The noon sun was a blazing red ember in an ashen sky. It was all anyone could talk about. Even the dogs of the kingdom were going crazy, whining and running in circles and hypersalivating. Meanwhile, on the birthing table, the Red Queen, her knees up, her legs spread apart, her multiple chins trembling, pushed and pushed and then pushed again. Music – Wagner or perhaps Sousa, something rousing – came thundering out of her. She was like a little brass ensemble playing mightily. The royal physician remained strangely calm, as though thinking, “OK, why not?” Blood had never looked so red.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of more than a dozen poetry collections, including most recently Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing).

The sun was just a faint red ember in an ashen sky when I stepped onto the swaying boat. “A poet,” as Paul Celan observed before his second suicide attempt, “is a pirate.” I felt a kind of guilty freedom to be maneuvering the boat above the rush-hour streets. If only I had had a Jolly Roger! Behind the boat, I pulled a net that was soon full of strange new words for things. My pursuers cursed and cried and complained bitterly of fatigue and stress and vast distances. “Oh yeah?” I said. “Try going through life as a Howard.”

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of more than a dozen poetry collections, including most recently Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing).

I reached up to cover my eyes and when I lowered my hands again, she was gone. No not gone, not completely. I could still glimpse her through the clouds.

I remember little else. A sedative was administered and finally, I slept.

David Rae is an author of award winning flash fiction, short stories and two dark fantasy novels. His latest CROWTOWER is available here and more of his work can be read for free on his website David Rae Stories.

The trees about Raoul start to strain on their top masts and branches. Fog flees, a great wind comes, a storm too.

Over the drone of the wind, Raoul distinctly hears the Watcher in the Woods growl, ‘Raoul!’

From Guest Contributor Brett Dyer

Special trains departed every hour on the hour for labor camps and reeducation centers. Hatchet-faced men in leather trench coats would grab people right off the street. I struggled hard to keep the look of the panic-stricken out of my eyes, the hitch of the guilt-ridden out of my step. It wouldn’t even be noon, and the sun would already be a dying ember in an ashen sky. There was no specific end to the workday. Steel bars had been installed on factory windows and suicide nets on the roofs. Manufacturers knowingly sold baby food contaminated with the devil’s tears.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of more than two dozen poetry collections, including most recently Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing, 2021).

When I walked into the village, white fur balls kept falling from the sky.

One day I left the village. When I turned back, the village was gone. Instead, white fluff balls spread as far as the eye could see.

From Guest Contributor Yukari Kousaka

Born in Osaka in 2001, Yukari Kousaka is a Japanese poet, fiction writer, and essayist. Translated by Toshiya Kamei, her short fiction has appeared in New World Writing.

The sliver of moon that hung in the dark sky was the only source of light on that cold evening. It had been raining for hours, and the parking lot was now a collection of puddles. Exhausted after a long day, the woman trudged across the lot to her car. She despised leaving work late, since she was still adjusting to her new life in the city. Preoccupied with thought, she didn’t realize that her new life was already over until she reached her car and found a note tucked under her windshield. “Found you,” it screamed in his handwriting.

From Guest Contributor Kelsey Swancott

Kelsey is a senior majoring in English with a minor in Visual Arts and Spanish while also being involved in the campus literary magazine Angles. She plans on furthering her education by getting her master’s degree in English as well.

The lake has an island that has a church on it with fine black cracks etched all over. It’s the place where disaster originated. Everything else has been declared safe for visitors. The sky is an orange I never experienced before. A smell like the rancid diapers of the spawn of Satan crawls through trees. A fox poses in front of a sign that says NO JEWS AND ANIMALS ALLOWED. Joggers, dog walkers, and parents with strollers slow down as they go past. I catch the expression on their faces, mostly a combination of surprise and puzzlement. Sometimes they smile.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of two new poetry collections, The Death Row Shuffle (Finishing Line Press, 2020) and The Trouble with Being Born (Ethel Micro-Press, 2020).

It took millennia for the rays to alight atop the sky. As It saw them, It rejoiced. Its cold corpse rose from Its slumbering position. The light would not be long now. The radiance burnt the gray skies, who smoldered with violent violet rage, fading to baby blue embers. The trees near It unfurled their stalks, reaching lightwards towards the first sunbeams. Kaleidoscopic rays raked closer. It grinned giddily. So long to shadow and cold. The light finally, finally, finally touched the tops of the trees, which elongated upwards. And as It touched the sky’s embers It smiled, burning happily.

From Guest Contributor Kaleb Bjorkman

Kaleb is an aspiring poet, artist, and electrical engineer from Colorado Springs.

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