On the working class tube filled with out-of-work laborers, gangs and students, Reyva hugged her backpack on her lap and gazed at the ads above her head. 

“Change your Life! Travel with Distant Horizons!” 

She ditched her unfinished schoolwork and went. 

At Distant Horizons, she lied about her age. She wasn’t afraid to make adult choices.

They strapped her to a table. Fear gripped her, but they stripped it away. Gave her a new body, a new purpose.

Within the storms of Thacyline, she rode the winds on golden wings and avoided looking towards Earth. 

She could never go back.

From Guest Contributor Tyrean Martinson

A jar of coconut oil sits on the sink. These days, she oils all the rough parts of her body: elbows, knees, and everything in between. Beneath her fingertips, the white glob melts quickly and glistens as it glides head to toe, her whole body suddenly pink before the mirror. She looks into her cunning eyes, searching for the humor in this beauty care. She smirks. The smell of the coconut makes her think of Paradise. What is she waiting for? The day unfolds. When she passes her hand over her head’s short silver hairs, she hears that funeral tune.

From Guest Contributor M.J. Iuppa

One person in six hasn’t heard of the Holocaust, doesn’t know what it is, a planet of smoke and flames. Seventy year ago my relatives didn’t believe it was there, and then they walked through the gate and under the slogan, Arbeit Macht Frei, and found they suddenly had a dismal view of God’s back from inside the barbed wire. So I look around, and though the times are terrifying, try to act like a kind of thunderstorm blue, like I can see clouds in the shape of a woman’s mighty body and feel the rain that hasn’t fallen yet.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie’s latest collections are I’m Not a Robot from Tolsun Books and A Room at the Heartbreak Hotel from Analog Submissions Press. 

She raged against the shackles that fashion lashed around her body, that gender weighed upon her soul, and she spit and she clawed and she cursed the names of the boys who mocked her aspirations.

She’d once promised to burn herself to ashes but that was long ago. Now she asked herself “Where did all the anger go?”

Hurricane season is upon us. Heat is the agitation of molecules. Today it’s raining, and my car is lonely as an empty swimming pool. Like a lost pilot, I drive myself around and around, although I don’t know where I’m going. All I can hear is black and white noise. Yesterday, I combed my hysterical hair, so I looked like someone based on real events. When I applied for the lifeguard job, I told them I prefer select flesh, and I never let the weather bother me. Was Amelia Earhart’s body ever recovered? I’m pretty sure there is still time.

From Guest Contributor Brad Rose

The sweat is dripping down my neck. I chug water to quench my thirst,
but it doesn’t alleviate my heated body. Why did I promise my wife I’d
plant the basil seeds today? Why? Because I’m an idiot and she knows it.
If I have a heart attack, all she’ll care about is the garden.

Now I know better than to have an affair with another woman in our
house.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Winter today felt like death. Sor glared at the obvious trail leading to his concealment.

“The planet’s sterilized,” the marine announced over her com.

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid

Lucy turned up the car radio. It was their song and it reminded her of his soft touch on her body and the warmth of his breath on her face. Jim was taken too soon from an unexpected illness and the pain jabbed at her heart. She longed to hear his laughter and see his big dimples. His family didn’t approve of their relationship. She was older, divorced and not Catholic. But they were in love.

Lucy drove up the driveway and rubbed her stomach. How would she tell a family that disliked her that Jim would’ve been a father?

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Having left my car behind, smashed against a tree in the forest, I’ve been walking for hours, with the snow and wind against my face. My feet half frozen, barely able to breathe and my hands numb, I’m lonely and afraid. If only I could see in front of me, but it’s becoming dark and the snow distorts my vision.

I can’t go any further. I fall to the cushioned ground and pray my death will be painless. I close my eyes and feel the snow cover my body. I drift off, and the last thing I see is darkness.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Annette sits in her favorite rocking chair, by a big window. A gloomy afternoon.

The devil exists.

From Guest Contributor Alexa Findlay