Category: Theme Issues

You swipe through a hundred men.

Eager. Desperate. Not you. Them.

It’s a turn off, but you do it anyways. You write the same thing over and over. A quick bite? You wait, teeth piercing through the skin of your lips. Many don’t answer. You intimidate. You’ve been told it more than once. But then a daring fellow responds. You set the time, the date, the place. They don’t need to do anything, but arrive. Some do, some don’t.

The initial meeting gives a slight stir in you, but they never look as handsome as their photos and their eyes don’t look at you like they used to.

It always ends the same way with you leaving in the still night. Full, but not feeling much of anything.

Then, another night, another swipe. It’s too easy. No thrill, no chase. No mystery in the demise.

Some nights you do it the old way. But it’s harder, less men looking at you. Too busy on their own devices, swiping, swiping, swiping. Always looking to devour more. Never appreciating what is in the flesh, right here and right now.

It used to go like this:

You go to a bar. You order some drink of no interest to you. Luckily, you always find something off the menu that will quell your real thirst.

Scanning the room, quick glances for all. Fluttering in the pit of your stomach, as you make lingering eye contact. His date returns to him and you avert your attention. It wasn’t meant to be.

When you think there isn’t anyone you want to taste, you see him. Stuttering, nervous energy. He was looking for something tonight, too. Just when he thinks that it is never coming, you catch him. He finds you intriguing. A few thoughtless laughs, an innuendo. You suppose it was a little too easy back then, too.

Soon you are out of there. A stinking bar alley is suitable enough for your intentions. Sinking into each other, you can feel him in the deepest of your veins. It’s fleeting. Day is quickly coming. You’ll never see him again.

Now, it’s like this. And you have to make do. Swipe left, swipe right. Your hand cramps and you are so empty.

But you match and you meet and you repeat. This time you order a blood red wine, no food. He doesn’t care either way. He’s easy, invites you back to his place. You don’t trust that. He has a roommate or a mother, so you decide to take a risk. You take him back to your place and this gives a new opportunity to excite you. For any kind of feeling, this is worth it, you tell yourself.

As you clean up the mess he leaves, you feel a little sentimental and you hate it. You never wanted to be like that. Right when you think you’ll never do it again, something happens.

A connection.

This one seems a little different. He’s invested. He sends more than one word or some cloyingly annoying cartoon face. You let your guard down. You wait for his messages. He wants to take his time with you and the chase exhilarates.

Your mind races as you build up the blocks of your past. You realize the thing that has been missing. The cycle needs to be broken. There could be two of you. Two would be better to fill endless nights with. You didn’t think you were capable of change or growth at your age.

You wait. You don’t want to spoil this. You keep up the Mr. One Nights, but you get them over with quickly, racing back to your potential Mr. Forever. Eternity has a new meaning.

But then he stops. A day goes by with no new message. And then another and another. You read over your mistakes. You feel like an idiot, a child. All these years later and you are still getting it wrong.

You meet up with a One Night Man and you take it all out on him. The whole night goes bad and you are such a mess that you fly home and vow to never leave again.

A ping erupts into the night. A beautiful sound from an electronic torture device. The fresh blood in your body warms. It is him.

He’s been so busy. He’s so sorry. He wants to meet. Can you forgive him? You don’t want to waste another second, as you already feel time slipping away. You fix your hair, change your clothes, wipe the dirt from your body.

And you go and you meet and it’s all on his terms now and you don’t even care. He’s just as he seems. He’s perfect. He’s it. The only one possible. You wish you could read minds, but it doesn’t work like that. You put away your old tricks and magic happens regardless. Two starved souls connected through digital space with the potential for something real.

It’s getting late. You grab his hand and lead him to special spot. A new place, untarnished, green and lush. A perfect place with vines digging deep into the earth. He’s trembling and you know what he wants. He has to want it as much as you do. You sink your teeth into his neck. You drink, so deeply and sweetly. He’s getting weak, but he holds on to you, so deeply and sweetly.

You let go only for a moment. But the moment is too long and before you can show him your true intention, before you can split your own chest open for him, show him why this is right, he grabs something, anything sharp, and he thrusts it into you.

Your heart turns to dust as the cruel sun rises, revealing your truth in the blinding light of day. You were never meant to see the sun. Eternity only exists in the darkness.

Melissa McCann is a writer based in Detroit, MI. She has earned an MFA in creative writing from Lindenwood University. She currently works in education. She has also worked as a staff reader for E&GJ Little Press and judge for NYC Midnight writing competitions. Melissa’s short fiction and screenplays have placed in a number of writing contests, including the Historic Irvington Halloween Writing Competition, Made in Michigan Festival, and The Write Room Screenplay Competition. Her work has appeared in Gathering Storm Magazine , The Gateway Review, and Fearsome Critters: A Millennial Arts Journal. She has an unhealthy addiction to cats and ghosts.

With just that first glance of the too familiar, hot pink walls and baby blue roof tiles, Riley Anderson was taken from the slightly chilly, well-lit aisles of Jack & Jill’s Pail of Playthings and transported somewhere she wished she never had to see again.

-*-*-*-

There had been a time when Riley had thought that Barbie’s Victorian Dream House was the epitome of femininity. Owning one of these two story beauties was all she could ever dream of. When she had opened one on her seventh birthday, she didn’t think that she could be any happier. Of course, she was wrong. Not that she knew that then, as she stared at its bright pink wall or it’s delicate baby blue roof. It would be several more days before she started to realize. It would start to sink in when she numbly noted how the soft glow of the night light spilled from behind it, illuminating its elegant balcony. The feeling of happiness that she had when she looked at it would start to fade as she saw what it looked like from across the room, snuggled deep into her bed with her little fingers gripping her blankets tight. With unfocused eyes wide open, the sounds of their fight somehow burned that moment, that image of her once beloved doll house into her mind.

There was something different about that night, though it almost sounded the same as all the other nights before. She was almost able to convince herself to close her eyes and snuggle deeper into her tear dampened pillow.

She should go to sleep, she knew. Mommy didn’t like it when she listened to them be loud. Everything would be better in the morning, anyway. Everything was always better in the morning–

CRASH!

Riley didn’t jump, scream, or sob. She had already learned how to cry without making a sound. Some nights it was almost a game for her to see how quiet she could be while they pushed the limits of how loud they were. Nights like tonight, though, she wanted to scream in a way that she could never actually do. She knew by now that if she reminded them that she was here, let them hear any trace of her, that it would only cause them to fight more. She couldn’t even breathe as she waited through the thick silence that followed.

She should go to sleep, she knew, but this wasn’t right. This was different and different was bad. Her parents were always loud. Night after night they were loud. For the first time her eyes moved away from Barbie’s cheerful home and landed on her bedroom door.

She shouldn’t get out of bed, she knew this. She would get punished if she was bad, but it was quiet.

It was quiet for a moment, for two, the silence stretched longer than her little lungs could hold that breath. There was an eternity of quiet moments, and she should go to sleep.

She wasn’t sleeping, though. She was opening the door quietly before even realizing that she was out of bed. Every step seemed loud as she padded barefoot down the hall.

Five, six, seven steps to pass the bathroom and bring her just outside their open door.

Unable to bring herself to step inside, she listened. It wasn’t so quiet anymore.

Her dad’s low, soothing voice rolled out of the room. She almost left then, turned, and went back to her bed. When she listened to his words, though, they didn’t match his tone. 

“I’ll take ya out back in the woods. Dig ya a shallow grave fit for a whore. I’ll tell them that ya up and ran off again. No one will look for ya.”

They wouldn’t, Riley knew. Her mom disappeared sometimes. Days would go by while she waited at the window. No one ever looked for her then.

One, two, three quiet steps into the room and her eyes locked on her mother’s hazel ones, but nothing made sense. She should help her; she knew that because her mother was laying on the ground. She should help her, she knew that as she saw his hands around her mother’s neck, as he continued to whisper how he would raise Riley to know her place. She couldn’t move. She could only stare at her mother, as her mother stared back at her. This moment felt big in a way she didn’t understand.

Her mother moved then, slowly, as if it was the hardest thing she had ever had to do. Her arm raised from her side until she was pointing past Riley, a silent command to go back to bed.

She should be asleep right now, she knew that, but she couldn’t leave. Then suddenly it was silent again. How could she have forgotten the threat in the room? With a quick, startled flick her eyes locked with a different pair. Somehow, they were cold, angry, and terrifyingly empty all at once.

He stood then. He was tall and she was very small.

Her mother coughed and wheezed, rolling onto her side. Riley waited for her to stand, to fight, and protect her. If this was a normal night, her mother would have, but tonight was different and different was bad. She watched as her mother laid there, breathing but broken, right before she felt the pain from his big hand wrapping cruelly around her little arm.

-*-*-*-

“Mommy?” Riley heard not just the scared, twenty-year-old memory say, but a newer, voice echo as well.

As she blinked, she realized that though they were the same hazel shade, the eyes she was looking into weren’t her mother’s. They were instead set in a feminine and youth rounded mold of her husband’s face.

She followed along the motion of the small body to the shelf her daughter was pointing to. Where an exact replica of Barbie’s Victorian Dream House sat, no doubt a marketing attempt from the manufacturer to lure in nostalgic parents.

“Mommy? Can I have it, Mommy?” her little daughter’s brow furrowed, and she stomped her foot as annoyance leaked into her tone. Obviously, this wasn’t the first time she had voiced the question.

That’s when Riley felt a warmth, she hadn’t noticed, leaving the small of her back. She turned to catch the soft, understanding gaze of her husband as he stepped from her side. Then she watched, almost entranced as he plastered a large and familiar smile on his face before swooping in to pick their daughter up and throw her in the air.

She watched them play for several minutes, eventually chasing and tickling each other through the aisles of the discount toy store.

With her own childhood so fresh in her mind, she couldn’t help but notice how her daughter was never daunted by her husband’s height, she never flinched at his touch or drew into herself to avoid catching his attention. Instead, she smiled at him. She watched as her daughter, with confidence, teased him. Her daughter loved him with a kind of love that doesn’t know fear.

With the help of her therapist, and later her husband, Riley had spent years crawling out of the effects of her childhood trauma in the hopes that one day she would be strong enough to create a world where any of her future daughters would be fierce, not because they survived in a man’s world, but because they thrived in it.

Today, in these dirty aisles, surrounded by cheap toys, she realized that she succeeded.

Femininity isn’t found in a pink, two story dollhouse, but it’s created in finding, and helping others find, the confidence and strength to thrive in a world that would rather see you lying broken on the floor.

Naomi Sheely is a student at Hagerstown Community College who is working towards earning a dual major. She is also a wife, mother of three, and continuously exhausted. She is motivated by her childhood dream of becoming an author and terrified of the thought of anyone, ever, reading something she has written.

When I was five years old, my doctor handed Mother a sheet of paper. She gazed at it, a hint of curiosity and possibility in her eyes. I looked from her to the doctor. His face was impossibly graver. “Am I dying?” I whispered. Mother handed me the paper while she searched in her purse for a pen to sign it. It was warm from the official hospital printer. It read: Defect, physical and mental changes may occur to this patient due to external persons’ unconscious desires. “Mom, what’s a–what’s a…” She waited. “…de-ff-ect?” I sounded it out.

         Years later, I walked through the kindergarten door and my hair turned greasy and brown. The other girls didn’t seem to notice, but I thought I saw the teacher’s eyebrows knit. My hair changed back to blonde when I got home, but every time I came to school, it would happen again. I asked Lissie from school about her curly locks on Tuesday. She had crowned herself queen of us girls, and a natural smile crossed her lips when I asked her about herself. “Isn’t my hair sooo pretty? It’s like gold! No one else’s hair is like mine.”

         I got my first grammar assignment in third-grade. My pencil pressed too hard in blocky lettering, and every time I had to erase, my frustration grew. I called loudly for my mother. My lips quickly intertwined into something unable to open. Mother and Father were busy talking in hushed, angered voices in the dining room, but I was beginning to cry and needed to interrupt them. I made guttural sounds with the back of my throat until Father finally came into the living room to see me. He asked what it was. My lips were able to part again so I could explain to him my problem. We stared at the workbook together for a while. He sighed and decided English wacks must have changed shit because he had no idea what a Direct Object was. My father told me that I was smart, that I had been the one taught the fancy new lingo, that I could figure it out on my own. He left, and I figured it out.

         My parents’ angered conversations got louder as school blurred into summer. I learned to head for the fields of hay outside whenever the name “Brenda” was mentioned. If I was there long after they said that name, Father or Mother would begin questioning me about loyalty. As they took turns looking at me, I could feel my face change. My father had a broad-set face, with strength if not beauty. When he looked at me, my nose would expand to match his. When Mother did, I could feel my eyes flicker to her blue-gray. By the time school started up again, it happened even when they weren’t fighting.

         Sixth-grade was when things got especially hard. Every period, we went to a different classroom with a different teacher. It felt like each teacher had different expectations. Some were OK with talking. Some got mad if you breathed too loud. Ms. Joice had just lost her daughter to a case of the measles. I didn’t want to think about what happened to my body when I went to her class. Because of these constant changes, the other students looked at me weird. Because of me, the school newsletter wrote a column about how to approach the subject of defective individuals when the talk came up with their children. The kids in my class still played with me during recess, though. The only game I didn’t play with them was the race game. Everyone wanted to be the fastest, so I was always last.

         My father bought a new house with Brenda. Custody issues were resolved in court, and I spent some months with him and some with Mother. In summers at Mother’s house, sometimes I would forget the sound of my own voice. Father took up a passion for art, so I didn’t talk to him much either. Brenda loved to talk, though. She said every child should be raised in California. She said all salads should be made her way. She said I should look over the weight loss programs in her magazines. She said a real woman could keep her man.

         Change was a part of life, a part of my life in particular. Once I started high school, it started to hurt more, though. On the way to Brenda and Father’s place, my insides were crushed and squeezed. They kept trying to get smaller. On the way to Mother’s, my skin would become smooth and hairless, everything would pop into place until I was her little girl. On the way to class, different pieces of me would twitch into various shapes. I felt like a puzzle with its pieces flipped upside down and forced together.

         It became a habit of mine to get ready in the dark. I memorized the squirt needed for the right amount of toothpaste, where the holes in my shirts were, and how to place a pad in the exact middle of my underwear. All without needing to feel for it. All without a chance of looking in the mirror.

         By the time I graduated high school, it felt like independence had come too late. Every part of me held a grudge against the other. The college catalog boasted of several programs and clubs, but I didn’t know what I was good at; I didn’t know what I liked. Instead, I moved out and took a gap year to build up work experience.         In front of me, the kitchen, living room, dining room, and bedroom of my new apartment were all smushed together into a single space. It was claustrophobic. It was cast in soft brown and dull blue–forgettable colors. But tears fell down my cheeks without consent. I was alone, truly and utterly. And that made me happy. My crying made it hard to breathe without gasping. I went into the bathroom–the only room that was separate–to blow my nose with some toilet paper. From years of practice, I averted my eyes from the mirror during the process. Something itched at me, though. I was miles away from my hometown, from my parents, Brenda, and all my old classmates. What if…? I looked up into the reflective surface in front of me; I gazed into the mirror. And there I was. I searched for something foreign in my features, for the creature that must have lurked inside of me, the one that rearranged my organs until they looked pretty from the outside. There was no such being. Heart thundering in my chest (I was breaking my rules!), I lifted the front of my shirt. Soon, I was standing naked. I was a girl. Just a normal person. Slightly underweight, with a nose some would call too long or narrow, but I was a person. Underneath my defect, what people wanted me to see and do, I was a person. “Who would have thought?” I whispered.

Brynn Lietuvnikas has written many stories, some of which have been published by Hedge Apple. This story, though laced with fantasy elements, strikes close to home. Her whole life, she has struggled with defining femininity and what its place is in her life. When she came across “The Divine Feminine” prompt, she decided to give the internal issue another shot at working itself out on the page. She is proud of the resulting piece, and she looks forward to seeing how her future self will continue to write on the matter.

Although submissions have ended for our themed issue, we are still open for general submissions until April 4th and will not reopen until October 2022! So send us what you’ve got, we can’t wait to take a peek!

There is what was a man

who walks October storms in darkness.

On sleepless nights I see him striding

all wrapped up in sheets of lightning

or flushed with the sodden rain of fall.

The gentle nights are spent without him

who rouses for the howl of wind

that consummates his passage.

I think to join him in his trek

but fear that he will tell me

of why he travels in this violence

or worse, for whom he seeks.

Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He’s had over three hundred stories and poems published so far, and six books. Ed works the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories, where he sits on the review board and manages a posse of nine review editors.

The girls had materialized on the street like cold night made flesh.

Both of them wore Little Red Riding Hood costumes – capes red as sin – and the irony wasn’t lost on Lucas as he and his friend Joey followed the girls through secret alleys and deserted backstreets.

Lorelei, who had red hair like Lucas, had walked on his arm, while Jezebel had led Joey.

‘Forget it,’ Lucas said when they arrived at their destination.

The crooked streetlights illuminated a stone building so covered in soot that it looked like smoldering coal. It was difficult to make out the letters carved into the stone above the entrance: Town Hall.

‘I’m not going in there.’

It wasn’t like there was a way in anyway. Not unless the girls could bust through the metal security shield over the door or the boarded-up windows.

‘Dude!’ Joey pulled Lucas aside. ‘What the heck? This is our chance to make a good impression, maybe walk away with a love bite and a couple of phone numbers.’

‘Unless the roof falls on our heads or we crash through the floor and impale ourselves on a rusty flagpole. That’s if we don’t get arrested for breaking and entering first. Do you have any idea what my parents would say, if the police brought me home?’

‘They’d probably say, “He’s sixteen, officer. What the hell do you expect?”’

‘It’s safe,’ Lorelei said.

‘We’ve been here before,’ Jezebel said. ‘Lots of times.’

‘See? They’ve been here before.’

‘Doing what?’ Lucas asked.

Lorelei smiled with crimson lips as she walked up to Lucas. ‘I’ll show you,’ she whispered, ‘if you come inside.’ She leaned closer, her breath in his ear somehow colder than the October air. ‘It’s something best done in private.’

She licked his ear, softly, like a feather, sending shivers through his body.

‘Or we find someone else to join us.’

‘Someone more up to the challenge,’ Jezebel said.

Joey glided over to her. ‘Hang on, darling. We’re up to the challenge. Aren’t we, Lucas?’

The grimace on Joey’s round face told Lucas that yes, they were, and if he said anything to the contrary, he could walk home alone and forget about calling Joey ever again.

‘Fine. But how are we supposed to get in?’

Lorelei walked up to one of the windows. The board here had a long scar running through it.

Lorelei checked that nobody was around, then pulled the smaller piece away. The remaining wood stuck out like shark teeth.

What big teeth you have.

‘See you inside.’ Lorelei climbed through the gap first and was swallowed by the darkness of the place and the silence.

All the better to eat you with.

‘Lorelei?’ Lucas called.

His voice sounded hollow in the nothingness beyond.

He leaned forward to peer into the black. His eyes hadn’t adjusted enough that he could see anything beyond vague shapes, but he thought he heard movement. Somewhere in the inky void, rubble shifted, a crunch crunch crunch that was getting closer. Closer.

Something was coming. Something taking its time. Something big and lumbering.

‘Lore-’

An arm shot out of the gap and grabbed him by the jacket.

Lucas screamed. He stumbled back, but the arm gripped him tightly, pulling him towards the gap, towards the broken wood.

All the better to eat you with.

It had taken Lorelei, and now it was going to take him. Take him down into the dark place, the place of lost children who had become too reckless for their own good, where pain waited to dig its claws into his soul, nothing but pain and eternity and the scream inside his own head.

And then somebody was laughing.

Lucas opened his eyes and saw a red cape, and then Lorelei, sticking her head out of the hole in the wood. She was laughing, and so were Joey and Jezebel behind him.

‘Sorry,’ Lorelei said. ‘You scare too easily. I couldn’t resist.’

Lucas pushed her hand away. ‘That wasn’t funny.’

‘It was a little bit funny,’ Joey said. ‘I’m next.’

One by one, they went through.

Lucas emerged last in the dark room. He could just make out a large hump in the middle of it, something glittering in a passing headlight. For a moment, he expected it to move, to unfurl into a beast with glowing eyes.

All the better-

‘Just a chandelier.’ It was Lorelei beside him.

She took him by the hand, and he was glad to feel her, glad to feel someone human in this place.

‘Speaking of,’ Joey said. ‘I don’t suppose you know where the light switch is?’

‘Not yet,’ Jezebel said. ‘The gap. We need to get to the back of the building first.’

‘Is that where the other guests are waiting?’ Lucas asked.

He had expected to hear the party once they got inside. Faint music or people talking. But there was nothing except the occasional car driving past outside.

‘Follow us,’ Jezebel said somewhere ahead of him.

‘And be careful,’ Lorelei said. ‘You don’t want to stumble over the dead.’

‘The dead?’ Lucas searched the darkness, not sure he wanted to see.

‘The busts,’ Lorelei said. ‘Old men that were left behind when this place closed.’

Old men. And now young men to join them.

As Lucas followed the others, feeling around the floor with his feet, he thought: This better be worth the risk.

The room had been the main ballroom once. It must have looked magnificent under the three chandeliers. But in the flickering candles the girls had lit, it looked more like a battlefield.

The floor was littered with debris that had fallen from the ceiling, sticking up here and there like craggy mountains. Some of the tables had remained, tipped over, lying dead like poisoned beetles.

Lucas sat next to Lorelei on a dusty chair, both of them watching as Joey and Jezebel kissed while the portable radio sitting on the fireplace played a slow song.

Lorelei looked bored, occasionally sipping from a beer bottle that had been empty for a while now.

Lucas hadn’t started drinking yet. He was peeling at the label of his bottle, stealing glances at Lorelei.

What would it feel like to kiss her?

In the light of the candles, Lorelei’s lips glistened. They looked soft, like rose petals misted in morning dew.

She turned to him. ‘You want to kiss me.’

It wasn’t a question.

She took another sip of nothing. ‘Well, you know what to do.’

Somewhere far away, Joey let out a great burp. ‘Oh God! I feel all tingly inside.’

To hell with it. In other countries, it was legal to drink at sixteen, so what was the big fricking deal? Besides, the girls had brought Botlov beer, which wasn’t that strong anyway.

‘Screw it!’

The beer tasted bitter, but it went down.

Jezebel whooped.

‘How is it?’ Lorelei asked.

Lucas spat out the aftertaste. ‘Disgusting.’

‘Let me make it better.’

It wasn’t as nice as he had expected. Her lips were too cold, and maybe it was her lipstick or something, but they felt slimy too. Like he was pressing his lips to a slug.

‘What’s that?’ Joey was asking somewhere at the edge of the world.

It seemed the beer was getting to him. They’d probably both have a bit of a headache in the morning.

Something did feel weird inside Lucas. Like pins and needles spreading across his body from his stomach.

‘What the-’

His insides felt like they were on fire.

‘Joe!’

Joey had doubled over, his face screwed up in pain. Jezebel was watching him, not at all disturbed by any of it.

‘What…’ – Lucas pushed the words out of a burning throat – ‘… happening?’

There were shadows around him now, as insubstantial as ink floating in water. But they were solidifying, and Lucas had a vague but terrible urge to get out before they arrived.

He just couldn’t move. He tried to get to the door, his steps heavy. He had to steady himself on one of the upturned tables.

Joey. Where was Joey? Was the same thing happening to him?

‘Don’t worry.’ Lorelei was beside him.

Good. She could run for help. She could-

Lorelei sat down on the edge of the upturned table. ‘It’s tough to get through, but you’ll emerge as so much more. You’ll be like us.’

‘Dying,’ Lucas said.

‘Not exactly. You’ll be in their glory.’

Lucas wanted to say so much, but he brought out only one word, feeling as if someone else was trying to speak through him: ‘Who?’

‘The Many as One. You can see them all around you, can’t you? You can even see them in me.’

She leaned closer, until Lucas saw only her eyes. And behind the black of her giant pupils, he saw the dark swirling of countless souls.

A scream built inside of him, rising to a terrible crescendo, unable to burst free.

They should never have come.

P. T. Corwin uses his training as an actor to read to himself in funny voices. He is proud to say that in secondary school, he read Stephen King so religiously that his teacher had a quiet word with his mother.
His stories have been published in Dark Matter Magazine, Schlock Webzine and Constant Readers. He celebrates his literary victories on his website at www.ptcorwin.co.uk and on his Facebook page (@ptcorwin).

When I first realized what had happened, I was terrified. I felt strange and out of place. What would my friends and family say, if they knew? I mean, I was still in high school. Slowly, I began to enjoy the added strength I experienced, even the bulk through the chest and shoulders. I had a newfound confidence in my physical abilities, and this extended to the mental arena as well. I just felt better about myself, knowing what I could do. I felt less judgement from others—including my Pops, who used to take the belt to me. When I started crawling out my window on a full moon, I guess what I’m saying, it made me feel free.

It took me a few months before I relaxed enough to walk down the sidewalk at night or cross the street in my altered form, but I began to feel proud of my body. I didn’t care who saw me, and sometimes I wanted to be seen, even or especially if I scared people I passed. I didn’t have to growl or feint toward people with my fingers clawed to scare them either. They saw me, they flinched, or crossed to the other side of the street, and I enjoyed that. I could feel them shivering. I could hear my muscles singing, the blood coursing through my veins

If I said something simple, like, “Hey, now,” even very quietly, which had no effect once upon a time, people jumped out of their skins. I once said, “Hey there, baby,” to a woman, and she took off running, which gave me a real, genuine laugh. I actually had to stop and slap my knees. I had no intention of chasing her down, though I could have, easily, but she showed she was scared enough not to think rationally. I mean, a guy that looked like me could obviously grab her on the street and carry her off over my shoulder any time I wanted.

But I hadn’t done anything like that. Not yet! I was so young then. I guess you could say that I gained a lot going weir. I didn’t always like it, as I’ve sort of indicated before. I mean, when that thing saw me on my bicycle, heading home from a few hours of playing Dragon Bait in my friend Henry’s basement, I knew I had found the kind of trouble you don’t come back from, not easily. I thought, this is going to mean a few years of rehab. And I was not far from wrong about the trouble. This woman—it was a woman who bit me—came after me so fast I couldn’t think of changing gears, just pedaled like crazy.

Bang, I was on the ground, her face shoved in my shoulder and my neck. She had a huge head, and just one or the other could not accommodate her. I can’t tell you what it felt like when she sank her teeth and nails in me. I screamed so loud I couldn’t think straight, and then she flipped me and bit my right butt cheek so hard I peed myself, like immediately. I still have the bite marks. She rolled me over a few times, but I couldn’t see clearly because I lost my glasses in the initial attack. At the time, I thought she was playing with me. Now, I know she was.

There must have been something she liked about me even then because I heard her laughing in among her roars, and I knew she liked scaring me as badly as she did. I was like a pebble tossed in a huge ocean wave or something, and this woman-creature laughing and growling and spinning me. She took special pleasure in twisting and mangling my bike. I had this idiotic thought it would take me an hour to get home now, without my bike, but only because the pain hadn’t sunk in yet. I hadn’t had time to feel it until she loped off on all fours, then went to her legs, and I could still hear her laughter.

I know now she was a relatively new weir—she got off too much on her powers. You take an older weir, especially an Old One, the real thing, they don’t enjoy it the way she did. I understand how she felt, because though it took me a little while to feel good about it, I did, and still do, as a matter of fact. There is something awesome about taking a chomp out of someone so scared they wet their pants or worse. I mean, it’s hilarious. You have to experience it to appreciate it. At first, I was a bit squeamish, because I felt bad hurting someone I didn’t even know, but you start realizing that when you have seen one human being you have seen them all. It’s like a species change.

Some of the shoulder growth became permanent, and I have to believe I am several inches taller than before. I needed an all-new wardrobe. My Mom went with me when she saw I had gotten a late growth spurt—I was a junior in high school at the time. I used to dress in jeans, pullover shirt, and tennis shoes, but now I favored shiny shirts where I could leave a top button or two open. I got two pairs of leather pants, and one thing I noticed right away is that girls took a look at me now, some because I frightened them, some because they liked what they saw.

My long-term goal was to own a Harley, but at this early stage, I was digging on the speed of my legs, the ground I covered just walking. My stride was longer. The real change came the day I saw that weir that bit me, the last day of my human life. Don’t ask me how I recognized her, but I did, and was she glad to see me? She was a black-haired beauty with big dark eyes, and she had to be five or ten years older than me. “You are coming along nicely,” she said.

“And you,” I said, “are one foxy lady.” She threw back her head and laughed, and I could see her throat muscles working. I blew off school and went down to the river with her. By nightfall, once the moon came out, I had said a fond farewell to my virginity.

School and I parted ways. I never went back and no one complained. My mother worried, but she seemed relieved when I moved out of the house and into Vanessa’s basement apartment, which had padding everywhere, where we could flop when tired, play when required. We never went to the grocery store, like normal folks. We liked a balance of what we called fast food and slow food, by which we meant how long we took to eat it. If we got hangry, we’d go for fast food, or what we liked to call take-out, by which we meant something snatched off the street and brought in. Slow food was more fun, though we gauged this by our mood. We gauged everything by our mood.

Once I saw this young nerd on a bicycle, like me at one time, and we took our time. She liked the mangling of the bicycle, to terrify him if nothing else, and while she worked, I held him by the back of his shirt as he pumped his legs trying to run away. This caught her eye and distracted her so much she fell on the ground, pounding the earth with her fists and howling with laughter. Since I had him by the shirt, she took his ankles, and I slipped him down so I had his wrists, and we swung him like a jump rope, laughing ourselves sick. She had this inspiration to take off his pants, which was difficult for her in the state she was in, working his belt and all and laughing, and then we let him go, just to watch him run like that.

We got ourselves in such a hysterical state we worked up an appetite. By morning, we were home and groaning, our bellies distended, and a pile of bones in the middle of the living room! Good times. But I think we both knew this couldn’t go on forever. You see, neither of us had ever been one of the Old Ones, and we just couldn’t keep it up.

The weir started wearing off after a couple of years. We could see it happening. We enjoyed a few more wonderful nights together before we started going back to who and what we had been. My shoulders dwindled, and I lamented to see I had a little pot belly. She had gone to flab, not a lot, just by comparison, and we looked puny. Our clothes hung off us, and we had to invest in new get-ups, something suitable for the workplace once we had to eat the same way as everyone else.

But, you know, it all works out. We’ve been together over a decade now, and we still care for each other. We reminisce about the old times, when we could scare the piss out of anyone we met. We both decided it was time to get on now, so I passed the G.E.D. for the high school equivalency. She finished college and became a nurse. We took up a workout regimen, to stay in shape. It hurts too much to go to seed once you’ve gone weir.

But I swear, if either of us saw a weir again—which we haven’t, not for years—be it a new or Old One, we would love to be bitten all over again just to feel the rush, to hear the blood coursing our veins, to howl at the moon like it belonged to us. What I wouldn’t give to feel that once again, and she’s the same on that score. Though, I do have to admit we are doing all right for ourselves. We have a little house, and Mandy is preggers now, and we’re happy, by human standards.

It’s just that sometimes, when the moon is full, we can’t help but dream we are back where we were, two crazy kids who had the world by the tail, and the tail in our teeth.

Robert Pope has published a novel, Jack’s Universe, as well two collections of stories, Private Acts and Killers & Others (2020) and a chapbook of flash fiction, Shutterbug. He has also published stories in journals, including The Kenyon Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Fiction International, and anthologies, including Pushcart Prize and Dark Lane Anthology.

Last Halloween,

a man wearing

a Santa costume

came to my porch

for trick-or-treating.

He had a big pack

on his shoulder.

The timing of his

visit surprised me.

It wasn’t close to

the merry season.

“Happy Halloween!”

I greeted him

and offered a bar

of dark chocolate.

“Thanks!” he said.

He took down

the pack and put

the treat away.

Rummaging, he

located something.

It was a snow globe

with a winter scene.

“Here’s your gift,”

the Santa explained.

He handed over

the snow globe.

The glass piece

must have come

from a store where

Christmas creep

had begun.

“How nice!”

I said, then shook

the flakes inside.

He closed the pack.

I watched him

arrange it neatly

on his shoulder.

The Santa said,

“I must hurry

on to distribute

gifts at homes

while calling out,

‘Merry Christmas!

Happy New Year!’”

He seemed thrilled

by the idea.

“You’re too early,”

I said, protesting.

“Not for America,

the land of malls!”

he replied. “Here,

we deck the halls

with merchandize

all through October!”

It wasn’t even

Thanksgiving;

the Santa meant

to cancel fall.

Sarah Henry is retired from a major newspaper. Her poems have appeared in over a hundred journals, including Founders Favourites, Jalmurra, Open Door Magazine and Trouvaille Review. She lives and writes in a small Pennsylvania town.

Darkness holds up its mirror. My harsh reflection

Accentuates how much the parting day conceals,

But evening, for all its stone-blindness, reveals;

The true face within, malevolent complexion

Suspended in ebony, a dire confection

Of harpy, leech, demon, monster, the grim ordeals

Of knowing the beast that I really am. It seals

My soul for foulness, predation and infection.

Dank air, gathering mist, nothing to reassure

Potential prey, whose unwitting presence completes

My nefarious task, my trail interwoven

With bat-wing flicker, spider web and serpent spoor

As I haunt the coarse bedraggled moonless back streets

With evil’s night eye and a foot part-way cloven.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, “Leaves On Pages” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Ellipsis, Blueline and International Poetry Review.