Issue 33: 1st Quarter 2010

"Whoever battles monsters should take care not to become a monster too, for if you stare long enough into the Abyss, the Abyss stares also into you."
—Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, chapter 4, no. 146

Editorial

On Writing Other Genders
by Wendy S. Delmater, Editor

Short Fiction

How We Fly
by Lisa A. Koosis

     Here's where we first meet: in a room with moss green recliners and faded Monet reproductions on cinderblock walls, a scatter of ancient magazines on low tables, IV poles and wheelchairs. I notice her first, maybe because she's so vibrant and young amid men and women with colorless hair and exposed wrists, skin so thin it might be vellum. Dressed in baggy denim overalls and a yellow tee-shirt, the girl sits cross-legged in the recliner, a magazine open in her lap. A tube winds from beneath her sleeve to a bag hanging on the IV pole beside her.

     My first thought: she doesn’t look like someone who's been told she’s going to die.

The Tortuous Path
by Bud Sparhawk

     What he was doing was strictly against the rules. Acolytes were not supposed to fraternize with the passengers, officers, or, most especially, crewmen.

     That’s what made it so exciting to break the rules.

Deutoroi
by Samantha Henderson

     They're coming, rumbled the oak.

     Oh, damn you, she thought. She usually avoided talking to the trees. It inched her that much further towards the madness that took her mother in the end. Tell me something I don't know.

     There are three. Did you know that? said the oak, taking her at her word.

Night Of The Manticore
by Tony Pi

     The guests, likewise taken by my idea, clamoured for Mason to show his contributions to the Grand Expo. At first, Mason turned beet-red under the barrage of pleas, but slowly, the spirit of competition overtook him. He smirked and called out to the Hespereian alchemist across from me.

     "What do you say, Fowler? Shall we show them a true manticore?"

The Wishing Stone
by Edward Greaves

     "This stone could work miracles!" Arrod stared at the scintillating gem in his fingers.

     "It better," said Lady Damaske. "For the cost, I better not be disappointed."

     "Have I yet failed you?" he replied.

Flash Fiction

Anything Chocolate
by Caren Gussoff

     The young checker looks at my father's hands as he pays, grey hairs sprouting from his knuckles, age spots deeper than freckles, black bruises typical of blood thinner medication. Age is becoming foreign territory. I am the last generation that will know death personally.

     I gather up the grocery bags with one hand. The other gently steers my father towards the car.

     “Let me help,” he says, clumsily swiping for a bag. “It's too much.”

     “I'm fine,” I tell him. “I'm strong as an ox.”

     “Never get old,” he says. “It doesn't pay.”

     I won't.

When White Roses Freeze
by Amy Power Jansen

     I swallowed, pushing down the lump forming in my throat. “I thought--today-- we’d go outside. Visit dad.”

     “Your brother’s ritual,” she said, nodding slowly to herself. Then she shook her head, and the ice encasing her neck shattered. “No. I always hated it. The dead are dead and gone.”

Poetry

Changeling
by Mary W. Jensen

Small
by Richard Schiffman

Uttu's Garden
by Gwendolyn Clare

Waiting
by WC Roberts

My Wife
by Albert Melear

Colophon and Affiliations