'The Scream' by Joshua Jones Lofflin

It starts with a low hum, a vibration in the back of the throat, a child parting her lips, a mother wincing in the dark from a migraine, an old man gasping for breath from the depths of his deathbed, the noise swelling within him, within her, within thousands of bellowing marchers howling under the flat slap of truncheons and spray of firehoses, their voices shrill as a million chainsaws, a cleaving icesheet, a rifle’s hollowed report as soldiers drop their weapons and tilt their heads back into smoke-filled air, hinge their jaws open wide, wider, as wide as the wailing mouths of infants pulled from screaming mothers who crush hands of screaming partners who lock eyes with screaming midwives and doctors as they resuscitate patients from failing ventilators, delivering thirty chest compressions and a screaming breath then thirty more as the patients utter silent screams of yes yes yes like the soprano on her hotel terrace, her cries echoing down jagged alleys as she presses her hips into her screaming lover’s mouth who bends forward as if in prayer and listens—and listens—as the entire city screams, the citizens stepping to their windows, flinging them open, finding one another’s hands, emptying their lungs their hearts their spines, until cracks spider across mirrored glass, until steel skyscrapers flex and sway, until oceans ripple beneath the beating air and a hundred millions wings blot out the sun——until the earth shifts on its axis, slipping just far enough in its orbit to bring back the rains, restore the melted ice caps, to make the last wild rhinos furiously copulate after trampling the last screaming poachers, to make the smallest child run naked into a gentle hush of waves, to leave her doubled over with laughter and amazement.

'Family Tree' by Megan Cannella

Mother
(n.) one who sheds their human form to fully transition into sacrifice; the juxtaposition of widow and youth

See synonyms: martyr, enemy, friend, stranger, future

Father
(n.) a myth you don’t quite believe in anymore, despite the evidence you see every time you look in the mirror and see his face; an ancestor; an increased risk of heart disease

See synonyms: absence, answer, question, mirage

Brother
(n.) a person you raised but have no maternal claim to

See synonyms: ungrateful, asshole, heart, forgiven

You:
(unsure) versatile; resilient; repurpose as needed

See synonyms: mother, father, sibling, tired, wretched, alone

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First published at Mac(ro)mic on October 28, 2020.

'I’d Like to Report a Prophecy' by Emma Brankin

Cassandra watches her eyes ruin with red and purple. Sees her own face bulge and whiten in desperation for breath. Her cries become formless as she tries to dislodge his grasp from her neck, her hands nothing but wisps of air.

She details her latest prophecy to the police officer standing in the hallway of her flat. She describes her ex’s violence, aggression and belittling in a voice that walks a high wire, balance tilting with every step.

‘He’s going to kill me,’ she says, looking at the officer with eyes as grim as head-stones.

The officer scratches his neck. Tells her he wants to believe her. That he wishes she could show him proof. But when it’s just one person’s word against another’s, his hands are tied.

‘You won’t do anything until you’re zipping me into a body bag,’ Cassandra says, as the future, cruel and all-consuming, twists through her mind.

The officer pats her on the arm. Offers a strained impression of a sympathetic smile. Suggests perhaps she could stay with a friend.

Cassandra sways gently in her doorway as she watches the officer pushing away into the night, darkness closing around him like a fist. How lucky, she thinks, that he’ll only have to die once.

'Planets at Intergalactic Met Gala' by Suchi Stava

Earth, the shy heiress, strutted past Jupiter in his starry high floating heels and the holographic mist of gases–golden, amber and ivory. She felt underdressed.

The parched tint she had tried to hide under the layer of green satin, was very evident. The blue was over-draped in fumy grey.

Earth wanted to show off ‘vibrance’, the theme.

Her chief stylist was a big time procrastinator and his last minute decisions gave her dress the texture of grey-green-rotting meat.

She had taught him the ABCs of the trade, given him a chance when nobody else would.

 “...hot cutter…cuter…haught…coucher….” He had even struggled at pronouncing Haute Couture.

At first she thought he was making passes at her, later they became thick friends, until his rise of fame.

Nothing was going as planned.

She rang him. “At the tone leave a message for….”  She ended the voicemail.

Just then Pluto walked by. The shutterbugs rushed past Earth to capture the least popular one in avant garde icy shimmer.

“It’s not even a planet!”

This was urgent, now. Earth called the stylist again, and again, trying to reach for him behind the veil of voicemail.

“One last time before I take matters in my own hands.” She called again. ”At the tone leave a message for Human….”

Earth erupted, spewed lava all over her attire; burning…the glow and the drama were the best anyone had seen. Shutterbugs ran to her.

Her DM apps were flooding with applause and forwards of more applause.

After she was done, she sighed, whispering under her breath. “You are fired Haughty Coucher.”

'To Love Another ______ is to See the Face of ___' by Siarra Riehl

TO LOVE ANOTHER ______ IS TO SEE THE FACE OF ___

before

When the poppies first appear, she is shocked they aren’t red. Two grey flowers bursting through carefully amended soil. Their grey reminds her of the cliff she and her friends used to jump off in summer. The cliff they once coveted as theirs. After the poppies grow, she thinks to bring them to the cliff and hold them over the water. She wants the flowers to reveal themselves to her.

II

As children, they would hold dolls—dresses stitched with fresh flowers—over the water’s surface. Unearthing a true face from their reflection. She remembers the way the sometimes-rippling surface changed their features. Turned smiles to grimaces, goods to bads. She often conflates this memory with another. Of water. Of whistles and shouts. Of friends face down, afloat. Of blues and purples and fists pounding on chests.

after

The cliff crumbles like shortbread under her weight, sending soft crumbs toward the water. Carefully, she places the poppies on the ground. Imagines her floating friends. Nothing about this place—not the thick heat nor the crackling branches nor the brimming ache from breastbone to throat—feels like her memory of it.

IV

She’s too high above the water to see her own reflection, but she looks down anyway. Allows her feet to dangle loosely over the edge. Is she somewhere in that far-below? Are her lips turning? Her eyes swelling open or rippling shut? She reaches one hand toward the water and places the other on her cheek. One of them meets wet. The un-red poppies tumble toward the water and barely make a splash.

Debut Flash: 'Teeth' by Martha Hampson

Her teeth arrived early, eager to experience what the universe had to offer. By five months she had eight of them, crenellated edges like the gates to a new world: a sensory kaleidoscope of crisp-snap-crunch. Wide-eyed, she rubbed them with her tongue, her knuckles, her toes; gnawed the bars of her cot until the paint flaked away. She greeted strangers by grabbing their fingers to run along the ridges, dribbling proudly. She bit me, hard, just once, the bloody milk shocking her more than my pain.

After five years' service the first smoothed pebbles fall out, their replacements already pushing up for air. She brushes them clean at the kitchen table, holding each one up to the light before placing it in a tiny hessian bag to exchange for two shiny coins under her pillow.

How will the Tooth Fairy know? she asks.

There's a list, I say.

Like the one Father Christmas has?

Yes, probably.

Maybe they share it, she says, nodding with satisfaction at the efficiency, eyelids closing.

"I can't believe they're gone," I sob into my husband's shoulder, "I didn't even say goodbye."

Gently, he reminds me that nothing is ever really gone, because we are all parts of one another: stardust and DNA regenerating in an endless swirl of love and memory. And, also, that the Tooth Fairy is me.

In midnight darkness we lift her soft small head from the pillow, her hot breath ragged with dreams. The switch is made with a solemn sprinkling of blue glitter. We feel ludicrous.

As I tip the teeth tenderly into my hand, I resist a compulsion to eat them, to return them to where they had grown. A part of me, a part of her, jettisoned without sentiment, for the price of a strawberry lolly.

'A Space Station Odyssey' by David JI Hampton

“Morning!” I say as I float past a friend.

“Gosh, is it?” They say, gliding past me with ease.

We can all fly, you see, as free as birds. All of us can. In mid-air, we move like bobbing, bumping apples. Busy with our daily tasks. We worship a great machine and spend our day tending to its needs. Flying and checking a dial here, hovering and noting a reading there. This machine keeps us alive. It has taught us how to fly high above the oceans and clouds. If we worship it, it will keep us safe.

Our flight is not truly free, alas, for we are caged beasts who, beyond the confines of this cage, would surely die. Outside is blackness and despair, our homes no more than specks on a flash of blue and brown that we endlessly drift across like roaming nomads.

Round and round, we go on this giant fair ride, trapped and free simultaneously. Loving the thrill yet dreading any mistakes. Dreaming big dreams whilst taking care of minute details. We stare in wonder at the majesty of it all yet yearn for the journey home with all our hearts.