Issue 25: 1st Quarter 2008

"Whoever battles monsters should take care not to become a monster too, for if you stare long enough into the Abyss, the Abyss stares also into you."
—Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, chapter 4, no. 146

Announcements:

Editorial:

Cover Art, Guest Editorial by Eric T. Reynolds

Short Fiction

Snatch Me Another
by Mercurio D. Rivera
      Wide–mouthed and waist–high, it resembled a barrel with a glistening silver coating. If it didn't weigh so much, if it weren't so sturdy, she would've kicked the goddamned thing on its side and taken an axe to it. But what difference would that have made?

If Tears Were Wishes
by Ruth Nestvold
      Brooke's and Crystal's childhood continued to be dominated by the Farm's laid–back approach to home schooling, the sweet smell of mildly hallucinogenic plants, and the slinky softness of kittens being given away on the side of the street at the weekly trips to Saturday Market in Eugene. Most of the spaced–out Farm members thought a suit was weirder than tears granting wishes – – and certainly more perverse.

Healer
by Phil Margolies
      The spiders jerk their web tight around my stomach. My heart pumps double fast, trying to shake the web off. I'm a senseless mackerel with one thought– –too late– –as the fisher's net squeezes my companions into me: I'm going to die, Billy is going to die.
      And there's nothing I can do about it. What I'm trying is unnatural; I'm not human. I'm a freak, a super–holyman, and if the government discovers me, I'd simply become an X–File that vanishes into their clutches.
      I have to squeeze Billy's shoulders hard to keep hands from flying back to my own body. He gasps.

At Blue Crane Falls
by Brian Dolton
      The river tumbled over enormous round boulders, and foamed into a pool below, with a grassy sward beside it. But the pines that grew all around were twisted and gnarled, as if tortured by the wind, and the sky was dark with autumn clouds. The air was heavy with spray from the falls, and felt chill against her skin. It offered no welcome.
      Yi Qin stood, and turned, slowly looking around her. There was no sign of any ghost. There was nothing but nature; nothing but the water, and the woods, and the wind.
      No. There was something; something, perhaps, that did not belong.

Quartet, With Mermaids
by Alan Smale
      She's no natural beauty, just a mammalian form with recognizable parts but a face that looks kind of vacant, but guarded, but sentient, but caged. She's in the water and then she feels the sun come out, those arc–lamps shining down bright, and with broad muscled shoulders and a flick of that wide tail, Daisy is up and on that fake rock, water running off her through the fine down that covers her face and body, leaning on her arms and tilting back her head, and her chest is forward, and maybe that would be erotic if she was a little, you know, a little less of a dog.

Flash Fiction

Flash Fiction will return in our next issue.

Poetry

City of Beautiful Nonesense
by Justin Howe

Raising a god
by M. Frost

Our chapbook is still on sale. Please click on the cover image at right to learn more.

Awards

Colophon and Affiliations