by Chip Houser

We are the occupants of the village you created, the village you abandoned. We are here because of you, but we are not yours. We are not your property or your prisoners, your mistakes or your consequences, your problems or your solutions. We are all of these things, and not. We are here because of you, but we are not here for you.

We are the street cobbles, heel-polished and moss-ringed. We are the cats, languid wanderers, sprawling on sun-warmed stoops. We are the dry leaves skipping along empty streets.

We are the rocks cleared from surrounding fields, set into walls. We are the mice, eyes shining in the damp shadow of a broken terracotta pot. We are the grapevines climbing the tower, roots grasping plaster.

We are the brick archways, mortar receding like gums from the pocked teeth of our inverted smiles. We are the lizards, darting out of sight. We are the lichen blooming across clay roof tiles.

We are the empty windows, the sagging doors, the crumbling defensive walls. We are the wild boar, foraging for pomegranate and fig in overgrown gardens. We are the pines, stretching for more light.
​
We are not your village, we are ourselves, and we are all each other. We are the village now, together, and we have grown beyond your reach.

* * *

Chip Houser's short fiction has appeared in Pulp Literature, Bourbon Penn, Every Day Fiction, and elsewhere. Red Bird Chapbooks published a collection of his very short fiction in 2023 called “Dark Morsels.” 

by Miranda Ray

He started out growing matchbooks in his backyard when he was ten. Every year, and every subsequent science fair, his craft evolved until he was growing birdhouses, doghouses, toolsheds, and drive-through espresso stands. By the time he turned twenty, he could seed the earth with a shingle, a doorknob, an unbitted key, and grow a one-bedroom one-bath house complete with an antique claw foot tub.

The houses gestated in two weeks, and could be moved into by the third. In six months, he had single-handedly solved the homelessness problem on all six habitable continents. The middle class moved out of suburbia in droves, trading Venetian blinds for venation wallpaper, electricity and wind power for chloroplasts and photosynthesis.

He was the youngest living recipient of the Nobel Prize, and went on several well-documented dates with many well-received actresses. He was invited to demonstrate at TED Talks, and was the keynote speaker at the New Earth Summit. In autumn, when houses around the world were just starting to change their colors, he delivered a rousing commencement speech at the University of Oxford and unveiled an orchard of new dormitories. Amid rapturous applause, a lone student put her hand up and asked:

"So what's the plan for when the roofs fall off in winter?"

* * *

Miranda was raised on a small island in the Pacific Northwest. She is the author of Lustily Ever After, the first erotic audiobook musical for adults. Visit her online at www.mirandaray.com, or find her @dammitmiranda on Instagram.

by Cheryl Snell

I was selling raffle tickets but he knew a long-shot when he saw one. Told me he was a cook and right off the bat invited me in for his homemade soup. “So you’re the literal girl next door,” he mused as he brought the steaming bowls to the table. “That’s what we should tell people.”

“Who would we tell?” I said. He was getting way ahead of himself, but the next Friday we went out to dinner. “I listen to the scuttlebutt from the kitchen,” he said, hand partly-covering his mouth. On a whim, I pulled his hand down and kissed it. He was so rattled he could barely demystify the ingredients in the dishes on our table.

The next time I saw him, he had recovered from my gesture and his shyness. We were in his kitchen making dumplings. As he shook the packet of rice-and-lentil powder into a bowl, stirring in yogurt, he said, “This shortcut will have no bearing on the taste.” We held hands and kissed a little as we waited for the mixture to ferment. When he dropped the batter into perforated cups, I watched it puff into snowballs. The sight made me think of the coconut Snowballs my ex liked to stuff in my mouth, practicing for our wedding.

I must have made a face because my host raised his eyebrows before he went back to chopping mint, onion, and cilantro for the dipping sauce. “Spices are the friend of physicians as well as the pride of cooks,” he said, as if he knew something about me I didn’t. And when I took one perfect white ball from his fingers, I remembered that deaf people imagine the sun makes noise as it rises. I bit into the round sphere, and listened.

* * *
​
Cheryl Snell's books include poetry and fiction of all sizes. Her work has or will appear in Blink-Ink, Roi Faineant, Switch, and Does it Have Pockets?      

by Ani Banerjee

The fan overhead makes a creaky sound; somewhere, a dog howls, and from downstairs, Baba coughs. The couple toss and turn in bed and he says, "Let's go to the roof."
 
Under the stars, their bodies meet, sweat dripping salty over her, both breathless, air thick as mango pulp.
 
“Like dipping in the Ganges,” she jokes.
 
“Next year, we should get some air conditioning,” he says. 
 
“Or we could just hop on a cloud and go to the mountains,” she replies, and he laughs.
 
Below, on the street, four flights down, the night watchman stomps his cane and asks, “Everything ok?”
 
On cue, from downstairs, his ninety-year-old Baba calls out to her, the disposable daughter-in-law, “Munni, water, water.”
 
She says, “Coming, Baba,” but she can’t get up; her saree is crumpled and wet and tangled. As her feet keep slipping beneath her, she clings to the railing, but like old houses do, it groans and the railing gives way.

​* * *

Ani Banerjee is a retiring lawyer and an emerging writer from Houston, Texas. Her flash fiction has been published in Lost Balloon, Janus Literary, Dribble Drabble Magazine and others. 

by Gabbi Grey

​She leads me down a dark alley. The smell of urine overwhelms, but I’m focused on her. She squeezes my hand, undoubtedly sensing my apprehension. I’ve never been to this side of town.

Rumors abound about it. Stories are shared. Whispered.

The door says Employees Only, but she pounds. The sound reverberates off the walls.

I cringe. I trust her with my life. But will this venture cost me that life? The promise, though. The lure of salvation. Of redemption. Too powerful to resist.

As the door swings open, a little man is revealed, his white pasty skin a direct contrast to my dark.

I hesitate, but she pushes me inside to follow the creature of the night. I straddle the chair he points to. My breasts squish against the cold padding.

She sits next to me, pressing a kiss to my temple.

I bare my back and the man fires up the ink gun. The pain is excruciating, but less than the fire that caused the burns. She whispers in my ear. How she loves me. How brave I am. How she doesn’t care about the scars.

I’d bear a thousand more to hear those words from her. I’d enter a thousand more burning buildings to save a wretched and ungrateful feline if she would hold me.

Magic ink.

A promise I didn’t believe.

The pain is transforming. The ink is taking hold. Tightened skin loosens. I feel my scars disappearing. Fading into nothing, replaced by beautiful ink. Healing ink.

For her I will do anything. To bask in her love, I will endure anything. And this particular anything is working. Is curative. Is transmuting.

The gun is silenced, and he wipes off drops of my blood.

She tilts my head and kisses me deeply.

Passionately.
​
Promising an eternity.

***

Gabbi Grey, a USA Today Bestselling author from British Columbia, dedicates herself to her fur babies and manages a government job while writing LGBTQ-focused contemporary romances. She also writes m/f romances as Gabbi Black and Gabbi Powell.