by Thomas J. Misuraca

Footsteps upstairs. Reminding me of my old apartment living days.

The upstairs residence switched renters quicker than the leases allowed. No matter how well I knew my upstairs neighbors, I heard them more than I saw them. 

Edna, the little old French lady, woke up with the sun every morning and stomped over my head as if she were a charging rhino. She dropped things constantly, scaring the life out of me with the sudden crashing on my head.

Gil, the large Latino, had a softer step. Most days I heard nothing of him, but at night, he paced the floor endlessly. 

The one guy I never met was a night owl. I heard him running around his bedroom as I was about to fall asleep. Then a second set of footsteps joined him until they transformed into bed springs squeaking. 

Footsteps upstairs. A whole other life I could only imagine from their sound. 
​
Footsteps upstairs. I counted the days until I no longer had to hear them.

As I awake in my new home to the sound of thunderous footsteps, I remember…

Nobody lives above me. 

* * *

​Tom Misuraca has had over 150 short stories and two novels published. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2021. He’s also a multi-award winning playwright with over 150 short plays and 13 full-lengths produced globally.

by Lisa Lahey

We don’t act like them, the xenophobes
and kinemortophobes,
each of us with a peculiar
look and a lamentable odour.
We’d love to run among the blue green grass
on frozen glass mountains,
with the cannibals
and their turquoise camels.
There is the one who sheds her skin 
every birthday so she can grow
while the skin melts into the ground.
There is another whose eyes
are moonlit lasers that x-ray every bone
and dream in a demon’s head.
You fear us all, that’s why we stay hidden.
It isn’t fair, shetani,
but what is?

* * *

Lisa Lahey's short stories and poetry have been published in 34th Parallel Magazine, Five on the Fifth, Bindweed Anthology, Spadina Literary Review, Vita Poetica, Ariel Chart Review, VerbalArt Journal, and Altered Reality.

by Sarah Das Gupta

Witches steal the milk from cattle,
shapeshift into brown hares.
In the hidden witches’ garden
grow pink foxglove fingers,
yellow clumps of spindly ragwort,
deadly to man or beast.
Witches ride in the Wild Hunt
high in inky darkness,
they form dark silhouettes
across the face of the harvest moon.
In elder trees they hide,
under the spiked blackthorn,
among monkshood and aconitum,
mixing strange concoctions,
bringing certain death and gloom.
Yellow and red flames
consumed them once.
Yet in the darkness of the pinewood,
in that other land under the hill,
they survive, to curse and cure us still.

* * *

Sarah Das Gupta is a slowly emerging poet from Cambridge, UK who started writing a year ago when her mobility became limited to 20 metres. Her work has been published in over 20 countries and she has been nominated this year for Best of the Net and a Dwarf Star award.

by Lucy Barker

I watch you enter. Sunlight penetrates the stained-glass, suffusing your pale cheek.
Once, from that  pulpit, the Reverend Swales preached forgiveness, his gimlet eyes resting upon me; the sinner of his flock.

I reach out. I have come too close. Startled, you flee towards the headstones encircling those weathered walls. My empty, unmarked grave lies beyond; above the wind-buffeted waves raging far below.

He waits for you by the lych gate.

With venomous whispers I bid you not to go.
​
Convinced it is merely the rustling of trees, you rush inexorably towards him; oblivious of my pursuing shadow.

* * *

Lucy is a retired tutor living on the beautiful South Coast of England, which inspires much of her work. For some strange reason she is fascinated by the eerie and macabre, but that’s another story!

by Lorette C. Luzajic

The seagrass, like woodcut lines zigzagging across the dark water. Rippling cords all tangled in the shallows like some kind of labyrinth. The soft moon illuminates a hushed halo over her brow. Sometimes she wails for her drowned child and the eerie sound fills up the whole world. Sometimes there is mere silence. No wind, no waves. I crawled off of the same shore, the epigenetic trauma of hate and war. Want spun through and through my story. Like a ghost, I wandered after her, needy and damaged and desperate, tugging at her silk nightgown, begging her to see me. 

* * *
​
Lorette C. Luzajic reads, writes, edits, publishes, and teaches flash fiction and prose poetry. She is the founding editor of The Ekphrastic Review and The Mackinaw.