THIS ISSUE

Absolutely Knot

by Winona Morris

Behind the white picket fence, something was unraveling.

MARRIAGE WAS EVERY WOMAN’S end game. From the time she slid wet and screaming from the warm, tearing doorway of her mother into her father’s waiting arms, every woman was preparing to be a wife.

Claire never learned any different. She spent her time between birth and marriage practicing. She learned how to cook,

The Sky Fucking Exploded

by Chris McAuley

Ground Zero, the most horrific place to be—except for the observers.

AT 11:02 A.M., MITSUKO was arguing over a bruised pear she didn’t even want. The vendor insisted it was fine. She insisted fine was a lie. Her son Akio clung to her arm, sweaty fingers digging in, his other hand gripping a paper pinwheel folded from a ration notice. He kept asking when his father would be home. She kept s

Savage Mountain

by Nikki Durbin

Pride comes before the fall.

MARCH 8

I’m not stupid. Far from it. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find someone smarter than me. That’s why I’m writing this diary. When I get out of this fucking crevasse, I’m gonna take it and publish it. A tale of survival, told in real time! And I AM goi

Pigmalion

by Rosie Shrike

The perfect girl is one click away.

CONNOR SAT POISED ON his Secretlab chair like a disenchanted Roman emperor, staring disdainfully at his glowing monitors.

He glowered at the screeching female streamer in the highlight video. For one, she was too fat. She was also peppy, disgustingly so, bouncing in an effort to look attractive and babbling over the

Violent Content

by Adam Hunter

Pain and pleasure mix together on the screen of your computer.

THE SOLDIER FIRED HIS plasma rifle. Sweat glistened on his cheeks above the collar of his blue-and-grey European Army Corps uniform. His eyes were wide, babyish, visible markers of his prayers to see his mother. He ran through the sand, kicking up clouds of dust.

The desert extended in all directions, smothered und

Wreck Y’Self

by Christine Morgan

Check yourself before you wreck yourself, or someone else will do it for you!

WE WERE NOT on the run.

So we told ourselves, anyway. So Bulldog insisted.

And, hell, maybe some of us believed it, or wanted to. Clung to the notion like a talisman, helping us save face or ego. Holding fast to our blind trust in Bulldog, which had gotten us through plenty of scrapes before.

I

The Feculence

by J. Rocky Colavito

In a world gone to shit...

WE’RE UP HIGH ENOUGH to stay away from its touch, but no matter how high we go we won’t ever escape the smell.

It’s a living thing, using the winds to waft itself to the heavens and beyond. Think of a graveyard washed through the overtaxed sewer system of a large city. If you’ve ever wondered if the living d

The Night Sam Popped His Cherry

by Daniel R. Robichaud

Who would you sacrifice for $100?

SAM GAPED AT HIS tío’s display of bloody devotion.

Chavez couldn’t hold the knife anymore, so it fell into the mess he’d been cutting off his flank. The flesh and blood and creamy fat had mixed into a red slurry. He looked up, lips moving as he pleaded for painkillers. The crazy Asian chick in the lat

Catch a Hot One

by Phoenix Mendoza

Welcome to the kingdom of the flies.

THE FLIES MET in the cornfields, in a hollow they’d crunched down between rows. They called it their clubhouse, but it wasn’t a house or even a shack—just an open-air clearing with a cooler that doubled as a card table and some ratty, sun-bleached lawn chairs they sat in like thrones while us new recruits knelt in the

My Putrid Valentine

by Violaine De Charnage

Ever been gagged with a used bloody sanitary pad?

Translated by Basile Lebret

Monica shoos the big emerald green fly with a sleight of hand. The Calliphoridae flies away before coming back to the cup of tea.

Dear Diary,

It is a pleasure to come back, to confess my emotions and my wild

The Blight

by Mike Rusetsky

Some skin care issues go deeper than others.

IT STARTED AS a foul odor. Unfortunate, but there it was. You know it’s bad when you can smell your own funk, and boy, did my body bring it. The stench concentrated in my left armpit. I sniffed and immediately regretted it as my eyes watered.

“What the hell? I showered today,” I muttered to myself. I thought I

Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend

by Kasey Hill

Who needs brass knuckles when diamonds are a girl’s best friend?

THE SIRENS COULD BE HEARD coming down the street as I sat on the steps of my front porch awaiting their arrival. Sticky, drying blood caked in my hair, on my face, hands, and clothes. I sat there twisting my wedding rings around my finger, leaving tacky fingerprints from my thumb and pointer finger on the sides of the bands

Betty Jean

by Nora B. Peevy

Getting revenge never felt so good.

THE ROOM WAS PERFECT. Sterile, empty, and devoid of anything but the operating table, overhead lights, and a surgical cart with equipment. Just as I requested. It smelled like fresh paint. I inhaled deeply. It wouldn’t smell like that for long. Soon other scents would take over, piss and shit and the strong, coppery aroma

Hereditary

by Jay C. Alexander

Smoking kills.

FIRST, YOU LOSE YOUR GUT. That fat you had been trying to burn for months disappears, and you feel lighter than ever, even though there’s now a small lump right under your diaphragm. It looks cute. A few years later—maybe sooner if you’re lucky enough—you’re breathless after climbing up a flight of stairs. Beautif

Carmen

by E.K. Charny

It’s not a bad habit. I can stop any time I want.

CARMEN HAS A HORRIBLE HABIT of eating her skin. On the bus home, she clenches her teeth between thin layers of her inner lip. When her hands are free, she brings them to her mouth without hesitation.

It is not a nervous tic. Carmen knows, if she wants to stop, she can.

The other girls have such soft skin. Thei

Feeder

by Drew Nicks

What looks like horrific murder gets far stranger...

For KW

We’d received the call fifteen minutes prior, just as we were leaving Alaskan Andy’s. Peters responded to the call and tossed his half-empty coffee into a heaping trash can. He turned to me.

“Alright, man, duty calls. Let’s go.”

“What’s the call?�

Between Everything Alive

by Nathan Grimmer

It’s you and you.

FORK AND KNIFE HELD upright, she stared straight ahead, stifling the scream that brewed throughout her thirty years and threatened to escape with each moment.

She ignored the smell of sizzling fat and the burning sensation on her skin, pressing the utensils to the pufferfish on the plate. As the pain receded and the

Explosión Trágica y Espectacular

by Phoebe A. Xavier

Herbert wants to get out of the messy business of being a shrink.

2456 Terran Standard

Exo Oort Colony - Tyche City

During his short tenure in the field of psychotherapy, Herbert the Walrus found one particular patient to be a bit of a challenge.

Part of it was that Javier was completely forthcoming, perhaps to a fault. He was also prone to graphic expleti