Sometimes at night I cling to her hand in the darkness and try to imagine what she’s dreaming.

But most of the time we just watch television.

The shadows that lurk in the background carry the suggestion of prison stripes. Cary Grant picks a flake of cigarette tobacco off his tongue. This whole time the Ferris wheel has been spinning in the traveling carnival of his mind. He doesn’t try to reason with the gods but mocks their Greek robes. Then, as night burns to the ground, he discovers the perfect partner in Rosalind Russell, who spits words the way a machine gun spits bullets. She knows without having to be told that movies are just life enlarged. There’s no one to feed, nothing to feed anyone.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of more than two dozen poetry collections, including most recently The Death Row Shuffle (Finishing Line Press), The Trouble with Being Born (Ethel Micro Press), and Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing).

The Grim Reaper took things slower, started to travel by tricycle during the week and by donkey on the weekends. At night we kept warm around matchsticks and dumpster fires. For entertainment we compared peanut butter and jelly recipes. Snooze buttons recorded high anxiety days. Snooze alarms provided the year’s soundtrack. Almost everyone drank alcohol to mournful excess. Even coffee was served wrapped in brown paper bags. Coincidentally, that was the last year for the Miss America pageant. The final talent show, with an extra-large flame thrower, was really something. For months afterwards people sold charred auditorium remains as souvenirs.

From Guest Contributor Mike James

The desirable and exquisite souls always come at night—when the crescent moon shapes a bent halo around their stiff, floating bodies illuminated by the stars. Beautiful people are tough to kill, yet so impossible to resist. Their calm spirit invites the monster to the forest. Mothers hiding from their tormenting infants; lovers exploring their wild, rupturing hormones; broken people just seeking a place to sing along with the birds and dance to the tune of the wind—Everything leads to when the monster crawls out of the dim and spiny bush to say, “Do you want to play, Kitten?”

From Guest Contributor Annabelle Torkwase Ulaka

Annabelle lives with her mother and two siblings at a little town, north of Nasarawa state, Nigeria. She believes in the magical bond of family. Her days are spent reading anthologies, watching movies and writing stories and essays. She’s a final year student in Benue State University, studying for a bachelor’s degree in Biology. Writing comes naturally to her, and her greatest aspirations have always been to become a respected writer, own three black cats, and finally learn how to dance. You can always find her on Twitter with the handle @Annyball1.

Other residents would cradle baby dolls, designed to match the heft of a newborn. But for Grandpa, who’d been one of America’s top reporters, only a typewriter would do. It didn’t even need paper; as the nurses discovered, simply sitting at the antique Olivetti was enough to quell his nightmares. Though his mind was gone, his fingers retained echoes of his memories, shaping them into the staccato sound of clacking keys.

He would sit there, morning to night, at his little utilitarian desk. And while he never produced a single page, we still cherished each and every word he wrote.

From Guest Contributor Keshe Chow

It’s New Year’s Eve and Chad is in quarantine. His Covid-19 test came back negative the first time and he’s waiting on the next one. He doesn’t feel sick and he’s confident the test will come back negative.

The next afternoon Chad’s test is positive.

From Guest Contributor Lisa Scuderi-Burkimsher

He was deserted by the sun, forced to sleep at night. He would lay in bed, tossing and turning until the first rays of the sun would fall upon the earth. Sometimes he would wake up in the middle of the night, get out of bed and sit in the corner with his face hiding between his knees. Sometimes he would leave his room and wander alone in the silent streets where shadows would chase him into dark alleys. Sometimes he would just look up at the sky, smile and think that at least the moon hasn’t left him yet.

From Guest Contributor Sergio Nicolas

She had sun-streaked hair. I told her we could have a quickie after the show but she just looked blankly at Murphy, the doll. That night I jerked off with Murphy and cussed him for missing my chance with her. He looked on with the wooden smile, his wooden fingers clenched tight by his side. Murphy said cute things that day. People laughed at the stale jokes about slavery. I saw her reach out for the tip. And then she walked past me, with sad the ruffle of notes in her bodice. A little girl came up and hugged Murphy.

From Guest Contributor Sreemanti Sengupta

Sreemanti writes fiction and poetry (Losing Friends – Alien Buddha Press 2.0) while occasionally dabbling in collage art. Some of her haikus have been translated to French and a poem read out at City Lights Bookstore, NY. She runs The Odd Magazine and Odd Books.

Carol heard the front gate creak; someone had come into the garden. “Who could it be? Who is out at midnight?” The doorbell rang. She quickly put on her bathrobe and started for the door, then hesitated. Should she answer it? What if someone wanted to harm her?

The next morning Carol learned that her mother had died of a heart attack the night before at 11 pm.

From Guest Contributor Janice Siderius

She dances with the leaves on this late autumn night. They rise, fall, crackle, swoop back into the air, without reflection about their falls. No signs of injury. No self-pity.

The words float in her mind like sickly alphabet cereal. But another curtain of leaves showers her. She twirls, the leaves dancing with her, sky and street opening wider than ever before.

From Guest Contributor Yash Seyedbagheri

Yash is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA program in fiction. His work is forthcoming or has been published in WestWard Quarterly, Café Lit, and Ariel Chart, among others.