a little harder to cling to what is real. The voices start—whispers at rst, butthen much louder until the screaming makes you want to pound your head against the wall.
Your other daughter, the one who lives far away and talks to you on the phone every other day,suggests that your doctors increase your nighttime dosage of Haldol, an anti-psychotic. It helps a little,
but then, you start having trouble sleeping, so they prescribe a sleeping pill. And that makes you feelsick to your stomach, so they prescribe an anti-nausea pill on top of your vitamins, blood thinners, andallergy medications. Sometimes, it feels like you’re swallowing a pharmacy with every meal.
All your sundowning and night terrors center around one man: Reggie Day. He lurks in the
periphery of your vision and smiles in through the windows. His grin is too wide, showing too many
teeth, and his eyes are empty. There is no joy in that smile, only malice.
“Reggie Day is trying to kill me,” you say.
Your caregivers laugh you off, making you feel like a child that is afraid of the dark.
“Reggie Day is trying to kill me,” you say to the little girl who may be your granddaughter.

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She just looks confused. “Who’s Reggie Day?”“Reggie Day is trying to kill me,” you say to one of your daughters.
Justine, who is visiting with her grandchildren, rolls her eyes. “Dad is dead. Stop making him into a
monster.” It is a bit harsh, I will admit, but it comes from a place of pain rather than malice. I guided
Reggie to the next phase of existence about twenty years ago. He died suddenly of a heart attack, andJustine—ever the daddy’s girl—took it the hardest. It was her rst real encounter with me at my mostsudden, and the grief was so powerful that there were days where she could barely breathe, her chest
so tight that she wondered if she too was going to die like her father.
And then she nds out the truth of your marriage to him. It makes her life feel like a lie.
Reggie Day loves you, but you can never love him. Not in the way he wants. So, you lie andpretend to be attracted to him and pretend his kisses don’t make your skin crawl and pretend that you
didn’t sneak out at night to sleep with other women, reaching out in the hope of connection and too
afraid to take it once you have it. It isn’t fair to him, and it isn’t right, but I’m not here to pass judgement
on you. That is not my job. My job is to sit beside you until you are ready for me.
All that isn’t to say that Justine hates you. She loves you very much, but seeing you drift away like aboat unmoored is breaking her heart in a way she never thought possible. She isn’t sure which isharder: her father’s quick death, her stepmother’s wasting death by lung cancer, or your slow decline as
your memories fade like a painting in the sun. At least Jo and Reggie could recognize her before theend. The idea of forgetting everything she is lls Justine with a terrible existential terror.
Still, you say, “Reggie is standing outside my window. He wants to kill me.”Your caregivers try to reassure you that you’re safe while your daughters try to remind you thathe’s gone.
You should know, though, that Reggie forgives you. He sees how happy you were with Jo, and he’s
just glad you had a few years of your life as your authentic self before the disease began slowly
scouring your mind with sandpaper, grinding away your short-term memory rst and working its way
deeper and deeper into the memories that make you who you are.
When you rst receive the diagnosis, it lls you with an awful terror. You feel condemned to losing
yourself day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, until there is nothing left. You contemplate callingme early by ending your own life, but your daughters have just lost their stepmother, and you can’t
bring yourself to cause them more pain.

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(There is a part of you that fears that, before your diagnosis, you might have accidentally hastened
Jo’s death by giving her the wrong medication at the wrong time, overdosing her, or underdosing andmaking her suffer. As her primary caregiver, these are reasonable fears, but you should take comfort in
the knowledge that I met with Jo exactly when I was meant to. There is nothing more or less that you
could have done, and all she cared about in the end was that you were holding her hand.)You feel cool air blowing on you. The sensation is like icy ngers on your neck, so, despite thesummer heat, you crank the thermometer to seventy- ve degrees and turn on the heater. Yourdaughter, Vi-something, complains about the how warm it is until she notices, and then turns it down.
You feel cool air blowing on you, and it’s like a popcorn kernel between your teeth, somethingthat does not hurt you, but you keep prodding at it in the hopes that it comes loose.
You feel cool air blowing on you and you wish it would stop.
When you fall, you brush against me, breaking your hip, and sending you to the hospital. Dignity
has not been on your mind for a long time, but you do enjoy having the ability to walk unassisted. Now,
you are pushed around in a chair.
To the kitchen for meals and games of solitaire at the table while daytime soaps play in the
background. To the bathroom when your diaper needs changing and when you need to bathe. To the
bedroom to try to sleep as the Reggie Day conjured by a guilty mind that cannot remember why it isguilty leers over you and the voices both in your head and from beyond the veil whisper to you.
One of your daughters places a baby monitor in the room, and the you of three years ago would
have hated feeling like you’ve fully regressed into a child. But that is the curse of a long life, isn’t it? As
your body breaks down, you slowly shrink and become more brittle and more helpless—an eighty-yearold newborn—and the ones you raised, fed, and cared for when they were infants now return the favor.
When a bedsore forms and gets infected, I know that you will join me soon. You must know it too
because I see you looking at me. Despite the pain and the drugs coursing through your system, yousmile politely, eyes and cheeks crinkling from decades of laughter, and ask, “And you are?”“An old friend,” I reply.
Embarrassed, you study your hands. “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember you. My memory isn’t what it
used to be.”“It’s okay. I’ll sit beside you until you do.”Weeks pass as you wait, clinging to every labored breath and slowed heartbeat. I wonder why you
are holding on. It’s not uncommon. For some, it’s until they see all their children and know that they’ll be

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okay. For others, they’re holding out for last rites from a preacher. I’ve even taken a few that have heldon until a milestone like their hundredth birthday or the turn of the century. But you’ve had your lastrites. Your grandchildren have mustered their courage in their rst real experience with me enough to
say their goodbyes and your daughters sit beside you.
After all this time, are you afraid of me? Or are you clinging simply because it's the nature of theliving to cling to life, to struggle against me? Half-crushed insects will use their front legs to crawl fromthe shadow of the boot, and plants will push through cracks in concrete before they let me take them.
Avoiding me is futile, but I am not cruel. Life is cruel. Life is what forced you to hide your true selffrom the rest of the world, robbing you of the woman you loved for so long, and life is what gave
Reggie his heart attack, Jo her cancer, and slowly stripped you of your memories. For most, I am amercy. I carry you to those that wait in the next room.
When nally you see me for what I am, you smile. I help you to your feet, and you are as you
looked and felt on the best day of your life. Like all souls, you are radiant.
I hand you a book. Your book. All this time, as pieces of yourself were sanded away to nothing, I
have been sitting beside you collecting the shavings and the sawdust and forming it into the book ofyour life from the moment of your birth to the moment of your death. After your diagnosis, your worst
fear was losing yourself, but you were never truly lost. You stayed who you were even as your memories
faded, and your mind conjured terrors born of past regrets.
I made sure to keep safe all that you have forgotten. Memories die in the same way that dreams,
knowledge, cultures, and religions do. My domain is not just the living. I was here for the cot death of
the rst star in its stellar nursery, and I will be there when the universe itself dies. It was an honor to be
the keeper of your memories until they were ready to be returned to you once more.
When you take the book, it absorbs into you, your glow becoming even brighter as you nallyremember everything. Then, you look to your daughters and smile as they weep. Though you
sometimes regret marrying Reggie, you would never regret these two girls. You caress Violet’s cheekand then Justine’s, a nal goodbye. They both gasp at the sensation and call your name, but you alreadystand beside me.
You stare at the door before looking back at me, reluctant to step through. “I have regrets,” yousay.
“All humans do, but your heart will not be weighed against a feather.”

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Your chuckle at that, the long-forgotten memories of your desire to become an archeologist as achild resurfacing. “Will I see Jo again?” you ask with tears brimming in your eyes.
I smile. “She’s waiting in the next room.”30

NO GREATER SORROW
by: Alexis Powell

No one knew why demons chose to ravage the quaint town of Sleight, Oregon, but they seemedkeen on staying. Since there were no reports of other towns struck by a demonic blight, people began
to come up with their own conclusions. Extremists, who likened Sleight to Sodom and Gomorrah,preached at the town’s borders that the citizens of Sleight had committed some high sin and must
repent. Conspiracy theorists accused the government of opening a portal to hell beneath the town as
an experiment. Those that were slightly more insipid than the rest claimed bored teenagers and a Ouija
board had something to do with it. Regardless of why, possessions were becoming more and morecommon. Like cockroaches adapting to pesticides, the demons were adapting to protection wards andsalt rings that had initially barred them from homes. Priests that had ocked to the damned city couldn’t
perform exorcisms fast enough before the demons were slipping right back inside their hosts.
We had been living like this for months, though. In the days when Sleight was still sunny, when
everyone else was happy, I welcomed my demon inside.
On the day I had lost everything, it miraculously bubbled up in my living room like an answer tomy prayers. Finally, there was something I could give over control to so I no longer had to be held
responsible for my own heartache.
I wasn’t foolish, though. After everything I had seen and been through in my life, how could I be? I
was able to recognize which direction a blessing came from when one showed up, and I knew this one
hailed from down south. It was the re and brimstone type. But beggars can’t be choosers.
I reached my hand out to it as it struggled to take form. It was lumpy and red and covered inmouths full of sharp teeth. It only had one eye that oated around in its sludge, and its pupil was
horizontal like a goat. I had to admit that when I imagined a demon, I pictured something strong, sturdy,
and fearsome. This thing was… pathetic. I simultaneously felt bad for it and also wanted to squash it
beneath my foot like an insect.
It gurgled and spat at my outstretched hand, a gesture that I took to mean it saw me as insolent. I
was supposed to be afraid and cowering in a corner, begging it not to overtake me.
“Come here and stop being so self-righteous,” I chided.

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page, I was sure, spoke about force. Force an unwilling participant to give up their soul, body, and mind.
Be wary of those that concede, or even offer, to be possessed. They were probably already insane and,
therefore, not worth the trouble.
So I stood from my cross-legged position on the oor and moved on. Ignoring it seemed like thebest course of action. I’d changed my mind. I didn’t want it in my house. I didn’t want it in my body. Or
at least I had led it to believe.
It grew angrier with each passing day. Shrieking and snarling and boiling on my oor, demanding
I pay it attention. I carried on, unfazed.
Until one day, as I slept, I heard it slither up the base of my bed and felt it enter into the soft eshof the sole of my foot. I yelped, sat up to click on the light, and drew my foot to me. Years prior, whilehiking in the Pine Barrens, chigger mites had taken to the taste of my blood and had chewed my ankles
raw. They’d left angry red welts, and the demon left similar marks and feelings. I scratched andscratched all through the night like a dog with eas, unable to sleep out of discomfort.
In the morning, when I looked into the mirror, I saw that the scleras of my eyes were bloodshot
and the skin around my mouth had formed a yellow crust, but otherwise, we felt great. We? Were we
now we?
We’d felt better than we had in months, years even, but not everyone agreed with our new
partnership. Mother, when she discovered her son had welcomed something inside himself and madeus as a result, came over to the house to beg. “Juniper, sweetheart, please, please! Let it go.” She wrung
her hands as she stood in the doorway, clearly too nervous to take a seat.
“Listen, I know. . .” Her eyes darted. “I know the things you’ve been through were awful, but thisisn’t the answer.” We sat on the couch and listened to her while we picked at the skin on our arm. It was
beginning to ake off and unveil new skin beneath that was the greenish-yellow of a healing bruise. If
we pressed hard enough, the underskin would start to ooze a rancid-smelling, white pus.
“We are happy,” we responded.
“You can’t be,” she said.
“We are happy,” we repeated. It was the only thing left to say. Mother continued to cry while we
ddled with a loose molar as we waited for her to leave.
Our neighbors steered clear when they saw us leave the house and whispered that we appeared
sickly. Our siblings and friends stopped visiting and calling. That was all perfectly ne. We no longer

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It didn’t come. If there was a “How to be A Proper Demon 101” handbook somewhere, the rst

needed others. We had us.
Then, the whole town suddenly had an “us.”We rejoiced at rst, guring everyone would nally understand, though the screams in the
distance said otherwise.

Now, we sat before the window and gazed at the itting and churning shadows in the street.
Other demons that were still searching for a host. They must be so lonely. The population of Sleight,
Oregon was small, and demons were notorious for not liking to share. Try to crowd a body that alreadyhad someone living in there, and you’d be ayed so severely by its reigning denizen that you’d beforced back to Hell to recover.
One shadow darted by our window and toward our neighbor’s old cat, Humphrey. Humphrey
hissed and spat and arched his back, appearing as the classic Halloween cat silhouette as the shadow
passed over him. When the shadow moved on, the only sign that Humphrey had ever existed was asmall, red smudge mark on the sidewalk like a mini explosive full of blood had gone off. Loud,
crunching noises reverberated from within the shadow as if some invisible teeth were chewing throughbone. We felt our stomach growl, stood to close the blinds, and headed into the kitchen.
All of our previous at, normal teeth had fallen out, and sharp shark-like ones had ruptured
through the gums in replacement. It made it a lot easier to tear through our meals. We chewed slowly,
hands slick with the blood of our food, as we tried to remember what life was like before we met. If it
was good, we couldn’t say. We lose more and more of our memories each day.
Another scream from somewhere else punctuated the dark that was beginning to fall. Our heart
went out to all of those that didn’t feel okay. That would never feel okay again. It was a shame.
But for us, we didn’t hurt, and we were together. And if there was anything we did know, it was thatthose were the only things that mattered.

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OTHER NEIGHBORS
by: Jennifer MaloneyCircles, make circles
of wagons, of crows,
crowd around, there is nothinginside it. Make a joyful caw.
The dictionary de nes trudge
as to walk with purpose, and he does,
across the lawn,
toward the writhing boy, the shrieking girl,he trudges
because this is inevitable
this was always going to happen
and he takes no joy in it, no joy,
he is empty, he is nothing,
he grips a kitchen knife — he swings an iron bar —and up and down the street, relatives
are climbing out of cof ns,
huddle like crows in a circle, gleam and strut
around nothing — I am not trudging —I am running — I am trying to run —the way you try to run in a dream —is this a dream —my feetsink into nothing —the circle is empty, there is nothing inside,
why draw the boundary? Bubbles
for the sake of iridescence, they are shiny, they gleam,
they pop with a squirt and blind us —I am screaming
I am screaming at him, stop

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I called the cops, stop,
the cops are coming
maybe he’ll run,maybe he’ll drop the weapons, but
my words don’t penetrate, they don’t get throughthe way a knife will penetrate a child, he is still trudging
toward the boy, the already bleeding boy, the girlpressing the towel against his waist,
the towel I gave them, pressing, the boy’s moutha sh gasping, a hole, emptyof all but a howl,
a string of foam apostrophe’s his chin,
and roses bloomin the front yard, roses bloom
on my white towel —my ngers don’t count, same as my head, my heart,
only what’s inside the circle, the children, the knife,
which is nothing, which should be nothing,
why do you guard it, what can’t I see,am I blind? There is nothing
but space, wide open space, space between paragraphs, space
between me and these children and the closing gap
between them and the knife and I’m screaming
but nothing comes out, only blood comes out
and grunting. Panting. The at thudof esh on esh, a groan,no other sound, nothing —even the screaming has stopped —the girl and boy beneath the knife —the girl and boy beneath his body —he is trudging toward this ending,nothing to stop him, nothing between them —my ngers don’t count, my hands, my witness —

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he sees nothing in front of him, nothing —this was always going to happen —make a circle, crowd around,a murder of crows admires the knife,that oats, iridescent, over the lawn,
under the hung-over, half-lidded eye of the sun

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AFTER 'AFTER'
by: Jessica Lilien

December 8, 20—

Dear Participant,Thank you again for agreeing to be a part of our upcoming conference, co-presented by the
Borlaug Institute for Public Health and Sanitation (BIPHS), the New Columbia University School of theArts, the Department of Invasion Biology, and the Alexandra Jobs Center for the Study of Large
Emergency Management and Response at New Columbia University, ‘And Then We Became After’: AnInterdisciplinary Colloquium on the State of the Human in the ‘After’ of the Brazilian Louse Scourge, andWhere We Go After ‘After,’ on April 18, 20—, at New Columbia University.
We take this opportunity, on the twentieth anniversary of the death of Lars Lobak-Davis, UnitedStates Poet Laureate, Columbia University Professor of English and Contemporary Literature, and thelast CDCP-substantiated victim of the Scourge in New York City, to re ect not on the causes of the
Scourge or of the speci cs of its vanquish — the hard sciences from which it sprung and through which it
was tamed (so much ink and breath have been sacri ced to those topics already) — but instead upon
the lasting changes, for both ill and — yes, we venture to say it: for good — which it has wrought upon thecollective face of the human spirit, the creative re of the soul. Deliberately, we aim to look at thechanges brought by and to our new world via a broad swath of elds within the humanities andhumanistic social sciences: for a topic which has touched every one, in every way, can only be fully
understood when examined under such a wide canopy, painted with such a broad brush. Of course,when one speaks of humanity one speaks of the arts, as that is the lens through which the human seesand studies itself. Thus, the focusing lens through which we train our collective eye this April: the Arts.
You will nd included herein a number of important documents regarding your travel,
accommodations, and reimbursements; as well as campus maps; locally speci c (to the entirety of theManhattan Island area) pediculicidal / ovicidal wipes; a list of nearby CDCP C-rated restaurants andpoints of interest; and a number of tax, Inter- and Extra-Province Immigration Commission, and CDCP /Health Department forms. Please ll out, sign, and return all applicable papers to the BIPHS’s Events

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and Emergencies Coordinator Tess Tran (tt3880@ncu.edu) by Friday, March 2 at the latest, or we cannot
guarantee that your Letter of Invitation to Movement will be presented in time for travel.
Remember that all New Columbia campuses are rated CDCP C-1. Our campus maintains its
exemplary record of health and hygiene through a strict and CDCP-Award-winning regimen ofcleanliness protocols. Please respect city and campus ordinances, obey posted signage, and follow all
Campus Guard instructions.
Carry your New Columbia Letter of Invitation to Movement at all times. If you are detained or haveother issues with the Campus Guard, do not resist arrest. Present to them your LIM and call the Invited
Guest Help Line at 4-1833 at any of the provided campus Emergency Assist Phones; one of our lawyers
or doctors will assist you.
Though Manhattan Island and most of the greater Atlantic American Province have been
habitable for upwards of 3 years, basic self-safety when off-campus is, as always, of utmost importance.
Wear light colors, long sleeves, long pants, long stockings, and hairnets or caps at all times. Avoid
perfume or cologne and perfumed soaps and laundry detergents. Remain aware of your surroundings.
Do not walk alone at night. Do not approach the Island walls.
Please remember that if you are presenting a paper, your draft is due to Tess Tran
(tt3880@ncu.edu) by Friday, March 2. We will contact selected writers about nal manuscripts forpossible publication in a special issue of the Provinces United Journal of New Emergency Studies, to beedited by Morgan Hannover, after the end of the semester.
Graduate students participating in the Media Expo / Poster Presentation should have been
contacted previously about shipping and display needs. If you have not yet made your nal
arrangements with Tess Tran (tt3880@ncu.edu), please do so as soon as possible.
We are currently nalizing the program and hope to have a complete schedule online atbiphs.ncu.edu/webecameafter20— by the end of the month. If you have any questions or concerns, do
not hesitate to contact Tess Tran (tt3880@ncu.edu) or either one of us.
We look forward to a day of lively and fruitful discussion.

Safe travels,
Morgan HannoverDirector, Borlaug Institute for Public Health and Sanitation, New Columbia University

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Diane C. Feldkin
Dean, Literary Arts Program at the School of the Arts, New Columbia University***‘And Then We Became After’:
An Interdisciplinary Colloquium on the Human and Humanist After-Effectsof the Brazilian Louse Scourge, and Where We Go After ‘After’

April 18, 20—
New Columbia University | Manhattan Island, Atlantic American Province, North

9:00am - Eldenwood Ballroom (Room 101), Orion Hall
Doors open for coffee, danish, registration.
*All participants and attendees must show detoxi cation certi cation upon check-in.

9:30-9:55am - Erwin James Auditorium (Room 401), Orion Hall
Welcoming Remarks•

Morgan Hannover, Director, Borlaug Institute for Public Health and Sanitation, NCU

PLENARY:
10:00-10:55am - Erwin James Auditorium (Room 401), Orion Hall
Keynote Address: “Fraud to Hipster to Hero: Confessions of the ‘Hip-Hop Exterminator,’ or: How I
Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bug(z)!!”• David Bowers, Co-Director, Emory University Danburry Center for the Ecosystem Studies;
Distinguished Professor of Invertebrate Biology, Emory School of Medicine; Winner, 20— Nobel
Prize in Medicine

AM TRACK 1:
11:00am-12:25pm - Room 425, Orion Hall
The Activism, Politics, and Performance of Gender, Race, Religion, and Class in the After“From Crabs to Lice: The Clean-1 Social Media Stars of Sex and Gender”

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•

“How ‘Brazilian’ Lice In- and Out-Side of the Americas led to the North Uni cation Act of 20—”•

“A Brown Girl’s Murder in White Plains: How ‘Brazilian’ Lice Killed Ana Desilva”•“Cannibalism and Other Hiccups on the Way to Reconstruction”

AM TRACK 2:
11:00am-12:25pm - Kemper Theatre, Kenneth & C. Eckert Hall
Screening of: Attrition: The West Laurel Primary School Seven, followed by a talkback with:•

Christian Greene and Michael Greene, Co-Directors of Attrition•

Mitchell Capelli, Emergency Response Communications Specialist, Centers for Disease Control

and Prevention•

Kevin Combs, Writer and Activist; Co-Founder of Parents and Families of Living Children• T. C. Robert, Professor of Grief Studies, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU; Director of Tear Down
These Walls•

Kat Gan (Moderator), Assistant Professor of Non-Fiction Film and Documentary Theory, NCU

12:30-1:25pm - Eldenwood Ballroom (Room 101), Orion Hall
Graduate Student Media Expo / Poster Presentation
andBreak for Lunch*See registration desk in Eldenwood Ballroom (Room 101) for a list of on-campus cafeterias and coffee
shops. It is strongly recommended that you do not leave campus during the conference.

PM TRACK 1:
1:30-2:55pm - Room 425, Orion Hall
Re-Learning to Be an Artist Again•“The Performance of Restriction of Marie Marin: This Is Your Invitation to Movement”•“‘Clean’ Slates and the Future of Archiving”• “A Collaborative Social Anthropological / Performative Dance Study of Self-Induced Hysterical
Sloughing and Destructive Panic Syndrome in Two Families Living in an Un-Walled ‘Cannibal’Camp in Midwest Pass”“Organic Pigments: The Los Angeles Sisters of Hope Artists Commune Massacre”
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• “A Reconsideration of the Introduction of Cellular Reorganization and Pathogenic
Reprogramming Systems at the Hydro-Cellular Level Inspired by a Study of the Senior Thesis
Projects Produced by University of Nebraska Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art Graduates, 20- to
20-”

PM TRACK 2:
1:30-2:55pm - Room 412, Orion Hall
Yes, Mr Vice President: What You Call it Matters - and Other Linguistic, Literary, and Journalistic
Considerations• “Where Do ‘Cannibals’ Come From? Etymology and Entomology; an Anecdote and an
Antidote”• “Cry Cannibal: The American Media-tainment Industrial Complex and the Future of Disaster
Preparedness Theory”• “‘Nothing Will Ever Be Funny Again,’ Said the Rubber Chicken: Late-Night Television in a Timeof Tragedy”• “Who Will Write the Great North Novel?”

PM TRACK 3:
1:30-2:55pm - Room 200, Orion Hall Annex
The Walls, the Divide, and What the Inside Must Do for the Outside•“Cannibalism, Panic-Induced Destruction Syndrome, and the New Normal in the Outside”•“Beyond the Cure: How to Get Over the Idea of ‘Moving Too Fast’ Next Time”•“Painted on the Skin: Pre-Screening Identi cation Methods for Keeping the Outside Out”

3:00-3:25pm - Eldenwood Ballroom (Room 101), Orion Hall
Coffee and Light Refreshments
andPerformances by:•

The Manhattan Island 2-Piece Quartet•

Children’s Choir of St Dominic of Silosfi

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PLENARY:
3:30-4:55pm - Erwin James Auditorium (Room 401), Orion Hall
Roundtable Wrap-Up Discussion: “What Do We Become After ‘After?’”•Morgan Hannover, Director, Borlaug Institute for Public Health and Sanitation, NCU•

Xiaodan Song, Director, Center for the Study of Large Emergency Management and Response• David Bowers, Director, Emory University Danburry Center for the Ecosystem Studies; Professorof Invertebrate Biology, Emory School of Medicine; 20— Winner, Nobel Prize in Medicine
Caroline Lobak-Davis, Professor of Creative Writing, NCU•

5:00-8:00pm - Barkey Memorial Library, 6th Floor, Orion Hall
Literary Reading in Honor of Lars Lobak-Davis, followed by Reception• Caroline Lobak-Davis, Professor of Creative Writing, NCU
A reading of “First We Were Before; and Then We Became After,” by her late father, the poetlaureate, educator, and activist Lars Lobak-Davis*Reception is open to all. Dinner and wine will be served.
***
Issue XXVI; Winter 20—
Provinces United Journal of New Emergency Studies
Guest Editor’s Letter

When Marcia casually asked me over sushi and sake (perhaps a bit too much of both!) whether I
might be interested in guest-editing an issue of her journal focusing on what had, until then, been
merely a personal pursuit of mine — the artistic response to and study of the Scourge — I replied in thepositive, with no hesitation. Had I known what I was getting myself into, I may have reconsidered!
(Kudos to you, Marcia, for pulling this off four times a year!)In the eye of the hurricane of an ongoing disaster, it can be dif cult to focus one’s academic
attentions on anything beyond the immediate needs of the body: health, safety, governance. And yet.
Once the public is secured, once rule of law has been re-established, once the prescriptions have been
written, once the res have been quenched and the cities rebuilt and the walls (for better or worse)raised, then the work must be handed over from the scientists to the humanitarians, the social scientists,

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the artists. For the task falls to them to secure the public’s sensibilities. The task falls to them to reestablish the means of expressing what we (“we,” collectively) have endured, to write the emotional andpersonal stories of us (“us,” collectively), to quench the nightmares and rebuild the aesthetic senses andraise the hopes of the collectives (O, collectively!).
There are those who will say these efforts are too frivolous, too spurious: Why study Victorian
literature when there are children starving in Sonoran Province?
The conference and papers from which this special issue of PUJNES is sprung experienced
terrible setbacks. Following the tragic blow we were all dealt at last year’s gathering in Manhattan
Island, it was suggested that we scrap the project entirely, out of respect for the families of the missing.
But it is these very setbacks which prove how necessary these studies are—and it is precisely forthe families of those who disappeared following the conference that we forge ahead with our work, andwith the publication of this collection—more important now than ever.
We study Victorian literature for the children starving in Sonoran Province!
And I dedicate this issue, with thoughts and prayers, to those lost last April, who ventured
unauthorized outside of the safe zone of their own accord. Were they then taken by human means or by
infection? Obviously, it is impossible to know. Leslie Bowen. Willard Bowen. Kat Gan. Vatsal Gupta.
Caroline Lobak-Davis. Marcus MacDougal. Leanne Rai. Though their academic careers were only justbeginning, their names—and their works—will live on in our journals, our textbooks, and our hearts.

Morgan HannoverDirector, Borlaug Institute for Public Health and Sanitation
New Columbia University***
Dear Francie,
Cameron said the Verrazano was cleared! Or almost? He said it was getting close the last time hewas by, and they’re going to see if it’s passable this run-through. He told me I shouldn’t count on it, but I
don’t care, I’m feeling optimistic this summer — I gave him a load of our little gnome tomatoes for you
with the rest of the mail. I know you said you weren’t having any luck with tomatoes, but every yard incamp has ten of these vines — they grow like ridiculous. I gave them to him green (I’m writing this on

43August 4, for what it’s worth??) — maybe they’ll reach you before they’re marinara. (And if not, plantthem, anyway. Seriously, they growgrowgrow.)
I’m sending a few other seed stuffs: purple carrots, cauli ower, and pink tea roses (!). We got abunch of mixed melon seeds, too, a few months ago, last time the Sun ower House kids came through,but I always heard melons take a ton of room, so I wanted to clear a new plot, and now I think it’s toolate in the year? Probably I’m being paranoid, but I didn’t want to waste them. But next year hopefully I’ll
get to pass some of those along, also. And Teo and Sam found a mostly untouched in-house doctor’sof ce a few weeks ago, so we’re also sending along a box of supplies. Mostly just Band-Aids andaspirin, tbh, but some iodine, at least.
How’s Pete? What’re the boys up to? Cameron said people were starting up livestocking in New
Jersey—anywhere near you? We’ve got blue sh and bass up the cootch, but I swear to god, I would
brave the walk with the Mailmen if it meant having a hamburger with you.

What do you think of this new crew they’ve got tagging along with them this year!
ELECTRICIANS!! They’ll swear they’ve been through cities that have whole grids up, but they’re either
lying just to cheer us up, or anyway THEY weren’t the ones who did it. But they showed us how toconvert the gas generator over to a turbine engine, and they have a ton of solar chargers that they’ll sell
you for meals. They’ve got a couple of kids from the Island with them, too, doing interviews andcounting census stuff. They’re writing up some little reports for Columbia, they said. It was kind of sweet.
There’s one girl with them that will remind you of Beth like crazy.
Nothing much else new here. Three new babies since the last time the Mailmen were through(including Kaiama’s — she named her after Audra), one slightly rough round last winter of what I guess
was just a bad u (?), but no bugs, no bugs, no bugs.
Miss you like ridiculous. Hugs to everybody from me. Good luck, safe travels (ha-ha).

All my love,
Jana

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AN INFERNAL ROMANCE
by: Asa WestIn her ten thousandth year in Hell, Sara discovered that she could grow a garden by planting heresh. In the mornings, when the sun rose red and smoky over Dis on the horizon, she would go to thecracked eld of clay outside the cottage and ay herself, julienning her skin and rolling it into seeds.
The skin grew into sour fruit by evening, which she could dry on a spit over coals, and each night she
and Jack gnawed on pieces of it for dinner. If she was especially hungry, she could plant some muscle,
maybe a bit of viscera, and combine the different fruits into kabobs. For festivals and special occasions,some lung or brain, or a couple of ngers. Each morning, when the planting was done, she would
shamble back to the cottage and slip a dress over her bloody bones.
Today was their anniversary — a sort of combination wedding, dating, and dying day, which they
picked at random now and then. Sara decided to experiment in the garden by combining two bodyparts into one seed. Liver, she decided, remembering the canned stuff she’d spread on crackers in life,
and, oh, an eye, why not. She expertly rolled up the bundle and stuffed it under a clump of loose clay.
Jack would be happy, she thought.
But that evening, after Sara triumphantly presented the result of her experiment at the table, Jackseemed distracted. The seeds had grown into salty fruits like salmon roe with a spongy outside, andthey were relatively tasty. She’d had to ght the urge to eat all of them out in the eld, right off the tree.
“What’s wrong?” she said. She was annoyed that he didn’t appreciate the food, didn’t notice that she’dpulled out an eye.
“I heard about something today,” Jack said. He tended to spend his days in the steam vents,
blasting off all his skin, letting it grow back, blasting it off again. It was kind of like a sauna, he told her
once, his eyes lidless and his teeth showing through his stringy boiled cheeks. Invigorating. He swore
their bodies produced endorphins here, but Sara was skeptical. “Something in Dis,” he said.
They only went into Dis for the big festivals. It was a long walk, and loud and smelly once they got
there. “What,” she said, grumpily popping a fruit into her mouth, “new restaurant?”“A gate to Heaven,” Jack said.

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ROOTED:

Sara stopped chewing.
“The thorny guys told me about it,” Jack said. “There’s this shrine with a door behind it, and it
leads straight to Heaven. And if you hear about it, that means you’re worthy of going through. They saythat people are getting redeemed, that they’re paying their dues and they don’t have to stay here
forever.”Sara’s heart raced. She and Jack were damned for killing his rst wife, Daisy. If he had divorced
her, Daisy would have gotten his house, so together he and Sara had faked her suicide. They’d done athorough job, and had never gotten caught, not for the rest of their lives. Jack had given her a string of
pearls and she’d kept them until she died, and even now, all this time later, her hand still went to herchest sometimes to nger it. She had always wondered if there might be a secret way out of this place, apath to something better.
Her skin wasn’t completely grown back yet from the morning’s planting, so she pulled her
cardigan tighter to hide her thumping heart. “Sounds like bullshit. Sounds like the thorny guys arehaving fun with you.”“No, but my friend Sylvester — he says he knows someone who went through it and the guy
disappeared. He never saw him again.”“Maybe the gate thing just killed him,” Sara said, even though she knew it wasn’t how things
worked around here.
“Either way,” Jack said, “it’d be an ending.”
Sara paused, then took another fruit. Part of her wanted to believe it. The universe was made ofchange. Nothing lasted forever; everything worked in cycles. So why not this? Why couldn’t this end,
too?
“I think it’s bullshit,” she said.
“I’m going to Dis tomorrow,” Jack said. “The thorny guys gave me the address.”
Sara pictured a little house for them in Heaven. Fresh food to eat, and skin that stayed intact. It was
hard to remember their lives on Earth after all this time, but if she tried, she could still conjure up thetaste of strawberries, the scent of owers on a breeze.
***
The knife she used to ay herself each day was a good, sturdy shing knife that she had pickedfrom one of the trees in the Grove of Blades. Its hilt was as sharp as its point, so it cut her hand when she

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used it, but who cared in this brutal place? That night, she planted some seeds so they’d have fruit for
the trip, and then put the knife in her bag. You never knew how long it would take to get to Dis.
Sometimes an hour, sometimes a month. The city knew how badly you wanted to get there, andwithheld itself accordingly.
They left the next morning and traveled for ten years before they reached the city gates. Sara andJack had run out of things to talk about millennia ago, so they simply enjoyed each other’s company.
Each night they scraped away dirt to reveal the embers that seethed underground, and Jack leisurely
pulled out his teeth, one by one. “You can plant those,” Sara said sometimes, curious about what theymight grow into, but he never seemed interested. Instead, he inspected them like a jeweler, sometimes
pocketing one that he apparently thought was worth keeping, and threw the rest onto the coals towatch them skitter and pop.
“I love you,” she said each night, curling up against him in the dirt. In the distance behind them
they could see the speck that was their cottage, but they knew that if they went back, the land would
keep them walking for twenty years just to spite them.
Jack would stroke her hair absently, gazing at the smoke drifting through the night sky abovethem.
“If it’s real,” she said one night, “let’s celebrate with a big dinner once we get there. Let’s get all ourfavorite foods after we get settled in.” She kissed his cheek. “I can’t wait to be in Heaven with you.”“Mmm,” Jack said.
“What are you thinking about?” Sara asked, anxiety gnawing at her. She’d done something wrong.
She’d annoyed him somehow. He didn’t want to be with her anymore. Maybe he’d get into Heaven andshe wouldn’t, and he’d leave her behind.
She waited for him to answer, but he didn’t seem to hear her. He just stared at the hostile sky.
***
They nally arrived at the gates of Dis. “Reason for visiting,” the sentry asked.
Jack winked at her and her heart uttered. She loved it when she saw glimpses of his old self, theJack she had plotted and schemed with, the Jack who had given her presents and taken her on dates.
“Visiting a friend,” he said.
The sentry waved them in, and they walked through the crowded streets. Vendors at market stalls
sold food they’d grown on the smoldering plains, goods they’d crafted from the trees of bone. Sara and

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Jack walked through the wide boulevards where the wealthy lived, and then the side streets of themerchant classes and the shanty towns lled with everyone else. Jack led them down a twisting alley,
and they found the shrine.
It was impossible to tell what spirit or deity the shrine honored. The statue had been worn down toa shapeless lump of granite, with vague lumps for a head and arms and maybe wings. Still, it was
comforting to venerate something. Even in Hell, people needed a shrine on which to lay offerings, aface that would listen to prayers without judging. The shrine was covered in bouquets of lea ess
branches, and shiny rocks, and coins of nickel and brass, and Sara instinctively picked up a fallen
pebble and laid it on the dais.
“Hey,” said a shrine keeper in a folding chair. She stood up with a grunt and brushed invisible dust
from her skirt. “Ten dollars to feed the statue.”
Sara sighed and knocked the pebble off again.
Jack cleared his throat as he approached the shrine keeper. “We’re, ah, here for the door,” he said.
“The what now,” the shrine keeper said.
Jack leaned in. “The door,” he said quietly. “The gate.”
The shrine keeper stared at him, and Sara felt the I-told-you-so rising in her throat. They’d walked
ten years for nothing! And how long would it take for them to get back? Probably thirty years, just so theland could laugh at them.
But then the shrine keeper broke into a grin. “Ah,” she said. “Sylvester’s friends! Oh, yes! All right!
Come on, come on, I love to watch!”
She led them around to the back of the shrine, where a wooden door was wedged into a
misshapen frame. “Right through there,” the shrine keeper said.
“You don’t charge?” Sara said.
“Can’t charge for this,” the shrine keeper said. “I want to be redeemed myself someday.”Sara couldn’t quite follow the logic, but she didn’t question it. Jack took a shuddery breath andpulled on the knob.
Behind the door was a grayish tunnel, brighter than anything Sara had seen in ten thousand years.
She blinked, dazzled by it, and hurriedly fumbled for Jack’s hand. “Do you think it’s real?” shewhispered.
He didn’t hear her. As she tried to take his hand, she felt a clump of little hard things in it, and she
looked to see what it was. A necklace, fashioned from the teeth he’d pulled out over the years of their

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journey. He’d strung up the very best ones, the whitest and shiniest. Just like the pearls he’d given her
when they married. As she watched, he brought the necklace to his chest, his eyes wild with hope.
Her heart was already sinking, but she forced herself to speak. “Is that for me?” she asked.
He nally seemed to notice her. He looked at her blankly, then down at the teeth in his hand. “Uh,”he said.
And Sara knew. She knew who the necklace was for. Oh, god, she could slit her own throat, she
was so angry at herself, so disgusted. Instead, she slid her knife out of its pocket in her bag and drove it
into his chest.
Jack grunted and fell on his ass. “What the fuck!” he cried.
“You’re going back to her,” Sara said. “You’re just going back to her!”“Babe, no,” Jack said, but she’d seen it, she’d seen the look in his eyes, it was the way he’d looked
at Sara the rst time he asked her out. She’d seen it just now, that love, that bliss, that moony rapture, ohgod, she was too stupid to live.
While he ailed on the ground, yelling excuses — “It was an apology gift, that’s all! Just to say
sorry!” — she sliced the tendons in his arms, and got to work carving him up. The streets in Dis were
paved with tarry asphalt, so there was no clay in which to stuff his parts. She carved and carved,
shredding his neck and chest, inging his entrails, hacking his ngers, weeping all the while. A crowdbrie y formed around the sides of the shrine, drawn by the commotion, and then dispersed. Behind
her, the shrine keeper laughed and laughed.
Jack looked like a pot of spilled stew by the time Sara stood up and wearily dragged an arm
across her brow. His parts twitched and twisted. The tunnel behind the door was black. Either the gate
to Heaven had closed, or it had been a prank all along.
“It never gets old,” the shrine keeper gasped. “Oh, god, never ever. I can’t wait to tell Sylvester.”***Sara went and stole a ten from a market stall, menacing the owner with her knife, and returned to
put the pebble back on the dais. By then, Jack was mostly back together again, the last few muscles andguts spasming across the pavement to nd him. The two of them didn’t spend the night in Dis. They
started home right away, after Sara threw the necklace into the darkened gate so that it would nevergrow into anything.

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Killing Daisy had been Jack’s idea. Sara was horri ed at rst, repulsed, on the verge of leaving
him. But he’d worked on her and worked on her until she gave in, helped him get the pills and bury
their tracks. At least, that was how she remembered it. And Daisy had always been nice to Sara. Once,
Sara had shown up crying because she’d gotten red, and Daisy had ushered her into the house andpoured her wine and listened as she blubbered and vented. But Daisy had been depressed, too, almost
ready to pull the trigger on a divorce herself, and Sara had felt so bad for her that she’d almost told her
to do it. But if she did, Daisy would have gotten the house.
Sara barely remembered that house now. Did it have a second- oor deck and a salt water pool?
Or was that a house she’d seen in a movie? It had only mattered for a few decades, a tiny blip in her
relentless existence. If it weren’t for Jack, she wouldn’t be in this awful place. She could have been in
Heaven, clinking wine glasses with Daisy, who had always been so kind.
It took Sara and Jack forty years to get home to the cottage. When they got there, Sara opened
the windows to shoo out the scorpions while Jack put his things away.
“I’m going to the steam vents,” he said.
Sara watched him trudge across the eld. “She never would’ve taken you back anyway,” shecalled.
She went to the garden to plan dinner. As she held the knife and gauged which part of herself to
cut rst, she suddenly wished that she had kept the necklace, even if it was made out of the man she
hated. She knew there were no endings in Hell. Change drove the awesome gears of the universe, but it
didn’t come here. She understood that, but maybe a pretty necklace would have made it bearable for awhile.
She wedged the knife between her ribs and her sternum and cracked herself open. She daintily
severed her heart, leaning over to let the blood pour out of the aorta, and then laid her heart in the clay.
The house needed cleaning and the laundry needed doing, but instead she sat down to watch herheart take root, and see what it might become.

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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES
Breath Between Battles – Beth Cato and Rhonda Parrish
Nebula-nominated Beth Cato is the author of the Clockwork Dagger duology and the Blood of Earthtrilogy from Harper Voyager. She’s a Hanford, California native transplanted to the Arizona desert, where
she lives with her husband, son, and requisite cats. Follow her at BethCato.com and on Instagram@catocatsandcheese.

Like a magpie, Rhonda Parrish is constantly distracted by shiny things. She’s the editor of manyanthologies and author of plenty of books, stories and poems (some of which have even won awards!).
She lives in Edmonton, Alberta, where she plays Dungeons and Dragons, makes blankets and cheers on
the Oilers.

Because You Could Not Stop For Death – Kay Hanifen
Kay Hanifen was born on a Friday the 13th and once lived for three months in a haunted castle. So,
obviously, she had to become a horror writer. Her work has appeared in over forty anthologies andmagazines. When she’s not consuming pop culture with the voraciousness of a vampire at a 24-hourblood bank, you can usually nd her with her two black cats or at kayhanifenauthor.wordpress.com.

Harvest – Ann Yihyang Kim
Ann Yihyang Kim graduated with a B.A. in English from the University of California, Berkeley. She
climbed the corporate ladder for several years before realizing that writing was her true passion. She
recently nished the manuscript of her rst novel, a work of dark fantasy that explores trauma, abuse,and the importance of friendship, and will soon begin the querying process. She resides in San Diego,
CA with her loving husband and their rambunctious dog, Max.

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A World Ends, A World Begins – Jamie Lackey
Jamie Lackey lives in Pittsburgh with her husband and their cats. She has over 170 short ction credits,and has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Apex Magazine, and Escape Pod. In addition to writing,she spends her time reading, playing tabletop RPGs, and hiking. Find out moreat www.jamielackey.com.

After 'After' – Jessica Lilien
Jessica Lilien has had work published in Meridian (winner of the Meridian Editors’ Prize), The
Chattahoochee Review ( nalist for the Lamar York Prize for Fiction; nominated for a Pushcart
Prize), LUMINA Journal (a winner of the LUMINA Fiction Contest), and the edited volume Night Terrors
III, among other publications. George Saunders once called something she wrote “very strange.” Shelives in Brooklyn.

Other Neighbors – Jennifer Maloney
Jennifer Maloney writes poetry and ction. Her work has appeared in Literally Stories, Litro Magazine,
SHIFT: A Publication of MSTU Write, and other places; she has a story forthcoming in the November/
December 2023 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine. Jennifer is the co-editor of the poetry
anthology Moving Images: Poetry Inspired by Film (Before Your Quiet Eyes Publishing, 2021), and theauthor of Evidence of Fire, Poems and Stories (Clare Songbirds Publishing, 2023).

Weekend, Ruined – Christi Nogle
Christi Nogle is the author of the Bram Stoker Award winning novel Beulah (and the short story
collections The Best of Our Past, the Worst of Our Future and Promise. Visit her at christinogle.com

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Alexis loves all things vampiric and unusual. At four years old, Alexis’s rst crush was Rudolph SackvilleBagg, and she hasn’t stopped wanting to be a creature of the night since then. Darren Shan (whose
novels also shaped a worrying amount of her personality), Clive Barker, Anne Rice, and Stephen
Graham Jones are some of her favorite horror writers. She enjoys horror that makes her skin crawl but
also acts as catharsis for everyday struggles.

Autumn Harvest – Crystal Sidell
A native Floridian, Crystal Sidell grew up playing with toads in the rain and indulging in speculativection. She holds a master of arts in both English and library & information science, moderates twocreative writing groups, and has reviewed books for the Florida Library Youth Program. A Pushcart
Nominee and Rhysling Finalist, her work appears in 34 Orchard, Apparition Lit, F&SF, Frozen Wavelets,
Haven Spec, and others. You can nd her online at crystalsidell.wixsite.com/mysite

Rooted: An Infernal Romance – Asa West
Asa West's ction and essays have appeared in The Of ng, Joyland, Gods and Radicals, and otherpublications. She's the author of the zine Five Principles of Green Witchcraft, and the forthcoming
memoir Witch Blood. By day, she's a culture writer for The Mary Sue under the name Julia Glassman.
You can nd her on Instagram as @TheRedTailWitch.

Seeking Bad Boys for Fun and Adventure – Jay Whistler
Jay holds an MFA in writing for children and young adults and an MA in technical writing. She has
worked as a professional writer for over thirty years, was a university writing instructor for over 16 years,
and served as an editor for a literary journal. She is currently an acquisitions reader for a literary agency
and a freelance editor with Angelella Editorial. Her rst MG non ction title, The Ghostly Tales of San
Antonio, debuted in August 2021. She also grew up in a haunted house and comes from afamily of psychics.

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No Greater Sorrow – Alexis PowellVol. 2 - Issue 3 - The End, Part Two - December 2023

Executive Editors

Readers

David Fey

Aileen Johnson

Emily Young

Kyle McHugh
Neidy McHugh

Cover Illustration
Alex Vasilakos

Marianne Murphy
Alexis Powellinstagram: @drawdoodlesketchThomas Shimmield

web: alexlikestodraw.com

Harper Stuart Villani
Jay Whistler

Cover Text DesignDavid Fey54

the end(... or is it?)55

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