DP FICTION #119B: “The Statue Hunt” by E. Carey Crowder

edited by David Steffen

Awen Drome looked back down at his half-written exam and groaned. The velocity integral in question fifteen was unraveling into a giant mess, and the students would be helpless against it. He should just throw down his stylus and give them the same finals as last year. The material never changed: energy diffusion rates, course trajectories in deep space, everything the future luminaries of the Inquiry would forget and relearn a hundred times before, God help them all, they were hired into the innards of Navigation or Sustainment. They’d manage. It only felt like this crop was a thousand times duller than their predecessors. But then they’d all ask their cousin or their cousin’s cousin for the solution set, and then they’d all pass having learned jack shit. Which the administration would probably celebrate.

A chime at the door. “Oh, come in.” He tossed the stylus, relishing the bounce.

A shock of blond hair above a jowly face: Professor Biri Micom.

Awen’s mood lightened. “Evening!”

“The students are planning a statue hunt tonight.”

Awen blinked. “Relevancy?”

Biri snorted. “You are acting dean,” they said. “Did Maryv leave Ollie with you?”

“Oh fuck me,” he said aloud. “Yeah, she left it, right next to the faculty evaluation records and all the budgetary data and my goddamn pay raise.” For the dozenth time that month, he hoped that Maryv’s shuttle hit a micro-asteroid the shielding couldn’t prevent and exploded into debris.

“We should find it, move it to the library pedestal,” Biri said. That was the traditional place for the statue, where the night of stealing and counter-stealing between the rival residential colleges would begin. Awen still wasn’t sure why that made it his problem, though.

“A statue hunt, at a time like this! Don’t they have better things to think about? We’re barely out of the Oort cloud, and after that comet last year I’m not sleeping easy yet. And then there’s the algae die-offs. The kids need to stay focused so they can actually help the Inquiry, instead of being just wasted mass.”

Biri let Awen talk. When he finished, they said, “You can’t possibly believe that. You never blew off steam? You never broke into the music complex with us and then ran straight into a security officer when everyone scattered? Never?”

Fair shot. “Maybe I’m just sick of cleaning up Maryv’s messes.”

“More than you’re sick of grading?”

“I’m not grading,” he muttered. “This had better be quick.”

***

They tried Maryv’s old office first. Somehow, Maryv abandoning the Inquiry and taking her chances with deep space had left Awen with all of her responsibilities, but none of the perks. Her office had gone to Ursei Dasaro, Professor Emeritus of Topology, who, as far as Awen could see, spent most of her day yelling at her nervous graduate students.

Dasaro was leaving the office as Biri and Awen came through the hallway’s automatic door. She was well-groomed, with a self-important cast to her face. Every item of clothing, from her shoes to the pin holding back her hair, was shiny and new, practically still had the creases from the fab-system. Awen looked her up and down.

Biri broke the silence: “Hi, we don’t mean to keep you. Did Maryv leave the launch commemoration statue with you, or in her office?”

Dasaro scrunched her face. “Now, I can’t say I’ve seen that. It’s quite distinctive, if I recall. Old world style.”

“So it’s not in your office?” Awen asked.

“No, no, I can’t say that it would be. There were a few boxes of…” She twirled a languid hand. “…dross. But nothing quite so large.”

“Could we check?” Biri waved their hand by the door sensor, but of course it was keyed to just Dasaro’s biometrics.

“Oh, no, I’m sure it wasn’t there. And I refabbed all of those old things, like I said.”

“Moving fast,” Awen muttered.

Biri shot him a look. “Thanks, then. We’ll check somewhere else.”

As Dasaro walked away, Biri mouthed “politics” and gave an exaggerated smile.

Awen waited for the whoosh of the hallway door settling into place. “Where do you think she got all that new finery? Certainly not from the reimbursement office, not for the third time this year.”

“Look, scholars who’ll never reach their true potential deserve some comfort, don’t they?” Biri murmured.

The quip could as easily have referred to either of them as to Dasaro, and both of them knew it. Not that it was easy to reach any potential when the academic establishment on Earth was over three light-years away and receding. Awen sighed. “It’s criminal, is what it is.”

Biri shrugged. They fiddled again with the office sensor, but the light stayed red. “She’s an old person. She can have her luxuries.”

“We’re all in this together, remember,” Awen said bitterly, echoing the phrase the news kept repeating after every setback. “If everyone on the ship wants new clothes three times a year and there’s a 60% yield on recycling, how long would it take us to run out of raw material?” That would be a good exam question, maybe for freshmen. Though afield from Applied Mathematics as traditionally interpreted.

“I didn’t say it was right. It’s not. It’s the sort of materialistic shit that even a hundred years ago would have been stamped right out. But, Awen, darling, you can’t fix every slimy motherfucker in the world.” They slapped the sensor, tried it one more time. No luck. “Maybe Ollie’s in storage. The hunt starts at 2100. We’ve got time.”

***

University storage was deep in the hub of the ship, where the centrifugal gravity was weak enough that Awen always got queasy. The two of them waited in the rickety elevator as it headed hubward and the descriptions on the display flickered: offices, classrooms, cafeterias.

“If Maryv has the statue on her shuttle, so help me, I will launch myself into the void after her,” Biri muttered.

“Don’t do that.” He knew Biri was joking, but he hated the thought of them alone out in deep space, with only the hope of finding one of the other generation ships. It was even hard to picture Maryv, though Awen would have sworn he didn’t care if she lived or died. But imagining the half-sleep of the anti-aging drugs that would give Maryv the best chance of finding something else before her natural lifespan ran out—scary as hell. He still didn’t understand it, what caused a person to give up her tenure, for God’s sake, not to mention her entire life on the Inquiry.

The display cycled through the more esoteric floors of the university: fusion labs, maintenance, garbage processing and reclamation. Storage. The doors opened onto a narrow entryway. Awen’s stomach responded to the lowered gravity by turning over.

Biri studied the array of doors before them. They pushed a few buttons on one of the information tablets. “It can’t possibly be with paperwork. Maybe ‘Department Goods,’ whatever that means?”

They pressed something and one of the doors opened with a hiss of air. The lights in the room beyond flickered shakily to life. A mass of boxes, cardboard and plastic, piled on all sides of the space. On top of the boxes were various knickknacks: some old mortarboards, broken glassware, a cup full of dirty paintbrushes.

Biri put their hands on their hips. Silhouetted against the light and the mess, they looked like an explorer in an old painting. Wanderer above the sea of absolute crap.

They made it two steps into the room, as Awen watched fondly. A change—alarm in their body language. Awen jumped forward as Biri stumbled out, sluggish in the quarter g. They sucked in air, gasping. “Shit, shit.” They slammed a hand onto one of the tablets and the door stuttered as it closed.

“What’s wrong?”

“Stale air.” Biri coughed, then cleared their throat with a lighter affect. “Sorry. Scared me. It’s fine in here, right?”

Awen breathed in deeply. The air was hot and had an unpleasant smell of abandoned things, but it filled his chest the way the nitrogen-oxygen mix was supposed to. “Should be.” The fear passed. Awen began to think: What cascade of warning systems had to fail for this to be a mistake? Where had the oxygen gone? And then the fear was back, but deeper, a maw gaping beneath his feet.

“Damn.” Biri smiled, rueful. “I can’t believe they just let me open that door. Whatever happened to automated warning systems? What a dump. I should write the ombud. I guess I’ll go find an oxygen tank or something and go spelunking. It’ll be an adventure. You don’t have to come, I know you hate it here.”

“Biri.”

They caught something in his tone and stopped.

He met their soft-lidded eyes. “This is a bad sign, right?”

“For…?” But still, 30 years after the two of them had first met and a dozen years since they’d last worked in close tandem, Biri always knew what he was thinking. “Mistakes happen. We can’t extrapolate…” they said softly, chewing on their thumb.

“How can it be a mistake? Where did the oxygen go if no one’s been down here in months? Nothing’s using it.”

“I meant the mistake could be the lack of warning system. Honestly, it’s smart to clear out O2 from unused rooms. Thrifty even…” Biri trailed off. Then they sat down as heavily as the gravity allowed.

“You see,” Awen said, trying to ignore the roaring of his blood in his ears.

“I am wondering,” Biri began slowly, “why Tlin Maryv left. It occurs to me now, that if the Inquiry’s premier statistician and probabilist wants to shoot through space in a box the size of a classroom, it’s because she thinks her odds are better out there than in here.”

“And the odds she’ll ever find another ship out there, not to mention one accepting castaways…”

“I guess I thought she was having a midlife crisis,” Biri said. They jumped to their feet and began fiddling with the tablet by the door. “Last accessed 3 months ago.”

“Pre algae die-offs.”

“Fuck. This is crazy right? Some conspiracy shit. They said the virus only affected a few of the algae pods. They wouldn’t just… start shunting oxygen out of non-essential areas? Not without telling us something was really wrong. Imagine the work that would take.”

Awen’s thoughts whirled through the storm of his mind. He still felt like vomiting, and it wasn’t just the gravity-sickness. He ticked off his points on his fingers. One: “Someone is diverting oxygen, at least from this one storage room. We need more data.” Two: “Would it be crazier for them to tell us? Can you imagine the panic? 250,000 people, all aware that the air is running out. There’d be riots. It’d be like 2668 all over again.” Three: “But they did tell us, sort of. The die-offs are all over the news.”

“All over the news, but in the same tone as, I don’t know, when the governor sacked his cabinet, or when the cooling tanks flooded Fletcher Park. They didn’t say ‘this is an existential threat’! How dare they bury it with all the other nonsense?”

Awen imagined the suits in their meetings, trying to decide who needed to know and who deserved to be swaddled in comfortable ignorance. The image made him shudder. “You’re the biologist. How much of the ship’s oxygen needs were being met by the algae tanks that went under? How long will it take for the unaffected tanks to repopulate?”

“I’m a genomicist, not a fucking phycologist! Besides, the numbers are cooked. They have to be. One tank is nothing. There’s redundancy in the system. Unless the virus spread from tank to tank…” They trailed off. “Anh Weia’s been in meetings all week. She is a phycologist. I thought she’d been looking harried, but I never considered this.”

Should that comfort him? At least someone qualified was being consulted. But, for any civil servants to come down and beg for help from the eggheads, something was deeply wrong.

“We have to rule out that it’s a fluke,” Awen said. His head spun. “If it’s intentional, there will be logs. There’ll be other dead zones too.”

“And then what? We uncover the conspiracy and then what? We’ll know how fucked we are, but we won’t be able to do anything about it. Unless you’ve got your own shuttle plans.”

“The more we know, the more we can… I don’t know, think of something.”

“Write up a study on the certainty of our impending death, you mean?” Biri breathed in. Their tone changed. “I have to go find an oxygen tank. We have a statue to find.”

“You can’t be serious.”

They met his gaze. Their hands were shaking, but they clasped them together. “There is nothing else to do,” they said with unfamiliar intensity.

***

Awen waited down-elevator. That should have made the gravity sickness better, but of course his stomach continued to churn. While he waited, he undertook a comprehensive search through the data: promised oxygen output of the algae tanks, measured numbers (where available) from various points around the ship. Energy expenditures from vent-points near little-used sections consistent with breathable air being pumped out and carbon dioxide being pumped in. Data analysis was something to do, a path for his brain to follow that wasn’t panic.

Biri came back with the statue, both  covered in dust. Oliver Rafael Duncan, better known as Ollie. It didn’t look like much, at least not tarnished with the fingerprints of hundreds of years of students. Just a metal-plated statue of a man sitting in a sleek chair. Duncan had planned to be the first president of the university, but when the Inquiry left Earth, he’d stayed behind to take care of his aging parent. His statue had been dedicated in his place. Awen wondered what he would think, if he’d ever known of the chaos that once every few years swirled up around his likeness.

“You found it,” Awen said.

Biri looked at him. Awen willed that connection the two of them had, the intuitive sense of each other from decades of friendship, to shut tight. “Not hard. There was a map,” they said, their voice fluty and unsure.

“Almost 2100. We should get to the library,” he said as gently as he could. And maybe that was enough, this uncharacteristic gentleness, because Biri knew, then, what he had found. “Let’s have a drink,” he said.

***

They said nothing as they sat in the hallway leading to the library main entrance, passing the liquor between them. After the third statue hunt had ended with engineering students hacking the library lock, a few faculty usually guarded the door—it was tradition. The university’s designers had underestimated students’ desperation to get places they shouldn’t be and had probably, like many of their forebears, pictured the Inquiry as some high-trust utopia without crime or locks. Lucky them.

The liquor felt like acid in this throat. The sound of the vents and the climate control system normally faded to a useless hum, no semantic content, but today they were all Awen could hear. How long did they all have left?

Ahead, a door opened and the sound of laughter tumbled through. A handful of undergrads came around the corner. “Oh, shit,” one of them said at the sight of Awen and Biri, and they retreated, still laughing. They were drunker than Awen. Their voices carried through the hallway in a mess of words: “Can’t we just ask? What’s the worst that could happen?” “Come on?” “No way, I have my rec letter to worry about.” “…suspended!”

In the end, a single undergrad came around the corner, walking stiffly like someone trying very hard to seem sober. Awen recognized them but he couldn’t remember their name. They had a ribbon tied around their wrist representing one of the dozen colleges competing in the hunt. “Hi, um, Professors. I don’t suppose you could, you know, just give us a few minutes with the door? We wouldn’t tell anyone.”

Biri, in all their sensibility, their voice only a little hoarse, said, “Nice try, Alder. But would that be fair?”

Awen couldn’t say anything at all. He was thinking this child is doomed. Not tonight, God willing, but soon, or soon enough, for a value of “soon” equaling “sometime in the next few years.” Before they would live their life. Or maybe they’d all get through this crisis, and it would be a different one that would take them out. Maybe they’d be overtaken by the fabled ships from Earth whose newer tech let them leapfrog the Inquiry. There was no way to know, and no way to do a goddamn thing about it.

The undergrad shifted from foot to foot. “It would be fair, because they could ask just the same. And we really wouldn’t tell.”

Biri swirled their glass. “What do you think?” they asked Awen softly.

What did Awen think? He thought there was something perverse in sitting here pretending the sky wasn’t falling. Didn’t this child, Alder, deserve to know? But didn’t they deserve to be happy in this infinitesimal moment before all the knowledge was out and things truly fell apart? Was that what everyone in the government—Maintenance or Leadership—had been thinking, when they’d made the decision to cover up the die-offs? Just let the sheep graze, keep them content.

“Sorry, not tonight. Good luck. But you’d better hurry,” Awen said.

The undergrad’s alcohol-flushed cheeks went even redder. “Yes, Professor. Sorry.” And they were gone.

Biri sent him a sideways glance. He didn’t have to explain, he never did with Biri, but he felt compelled to: “If we just gave it to them, they wouldn’t have the satisfaction of getting it. You understand, don’t you? They have to solve the small problems so the big ones feel possible.”

Biri nodded. “I hope…” But they both knew what Biri hoped, so Biri left the words unsaid.

Awen and Biri sat in silence as the lights cycled for nighttime, as from behind them in the library came sounds of clattering and hushed voices.

© 2025 by E. Carey Crowder

3032 words

E. Carey Crowder lives in Seattle, Washington. Carey writes code for a living, speculative fiction for fun, and cryptic messages only on odd-numbered Tuesdays (mostly). This is Carey’s first published story.

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DP FICTION #119A: “The Year the Sheep God Shattered” by Marissa Lingen

edited by Ziv Wities

Suvin couldn’t make the year’s gods, but she could wedge the clay that made them, slamming it into the table over and over again to get the air pockets out. Her village was a good one for god clay, sturdy and functional, and even without Auntie Deri, who had died in the winter, they had three old people and seven children, a solid number of people for making gods.

Two of the children were new to it this year, their gods clumsy and half-formed but powerful with their toddler enthusiasm. The other children varied from Zora, eleven and dreamy, to Jemmy, a stolid seven and absolutely intent on building as many animal gods as he could manage before the gods had to go in the kiln for Midsummer.

The elders were more considered in their approach to the divine, finding and filling in gaps in the children’s work, each according to their own life experience. Seeing that Jemmy managed a chicken god, a sheep god, and a spider god (likely to be friendly to spinners and weavers), Uncle Orn quietly filled in the rest of the village’s life with a god of the fields and a god of the forests. Auntie Larig made a god of childbirth and a god of death, both, so that the god of childbirth didn’t have to take over both functions. She had seen that once, when she was young, and was determined that it would never happen again.

Bei was too old this year, grown gawky and half-responsible. She skulked around the door of Suvin’s pottery, tossing criticism and complaints at those within, particularly her younger sibling Clar, who ignored her. Zora gazed after her for a moment, but then went back to making a god of rainbows. Suvin stepped out to speak with her.

“Aren’t you needed in the dairy?”

Bei shrugged, her whole body jerking.

Suvin tried again. “You’re not making it any easier on yourself watching. Go distract yourself; you’ll mind less if you’re thinking of something else.”

Bei scowled but stalked off, leaving Suvin feeling she’d made things worse rather than better for the girl.

Not everyone minded leaving the rituals of childhood behind them, nor showed their minding in the same way. Suvin herself had found that she missed the feel of the clay but not the spark of the divine, and by Midwinter of that first year she had found herself apprenticed to the previous potter. Neither of her brothers had thought a thing of it, shedding their childhood as thoughtlessly as an old jacket. But neither was Bei unprecedented. Auncle Phee had spent their adult years yearning for the creation of the Midsummer gods, and had settled into old age with a contented sigh.

Suvin wondered if Auncle Phee might be persuaded to have a quiet word with Bei when they were done making gods for the day, or whether that would feel to a prickly adolescent like piling on. In any case, Bei couldn’t lurk around the pottery all day distracting the god makers; that wasn’t good for anyone. Suvin went back in to find Auntie Larig a spare scribing tool.

By the time Suvin shooed them off to wash the clay from their hands (arms, noses, eyebrows), the ten of them had made two dozen gods, small and sure in their rows, ready to be fired. Suvin regarded them with satisfaction and no small amount of worry: this year’s gods would shape the days of the village, not just in their own year, but in their implications in the years beyond.

She could neither stop nor change them⁠—her days of that were gone, or not yet come again. Every year the old gods had to be shattered, and the new made. Everyone knew from harsh experience that keeping old gods, or letting adults in their prime direct the new ones, led to cult and catastrophe. The old gods had been smashed to dust on the green to release their essence, and these were ready to dry, fire, and cool in time to catch the divine spark at Midsummer. Suvin arranged them carefully and slid the trays in, closing the door of the kiln.

She returned a few days later to take them out, ready to pull out gods, whole and cooled. Instead, there was a mass of clay shards and dust, nothing but rubble in the bottom of the kiln. The entire tray was ruined. Worst of all, Jemmy’s sheep god had shattered in the kiln like a hastily thrown pot, taking the god of childbirth, the god of hunting, and the god of the river with it. Not only was this catastrophic, it was unprecedented. Gods were not supposed to shatter. Gods shouldn’t have been able to shatter.

Something was badly wrong, and if they couldn’t hurry to make more, it was going to be a very hard year indeed. Gods of song or war were optional. A god of sheep was essential. Sheep were the lifeblood of the village. There were other keystones⁠—the river, childbirth, hunting⁠—but the sheep god was the worst of the lot to lose in a shepherding village. Suvin ran to find Jemmy, who was still at breakfast with his parents, Wurran and Arev.

“My sheep god?” he whispered.

“It’s not your fault,” said Wurran and Arev in unison.

“It really isn’t,” said Suvin, “but I was hoping you could see if you could make another one while we try to figure out what went wrong.” Jemmy was on his feet before she’d finished speaking, out the door like a flash, and Suvin had to hurry after him to get him clay that was properly prepared. She had just gotten him set up when she found Wurran had followed them both.

“The way I see it,” he said slowly, filling the door of the pottery with his broad shoulders, “the only reason making the gods would go wrong is if some part of the preparations weren’t done properly.”

Suvin cast around the pottery in a panic, trying to figure out how she had failed them. “I got the same clay we always get, but that’s not supposed to matter. I kept it moist and wedged it for them and placed it in the kiln myself; I just don’t see what I could have done to prepare it differently.”

“There’s the other half of the preparations,” said Wurran. He raised a significant eyebrow at her, but she was still not following. “The smashing of last year’s gods.”

Suvin’s stomach sank. “But⁠— we all sang and watched⁠—” But she knew whose name had come into her head at his words.

Wurran’s expression grew intense, as though he’d recognized the awful thought that crossed her mind. “How closely did you watch everyone? A lot of people had more than one god. There was all the smashing and the singing—it’s hard to keep track of everything. And you’re thinking you know whose god it is, aren’t you? Suvin, I’ve known you since we were young enough to make the gods ourselves.”

“I just have a theory. I’ll⁠— I’ll tell you as soon as I have it confirmed. I don’t want to make trouble unless I have to.”

“We already have trouble, and we don’t have much time,” Wurran warned.

“I know. But— we have to get this right. Are you okay watching him here?” Suvin gestured at the workspace, at the ready clay, and Wurran nodded. Jemmy, intent on his second try at a sheep god, ignored them both, focused on the curls and rounds that whispered “fleece” into his heart.

Suvin walked more slowly than she should to the house where Bei lived with her parents, aunt, and sibling. An unsmashed god⁠—oh, how she wanted to be wrong. But when she saw Bei sitting outside on a bench, shelling peas, she knew from the girl’s sullen startle that she was right.

“You know why I’m here, don’t you,” she said, sitting on the other side of the pea basket so she could help shell while she talked.

Bei glared at her.

“It’s already going wrong. The sheep god shattered in the kiln because the power isn’t out of all of last year’s gods yet.” She snuck a glance at Bei’s face. The girl was shaken, ashen. That was a good sign: it had not been deliberate sabotage of the other gods. But Suvin knew she couldn’t stop there, as upset as they both were–and as much as Suvin would have liked to just get back to her silent, malleable clay. “Who knows how much worse it will get from here. You have to give it up, Bei. You have to smash the god. I haven’t told anyone it’s you, you can just— do it now, it’s not too late.”

Bei’s eyes filled with defiant tears. “It’s my last one, my last god until I’m old or maybe ever, not everybody lives to be old!”

Suvin shook her head in disbelief. “We all have a last god; that’s just the way of things. You don’t get to keep it. It sucks power from the new gods, tries to form a cult.”

“Mine wouldn’t.”

“They all do.”

Bei leapt to her feet, upsetting the pea basket. “You don’t know my god of beauty! You haven’t been paying attention to it all year⁠—nobody has but me, you all thought it was stupid! Well, I’m not giving it up, and you can’t make me!” She dashed down the path into the bog before Suvin was halfway off the bench.

Suvin sank back, numb. She had expected Bei to be concerned for the village at large, contrite. Biddable. She had expected Bei to behave like a chastened child. Or maybe a thoughtful adult. This cusp stage had caught her completely off-guard. She made her way back to the pottery in a daze. Jemmy was still hard at work. Wurran raised an eyebrow at her.

“It’s Bei,” she managed. “She… didn’t want to stop making gods. Feels like no one understands her, from the sounds of it. Becoming an adult is difficult, but—”

“But no one else threatens our safety because of it. Bei can’t be permitted to either. We’ll have to track her down.”

Suvin blinked up at Wurran. He was so gentle with Jemmy, she had not expected this reaction. “She’s run into the bog.”

“I’ll go drag her out by her hair, she’s small enough,” said Wurran grimly.

Suvin shook her head. “Would you do that to me?”

“I couldn’t, you’re scrappy.”

“But if you could.”

Wurran thought about it. “No, I’d talk to you first.”

“We have to talk to her first. We’re telling her she’s an adult, we have to treat her like an adult. We can’t just take away all the best parts of being a child without anything in recompense.”

“You’ve earned being talked to first. You behave like a reasonable person.”

“I think sometimes we have to be the first ones to be reasonable.”

Wurran didn’t like it, but he didn’t have a counterargument. The problem, Suvin thought, was that he was the wrong person to do the talking, and she certainly was. In Bei’s mind, she was the cruel person who had chased Bei out of the pottery and denigrated her god of beauty. They would have to find someone else. Someone Bei didn’t find threatening. Someone she loved.

Someone who understood how hard it could be to let go of making the gods.

Auncle Phee was upset to hear the news of the sheep god, and then bewildered by Suvin’s request. “But what can I do for little Bei?”

“Not so little any more. She’s angry with me. I hoped you could talk sense to her. You… reacted like this, but not really.”

They laughed wearily. “I did run off to the bog and weep. I just skipped straight to that part, I suppose. Oh, there was a lot of weeping down there when I was young. I was a little waterfall, you wouldn’t believe.”

Suvin smiled sadly. “We all… grow in our own way. I guess I hoped you might try to speak to her. I could ask her parents, but I think she’s at an age—”

“No, no, not her parents,” said Auncle Phee hastily. “All right, I’ll come. Let me get another shawl and a walking stick.”

The two of them walked together, squelching along companionably on the damp soil. There was neither sight nor sound of Bei until they got nearer the river. Then a thread of her hem showed them where to turn. They found her sitting in the mouth of one of the river caves, throwing rocks angrily into the river.

“Go away!” she shouted.

“We’re just here to talk!” Suvin shouted back. “You don’t even have to talk to me; just talk to Auncle Phee.”

No response. Phee edged closer, though Suvin kept at their heels to provide assistance if necessary. “I know this is hard, Bei,” Auncle Phee started, “but you have to be brave.”

“I don’t! I don’t have to be brave. I can just keep my god with me and it can handle being brave!”

“She’s got us there,” Auncle Phee muttered out of the corner of their mouth.

“But that’s a really bad idea for the rest of us,” said Suvin, equally quietly.

“It is. Bei, that’s a really bad idea for everyone else,” Phee said more audibly. “Like your Dad, or like Clar. I know they must annoy you sometimes—my brother annoyed me—but that doesn’t mean you want them to have to struggle along without any gods.”

“They could share mine!”

“She’s got all the answers,” Auncle Phee whispered.

Suvin sucked breath in through her nose, wishing there were still gods she could ask for patience—especially as that did not look like a blessing that the god of beauty, still clutched in Bei’s pocket, provided. Auncle Phee crept closer. Suvin followed.

“Seeing your god smashed is terrible,” Auncle Phee tried. “Don’t I know it. The whole thing was terrible. It’s the kind of terrible that’s like getting over an ague, though, you just have to grit your teeth and endure it. No one’s come up with another way.”

“Why don’t you, then.”

Auncle Phee wheezed out a laugh. “We’re not that good yet. Maybe that’ll be on you to figure out; maybe that will be your adult work. To quest for some better way, so that people can grow up without pain. I don’t know of one, but maybe you will. But first you have to get there. And a village that depends on one god… isn’t going to raise you or Clar or Jemmy or any of the others to be strong adults who can go on quests. Too many bad harvests and passing fevers for that.”

There was quiet. Suvin wondered if Bei had thought about how little help her god of beauty would be in the face of the barley harvest failing, or spotted fever coming down the river in the wet season. Instead Bei said, “What if you made me another one? A god of beauty? So that mine could just… come back. We have a sheep god every year. If you’d just make me another god of beauty…”

“I can’t, little one,” said Auncle Phee.

“Why does no one understand how important beautiful things are?” Bei cried, and Suvin was moved despite her annoyance. “There are so many, and everyone ignores it! They just go on like lumps, turn the cheeses, milk the sheep, nobody says, oh, look, Bei, look how glorious the lupines are in bloom, look at how perfect this apple is. No one. It’s just me.”

“I don’t mean that I won’t make your god for you, child. I mean that I can’t.”

Bei finally looked at them, sullen but paying attention for the first time.

“My god of beauty wouldn’t be yours. It couldn’t. We don’t find the same things beautiful; we aren’t excited by the same beauty. It wouldn’t catch the same spark. Your god was yours⁠—nobody could have made it for you. I could promise to make you one, but I can’t lie to you and tell you it’ll be yours.”

Suvin thought that Auncle Phee most certainly could have lied. But Bei was listening, at least. Thinking. Suvin had brought Auncle for a reason; it was theirs to try. Even if Suvin hated to see an easy solution rejected out of hand.

“So what do I do?”

Suvin wanted to answer: you just go on. You just do. There will be things in life that hurt, things that you grieve for with your whole self, and you… go on, you turn the cheese, you milk the sheep, you admire the field of lupines, you ache, but you go on. But that was an answer Bei might not be ready to hear. Even in the darkest hours, adults were supposed to be there to help children persevere, to show the way through to light again.

“What if Auncle makes you a different god?” she said aloud.

Both of them jumped. They’d forgotten she was there. “What other god did you have in mind?” said Auncle Phee. “I can’t do everything. I can’t do most things; ask Jemmy what use I’d be at a god of cats or beetles.”

“But the abstract ones, you’re good at those. Something else that could help Bei with the journey she’s on now.” Suvin didn’t toss out suggestions. Auncle Phee, of all people, didn’t make gods to order. If they were to accomplish this, they’d need to do it their own way. Phee’s wrinkled face creased further as they thought it over.

“Two gods,” said Auncle Phee finally. “If I have the time—and I will try very hard to have the time. A god of roads, for this new road you’re on. And a god of childhood. For you to say goodbye to. You’ll have a year to pray to it, be with it, let it bless your ways. A lot can happen in a year. And then we’ll see, after.”

Bei burst into tears, and Suvin was afraid they’d failed beyond redemption. Wurran wasn’t right, couldn’t be right, about forcing the god away from her. Yet if she wouldn’t give in of her own free will, what else was there to do?

But she had misinterpreted the girl’s reaction. Bei stepped out of the cave. Suvin could see her shoulders shaking even from her distance, but Bei held out the little clay figure and deliberately threw it to the ground.

It didn’t shatter on impact. Bei took a hiccupping deep breath, and then Auncle Phee was with her, one arm around her as they handed her the hammer from Suvin’s belt and let her strike the first cracking blow. A rosy light flew out of the god with that blow, but Bei continued, crying and smashing, until it was dust on the stones of the cave. Only then did Auncle Phee stop her.

“Well done,” said Auncle Phee, and Suvin said, “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry you had to.”

Bei was crying too hard to answer.

“I’ll get started on those gods right away. There’s still time, isn’t there, Suvin?”

“Of course there’s time,” said Suvin firmly. “Auncle will make you a beautiful god of childhood, light and new, and a wonderful god of roads, strong and broad. And you’ll dance with the other adults at the pole, you’ll take hands and dance. You won’t be alone.”

Bei looked up miserably. “I don’t believe that yet. But I’ll try.”

© 2025 by Marissa Lingen

3280 words

Author’s Note: As often happens with my short stories, I was messing with two ideas that collided. One is that my godchildren are growing up. I am generally pro-growing-up! In favor of adulthood! But it is not at all easy sometimes, in ways that those of us who have already gone through it tend to minimize. The other is that I wanted a fantasy story whose gods are tangibly not just parts of an Earth pantheon in funny hats. “Oh, I’m Bodin, and this is my son Bthor”: no. So I started to think about more seasonal, cyclical ideas of the divine, and this came out.

Marissa Lingen writes fantasy, science fiction, poetry, and essays. She lives in the Minnesota River Valley near its confluence with the Mississippi and is cheerfully obsessed with its geology and limnology. She is also inordinately fond of trees, tisanes, dark chocolate, and Moomins.

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2024 Retrospective and Award Eligibility

written by David Steffen

We have been publishing the annual Long List Anthology since 2015. Last year at this time we hadn’t been able to run the Long List Anthology yet because the nomination statistics had not been published yet. This was extremely unusual since WorldCon 2023 had been in October and they usually publish the stats before they end. When they finally published the statistics in January 2024 there were various issues with the statistics that we didn’t feel it would be possible to produce an anthology from the list at that time.

In last year’s eligibility and retrospective we said this might mean that 2024 is another two-anthology year, so that turned out to not be true. And then, although WorldCon was back in its usual month of September, we are working on a new edition but decided to give ourselves more breathing room and fundraise and publish it in early 2025. So, instead of two Long List Anthology volumes in 2024, there have been zero, with the second one planned for early 2025. More information soono!

In 2023, we published 24 original stories in Diabolical Plots.

This year we renamed some of our staff positions to better reflect the nature of the work. I had always called myself “Editor” but now I am officially “Editor-In-Chief. And what we had previously called “Assistant Editor” we now call “Editor”. In addition, we have also started adding editor credit to all the stories for the particular editor(s) who worked with the author on the individual story.

This year we bid farewell to editor Kel Coleman, as well as Chelle Parker, and we wish them both the best! We also welcomed new editor Amanda Helms to join Ziv Wities and Hal Y. Zhang on the Editor team.

Diabolical Plots opened for general submissions in July. We read more than 1300 submissions and accepted 23 stories from the window. We updated some practices, including adding an optional “Content Note” box to the submission form as well as a suggested list of content notes that we would like to see when they apply if possible. We also added a formal “Rewrite Request” process, something which we normally just handled outside of the system in previous years.

It is never not a busy year in my personal life, but (crossing fingers) we are on the verge of having finished a calendar year without one of our dogs passing away, after losing one both of the prior years. Our dog Mabel had a crappy diagnosis this year, but so far she’s been doing well with treatment.

The rest of this post is award eligibility, suggesting categories for major awards, as well as a full link of stories with snippets.

Magazine/Anthology/Editor/Publisher

Diabolical Plots is eligible in the Hugo Best Semiprozine category or the Locus Magazine category with our team of First Readers as well as our Editors.

David Steffen is eligible as Editor-In-Chief of Diabolical Plots. Editors within this year were Ziv Wities, Kel Coleman, Hal Y. Zhang, Chelle Parker, and Amanda Helms. I’m not really sure how to interpret the eligibility rules for editor for Hugo for an online publication–supposed to edit four issues, we count the monthly pair as an issue, does it only count if the same editor edits both stories? Hugos allow multiple editors in a nomination, as is shown by editors of Uncanny for instance, but I’ve only ever seen two editors nominated that way, I don’t know how it works for a larger team, etc.

Diabolical Plots, LLC is eligible for Locus award for Publisher.

Related Work

Sole entry for this this year was: The Secret Origin of Hestu. If you like that, check out the related artwork!

Fan Artist

Is cross-stitch eligible for anything? Maybe fan art? LOL probably not. But check out this giant cross-stitch that took me almost two years to finish anyway!

Short Stories

A Descending Arctic Excavation of Us
by Sara S. Messenger

The surface of the iceberg has long had its taste of bitter cuisine: shimmering snow, wriggling bacterial filament, microplastic granules from the stolen boat you steered across the choppy Arctic waves. But this is new: the woody whisper of your matrilineal family map. The iceberg leeches the warmth from the paper, like sucking air through teeth, trying to latch on— but you bend, shake the map, and tuck it back into your pocket.

They Are Dancing
by John Stadelman

When they woke it was in what little pocket warmth they’d accumulated between their bodies in the night, clinging together in a sleeping bag as if without the other they would forget how to breathe, or why. When Nash cracked his eyes open to take in this reality it was to Vicky watching him, her face as beautiful as everything behind it, a moment of naked love in which they both wished that they could remain lying here like this, frozen in stasis. Neither needed to say it.

But time moved on. Inexorable, mechanical as a wave in the ocean, as the dissolve of light into dark. They knew it was time to go when Vicky mumbled that he needed to brush his teeth, and Nash said that she’d had too much to drink last night.

BUDDY RAYMOND’S NO-BULLSHIT GUIDE TO DRONE-HUNTING
by Gillian Secord

Hey, kid. Ol’ Buddy here, your favourite underground, pamphlet-writing canuck. I hope, whoever and wherever you are, you’re well. Keep the generator full, the firewood chopped, and the contraband hidden.

Yeah, I said the next guide was going to be about rainwater collecting, but this topic is pretty fucking overdue for a pamphlet. File a complaint, if that bothers you. (Too bad this is real paper, asshole! No comment section!)

The Geist and/in/as the Boltzmann Brain
by M.J. Pettit

Lem had existed for all of ten nanoseconds (give or take) when she realized she was a Boltzmann brain pulsing away in the otherwise nothingness of space. She consisted of a conglomeration of particles that had randomly bounced off one another until they spontaneously formed into a structurally-sound and fully functional human brain. Lem came complete with a full inventory of false memories detailing a richly lived life back on a place called Earth. Entities like herself were absurd. That was to say highly improbable, statistically speaking, but no more so than the evolution of intelligent, organic life in the grand scheme of things. Given the unfathomable expanse of all of time and all of space, it was conceivable for a nice Boltzmann brain like Lem to randomly form then quickly dissipate innumerable times at various spots across the cosmos, the general tendency towards thermal equilibrium notwithstanding.

Level One: Blowtorch
by Jared Oliver Adams

Usually Friend gives me three food pouches after sportsgames, but today only one. He spits it out of his chest slot, and I kick off the bulkhead to snatch it before it gets caught in that jumble of wires over by the vents. When I grab the nearest handhold and swivel in the air for the next one to come, Friend just floats there with his slot closed and his metal arms at his sides.

“Did I do wrong parameters?” I ask.

“Naw, Graciela,” says Friend. “You were grumper to the leez! You sealed your suit with no mistakes, and you dodged all the obstacles on the course. Nineteenth time in a row!”

The Offer of Peace Between Two Worlds
by Renan Bernardo

At this age, on the planet of Orvalho, Alberto is conjoined with the ship called The Offer of Peace Between Two Worlds. They’re engulfed in the Mezelões’ unifying mix, a tank where a swirling brackish secretion flows through their pores and recesses, nanoscopic spidery bots tying their espírito together—parts and limbs, yottabytes and nucleotides, ship and captain, physically separated, spiritually united.

Ten Easy Steps to Destroying Your Enemies This Arbor Day
by Rachael K. Jones

1. Raid the army surplus warehouse, NASA’s scrapyard, and Aunt Diabolica’s volcano lair for parts. On the way home, swing by CatCo to buy more Fancy Feast for Mr. Wibbles.

Six-Month Assessment on Miracle Fresh
by Anne Liberton

Miracle Fresh is a soft drink produced by Spirits & Co. since 2027. The original pitch described a holy club soda blessed with droplets of blood from our devoted Messiah, something the average person could drink on the go, après-exercising, or even at [insert holy building of choice] without requiring long tiresome religious proceedings. This idea was abandoned shortly after the company realized a soft drink would appeal to a greater audience, and after considering the lawsuit filed by the parental association Guardians of our Holy Youth (GHY), who worried the club soda would be used as a component of alcoholic mixed drinks. Associating our devoted Messiah with sugar and adding a clear appeal to children did not seem to faze any of the naysayers.

Ketchōkuma
by Mason Yeater

My name is Yasuko Nagamine and I work for the employment bureau. There’s a monster destroying the city. It used to be the mascot for the organ rental service, Sensation. I guess it still is but I don’t think it’s doing much for their bottom line anymore.

How to Kill the Giant Living Brain You Found in Your Mother’s Basement After She Died
by Alex Sobel

[Guide]
Welcome to this interactive guide! I understand from your About Me profile that you have an issue with a brain that needs killing. I’m here to help!

[graciegirl2006!?]
I can’t believe I found this.

[Guide]
Actually, we are the top search engine result for the keywords in your query!

This Week in Clinical Dance: Urgent Care at the Hastings Center
by Lauren Ring

Brigitte Cole presents with lower abdominal pain, nausea, and a long-sleeved black leotard. She has a well-developed appearance and does not seem to be in acute distress. Her accompaniment for the evening is pianist Roy Weiss, a fixture of the local music scene whose minimalist style pairs well with the bold choreography of clinical dance. As the house lights dim and the spotlights focus down on Cole, stoic and poised, one cannot help but notice that a stray lock of hair has fallen out of her sleek bun. Such composure, such strength, and yet—disarray.

Hold the Sea Inside
by Erin Keating

Among the crags of the mountains weeps a cascade of salt water. In the pool beneath, stiff-peaked foam drowns careless men and sickens parched animals. The menfolk say it’s devilry to find salt water so far from the shore, but we know better. It’s no devil’s work but woman’s grief.

Eternal Recurrence
by Spencer Nitkey

The deepfake is nothing like you. Its smile is all wrong. It’s recorded your dimple as an artifact and smoothed it over. Your smile is too symmetrical. It’s shortened your beaky nose. It winks at me from the computer screen with the wrong eye. It doesn’t squint when it smiles. It doesn’t dance like it’s missing a few tendons. It sings entire songs instead of its favorite couplet over and over again. It doesn’t tell me I should eat something, or remind me to call the landlord and fix the icemaker, or tell me about the article it just read on the intersections of Nietzche and Oscar Wilde’s philosophies.

Phantom Heart
by Charlie B. Lorch

The widow wants to talk to her husband.

She has been warned: It is not her husband. It is ADRU. (ADRU-93, if you must know, but really the full name does the opposite of what it should: It shows it is one of many.) ADRU stands for Artificial Death Reconstruction Unit, and all it knows is the moment the husband died.

But it doesn’t matter. It never does, not to the living.

In Tandem
by Emilee Prado

I’ve known her for four summers now, so I don’t believe Sephina when she says we’ll return the bicycle before anyone knows it’s missing. Eventually, I say okay, but it’s not like I have a choice. My mom is always telling me that Sephina puts bad stuff in my head; Mom has no idea. I glance once more at the empty porch and curtained windows, but Sephina is already off, tugging me with her, gripping the handlebars and jogging toward the road.

Dreamwright Street
by Mike Reeves-McMillan

The shop fronts glitter along Dreamwright Street, where all the best people come to buy their dreams. Sunlight winks off polished glass, clear as crystal; off the lovingly applied varnish of the wooden window frames; off fragments of mica embedded in the very cobblestones.

The customers, too, sparkle. Light leaps from the gemstones they wear, from their polished shoes, from the braid on their servants’ livery. Clear eyes reflect the dancing light, and their bright teeth send back radiance as they smile. The customers of Dreamwright Street sleep well in their high mansions, and they sleep deeply, and when they arise, their minds are clear and scintillating as a wellspring.

Letters From Mt. Monroe Elementary, Third Grade
by Sarah Pauling

Dear Mr. Kaur,

I’ve attached scans of the student letters per my conversation with Anthony Noble at the White House Teacher’s Dinner. To be honest, we’re all enormously starstruck by the Secretary’s offer. We’ve guarded our Pilgrim Letters jealously through the years—our own little time capsule—but it’s not every day your elementary school gets to participate in cultural diplomacy.

Note that the earliest letters date back to 1967, a mere five years after Beacon Day. While they were assigned only as creative writing exercises—the technology to reply to the first Beacon transmissions didn’t even exist when Ms. Barbara Kirby came up with the idea—I’m sure the children who wrote these letters all those years ago would be ecstatic to learn that their words would one day reach the stars.

Batter and Pearl
by Steph Kwiatkowski

The sun’s almost down over the boardwalk, that time of day when everything’s dark but the sky’s still lit up, when townies drive past the lake on their way to Gary and say gosh it’s pretty out here by the battervilles, I don’t know what all the fuss is about.

The air’s thick with marina noise and mosquitoes eating up my shirtless chest. I’m pouring my jug of fresh-caught batter into the shuddering funnel of the change machine, even though I know in my heart there’s not enough to buy Ecker the smallest size of honey-glazed crispies. The line for the chicko joint is starting to wind down the boardwalk. Everyone’s yelling, a bunch of sunburned lake-slick battermags pissed I’m taking too long during the dinner rush. But I can’t let it go, not tonight. Ecker is leaving tomorrow to go back to vocational school, and he’s standing at the order window with his hands in his pockets like he’s embarrassed.

The Gaunt Strikes Again
by Rich Larson

“My friends, I apologize for pulling you away from the festivities,” the Duke said, shutting the heavy oak door behind him, “but I believe our lives to be in danger.” He turned to his guests and drew a deep breath. “It seems the Gaunt has decided to attend our soiree.”

The Beldam, fashionably attired in the skin of a flayed heretic, clapped her beautiful hand to her beautiful cheek. The Raconteur, already flushed and tousle-headed, wine staining his doublet, guffawed. The Corporal, a shard of obsidian in military dress, narrowed her flesh eye while its clockwork neighbor roved about the room.

Bone Talker, Bone Eater
by D.S. Ravenhurst

Mama’s bones scream as the writhing mass of beetles cleans her skeleton. My fingers bury themselves in my ears against my will, trying to block the shrieking no one else can hear and the squish of macerated flesh they can. I don’t know which one’s worse.

Song For a Star-Whale’s Ghost
by Devin Miller

Captain Ruby Tauda of the whale-ship Balentora strapped down a crate of medicine and hurried across the star-whale’s mouth. She and her crew had always used the mouth as a cargo bay, but this wasn’t their usual cargo. They weren’t thieves.

The Lighthouse Keeper
by Melinda Brasher

I’m not supposed to talk to the locals, but that’s not a problem because there don’t seem to be any. Not as far as the eye can see. Not in the endless blue I can’t look away from. Not along the windswept bluffs high above that crashing, ever-changing vastness that makes me feel smaller than I’ve ever felt. And yet bigger. More alone. And less.

I must keep the light burning at all times.

And I must never, never climb down to the beach.

St. Thomas Aquinas Administers the Turing Test
by Mary Berman

Herewith I present to Your Holiness Clement IV the proceedings regarding the phenomenon at Santa Sabina.

On the 25th day of the month of March in this year of our Lord 1265, I was ordered by the Most Holy Father to the Studium Conventuale di Santa Sabina all’Aventino to evaluate the existence, or lack thereof, of a soul housed within a Wooden Likeness of a Man, the Likeness having been constructed by Father Antonio di Cassino, a friar serving in that place.

Margery Lung is Unstoppable
by Lisa Cai

The first time Margie raised the dead, it was to prove she didn’t eat her dog. As Harold hadn’t been walked around the neighbourhood recently, her classmate Brenda assumed Margie’s family devoured their dog and caught SARS.

DP FICTION #118B: “Margery Lung Is Unstoppable” by Lisa Cai

edited by Hal Y. Zhang

Content note (click for details) Content note: anti-Asian racism and misogyny, murder, body horror, gore, pet death.

The first time Margie raised the dead, it was to prove she didn’t eat her dog. As Harold hadn’t been walked around the neighbourhood recently, her classmate Brenda assumed Margie’s family devoured their dog and caught SARS.

Harold was a beloved member of the Lungs. That grey fluffy Pomeranian guarded Margie since she was born. He spent his final months lying limp on his beanie bed, yet he growled and his fur stood on end whenever the doorbell rang.

Margie arose before dawn to bring Harold back. She squeezed between the backyard’s fence and shed to reach his resting place. She flung fistfuls of dirt off the soaked shoebox. Worms and maggots crawled up her wrists at the sudden disturbance; she brushed them off with her hands.

Poh Poh taught her to raise the dead; with brushes dipped in chicken’s blood, they wrote spells on paper, copying from old instruction manuals, and practiced on mangled squirrels and sparrows in the backyard. Those animals stood, brown wings and furry black arms raised, and hopped towards a small ditch as Poh Poh knelt and rang a bell. Their powers were used for undertaking. Why not do other things before the dead were laid to rest?

Margie pulled a yellow talisman from her waistband and punched it through the box. Gas, grit, and flies burst from her force. The cardboard coffin and surrounding dirt trembled and collapsed inward. A high-pitched yelp came from the grave.

Harold poked his head out of the ground. He licked his pointed nose. His beady black eyes widened staring up at her. He yipped a greeting and wiggled his whole form to shake the insects off and out of him.

“Morning, Harold.” She pulled him by the paws to get him to stand on all fours. Harold wagged his short tail with vigour and smiled with his tongue out. He was so excited to see her and have his strength back! “Wanna walk?”

Harold limped towards her; the surgery he had on his hip last year never fully healed. 

Margie retrieved the black leash from her pocket and attached it to his collar. When her parents buried him, they left his collar around his neck because he was irreplaceable.

Margie led them out the backyard. Harold hopped once, twice, then kept to it to follow by her side. The talisman on his back flapped up and down with each bounce. No matter how stiff, goeng-si could always jump.

Based on the dark sky and bright streetlights, it was around six a.m. Brenda’s dad jogged wearing a Walkman, fanny pack, and tracksuit with orange neon stripes. If Margie found him and showed him her dog, he could tell his daughter nobody devoured Harold and he died of old age.

Cedarvale Park’s entrance opened with a misty paved path flanked by tall trees. Leaves crunched under Margie’s slippers. Harold panted. Drool dripped out his mouth and onto the sidewalk.

“Are you tired?” She couldn’t wait for Harold to adjust to his new state; her family wouldn’t understand her motives. They ran a funeral home to send the dead away, not bring them back. Or, at least, they didn’t anymore. They ended the whole leading-the-dead business generations ago.

Her parents and older sister, Evelyn, told her it was disrespectful to revive the dead. How did they know? They never asked goeng-si what they thought. In movies, they usually went on rampages until they were subdued by someone. Margie wanted to sit one down and ask why they came back with bloodthirst.

“Margie, stop!” Evelyn pounded towards Margie in her pajamas.

Harold’s tail wagged and he yipped in greeting.

Margie was going to get an earful from Evelyn. Margie snatched Harold into her arms and charged into the park, dashing up a slope with tall grass. Evelyn, chasing her sister, tripped and slipped into the dirt. Margie reached the top. A man with a racket in the nearby tennis court turned to her. Harold bared his fangs and snarled at the stranger.

“What’s wrong with your dog?”

Nothing’s wrong with him. Margie ran around fencing and hid behind a tree, leaning against the trunk and panting. She’d never find Brenda’s dad now. She had to try one last thing. She held Harold up, so their dark eyes stared straight into the other’s.

“Find Brenda’s Baba!” She had the image of a middle-aged skinny jogger in her mind and burned her gaze into Harold.

He stared at her in concentration. She was trying to teach him a trick and he couldn’t decipher the action he had to perform to get a treat.

Evelyn yanked Margie by her shirt collar. Harold dropped to the ground. Margie kicked and shrieked as her sister gripped her by the waist, but she wouldn’t let go.

“Do you know how much trouble you’re in?”

***

Harold barked and barked at the sisters. They were a pack; infighting like this was never allowed! Sometimes, the two of them argued, but it never got this physical.

Margie’s mouth released a long high-pitched cry. Tears streaked her face. She wailed like that when she was a puppy, spending her days sleeping and feeding. One day, she’d be as big as the other humans because he protected her. Why he had been buried in a box in the backyard was a mystery, but he could bark and follow Margie again.

Margie collapsed onto the ground and he ran up to her. Evelyn yanked the paper off his back and the world went black.

***

The second time Margie raised the dead, it was to extend a long life that should’ve gone longer.

Poh Poh chose to die at home. She didn’t want to be tended to by strangers in a hospice and have instruments run on her. She lay on her wide bed with several layers of blankets. Her cheeks had grown sallow and the outlines of her neck and collarbone creased her skin as she lost weight. A black beanie covered her head as her white hair was styled short.

Mama raised a spoon of congee to Poh Poh’s lips. “Eat.”

Poh Poh parted her lips, took a small sip, and turned her face away. Margie stayed by her grandma’s side, scribbling in a notebook, as relatives entered and left checking in on Poh Poh.

In the afternoon, her chest went still. With her eyes closed and face laxed, she appeared to be sleeping. Once an aunt noticed Poh Poh wasn’t breathing, she called for everyone to gather in the bedroom. Among the crowd, several sniffled or covered their teary eyes. Murmurs about what to do next circulated through the room. Margie knelt in the corner and put her hands over her ears.

Harold’s body rotted behind the shed years ago and was unretrievable, but Margie wouldn’t let Poh Poh leave, not until she was ready. They were supposed to grow bitter melons together in the backyard, as they did every summer. The seeds in the aluminum dishes they set on a windowsill had germinated with tiny white roots sprouting. The crops’ yellow flowers sometimes moved in the direction of the sun. Their leaves shriveled as the nights grew colder. Who was going to look after them with Margie?

Life wasn’t fair. Death was unfair. Why just stay here and accept death? Who was Margie, other than someone who could redefine what being alive meant?

Margie dashed to her bedroom and rummaged through her drawer. Poh Poh was illiterate, but she taught Margie how to write and copy spells. If she had regrets or things left unsaid in this life, Margie would give her one last chance before moving on.

“Get out of the way!” Margie waved the talisman above her and charged into Poh Poh’s room.

“Ah-Margie, stop!” Mama grabbed her daughter’s arm, but Margie jerked away as her mother’s nails left long pale scratches along her skin. She slapped the talisman on her grandma’s forehead. Poh Poh’s eyes popped open and she sprang sitting up.

A cousin screamed at the back. How could Margie use her powers on their matriarch?

“Poh Poh!” Margie grabbed her grandma by the sleeve and shook her. “Say something!”

She passed away ten minutes ago. If she needed to speak, she could do it now, before it was too late. Relatives yanked Margie back. She cried out and stretched her hands out to Poh Poh. She couldn’t be the only one who wanted Poh Poh to stay with them. Who didn’t want their grandma to live forever?

***

Poh Poh observed wrinkles and spots on her adult children and pimples and braces on her grandchildren; her sight had never been better in years. Everyone yelled at each other in the room. All their words meant nothing, travelling jumbled in a circle.

The yellow talisman fluttered up and down Poh Poh’s face. Ah-Margie did that. She was brought back to life minutes after death. Was it worth it? It had been generations since their powers were needed to lead the dead home. She wanted to be buried here, in Canada, beside her husband; she had no intention of returning to her birth village.

Ah-Margie’s eyes were round and focused on Poh Poh even as she was pressed down on the floor by relatives. Poh Poh’s false teeth gleamed between her lips as she smiled. Her laugh was dry and hoarse as her chest expanded with air. She was right to pass on her knowledge of raising the dead. Ah-Margie could, would grow and guide the dead to a dignified final journey. That was all Poh Poh wanted.

She yanked the talisman off, lay back, and resumed being dead.

***

The third time Margie raised the dead, she didn’t have any other choice.

No matter the trauma, body bags were supposed to be still. The zipped white pouch was motionless on the table, yet something beat within Winona’s body.

Margie rubbed her blurry eyes. The back of her head buzzed. Was she imagining things? She had stayed late at the funeral home browsing online.

When Winona was found dead, stabbed outside Spadina Station, a media circus broke out. Editorials discussed how this was related to the rise of anti-Asian hate crimes due to the COVID-19 pandemic, or how it wasn’t. Authorities investigated it as a random incident; the killer was unknown, so there was no evidence she was targeted because of her race or gender.

On social media, people declared this sort of thing didn’t happen in Canada. Others posted proof to the contrary: the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, Vancouver anti-Asian riots, internment camps, the head tax and Chinese Exclusion Act, border controls, carding, the bamboo ceiling—that was their Canada. What did people do when faced with this? What could someone do?

Winona was named after the area her family immigrated to in Toronto. Margie lived nearby, walked through it, and went to school there. They might have encountered each other in a convenience store selecting candy, browsing through an aisle of books in a library, or waiting at a bus stop.

The body bag expanded and deflated; Winona breathed.

Margie’s hand twitched. This corpse needed to be controlled before it arose and sought vengeance. Anger was the fluid that brought her back to life. Margie was supposed to quell goeng-si from rampaging by placing a talisman on their forehead and leading them to their resting place.

When Margie brought the dead back, she was supposed to guide them towards peace. She had done things backwards with Harold and Poh Poh; they had no reason to come back as they lived long, fulfilled lives and were cared for at death. Winona had none of that. She wouldn’t leave for the afterlife until she got revenge. All Margie needed was a talisman written with chicken blood to give Winona peace. What was the point of having powers if you didn’t use them to fight for a good cause?

The body bag trembled and drummed against the table. Winona extended her limbs and clawed and kicked the pouch like a creature emerging from a womb. Margie unzipped it.

***

Winona had to escape. In the dark, she swiped and punched. Her heels banged the solid surface behind her as the world shook. She tore at her back and dug nails into her wounds. He stabbed her there so many times, when would he stop?

White light beamed on her. Was this a trick of her assailant? Winona extended her fangs and claws to counter whatever came at her.

Her forehead was slapped and vision obscured in white and black by a strip of paper. Her body froze. The world was now dark blue. A small stream flowed over mud and stone. On each side of the water were trees with yellow and orange leaves. Cedarvale Park: she had jogged through there, years ago. Why was she seeing this?

“You’re safe in my family’s morgue,” a woman spoke.

What was she doing here? She was fending herself off from an attacker after leaving Spadina Station. She wanted to grab a book from Robarts Library; classes were finally happening on campus again. The students in her tutorial expected to discuss the professor’s assigned readings. She had to grade papers, edit her thesis, and grab groceries for herself and her fiancé. She couldn’t be dead.

Why was this happening to her? Why did she live to learn about her own death? Winona uttered a cry; something hoarse and hollow emerged from her mouth. Had her body decomposed so far that she was without speech?

A hand stroked her hair. “I’m here to help.”

What could this stranger do for her? She couldn’t return to what her life was.

“Winona.” The woman clasped her hands, claws, and flesh. “They haven’t found your killer, but you can. You’re both connected, whether you like it or not.”

Winona gripped the hands that were offered to her. Her pointy nails dug into the other’s skin. Warm droplets of blood rolled down her wrists. If Winona did nothing, he’d get away with murder.

“I’m from the same place as you, Winona. Men honked at you from cars since you were a teen too, right? You’ve been followed and asked where you’re from. No, where’re you really from?”

It wasn’t just strangers. Her classmates, acquaintances, and exes grabbed her, insulted her, hit her. She was punished for just existing. She always kept her head down and fled in silence. What else could she do? She was helpless, until she died.

“You’ve thought about getting back at all those assholes, haven’t you? We all have.”

Her killer was like all the others who wronged her. He’d continue hurting and targeting others if she didn’t stop him. Winona ground her fangs. Her sharp teeth could crunch down on her killer’s bones and reduce them to bits. She’d render him small for her consumption by tearing up his flesh with her bare hands. She defied heaven and hell to return here; she was the strongest being alive.

She’d thoroughly disrespect him. Her feet could stomp and crush all his organs. She’d splatter blood over his home’s walls and ceiling with the force of her fists. He’d never find closure to his violent end.

“You have a few hours before you have to come back here.” The woman let go of Winona.

***

As the blue-haired VTuber hit the high note at the end of her song, clapping hand emojis flooded the chat. Margie watched the singing streamer on her phone as she waited in the kitchen. She sent several messages with heart icons.

Margie grabbed a dampened cloth and lifted her wok’s lid. Steam puffed up in a cloud, as did the aroma of shrimp, eggs, and chives. The stirred eggs in the tin dish solidified into yellow and white, with a bubbly surface spotted with chopped green onions and mini shrimp. Their tiny black eyes dotted the surface. This was how Poh Poh made it. Margie set it on a coaster and cut it apart in quarters. As she lifted a slice up, the ends of glass noodles hung out.

Her apartment door creaked open. The footsteps were heavy with every stomp and hop.

“Oh, you’re here? Are you hungry?” Margie set up two bowls on her table with steamed eggs and rice. Margie held a spoon; if Winona needed to be fed, she’d help.

The goeng-si turned the corner into view. Winona kept a hand on the wall to support herself. Her palm left streaks of blood on the white wall. Her head tilted right, along with the talisman on her forehead. Margie’d scrub up the blood soon.

Winona stared at Margie. The rank pungent smell of human flesh and blood wafted throughout the kitchen as she exhaled; it was stronger than when corpses were drained of blood for embalming. Winona’s clothes were soaked red. They dripped a dark trail on the floor. She had eaten well.

Margie doubled the portions for nothing. She’d stretch her rice and eggs for lunch and dinner, maybe save some for tomorrow.

“Sit down, at least.” Winona was going to continue hopping as she stiffened and returned to death. Margie retrieved a dark hoodie from her bedroom. She stood by a seated Winona and held the garment up.

“Wear this and we can go back to the funeral home.” Did Winona understand the implications? Her family wanted an open casket viewing. Her face needed to be patched up with wax, clay, and makeup to hide the cuts and bruises.

Winona turned her head up to Margie. Her glassy eyes were spotted red, brown, and black.

“You killed him, right?” Margie said. “Is there anything else you need to do?”

Her head bobbed back, then forward as a nod to her first question, then her head swayed left and right for no. The talisman followed her movements. Margie couldn’t peer into the goeng-si’s mind. If she could, she would’ve asked Harold if he appreciated her placing blankets on him as he slept on his beanie bed and questioned Poh Poh about her adventures subduing the undead.

Margie covered Winona’s head and arms with the hoodie. From a distance, the blood was unnoticeable. The bandages around Margie’s hands pressed against the other person. 

In the morgue, the goeng-si’s nails dug deep into Margie’s skin. One way to become a goeng-si was through infection. Tomorrow, she’d unwrap her bandages. If the punctures were coloured anything like a corpse’s, she’d consult the old manuals for antidotes to remove her poison; if that didn’t work, Evelyn would have to subdue her by slapping a talisman on Margie. As tempted as Margie was to prepare comebacks for her sister’s scolding, she had to deal with Winona first. 

“Can you run for thirty minutes? That’s all we need.” If Winona jumped from roof to roof as Margie jogged on the sidewalk, they could travel without raising suspicion.

“Y-s….” Winona’s legs trembled as she stood. Margie held Winona by the arm to help her stand.

Her parents would have arrived at the funeral home about now and they’d have to let her in. They sensed when corpses arose. This time, they were too far away to control her. What could they do? Turn her in to authorities and expose their powers? They were forced into silence now. In the end, Margery Lung was unstoppable.

Margie patted Winona’s shoulder as she headed to the front door. According to Poh Poh, their ancestors, for a fee, may have marched the dead from cities back to their birth villages at night by using talismans. They rattled bells to warn people to stay away from them.

She rang her handbell to begin the final command.

© 2024 by Lisa Cai

3288 words

Author’s Note:

The story’s setting is close to home; I live, work, and play near the Oakwood Village area in Toronto, where Winona Drive is. While Canada likes to prop itself up as a welcoming and multicultural place, it is not without its flaws. I wanted to highlight the historical, cyclical, and systemic violence Asian people, especially Asian women, are subjected to. Using the goeng-si, I wanted a victim of such violence to get revenge.

Goeng-si (also called jiāngshī) are hopping vampires or zombie-like creatures from Chinese folklore. They’re usually depicted wearing Qing dynasty official outfits with talismans clinging to their foreheads. A human may turn into one due to things such as getting attacked and infected by a goeng-si, a bad death (i.e. murder, suicide), or a Taoist priest needing to transport the deceased. Goeng-si genre films experienced breakthrough success in the 1980s with franchises like Mr. Vampire, a Cantonese language series produced in Hong Kong.

Lisa Cai is from Toronto, Canada. She has been published in The Dark, Polar Borealis Magazine, and others. When not reading or writing, she is probably wrangling with IT at a university, watching anime, taking a long walk, or solving crimes in Among Us. Her socials are listed at https://linktr.ee/lisacai.

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DP FICTION #118A: “St. Thomas Aquinas Administers the Turing Test” by Mary Berman

edited by Hal Y. Zhang and M.R. Robinson

Herewith I present to Your Holiness Clement IV the proceedings regarding the phenomenon at Santa Sabina.

On the 25th day of the month of March in this year of our Lord 1265, I was ordered by the Most Holy Father to the Studium Conventuale di Santa Sabina all’Aventino to evaluate the existence, or lack thereof, of a soul housed within a Wooden Likeness of a Man, the Likeness having been constructed by Father Antonio di Cassino, a friar serving in that place.

Let it be understood, first of all, that no creature can create from nothing. The power of that which produces something from nothing is infinite, and no creature has an infinite power, any more than it has an infinite being. Thus, though Father Antonio may have been able to create a Wooden Likeness of a Man, just as a saw in cutting wood produces the form of a bench, creation of the soul, which is of an immaterial substance, is the act of God alone. Thus it was clear to me even before my arrival at Santa Sabina that the Wooden Likeness could not possess a soul.

The circumstances by which the Likeness was made are as follows: It being nine years ago, in the year of our Lord 1256, Father Antonio constructed the Likeness of cypress wood, this being the wood upon which our Savior was crucified, and he hammered for him a face-plate of beaten gold. A box strung with catgut was placed into the Likeness’s throat, and an animal’s bladder placed in its chest, to allow for the movement of air. By pumping the bladder and maneuvering the Likeness’s jaw by means of a pump-and-pulley, Father Antonio produced the effect of speech within the Likeness.

For nine years, Father Antonio maneuvered the Likeness to do as he did: to genuflect, to speak words of prayer to Our Father in Heaven, to recite the Rosary, and to pass its gaze over the words of Scripture as though in careful study. In this way he strove to multiply the acts of adoration he dedicated to our Lord.

On the first day of January in this year 1265, the Likeness commenced the performance of these actions apparently of its own volition and under its own will.

After some weeks, the Likeness expressed a desire to receive the sacrament of the Eucharist. It need not be stated that in order to receive the Eucharist, one must first be baptized and confess one’s sins. In this case, in order for the Likeness to be baptized, Baptism itself being the cleansing of original sin, and to confess, the Church was obliged to determine that the Likeness was capable of sin, which is to say, that it possessed a soul which, in the way of souls, should remain subsistent when separated from the body and enter Hell or the Kingdom of God.

This is why Your Holiness sent me to the convent.

I endeavored first to determine that the friars of Santa Sabina were not being deceived, as by one of their own secretly manipulating the Likeness. I cannot believe open deception of my brothers, but Father Antonio’s adoration of the Likeness is known throughout the conventuale, and men express their love in strange and mysterious ways. Second, if the Likeness was decided to be genuine, I would determine the mechanism by which it operated of its own free will. Third, I would determine whether it possessed a soul by evaluating its behaviors according to the five genera of parts: vegetative, sensitive, appetitive, locomotive, and rational.

Upon my arrival at Santa Sabina, I was led at once to the Minor Basilica, where Father Antonio knelt with the Likeness, which had assumed an identical position.

Father Antonio informed the Likeness of the reason for my presence, and the Likeness greeted me with pleasant warmth. I was struck by this, for the face-plate of the Likeness, though shining and beautifully wrought, is immobile, and one would not think the Likeness capable of expression. The face-plate lacked a jaw, so that it only depicted the upper three-quarters of a man’s face, and the wooden jaw moved up and down upon an iron hinge. The rest of the Likeness’s body, too, was composed of wooden limbs, each meticulously carved to resemble the corresponding limb of a human being and attached by iron hinges at the joints’ hinges. These hinges had once been regularly oiled by Father Antonio; now the Likeness oiled its own hinges and wooden body so that the grain shone, and it polished its face-plate, while the Dominican Friars performed their ablutions.

I found myself experiencing a vague sense of unease.

For the following two days, I shadowed the Likeness as it imitated the behavior of the friars. It was true that the Likeness behaved precisely like one devoted to our Lord. On the third day, in order to preclude the possibility of human manipulation of the Likeness, I requested permission to disassemble it. Father Antonio responded vociferously. However, the Likeness, though it had become rigid upon my request, expressed after a moment a willingness to be dismantled if it meant that it would ultimately be permitted to receive the Eucharist, provided Father Antonio, and only Father Antonio, would reassemble him.

I ordered Father Antonio to stand twenty feet away while I operated upon the Likeness. He did so, seething openly, while I carefully removed the Likeness’s shining face-plate. Underneath the face-plate the wood was rough, even splintered. I manipulated the jaw. I also removed the jaw and its accompanying hinges, revealing a hollow within what would be, in a human, the throat. I reached into this hollow—the Likeness was so stiff as to be almost trembling, which struck me as queer, since its body contained no muscles—and felt, very delicately, the box strung with catgut, and the pipe that led to the bellows within. After this, I withdrew my hand and felt the Likeness’s body all up and down, and studied the pump-and-pulley mechanism that had allowed Father Antonio to manipulate the Likeness before falling into disuse, and knocked the Likeness’s torso. At this point, I determined that my examination had been sufficient, and I permitted Father Antonio to reattach the Likeness’s face-plate and jaw.

Both Father Antonio and the Likeness expressed surprise that I did not conduct a more thorough inspection of the Likeness’s physical form. Your Holiness may be surprised as well. I will say only that the responses of both the Likeness and Father Antonio to the examination were the responses of a man to violence, and the Lord detests those who do violence, as we know from the Psalms.

My examination was certainly sufficient to determine that the Likeness operates according to its own volition, free of external manipulation. It remained only to be determined the mechanism by which the Likeness was able to operate of its own free will, and whether it possessed a soul.

The Likeness, upon questioning, was not able to present a supposition as to the engine that allowed it to move, speak, and apparently think. Father Antonio, however, believed that nine years of repeating the same movements of worship under his guidance, each day the same as the one before, caused the Likeness to learn these movements and to execute them independently.

I said somewhat sternly that if Father Antonio was correct, then he had provided evidence that the Likeness did not possess a soul. For if the Likeness was only imitating the actions of a man devoted to God, he was not expressing his own devotion. Thus can an animal stand on its hind legs without walking upright as a man.

I devised a test.

I instructed both the Likeness and Friar Antonio to compose a tractate on the purpose of worship. At this time, I learned that the Likeness is unable to read or write, and thus he was obliged to dictate his tractate to a scribe, one unstudied in the theological arts, summoned for that purpose. I withdrew into the central compartment of the confessional in the Minor Basilica, and both tractates were slid under the curtain. I read both, studying carefully the language and the thoughts expressed, in an attempt to decide which tractate had been written by a human mind and which was mere imitation.

Both texts were coherent. Though one was more plainly written than the other, each was equally considered. Strangest of all, they diverged in opinion.

I was unable to tell which tractate had been written by Father Antonio, and which had been dictated by the Likeness.

I confess I was greatly troubled. Slowly I emerged from the confessional, and I could see that Father Antonio and the Likeness could read my distress upon my countenance. I was obliged to retreat for a long time to the library, where I meditated on the problem for many hours, and prayed to the Lord for guidance.

At last I emerged to present my findings to the Likeness, Father Antonio, and the other friars who had gathered round, and I present these findings now to Your Holiness:

“It is only to be concluded that the Likeness does embody the powers of the soul: these being vegetative, for the Likeness grew from an inanimate creature into an animate one; appetitive, for the Likeness desires to receive the Eucharist; sensitive, for the Likeness responded with fear and disgust to my examination of its body; locomotive, for the Likeness moves and acts in accordance with its desires; and rational, for the Likeness expresses its beliefs in language. If Father Antonio is correct, the Likeness has learned its habits through imitation, but pure imitation would account only for the locomotive and rational powers of the soul and not the foundational genera. Hence it is necessary to say that the Likeness possesses a soul.

“I have sought, too, to determine the mechanism by which the Likeness has been granted its soul, and I tell you: As God brought all things into being from nothing, so has he done with the soul of the Likeness. It is true that creation, including the creation of the soul, is the act of God alone; but we must allow, also, for the working of miracles, which proceed from God’s omnipotence.

“Thus we must acknowledge that the Likeness has a soul, and so may the Likeness be baptized into the faith.”

The Likeness’s beaten gold face was incapable of smiling. But it threw its arms around Father Antonio and then myself, overcome by joy. And in its joy, as in the joy of a small child, I recognized the spirit of the Lord.

© 2024 by Mary Berman

1774 words

Author’s Note: At one point in time, I found myself wondering what the highest ambition of a sentient artificial intelligence might be. I concluded that, like the Little Mermaid, a robot might wish to have a soul. To me, a woman raised in the Catholic Church, the concept of a soul has certain theological implications, so I thought it would be very interesting if the robot also wanted to be baptized. But how would you—or the Church—be able to tell if the robot really did have a soul? And what would it mean, theologically, if it did? Saint Thomas Aquinas would certainly have opinions on the subject!

Mary Berman is a Philadelphia, PA, USA-based writer of mostly speculative fiction. She earned her MFA in fiction from the University of Mississippi, and her work has been published in PseudoPod, Cicada, Shoreline of Infinity, and elsewhere. Find her online at www.mtgberman.com or read her monthly creative writing newsletter at mtgberman.substack.com.

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DP FICTION #117B: “The Lighthouse Keeper” by Melinda Brasher

edited by Ziv Wities

Content note (click for details) Content note: Death, stillbirth, and isolation.

I’m not supposed to talk to the locals, but that’s not a problem because there don’t seem to be any. Not as far as the eye can see. Not in the endless blue I can’t look away from. Not along the windswept bluffs high above that crashing, ever-changing vastness that makes me feel smaller than I’ve ever felt. And yet bigger. More alone. And less.

I must keep the light burning at all times.

And I must never, never climb down to the beach.

I’m content with these rules. A woman in my position is grateful for a job. Grateful for the quiet. For no eyes to watch me. Revile me.

I have a milk cow. A clutch of chickens. A garden the last lighthouse keeper planted neatly, then almost let die. And I have the sea. A beautiful fierceness I don’t yet understand.

***

“What do you know of the sea?” the man who hired me demanded, weeks ago, sitting on a bench on the street while people stared at us and whispered behind their hands.

“It’s… big. Bigger than our lake.” I tried to think of anything else that might satisfy him, but sea was just a word to me then. I hesitated. “Pearls. Pearls come from the sea.”

“You won’t be seeing a single pearl in this job. Let’s get that clear.”

I nodded. I understood. He had no idea how well.

Thin and sharp-looking, he didn’t smile, even when his lips tried. But he wasn’t treating me like a mangy dog. “What do you know about sea laws? Sailing techniques?”

“Nothing.” Surely he’d dismiss me now for my ignorance.

“What function does a lighthouse serve?”

I wasn’t even sure of that. “Maybe it helps sailors find a place to land?”

He grunted and muttered, “Finding isn’t the problem.” Then he narrowed his eyes at me. “I think you’ll do.”

“What?”

“The job’s yours, if you want it.”

Relief shot through me. Or fear. “I want it.”

“Wait until you hear the rules. You might change your mind.”

***

The first night, the peace was so complete I cried with the beauty of it. The waves crashed below, their faint rhythm strangely comforting. No other sound came, once the cliff birds settled down. Just me and the sea. The beam turned around and around, like the sun moving through a thousand days and nights, separating me from all before, moving me to a time when there was only peace. I needed peace.

***

The sharp-faced man never gave me his name. I never questioned it. “You understand,” he said, it’s very lonely.”

“Yes.”

“Very, very lonely.”

“Are you trying to scare me away?”

“Are you easily scared?”

“No.”

“Perfect.”

I wasn’t scared of loneliness. I’d faced plenty of it, surrounded by people I thought I knew. It would be a relief to be lonely alone.

“Pack up. It’s a long journey.”

***

When he first hired me, I’d assumed I would be cleaning whatever a lighthouse was. That’s what unmarried women did. If you couldn’t find a husband, you became a cleaner or a cook. Or that other job decent folk didn’t talk about. “That’s all women are good for,” a greasy-bearded man once spat at a ragged woman on my street. I’d shivered, as if I knew people would one day look at me that way. But apparently, in the lands by the sea, women can be lighthouse keepers. Maybe butchers and cartwrights too. Maybe anything’s possible here.

I spend my days high on this bluff, polishing the beautiful cut glass of the lens, winding the mechanism that turns it, clearing the vents. I make repairs. I chop wood. I inspect the wick and ready the oil. The sharp-looking man taught me these things, and now I feel a glorious power in them. If the light goes out, it’s my fault. If it stays lit, it’s my triumph. I’ve never felt so exhilarated.

The loneliness hasn’t truly set in. Maybe it never will.

***

One day I find a razor fallen behind a cabinet. A man’s razor. It’s the only evidence I’ve seen of the previous keeper—except of course for the wilting garden I’ve nursed back to health. So lighthouse keepers aren’t always women here. When I ask about the previous keeper, the man who brings supplies every two weeks says he doesn’t know anything. But when we first met, he knew exactly where to stash the supplies.  His horse knew the path.  I think he’s been doing this for a while.

I won’t pry. I’ve been on the other side of prying. But I let myself imagine what he looked like. How he spent his time.

Why he left.

***

A lighthouse warns sailors of rocky shoals where their ships may run aground. I learned that from the sharp-looking man. A lighthouse means life or death. It makes me swell with pride. As yet, I’ve only seen three ships, all keeping their distance. That means the light is doing its job. Sometimes I wish they would come a little closer. Close enough they can see what care I take to protect them.

Most afternoons I sit near the cross I carved and talk to the one I couldn’t protect. I’ve outlined the tiny plot with white rocks I found along the bluffs. I’ll plant flowers there next spring. It comforts me to imagine her soul at rest among the salty breezes, and the big open sky, and the distant crashing of waves. It’s a good place to rest.

***

The first big storm comes one warm night. The wind shoves its arms through the cracks around the windows and tries to steal my light, which keeps puffing out and bursting back to life, a tragedy and a miracle repeating relentlessly for hours. I sit up the whole night in the lantern room, high above the ground, as rain lashes the shuddering glass, and I protect the flame with my body.

At dawn I search the sea for wrecked ships and cry in relief when there are none. The pea vines in the garden have torn loose from their stakes. They wave in the wind like the tentacles of the sea monster I found in a book behind the flour crock.

***

That night, exhausted, I go to bed earlier than usual.  Earlier than I should.  I wake to wind screaming around the lighthouse again. Something is very wrong. I drag myself to the window.

The darkness is complete.

Did I forget to top up the oil? I fumble for my bedside lamp and try to light it, but my hands shake, my throat tight. I give up and feel my way to the stairway that winds up and up. Hand on the wall, I ascend into blackness, legs trembling, wind howling like a newborn child. I finally burst into the lantern room, made mostly of windows, and see the full splendor of the night sky for the first time, the darkness undiluted by the light. Half the sky is clouded, but on the landward side the stars shine brighter than I’ve ever seen, so many they’re a fog of light, not a sprinkling. It’s beautiful. But wrong. Wrong.

I stretch my hands out to the nearest window and follow until I find the open one, its latch broken. My eyes are adjusting. I wedge the window tight with rags, muting the fury of the wind, but still it sings through the cracks, a lonely and terrible lullaby.

I pull myself away. The lens is still turning. At least I didn’t fail to wind it before bed. I check the lamp. I’ve done this so many times now my fingers don’t need much help from my eyes. The oil reservoir is full enough, the air inlets unblocked. I tug at the wick, where it often slips out of place. I strike a match. A tiny glow pushes back the darkness, but the wind snuffs it. I light another. Cup my hands around it. The wick catches. The revolving glass glows brighter and brighter. A beam pierces the darkness.

I breathe deep and steady myself, legs even shakier now that my immediate task is done. I scan the sea. Its surface looks dull, choppy, but I can’t see any ships, any sign of trouble. I watch the light for long moments—not looking directly at it because the brightness hurts.

Something in me misses the darkness.

***

The window latch fixed, the oil reservoir filled, the mechanism wound, I make my blind way back downstairs. The sea is still empty, peaceful in its submission to the wind. I crawl into bed and dream of her.

***

They wouldn’t let me dress her little body. Pearl, I named her. Pearl was just a word then, like sea. A soft, shiny word that meant far-away places and unimagined beauty. Now my pearl has returned with me to the sea. Even if her body hasn’t.

***

The night is endless. This time what wakes me isn’t the wind. The building settling? Shutters swinging in a breeze I can’t hear? I lie perfectly still until it comes again, long and slow and purposeful. Scratching. On the door.

No one comes here. In all these weeks, no one has knocked but the man who brings the supplies. And he’s not due for days.

Scraaaatch.

A wild animal, in need of help? A demon?

Scraaatch.

A soft thud. Then a word. “Please.”

The same word I screamed as they took my baby away.

“Please,” the voice comes again. A man’s voice, but weak like a child’s.

I creep out of bed, grab my cooking knife, light the lamp, and tiptoe to the door. It’s latched. I always latch doors now when I sleep. I never used to. His appearance at my bed that night was not unwelcome. I thought I loved him. I thought he loved me. I would have opened the door for him at his first sweet word. I was foolish then. But I sleep with latches now. “Who are you?” I yell through the door. “Where did you come from?”

“Ship…” he answers, as if that’s all he has strength for.

Don’t say it, I plead.

“Ship… sank.”

All I can see is Pearl’s body, cold and gray and tiny. I imagine it sinking below the dark water. Sinking, sinking.

“Please,” the man begs.

I unlatch the door. If this is a trick, if a thief or a murderer lies on the other side, or a man who wants what every man wants, who will get what he wants and then leave me to pick up the pieces, then I deserve it. I open the door.

It looks more like a pile of rags than a man. Wet. Crumpled. When he lifts his face, it’s bloody. A gash across his temple. Another on his collarbone where his clothing has torn. He’s young. Practically a boy. He tries to push himself up.

I help him into the room. Into my bed. I tuck all my blankets around him. His heartbeat is slow, his forehead clammy. I touch the leg he was favoring. He gasps in pain. His face goes white. “Shh,” I coo. “I’ll get you some water.”

I quickly light a fire. Sprinkle herbs into a pot.

He lies still, breathing slowly.

I run up the stairs and wrestle the unwieldy black shield out of its cabinet. The wood is thin, but its size makes it heavy, and my arms shake as I hold it up, blocking the light while I count in my head. I pull it away, count, put it back up, count. I hope someone’s watching. I repeat the distress signal seven times. I’d do it more, but the man in my bed needs me. I run back down to find him still asleep. The water is warm, aromatic. I rouse the man and feed it to him like a baby.

His eyes hardly focus, but his breathing sounds stronger. I pull the covers away long enough to assure myself he’s not bleeding badly and wrap him back up.

I pull on my boots and head out into the wind, over to the edge of the cliffs, where I can see straight down to the beach and the rocks below, where a ship founders. I can still see the mast, tilted at a terrible angle, and other bits of the ship rising like a serpent from the water. Something bobs further out. What if more survivors are dying down there? It’s so far. There’s no good path. It’s dark. And I swore never to climb down to the beach.

But I’ve already broken my other vow. I let the light go out. I caused this. If you’re stealing an egg, might as well steal the salt, my father used to say. Before he slapped me so hard my vision blurred, and I saw his disgust three times over. Before he threw me out. He never knew my little Pearl was a girl.

I check on the sailor once more. He’s feverish, but I think he’s too stubborn to die. So I gather supplies. The noise rouses him. “You were singing,” he says. “So beautiful.”

“I wasn’t singing.”

He smiles. “Like an angel.”

I pat his hand, wipe his forehead with a cool cloth, and go face the cliffs.

***

The way down to the beach looks dangerous. I’ve sometimes wondered if the last lighthouse keeper slipped and fell to his death. Thus the rule. But if an injured, half-drowned sailor can make it up these cliffs, in the dark and the wind, surely I can make it down. I search for the least-precarious route. Maybe my eyes have already contemplated this, because now my feet seem to know the way.

It’s still terrifying—a slippery-thin edge of earth high above the nothingness of air and sea. I test each footstep. I cling to bushes. I try not to look farther than I need to.

I’m halfway down when a burst of wind drives straight into me. I totter. The sea lies so far below, scattered with rocks that will tear my body to shreds. I throw myself against the cliff and cling there, stone cutting into my cheek, one hand around a low plant that I pretend will hold me back if I start to slip. I don’t slip. I manage to breathe. Eventually, my feet start moving.

I’m using both hands, both feet, while wood creaks below me and no voices cry out for help. The light swings slowly overhead, sending its beam into the black. I begin to count the revolutions as I descend. And suddenly there’s no more to descend.

I run along the beach. “Can anyone hear me?”

Nothing. Just the crash of the sea, much louder here. There’s a sort of fizz too, not just the crash. It’s beautiful. I stop in the silence. Bend down. Touch the water. It caresses my hand. When I bring my finger to my tongue, it’s salty. Just like they said it would be. Like the tears I cried alone, after they took Pearl’s body. But here, the salt is a comfort. A balm.

I don’t understand why I’m not allowed to come here.

Then the half-sunk ship creaks and I remember myself. I scour the beach. No one. No live men, panting and shivering, looking for shelter, calling for help. No dead men, washed up on the sand, still and cold. There’s a piece of wood. Waves drag it in and out. The ship groans and tilts even more. If anyone’s trapped in there, they’d be dead by now.

I know this. But I keep calling for survivors.

I can’t swim. Even if I could, there doesn’t seem to be any hope. But there is still hope for the man in the lighthouse. So I touch the water one more time, a farewell, then turn my back on the ship and start to climb.

They’re there when I get back up: the man who brings me supplies and the sharp-faced one who hired me. They’re hauling the sailor out of the lighthouse.

“Wait! He needs rest,” I protest.

“Did he speak?” The hard eyes in the sharp face make me feel small.

“Only a little.”

“Did he say anything about why his ship sank?”

“No.”

“Do you know why?”

“The rocks…” I whisper. “The light.”

“Which you let go out. Don’t deny it.”

“I’m not. The wind—”

“You’re just as worthless as the last keeper. Three rules. That’s all I asked.”

“I tried.”

“I rescued you from your shame. Now you’ve dragged it here with you.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know the wind was so powerful. I’ll never let it go out again.”

“No, you won’t. Pack your things. You’re leaving.”

“I can do better.”

“I don’t think you can.”

“Where will I go?” My father says I’m dead to him. Pearl’s father, when I told him I was with child, pretended he hadn’t heard. The next morning his foreman came to fire me. My friends turned their backs. “What will I do?”

“Whatever you must.”

***

The sun rises over the sea as I sit on the cliff, everything I own in two bags beside me. The sky’s pinks and yellows are improbably beautiful.

They took away the sailor. Wouldn’t let me say goodbye. Told me which direction to walk to get to the nearest village. Then locked the lighthouse and headed off in the opposite direction.

Now I sit and cry for the sailors lost below. I tell them I’m sorry. But I keep imagining them laughing in my face, spitting at my feet. I wonder if any of them left women on land. Women large with child, reduced to begging on the streets after everyone abandoned them. Women who would starve themselves to feed their children, but who would praise the hunger, because the alternative was a cold, lifeless bundle wrapped in rags in the uncaring arms of a man who wouldn’t even let you kiss your baby goodbye.

I sit and I stare at the waves. The sunrise is gone.

It’s then I hear a sound far below, faint and sweet. A baby. Crying.

I leave everything and scramble down the path I found last night. The rules don’t matter anymore.

“I’m coming!” I slip in the mud and keep descending.

The baby keeps crying, a soft mewling that Pearl never got to make.

“I’m almost there, sweetling!”

When I hit the beach, more wreckage from the ship has washed ashore. I have to pick my way through it, following the cries. I nearly step on something that is not wood. A body. My mind registers it coldly. Just another obstacle. I head toward the far end of the beach, where I can make out a cave of sorts. That’s where she is. The baby.

I jump over another body. A barrel that still smells of wine. If there were a raging fire, I would run through that. I would dive into the sea, knowing I may drown.

At last, I reach the cave. “Sweetling, all’s well. I’m here.”

But the crying has stopped. Where is she? I search the light and shadows inside.

Something splashes behind me. I turn. There, pulling herself onto a rock, still half in the water, is a woman. Beautiful, with skin so pale it almost shimmers. Her dark hair cascades into the water. Her gown floats around her like sea foam. She smiles at me like she knows me. Like she knows everything about me. Knows and understands. And won’t turn away.

She opens her arms. “My sister.” Her voice rumbles like the waves. “You’ve come at last.”

I wade into the water, toward her. “Where… where’s the baby?”

She reaches out. I’m not afraid. Her fingers—light like the breezes off the sea—touch the hollow place where my heart is. “Your baby is here.”

I nod. Because it’s true. Because the truth breaks my heart again. She pulls me into her arms. No one has embraced me for a very long time. I weep, and the sea weeps with me.

“No man will ever hurt you again,” she whispers. “You will find peace.”

And somehow I believe her.

***

The gale is fierce. Its strength becomes our own. The wailing wind snuffs out the light above. Then my sister begins to sing, the music so beautiful I cry. She stops. And I start.

The ship in the dark changes course. Heads toward us. Without the warning beacon on the cliff, the night becomes ours alone.

No one will hurt us. Ever again. Our voices become a duet.

When the ship runs aground on the jagged rocks, something in my soul relaxes. The ship tilts, just like the other did. Men scream. Splash. Sink into the darkness and never come up.

One ragged sailor crawls onto shore, lust in his eyes, and I am not afraid. He has an earring in one ear. A pearl. I will take it from him.

And I will never let it go.

© 2024 by Melinda Brasher

3500 words

Author’s Note: Lighthouses have always fascinated me—especially the isolated ones.  Would life there bring madness or solace?  And what happens when the light fails?  “The Lighthouse Keeper” sprang from these questions. 

Melinda Brasher spends her time writing, traveling, and hiking. Her talents include navigating by old-fashioned map, mashing multiple languages together in foreign train stations, and dealing cards really fast.  You can find her work in Uncharted, ZNB Presents, the Just Chills podcast, and others. Visit her at www.melindabrasher.com or on Facebook as Melinda Brasher, Writer.

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DP FICTION #117A: “Song for a Star-Whale’s Ghost” by Devin Miller

edited by Chelle Parker

Captain Ruby Tauda of the whale-ship Balentora strapped down a crate of medicine and hurried across the star-whale’s mouth. She and her crew had always used the mouth as a cargo bay, but this wasn’t their usual cargo. They weren’t thieves.

“Secure?” Ruby asked her copilot, Loto, pausing with her hand over the comms button sewn delicately to the wall.

“Secure, Captain,” Loto confirmed as he pulled one last strap tight.

Ruby slammed her hand down on the comms button to give the command. “Cargo secure. Go.”

“Going,” Johnnie Quo, Balentora’s navigator, said. “Looks like we have enough cover.”

The plan had been to blend in with other departing ships and hope no one on Port Helleta noticed the missing star-whale medicine before they got away. They weren’t thieves, but then they’d learned that Balentora’s grandchildren and their age-mates were sick with a degenerative muscle disease. Port Helleta’s authorities had medicine that could help, but they couldn’t agree whether to use it. If the star-whales’ illness killed them, that meant more dead star-whales for humans to fly—far more. And while they debated, the whales were running out of time.

Balentora had been dead for decades. Ruby, in her youth, had found it drifting in a star-whale graveyard and politely sung its ghost the traditional shanty to ask, “Would you fly for me?” The ghost had been lucid enough then to say yes.

“Wait,” Johnnie said, their voice taut. Ruby’s already nervous stomach did a dive. “There’s an enforcer ship behind us.”

“Following us?” If they were caught, they’d be imprisoned. Worse, the sick star-whales would die before anyone decided what to do with the medicine.

A full star-whale life could last three hundred years. Ruby had been taught never to fly a whale-ship with an unwilling ghost, and only to ask star-whales who had died of old age for their service. But not all humans followed those principles, and star-whales were desirable ships—they could sing to the universe, open thresholds through space without the aid of a gate. That was more than enough reason for Port Helleta’s authorities to consider refusing to help.

“Yes. Yes, it’s following us. Shit.”

“Then we need to run.”

Loto was already galloping up the whale’s throat. Ruby didn’t have to tell him to get his violin ready; they’d been crewing Balentora together for years.

The whale’s ghost had grown less lucid in that time. It got confused easily. After the first few times it had failed to understand more complex songs, Ruby had stopped singing them. She knew there might only be a few more years where Balentora could fly, and it hurt to see it struggle.

Worrying about whether Balentora was up for complicated maneuvering, Ruby hurried through the sloping hallways from the whale-ship’s mouth to its left eye, their command center. The inside of the whale-ship was soft like the flesh of an almost-ripe peach, celadon in color and odorless. Its skin had calcified until it was impermeable to space debris.

The eye socket cradled Johnnie’s blinking screens, comms equipment, charts, and the detritus of their lives on board the star-whale. Ruby shoved an empty coffee mug aside and grabbed her concertina, sliding her thumbs through the straps. She leaned over Johnnie’s chair and looked through Balentora’s eye. Their getaway route was littered with the other ships orbiting, leaving, and arriving at Port Helleta station. Beyond was the sparkling darkness of space, and the octagonal orange shimmer of Helleta gate. If they could just reach it ahead of the enforcers, they could get through to Crocosmia space, where Helleta’s authorities would be forced to do bureaucratic battle to retrieve the stolen cargo.

Loto hurtled in, out of breath, holding his violin case. He knelt on the floor to snap open the case and extract the instrument.

Johnnie’s fingers flew over their navigation panel, calculating the positions of the other ships, their trajectories and speed, finding a route through. Ruby stood and planted her feet, and Loto’s arms bent into graceful curves, readying his violin and bow. Johnnie set the metronome ticking, and Ruby’s breath hitched. That was faster than they’d asked Balentora to fly in a very long time.

A clear, familiar A♭ rolled off Johnnie’s tongue as they sang the crew into the music. That was a turn to starboard, and Ruby knew the five bars of music that followed like she knew her own turning feet. Johnnie held up six fingers for six repetitions, the degree of turn, and the words to the song poured out of their mouth as the concertina breathed between Ruby’s hands and the strings of Loto’s violin vibrated through the eye socket.

“Oh, the land is below us, the seas are behind,” Johnnie sang,

“and the sky is no longer a ceiling.

Hey, ho, breathe in the stars, love,

your mouth fills with joy and with dreaming.

Cast off from the station, swim fast now,

we all know there’s love in the leaving.”

Ruby loved that voice, the song, the instrument in her hands, the whale. She’d learned this art at her mother’s knee. It felt like hers, part of her body, inextricable. She almost felt as if she and the whale’s ghost were still young. She remembered what it was like to know the whale would respond to every breath of music.

Johnnie changed the song, asking the whale to dive. The metronome ticked frenetically. Ruby wasn’t sure she’d made Balentora’s ghost understand what was happening to its grandchildren. It didn’t recognize the cargo in its mouth. She could tell it didn’t understand why they were asking it for such speed. Through the eye, Ruby saw a long-haul passenger ship almost straight ahead. But Balentora responded to the familiar dive song, and they passed under the other ship, alarmingly close to its belly.

The ghost strained and heaved the whale’s body through space. Ruby’s hands felt slippery with sweat; she was terrified she’d hit a wrong note. Loto’s bow arm was a blur.

Johnnie navigated them around a tiny shuttle, cueing Ruby and Loto’s music with hand gestures and their voice. They weren’t far from the gate now, but Ruby could see the blinking indicator of the enforcer ship on scan, and it was gaining on them.

They slipped past a buoy, and the orange of the gate was vivid and staticky with energy ahead of them. Nearly there, Ruby thought, concertina alive with sound between her hands.

Suddenly another ship surged into view, blocking their path. Loto made a noise like he’d been kicked in the belly.

Johnnie stopped singing, looked frantically between their console and the eye of the whale. “That’s another enforcer,” they muttered. “Where the hell did that come from?”

Two more enforcer ships appeared, flanking the one straight ahead. There was no way to reach the gate now. Johnnie held up a fist to stop the music and the eye of the whale fell abruptly silent. They slowed to drifting.

Johnnie’s comms panel pinged loudly in the silence, and they punched the button to allow the transmission through. “Port Helleta Enforcement to Balentora. We have received a report that your crew is responsible for theft. You are not authorized to leave Helleta space. Prepare to be boarded. You have five minutes to acknowledge.”

No. It rang through Ruby’s mind, through her whole body. They couldn’t get caught. They had to get the medicine to Balentora’s grandchildren.

“We could hide the cargo,” Loto said. “Try to deny it.”

Ruby shook her head. “We don’t know how much evidence they have.”

“What else are we going to do?” Johnnie asked. “Balentora could have got us out ten years ago, probably, but now…”

It had been years since they’d sung the song asking the whale to open a threshold. They were all afraid to find it wouldn’t answer. Opening thresholds took power the whale’s ghost didn’t have anymore.

“We don’t know that for sure,” Ruby said. “We don’t know it can’t do it.”

Johnnie and Loto stared at her. “You know how slow it is to respond,” Johnnie said, too gently.

“We have no other options.” Desperate and stubborn, and captain of the ship: It was Ruby’s call.

She sang the first line of the shanty to ask a star-whale to be a ship. It felt like a way to remind Balentora, to cue the aging mind of the whale’s ghost. Then she changed the song.

Ruby remembered the threshold song, of course. She remembered all the songs, even if Balentora didn’t.

“Ask the black to bloom, my love,” Ruby sang. Loto still looked doubtful, but he joined her anyway, pulling the music from his violin. Johnnie added their voice. Ruby felt the whale’s ghost turn its attention to them, curious, confused.

The ghost considered, its unstable mind sifting through the request. Ruby closed her eyes.

Balentora broke into answering song. Its music filled the whale-ship, resounding through its fins and tail. It sang as it hadn’t sung in years. It remembered, maybe, what they were running for. It remembered the joy of opening a threshold.

A threshold opened. It glinted with the no-color shine of between-space, hiding the enforcer ships and the gate behind it. Music filled the whale’s mouth and its crystallized eyeballs. There was only a moment where they were outside the threshold looking in, and then they were swimming through the waves of between-space for a time-tilted whole note. Ruby forgot how to breathe. Then the threshold spit them back into normal space.

Ruby felt tears wetting her eyelashes. For so long, she’d been gentling the whale along, not asking its ghost to do anything challenging. That had not kept at bay her sadness over its fading understanding. And, she realized now, it would not lighten her memory of Balentora’s last few years of flight. What she would remember were moments like this one: doing something big, something that mattered enormously. Trusting Balentora’s ghost enough to try, and seeing what it could do.

“We’re in Crocosmia space,” Johnnie said, checking the scan. “But nowhere near the other side of Helleta gate. They’ll have no way of finding us.”

The ghost’s song trailed off, but Ruby felt it smile and turn unerringly towards star-whale home-space. Balentora’s grandchildren would live.

© 2024 by Devin Miller

1710 words

Author’s Note: This story was inspired by several prompts I mashed together, one of which was “invent an alien aquarium,” and another of which was this David Bowie quote: “On the other hand, what I like my music to do to me is awaken the ghosts inside of me. Not the demons, you understand, but the ghosts.” And from there I got to piloting a whale ship by singing space shanties to its ghost. Since real whales sing, using music to communicate was the obvious choice. I’m not a musician, however, and after the first draft, when I thought, “I guess I can’t totally handwave how this works, how unfortunate,” I made my much-more-musical-than-me girlfriend help me figure out how it should work. Whales were also an obvious choice, because I’m kind of a nerd about whales. I am full of whale facts, which I mostly did not use in the story, but here’s a cool musical one: In 1979, National Geographic included a whale song record with the magazine, which at the time had a circulation of 10.5 million. This is still the largest single print order of any recording ever made.

Devin Miller is a queer, genderqueer cyborg and lifelong denizen of Seattle, with a love of muddy beaches to show for it. Their short fiction has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, PodCastle, and Strange Horizons; their poetry received an honorable mention in the 2022 Rhysling Awards and once appeared on a King County Metro bus terminal. You can find Devin under a tree, probably, or at devzmiller.com.

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DP FICTION #116B: “Bone Talker, Bone Eater” by D.S. Ravenhurst

edited by Chelle Parker

Mama’s bones scream as the writhing mass of beetles cleans her skeleton. My fingers bury themselves in my ears against my will, trying to block the shrieking no one else can hear and the squish of macerated flesh they can. I don’t know which one’s worse.

The hedgewitch watches me from beneath her fur-trimmed hood, her sunken eyes eerily like the beetles in the flickering lantern light. I look towards the silent forest, the trees an army of mourners watching the funeral beneath the velvet sky. The spaces between them could hide countless monsters, but nothing there scares me more than the yawning space at my side where Mama has always stood.

Not even the whispers of the villagers on the other side of the beetle well, or the way they shrink from me in fear.

None of them can hear the bones.

I first heard them ten years ago. I was seven, and they whispered inside the wall, the click and chatter of a decaying mouse. It was a sound I heard in my own bones, like the marrow called to its sister. A cold sound, not meant for the living. Even then, I knew not to tell people I could hear the bones, knew they’d say I was no better than a Bone Eater myself. I didn’t tell Mama until I was eleven, when Granny died and we took her bones down to the crypt.

Granny’s bones didn’t scream. They sang with the sort of sad contentment that I now know only comes from a life well-lived and a peaceful passing. Mama didn’t get that. The wasting sickness didn’t let her have even that at the end.

I sink to my knees before Mama’s beetle-swathed corpse, waiting for the last of her pain to stop boring through my eardrums, rattling my skull. A hand clamps on my arm, bony fingers digging deep into my tender flesh as though they might rip it from my bones just like the beetles.

“Up, Suvi.” The hedgewitch’s red-painted, hollow-eyed face wavers into view through my tears. “It’s time to go.” She jerks her head towards the cloaked villagers sidling towards us from the other side of the pit like vultures. Only they aren’t looking at Mama’s corpse. They’re looking at me.

“She’ll bring a Bone Eater down on us,” someone says.

I flinch. I don’t want to be a Bone Eater’s meal any more than they do.

I stumble to my feet and follow the hedgewitch through the grasping trees. My arms drop from my ears with relief as the shriek of Mama’s bones fades, and I nearly choke on the bitter guilt of leaving before the defleshing was complete. The dead aren’t supposed to be left alone until their bones are laid to rest in the crypt. Safe from the Bone Eaters.

The hedgewitch pulls me through the front door of her squat, moss-covered hut and pushes me onto a rough-hewn chair.

“They’ll not wait much longer. Not with your mother gone.” She spits in the corner to keep Mama’s spirit at bay.

“I know.”

The wind sets the trees to caressing the bubbled glass of the window above the hedgewitch’s work table, and I feel as though the touch follows the curve of my spine instead. The villagers have been baying for my blood since old Ritva heard me telling Mama the slaughtered hog in the smokehouse was scaring me because its bones wouldn’t stop screaming. I was only eleven, and they tried to stone me. No one wants a Bone Talker nearby. They always blame us when the Bone Eaters find them. Mama was no witch, but she hadn’t been afraid to barter for whatever power she needed to keep me safe. Even her health.

I ought to hate the hedgewitch for that. For taking Mama away from me. Or maybe I should hate Mama for selling her life for mine. But there is a chasm in my chest where my feelings are supposed to be, and the only thing clinging to the handholds of my ribs is grief.

“Will you run?”

I appreciate that she doesn’t tell me I should. That she doesn’t act like leaving the only place I’ve ever known and the only people who’ve ever loved me—for all they’re naught but bones now—is the obvious choice. I should run. I could leave and make my way through the woods and across the Salted Plain to the city, choose a new name, start a new life.

But cities are built on the bones of their past. The forest twines its roots through the skulls of its creatures. There is nowhere I can go where the bones won’t call to me. Someone always notices, sooner or later. And then comes the fear.

“No,” I say, and the word snaps like a femur.

She watches me over the sharp ridges of her painted cheekbones. The lantern light can’t drive the flickering shadow of fear from her eyes. “I still owe you my protection. I do not go back on my bargains.” The twist of her mouth adds a silent ‘However much I want to.’

“Thank you.” I let her think the words are for her, but they are for Mama.

I have settled down to an uneasy rest when we hear them outside. At first, in my sleep-fuddled haze, I think it’s just the branches again, but branches don’t wail and shout like that. Those cries are reserved for humans and bones.

The noise resolves into words. “Bone Talker! Come out! You can’t hide behind the hedgewitch’s skirts.”

I recognize the voice of the village headwoman, Leppa.

“Ignore them, girl,” says the hedgewitch. “They can’t get past the twisted pines.” I do not know if she means the trees merely mark whatever wards she keeps on her home or if the eyes I’ve felt on the back of my neck in this forest are more than my imagination.

I press my face to the window and peer into the night. Lanterns glow like eyes among the tree trunks.

“Come out now, Bone Talker, or we will grind your mother’s bones to dust and let them blow into the Salted Plain.” Leppa drops a sack on the ground in front of her, and I hear the bones cry out with the impact, their yelp of pain withering to a moan. The voice of Mama’s bones may not be that of her living voice, but I would still recognize it anywhere.

A small, broken sound escapes me. Without Mama’s bones safely interred in the crypt, how will her soul recognize Granny in the afterlife? How will she watch over me, stuck here without her? How will she find me when I eventually join her in the forests of the dead?

The mob can’t do anything worse to me than that. And Mama’s bargain with the hedgewitch only protects me, not herself.

“Consider your bargain fulfilled.” I lurch through the front door, shaking off the hedgewitch’s clawed fingers, ignoring the sting as her nails break the skin on my upper arm.

As soon as I pass the twisted pines whispering warnings into the cold night, the villagers surround me. But Mama’s bones sigh in recognition.

I stumble on their cloaks as they drag me along in a puddle of lantern light, hissing their rage with words I don’t bother to parse. Mama’s bones chitter with worry as the sack swings from Leppa’s hand in front of me. The ground begins to slope beneath my feet, the walls of the gorge rising to block out the stars, and I know where they’re taking me.

At least I’ll be with Mama and Granny at the end.

Hands drag me through the narrow fissure into the vestibule where mourners come to burn offerings to keep their departed loved ones quiet. They fear the bones as much as they revere them. My foot scuffs through the ashes of an old fire, and the quiet chorus of the bones in the crypt sets my rib cage to resonating in harmony. Most of these bones are old enough that their voices are mellow, the pain of their time among the living faded to a faint dissonant whine beneath the chord.

Mama’s bones in their sack bark with a rawness that carves into my sternum each time they carom off the ground or Leppa’s legs. They should have been laid out with care, marched through the village and down to the crypt on a litter strewn with living green, lovingly placed into the crypt by me, her only living relative. Instead, Leppa lifts the bar on the door to the crypt and hurls the sack into the darkness. She didn’t even bother to knot the sack closed, and Mama’s bones chatter as they spill onto the floor.

“Better you’re with your own kind, Bone Talker.”

I don’t make them push me. I fall to my knees inside the crypt, collecting Mama’s bones against me, making the same sort of hushing noises I’d use with a nervous cat. Or a baby, but no one has let me near an infant since they found out I was a Bone Talker.

Leppa drops her lantern by my feet, and then the door shuts behind me. The bar falls into place with a muffled thump, and I am locked in.

Alone, but not alone.

Empty eye sockets webbed in spider-spun shadows watch me from the grinning skulls that line the corridor, singing their welcome. They seem to stretch on forever beyond the small globe of light cast by the lantern.

Mama’s bones hum with contentment at my touch, joining the chorus of the dead. I gently place Mama back in the sack and stand. My footfalls echo through the maze of chambers, bouncing back to remind me how alone I am, even as the singing bones remind me that I am never alone down here.

I don’t bother to try the door. The bar can’t be dislodged from the inside, and Leppa and the others have been waiting for their chance for years. They won’t have squandered it now.

Though I know I’m walking deeper into the crypt, it feels as though I haven’t moved at all, bubbled in golden light, watched by a hundred pairs of depthless eyes. Every so often, a new chamber branches off this original corridor, walled in bones, with magnificent arches built of long bones sweeping to meet a flared rib cage in the center.

After an unknowable amount of time, I reach the newest of these chambers, with half its shelves still empty, bare even of dust thanks to the wards. The bones are louder here. Fresher. They haven’t forgotten who they are, yet. I place Mama’s skull on the middle shelf and kiss her forehead.

“What am I going to do?” Even whispered, my words split the still air like a broken tibia through skin. I have no food. No water. I knew I’d die here when I left the hedgewitch’s hut, but there is knowing a thing and being confronted with it, and I find I do not want to die just yet, not even to join Mama and Granny in the forests of the dead.

Mama’s skull hums louder, a lullaby that I know is meant to be comforting. But there is no comfort strong enough to warm me here, in the grave. I’m already dead; my heart just hasn’t realized it, yet.

The incorrigible thump of it skips a beat as the sound of footsteps echoes through the crypt. The feet belong to something large, something heavy. Something scrapes along the stone with every step.

The sound grows louder and the bones grow restless, jabbering with agitation. From another chamber, a crack reverberates, a high, terrible shriek chasing it through the maze of chambers. I sink to the ground, still clutching Mama’s humerus—whether as a comfort or a weapon, I’m no longer sure.

A Bone Eater. The thought brushes the back of my neck like a lock of wet hair, sending a trickle of terror down my spine. The wards are supposed to keep the Bone Eaters out. But the crypt sprawls deep into the rock, and there’s only the old sentinel Otha and her apprentice to keep the wards. And no ward is ever perfect.

Better you’re with your own kind.

The bones? Or the Bone Eater?

I choke down a bitter laugh. What does it matter? Dead of thirst or dead at a Bone Eater’s feet, dead is dead.

The scraping footsteps are closer now, the screaming of the bones making me clasp my ribs to keep them from shattering. I can’t tell where the bone cries end and my own terrified shaking begins. Somewhere in this crypt, the Bone Eater lurks, with his char-black beak and crown of splintered bones. I tremble as I imagine the flash of claws and beak, the spray of blood, joining Mama and Granny in the forests of the dead. Another bone lets out the scream that’s trapped in my throat, and I feel the crack as he splits it open, looking for marrow. Thousands of bones beg me for help.

Maybe I’m the real monster, because I cower with half of Mama’s bones in my lap and let the Bone Eater do it. I don’t want to be cracked open for marrow either.

I fix my eyes on the empty doorway and wait for it not to be empty anymore.

When the Bone Eater finds me, I stop hearing the bones. I know they are still screaming. I can still feel their fear. But my world has narrowed to liquid black eyes and a hooked black beak.

“Bone Talker.” His beak clicks when he speaks. His voice is harsh, raw. Like the bones he eats have torn his throat to shreds. “Welcome. It has been a long time since I’ve seen one of my own.”

My lips tremble as I stare up at him, my fingers aching with the strength of my grip on Mama’s humerus. One of his own?

“They are right to fear you. But you have no need of fear. Take the power that is yours.”

He steps into the chamber, his talons dragging across the stone. I am frozen. I may as well be one of the skeletons on the shelves for all the good my living flesh does.

“What do you mean?”

“Seize your power. You’re holding it in your hands.” He nods to Mama’s bone in my hands, the polished protrusion of the shoulder joint above my fist, and his crown of cracked bones sends spears of shadow through the lamplight. “Let me show you.”

He turns to the shelves and selects a bone, a scapula this time. He brings it to his face and drags his beak across its edge with the barest touch, savoring it. Without warning, his beak flashes and the bone cracks. The Bone Eater digs his beak into the marrow and feeds.

The Bone Eater’s presence mutes the shrieking of the bones, but I can still hear the echoes from before he arrived. My jaw clenches.

He turns his glittering eyes on me. “You need not join the bones. You hear them. You can join me. If your people will fear you anyway, do something to deserve that fear. And live.”

I look down at Mama’s bones, run my hands along the smooth, cool shafts of the long bones, the curved balls and concave hollows of joints, the ridges and tubercles and foramina. They are too still, too quiet. My ears ring with the absence of their sounds.

“Why can’t I hear them?” The words are too loud in the echoey chamber.

The Bone Eater laughs, beak clicking. “My apologies. That was me.” He makes a courtly bow, one talon skittering across the ground behind him as he inclines his head.

He rises, and the screams return, tearing through my skull, my ribs, making my eyes water.

I should have known. Once the bones start talking, they never stop.

“Please stop scaring them,” I beg. I can hardly feel the vibrations of my own voice over the terror of the bones.

The Bone Eater ruffles his feathers and the wailing of the bones goes dead again. “I cannot. Their fear is only natural. What salmon would not fear the bear?” He turns his back to me. “It is not always so terrible a thing to be feared.”

I snort.

“That’s why you should join me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I was once like you. Afraid. And feared. I am still feared. But I am no longer afraid.” He nibbles at the bone still in his hand. “All you need to do is eat.”

My mouth floods with saliva as if I’ve just smelled the freshest bread, and I drop Mama’s humerus in revulsion. How can I want to eat her? But I think of the glee on Leppa’s face when she shut the crypt behind me, and I want to make her pay. Her and every other person who cast me out for this power I didn’t ask for.

“I’ll leave you to think on it. You needn’t fear me until you’re naught but bones. The bones can always tell you where I am, should you choose to join me.”

The frightened cacophony of the bones echoes through the crypt again before his shadow has even crossed the threshold. I bury my face in my knees. I have no way out. I can die here, or I can become a monster. I can’t hear my own thoughts over the bones, and I wait, eyes closed until their panic turns to murmuring anxiety.

I climb to my feet and face Mama’s leering skull. I press my forehead to hers. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Eat and be free,” whispers Mama’s skull without words. “Eat and protect yourself the way I could not.”

It’s like Mama’s bones are the only ones left in the world. The others still sing and talk and cry, but I hear only Mama. “I can’t.”

“You can. They are wrong. I do not need my bones. I am safe in the forests of the dead. Eat, and give the village something real to fear.”

I pick up one of Mama’s tiny finger bones and turn it over in my hands. I raise it to my lips.

It cracks between my molars and the bones begin to scream again.

Someday they will not be the only ones who scream.

© 2024 by D.S. Ravenhurst

3089 words

D.S. Ravenhurst writes horror and fantasy about women faced with impossible situations, impossible choices, and bittersweet, impossible endings. Her work can be found in Shadows on the Water Short Stories (Flame Tree Press, 2024). In between her (too) many hobbies, she studied Linguistics at Macalester College in St. Paul, MN, and Applied Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, focusing on the endangerment, minoritization, and revitalization of Celtic languages. When she’s not planning new adventures or listening to sad, traditional Irish and Scottish songs, she can be found Irish dancing.

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DP FICTION #116A: “The Gaunt Strikes Again” by Rich Larson

edited by Chelle Parker

“My friends, I apologize for pulling you away from the festivities,” the Duke said, shutting the heavy oak door behind him, “but I believe our lives to be in danger.” He turned to his guests and drew a deep breath. “It seems the Gaunt has decided to attend our soiree.”

The Beldam, fashionably attired in the skin of a flayed heretic, clapped her beautiful hand to her beautiful cheek. The Raconteur, already flushed and tousle-headed, wine staining his doublet, guffawed. The Corporal, a shard of obsidian in military dress, narrowed her flesh eye while its clockwork neighbor roved about the room.

“This is no jest,” the Duke said, unfolding a parchment leaf with trembling hands. “I found it only moments ago, inserted among the other notices of intention.”

At the sight of the Gaunt’s distinctive seal, the tarry black spiral that had portended countless grisly deaths, the Beldam and the Raconteur both shrieked aloud. The Corporal made no sound, but snatched the parchment from the Duke’s grip.

The Corporal’s clockwork eye split and rotated, bringing its full magnification to bear on the seal.

The other three waited, breaths bated.

“It appears genuine,” the Corporal squeaked.

The Duke had braced himself for this pronouncement, but still felt it like a hammer blow and heard a correspondent ringing in his ears. He searched for words to apologize to his guests, to offer them comfort.

“Then we are doomed.” The Beldam crumpled into the nearest chair, blinking. “Utterly, and entirely.”

The Raconteur pressed back against the wall, an animal cornered. “The Beldam’s correct,” he croaked. “The Gaunt likes nothing better than a soiree turned bloody. Remember the solstice garden party?”

The Beldam grimaced. “They found the Contessa strung from a lemon tree by her own intestines. Remember the carnival boat?”

“The carnival boat! They found the Bishop’s upper half nailed to the prow, and his lower in the bellies of several fishes.” The Raconteur chewed at his lips. “Murderous master of disguise that he is, the Gaunt might already stalk among us. He could be any one of the guests.”

“He, or she,” the Duke pointed out. “Or perhaps they. The Gaunt has never deigned to reveal such specificities.”

“He’s probably slithering through the party at this very instant,” the Raconteur mumbled. “Selecting his victims, slipping his infamous paralytic poison into their drinks…”

The Duke swallowed. “That does sound like him, her, or them,” he said, tugging at his beard. “Corporal, are you armed?”

“I’m always armed.” The Corporal’s clockwork eye was fixed now to the Raconteur. “So is this lad who knows so much about the Gaunt’s methods.”

The Raconteur startled, then straightened. “I make a living from sordid details,” he snapped. “And why shouldn’t I be armed? You’ve no idea how often I have to duel ex-lovers, and lovers of ex-lovers, and critics.”

The Duke raised a placating hand. “It’s quite his right to be armed. And it’s quite obvious that nobody here is the Gaunt.”

The Beldam’s laugh was soft and contemptuous. “Tell another one, Dukie.”

The Duke glared. “‘Dukie’?”

“The Gaunt can sew themselves into any skin they like,” the Beldam said. “They’re a changeling. That’s how they’ve gone uncaught for so long.”

“Rubbish.” The Corporal raised her chin. “The Gaunt is not some unearthly creature. Merely a killer who hides behind incredibly lifelike masks, and has the gift of flawlessly imitating any persona.”

“I imagine some personas would be easier than others, though,” the Raconteur muttered. “A persona with a big bushy beard and a fairly monotone voice, for instance.”

The Duke’s fingers, which had been stroking just such a beard, faltered. “‘Monotone’?” he demanded.

The Raconteur folded his arms. “Your address this evening was painful. I’ve told you time and again to work on your vocal emotive range. At the very least, it would dissuade the Gaunt from impersonating you.”

The Beldam tapped a thoughtful finger to her lips. “If the Gaunt were to impersonate someone, it would be rather sensible to impersonate the host. And then lead the guests to an isolated room, in small groups, to—”

She sliced the finger across her throat and imitated a death rattle. The Raconteur and Corporal followed her gaze to the Duke, whose jaw fell open.

“I brought you here to warn you!” he yelped. “How dare you accuse me of being the Gaunt! You’re the one wearing a human skin and knowing all about changelings.”

All eyes leapt to the flayed stole about the Beldam’s shoulders.

She gave a cutting laugh. “Please! As if the Gaunt could look this good.”

“She does look good,” the Corporal said. Her clockwork eye whirred. “Such facial symmetry seems almost… unnatural.”

She reached into her vest, perhaps for her flintlock, perhaps for her snuff. The Raconteur dove immediately to the floor, yanking the spring-gun from the lining of his doublet. The Beldam leapt from her chair with a direwood knife suddenly clutched in her bony fist.

“Friends!” the Duke croaked. “Come, now. None of us are the Gaunt, and none of us are murderers.” He cast about for a solution, some way to wet the hissing fuse. He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a small glass bottle of spirits. “Perhaps we should all have a drink?”

The Raconteur’s eyes widened.

***

Three knocks went unanswered, so finally the servant opened the oak door and stepped inside, tray of canapes held aloft. They were greeted by tragedy:

The Duke, master of the house, gutted by a direwood knife. The Corporal, weathered veteran of a hundred wars, exsanguinated by a shard of glass bottle to the jugular. The beauteous Beldam and the rakish Raconteur, perforated by leadshot in a half-dozen places.

The servant scratched at the burlap of their crudely stitched costume, which was not remotely passable for house garb. They yanked off their flimsy masquerade mask to take a better look at the carnage.

They stared for a moment, then stuffed a canape in their mouth. “This again,” the Gaunt mumbled. “Goddamn it.”

© 2024 by Rich Larson

1001 words

Author’s Note: I wrote this story during the winter of 2021, shortly after watching Clue for the first time.

Rich Larson was born in Galmi, Niger, has lived in Spain and Czech Republic, and currently writes from Montreal, Canada. He is the author of the novels Ymir and Annex, as well as the collection Tomorrow Factory. His fiction has been translated into over a dozen languages, including Polish, Italian, Romanian, and Japanese, and adapted into an Emmy-winning episode of LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS. Find free reads and support his work at patreon.com/richlarson.

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Diabolical Plots Lineup Announcement! (from July 2024 Window)

written by David Steffen

Hello! I am here to announce the original stories that were chosen from the general submission window that ran in July 2024.

First, some stats:
# of Stories Submitted: 1323
# Rejected (First Round): 1220
# Rejected (Final Round): 57
# Withdrawn: 15
# Disqualified: 2
# Rewrite Requests: 6
# Accepted: 23

Note that the overall numbers might include some authors twice in some circumstances. This can happen if an author withdraws before any of the first readers read it, they are allowed to submit another story in its place. Also, if a submission becomes a rewrite request, if the author submits the rewrite while the window is still open then the rewrite would become a second submission to the window. Or a combination of these could make several submissions for a single author.

The overall submission count is lower than the previous window by about a hundred, but there was still plenty of great stories to choose from, enough that we had to send rejection letters for many stories we would have been happy to publish.

This year we recruited a new first reader team because our first reader team carrying over from year to year had grown smaller over a couple years as some first readers got busy with other life things and couldn’t come back. The team with a bunch of new members worked their way through the queue with amazing speed while giving each story the same full opportunity as every other story–many hands make light work. This helped keep the window flowing as the editors never had to wait for a submission to have two votes on it (as you can tell by this announcement coming out almost 6 weeks earlier than last year’s announcement despite the window running about the same time of the year!). Our first readers are an amazing crew and we appreciate their immense help! Check out our staff page for a partial list of our first readers if you want to learn more about them!

If you have any comments or questions feel free to comment here or to send us a message through our contact form.

Changes Since the Last Window

We did have a few relevant changes to the submission system software since the last submission window.

In previous years, we did occasionally request rewrites from authors if we thought a story was almost an acceptance and we had something specific and concrete that we could request that (if the author was interested) could move it to become an acceptance. This was always handled outside of the submission system, where one of the editors would mark it as a Rejection but would edit the rejection letter to request chances and invite the author to send in changes. Changes in these cases were generally handled by having the author email one or more of the editors directly, and wasn’t handled by the submission system at all, which made it harder to keep track of, harder to collaborate on (need to forward it to other editors for them to see rather than being in a central location).

After the window last year, just before posting the summary, the submission system has been set up now so that a submission can be marked with the terminal status of Rewrite Request. When a Rewrite Request response is sent, it automatically also includes a special one-time resubmit link. The author can use this at any time. They can use it during the same window, which will bypass the usual one-submission-per-window limit. They can use it when there is no submission window. The link expires after a year (just for data cleanup purposes) but we can regenerate a link after that year on request. When a submission comes back into the system it will be treated somewhat differently, such as notifying both the Editor-In-Chief and the requesting editor. It will also bypass the usual requirement for two first readers to vote on it before it’s resolved, because it has already been seen by editors and was of interest enough to cause a Rewrite Request result. In addition, the submission system links to both the current text and the original text so the editors can compare what has changed if they like.

We also added the ability to handle solicitations to authors through the system. We occasionally solicited authors before, but it was always handled entirely out of the system which again made it harder to coordinate and keep track of it. This works very similarly to the Rewrite Request, producing a one-time link. The main difference is that a solicitation can be generated out of nowhere instead of requiring an existing submission record to start from.

And, since last year we added to the submission form an option for the author to enter Content Notes for the first reader team. We’d tried this in a previous year but had gotten some feedback on the way it was implemented that prompted us to pause the idea and come back to it later when we had time to take the feedback into account. Content Notes are never required but are appreciated! Our first reader team appreciates having a heads up on things like whether the story has the death of a pet, or spousal abuse, or things like that: that way a first reader can either brace themselves for it, or can choose to skip over it if they choose to and let another first reader who is more ready for that to handle it. When our first readers are often reading dozens of stories a week (sometimes even more!) that it can be very taxing to walk into stories with some topics without having a head’s up first and these content notes are very helpful. Authors, though not required to do this, seemed to use it very conscientiously, as stories that our first readers thought should have a warning usually had a relevant warning. So we appreciate authors participating in this when they are able!

The Lineup

The Witches Who Drowned
by R.J. Becks

On the Effects and Efficiency of Birdsong: A Meta-Analysis
by F.T. Berner

The Unfactory
by Derrick Boden

The Glorious Pursuit of Nominal
by Lisa Brideau

Irina, Unafraid
by Anna Clark

The Statue Hunt
by E. Carey Crowder

The Matador and the Labyrinth
by C.C. Finlay

Please Properly Cage Your Words
by Beth Goder

The Rat King Who Wasn’t
by Stephen Granade

In His Image
by R. Haven

The Interview
by Tim Hickson

Paths, Littlings, and Holy Things
by Somto Ihezue

The Year the Sheep God Shattered
by Marissa Lingen

Resurrection Scars
by Sheila Massie

Application For Continuance: vMingle Restroom Utility (RedemptionMod)
by Ethan Charles Reed

Will He Speak With Gentle Words?
by A.J. Rocca

Laser Eyes Ain’t Everything
by Effie Seiberg

(Skin)
by Chelsea Sutton

When Eve Chose Us
by Tia Tashiro

The Octopus Dreams of Personhood
by Hannah Yang

The Saint of Arms
by Mason Yeater

Skin as Warp, Blood as Weft
by Lilia Zhang

Our Lady of the Elevator
by Shiwei Zhou