Category: issue 7

The earthquake hit three days before Lee felt his son kick for the first time. It was early afternoon, and Lee was halfheartedly scrolling job listings online. Every cover letter revision, every time he uploaded his resume and then had to fill out a form with the same information, a tiny hole widened somewhere between his stomach and heart. That hole was where despair lived, and Lee tried to brick it up with thoughts of Carissa, of their unborn son.

Truths are vile beasts with needle-like fangs. They prefer to nest in the dark, but once they mature and come to light, they grow exponentially and devour all creatures in their path. The cold-blooded, lizard-like monsters have even been known to eat their young. They remind me of my mother.

Okay, this thing looks like it’s recording. The light is on, but I have no idea if it still really works. Not much else does, but I figured keeping a record of some kind is a good idea. Though I still don’t know what happened. We got hit by … something. A meteor maybe? Or an asteroid? All I know is that there is a gaping hole in the station, not far from the cells, and everything has gone to shit. Like deep shit.

Your emperor is dying. Your emperor is dying, and so you drape garlands of lavender and moonlight across the windowsills, spit the mulched flesh of a nara fruit gently into his bruised-blue-waiting lips. Smooth a wet cloth over his forehead as he tosses beside you in bed, pale as the ice of the Seething Sea.

Your Esteemed Majesty Samrat Maurya, All the suns in all the worlds must hide their glow, so bright may the Empire shine. With these words, I offer you peace and great health.

“How many times have I had the misfortune to die?” Juliet falls into her chair with a dramatic toss of her head. “As many times as the rest of us.” Desdemona rolls her eyes.

“This is mostly your fault,” Baozi said as he bandaged the still-bleeding forehead of the stranger propped against the tree. “You jumped out at me from the trees without so much as a word of warning. Nearly scared me to death. Instead of stabbing you, I only punched you lightly.”

You’ll believe the dead are finally contacting you one week after you move from the countryside to São Paulo, two weeks after you turn 30. And much like both the moving and the birthday, the experience will be kind of bittersweet.

ve been covering the night shift lately. It just makes sense. Bernie has kids and Trevor has early morning classes over at the state college in Weatherly. At our last staff meeting, Andy (our manager) kinda-sorta indicated that I should step up and cover for the other two. He likes to see his employees striving towards something—family, career, whatever—and encourages us to support each other in those ventures. It’s not like grocery store clerking is anybody’s life ambition. Except maybe for me.

For the god Brahma the Creator, the act of Creation was never a one-and-done affair. He understood that when releasing an unpredictable element like humanity in a newly designed world, it would take some cycles to work out the kinks. That was why Brahma believed in an iterative process: four Yugas to chart the inception, progress, decline, and collapse of the world under humanity, an honest post-mortem, followed by a new version of Creation, with an updated design informed by hard data.