A 9-year-old girl trick-or-treating in a black-and-white Halloween costume got mistaken somehow for a skunk. The lead detective on the case is borderline Asperger’s. Covering an entire wall of her grubby office is one of those conspiracy theory maps, with all the pins connected by strings. “I’ll break anything in order to figure out how it works,” she’s famous around headquarters for saying. Her brisk confidence irks male colleagues. “Go away,” one shouts, “and take your shitty forest!” She can’t hear him. She’s out in a far corner of the city collecting evidence of the refulgence of pearls of blood.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of Spooky Action at a Distance from Analog Submission Press. He co-edits the journals Unbroken and UnLost.

His little girl called and said that she was getting married.

“Beautiful, Baby.”

From Guest Contributor E. Barnes

The soon to be father entered the delivery room wearing a hastily tied paper gown.

Tears of joy filled mom’s eyes as her daughter was placed into her arms, and she said with concern, “She looks like an alien.”

From Guest Contributor Eddie D. Moore

Eddie travels hundreds of hours a year, and he fills that time by listening to audiobooks. When he isn’t playing with his grandchildren, he writes his own stories. His stories have been published by Kzine, Alien Dimensions, Black Hare Press, Nomadic Delirium Press, Fantasia Divinity Publishing and by dozens of online publishers. You can find a list of his publications on his blog, eddiedmoore.wordpress.com, or by visiting his Amazon Author Page, amazon.com/author/eddiedmoore. While you’re there, be sure to pick up a copy of his mini-anthology Misfits & Oddities.

I’m wearing my navy blue, long sleeve shirt that says, “Nevertheless She Persisted,” just like the one I have in real life. I’m standing on the shoulder of a mighty highway, with my thumb out! Me, looking to hitch a ride to Washington DC! Was Mitch even there? Was Congress still in session? What about security? That’s the trouble with dreams. They’re stingy with details. I’ll leave them to my ride, who’s shown up driving an eighteen-wheeler. He’s honking and honking that bazooka kind of horn. It’s saying hurry up. It’s saying you’ve got work to do, girl. Get in.

From Guest Contributor Linda Lowe

He presented himself at Licensed Brothel No. 1 and asked with formal politeness for the girl named Rachel. When she appeared, dressed for work in stockings and a slip, he handed her his ear (or, more precisely, the lower half of his left ear, wrapped in cloth). “Guard this object carefully,” he said without prelude, and you would’ve thought he was bestowing on her a fabulous piece of art. Then he turned and walked away. She was accustomed to getting freaky requests from men in her boudoir, but this was a first. The police said call if it happened again.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

He returned to their place, behind a shrub. Where they as teenagers
watched practitioners exit a church. Where he kissed away her tears
after her father walked out, showering affection on a stranger.

Rainstorm may have passed, but the storm in his mind had only intensified.

From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs

Krystyna is a writer of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. She
resides in Edmonton, Canada with her husband and stuffed animals and
many friends.

Springtime breeds passion. It is the riotous pheromones.

One of her solar smiles would make my life soar. She doesn’t notice me among all this teeming beauty. Nonetheless, in love-struck desire, I sit taller as she approaches. Surely, if she can adore flowers so fully, I can cherish her as much. If only I wasn’t a cactus.

From Guest Contributor Bill Diamond

Three imaginary boys followed her everywhere. The one she called Whitey was the nicest. He would help her with math and comforted her when she was sad.

She knew all three boys were imaginary, but the scars Stephen left were frighteningly real.

I read a story once about a girl in nature. A man was watching her ride her bike through a field of flowers. She was beautiful, so he stopped her. He frightened her, her fear frightened him, he panicked. He raped and killed her, strangling her in perfectly-rendered fragments, snippets of sun-burnished green, pale skin under cobalt sky, a tale of flushed mania and hazy recollections of doomed resistance. A beautiful life snuffed out in beautiful prose.

I don’t ride alone through fields. I’ll never taste the freedom that killed the girl. Another beautiful life snuffed out in beautiful prose.

From Guest Contributor Tara Campbell

Tara is a fiction editor at Barrelhouse and an MFA candidate at American University. Prior publication credits include SmokeLong Quarterly, Masters Review, Jellyfish Review, Booth, and Strange Horizons. Her novel, TreeVolution, was published in 2016, followed in 2018 by Circe’s Bicycle. Her third book, a short story collection called Midnight at the Organporium, will be released by Aqueduct Press in 2019.

Samantha read The Great Gatsby, to her elderly grandmother Millie,
again.

Samantha’s eyes teared as she left, knowing her grandmother no longer
knew who she was, other than a nice girl who came to visit.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher