'Argive Burial' by David Luntz

The wanderer remembers the ox: pale, sticky, and shivering, gaping mournfully at his eyes, as he wrested it from its mother’s womb. Now they are alone, watching each other, while the sky spreads over them, as if yanked from infinity, still bleeding from its blue umbilicus. The ox collapses, panting heavily, gazing through him, too tired to moan.

It’s been an exhausting day. First his dog drops dead, then the bloodbath up at his house, now this…it never ends. He wraps his cloak around the ox’s shoulders, strokes its neck, and sinks to the bottom of his dreams. Down there, it’s nothing but a dark arena, concealed by a tatty curtain, a flap of loose sclera that he should never have drawn back. Across the way, he sees the ox’s bones crack, their marrow loaming dust, servants hacking off hooves, boiling them into glue: A shitty omen.

The next day, the ox dies the same way it was born: clammy and scared. He presses its mouth to a wet nurse’s breast. Who knows: it might provide some relief or convince the gods to change their minds. But there’s only clouded eyes, the nurse’s scuffed nipples, milk dripping down the ox’s bloated tongue.

He says: Fuck it. They can’t have him.

He looks around, (you can’t trust anyone), drags the ox into a cart and rides up into the cedar-clad hills. Digs a pit and lowers the beast next to the corpse of his dog. They will never find him now. Slips a coin under its tongue (just to be safe) and tells the ox, if he sees Argos, to thank him for waiting all those years.

He’s sorry he never got a chance to.

 

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Excerpt from a flash story 'Argive Burial' that appeared in The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts in 2019

'The world’s gone to shit, but at least we’ll be together' by Jennifer Lai

When the apocalypse nears, the townsfolk bargain with the Master Lord for more time.

Old man Wen divulges his famous char siu recipe to hotbox in his Camry for thirty minutes, Snoop Dogg style, The Next Episode playing on repeat. Da-da-da-da-dah.

When the sky turns crimson, Bruce, the bodybuilder, surrenders his barbells to soak for an hour in a frothy lavender bubble bath, newspaper in one hand, a grape-flavored juice box in the other.

When the air blurs with fury, Justice Marla Miller gives up her robe for a husky dog fur suit to attend the 75th annual Furries convention for the meet-and-greet hour.

When black steam rises from the sewer holes, Farmer Ray-Ray-Bob gets fifteen minutes to join Marla in exchange for ten crates of Yukon Golds. Twenty minutes if he throws in carrots.

When the ground cracks open, Carol, the math teacher, trades in her TI-85 calculator for fifteen minutes with a mug of hot chocolate, adding not one, not two, but twenty-eight mini marshmallows despite her diabetes. Because fuck it.

When the sun expands over the corpse-gray mountain range, Officers Perry and Santos relinquish their badges to push it real good, elbows bent, pelvis thrusting to Salt-N-Pepa in the interrogation room for as long as they need to.

Later, when there’s no glint in the sky, no twinkle of a star, no time left to bargain for, the townsfolk will take to their living rooms. They will gather on carpets, snuggle on couches, recline on armchairs. They will dine on fine China, indulge in aging wine, origami their rainy-day dollar bills into cranes with flapping wings. They will watch The Terminator for the very last time (on Netflix), take their very last breath, and listen to their very last words: Hasta la vista, baby.

Hasta la vista.

'The waning magic of older rabbits' by Judith Wilson

The bright coloured handkerchiefs offer the perfect bed for mindfulness as Robbie prepares for his retirement show.

Preening in front of the mirror he runs his paws across his wrinkled face and greying fur and closes his mouth on his missing teeth.

Pushing past the young, starry-eyed rabbit in the wings, he jumps into the top hat for one last appearance.

Indifferent applause leaves him empty.

And when the Magician places him in a rabbit-sized box and picks up a sharp, shiny saw, Robbie knows this isn’t just retirement.

Now he understands why he’s never met any of his predecessors.

'Solidarity' by Lisa Ferranti

The woman nurses her baby on a bench in the zoo’s rain forest. In front of her, a mama orangutan paces behind glass, a baby clinging to her chest, too, leathery knuckles scraping the faux jungle floor.

The woman observes the orangutans’ habitat. Burlap sacks, bunches of leaves, bowl of browned bananas. It resembles the disarray she left behind that morning. At her house, Cheerios on linoleum, spit-upon onesies, parenting books flagged with sticky notes. No matter how many she reads, it can’t make up for her missing mom gene.  

The mama orangutan sits down in front of her, baby still attached. She stares into the hairy mama’s droopy brown eyes. Maybe if she looks long enough, she’ll get the answers she’s seeking, all of motherhood’s secrets.

Her baby stirs, disengages himself with a loud smack of lips, his eyes drooping. She lies him in his stroller, and he quickly falls asleep. Where was this baby last night? He half smiles, a dimple indenting his right cheek. She would eat fire for this kid. Heave herself in front of stampeding wildebeest. One minute she would, really. And the next, she fantasizes about abandoning him at the orangutan exhibit. Would the mama in front of her raise him as her own?

The orangutan sets her baby down in a pile of leaves and slowly reaches alien fingers toward the glass, continuing her steady stare. The other mother stretches her hand out, slowly, so as not to startle, and their fingers meet on opposite sides of glass. The mothers look into one another’s eyes, and the human mother, feeling somehow not so distant from the orangutan mother, holds her gaze, an invisible line connecting them, a solidarity, as if both are saying, I know, right?

'Hormone Haze' by Rebecca Field

It’s the last week of term and its double maths first thing (which totally sucks) and Marty Franklin slinks into the back of class two minutes after the bell hoping nobody will notice, but he forgets his BO stench precedes him by several paces and there’s no way Matt Hughes won’t clock him, I see him wrinkling his nose up from here, scraping his chair as far from Marty as possible, shifting his books and calculator like he doesn’t want them contaminating and Marty acts like he doesn’t notice, doesn’t hear Ben Jeffers shouting, ‘Phwoar what’s that stink? Have you let one out again Jonno?’ as Ben fake-punches Jonno next to him and they start swinging back on their chairs, shirts flailing, shoelaces whipping the air as they aim jabs, shunting Cheryl Eason’s desk who shouts ‘Hey! Watch it Jonno!’ and slaps him on his back with her textbook, then Mrs Finkel (who has been fiddling with the electronic whiteboard the whole time) turns round and shouts, ‘Hey you lot, pack it in! Or there’ll be C3s on your conduct cards!’ and that shuts everyone up for approximately two point five minutes until Jonno really does let one out and everyone sniggers, and Mrs Finkel sighs, opens the window and gets out an air freshener she keeps for exactly this purpose and sprays it around and nobody notices Marty quietly get out his books and look round for a pen (because he never has one), except me, I notice because I’m sat diagonally across, and I give him one of mine because it’s not his fault he stinks, it’s his hormones, and he says thanks and I say, don’t mention it, and as the lilac blossom drizzle descends and the chaos subsides it doesn’t smell too bad after all.

Debut Flash: 'Stay, From the Beginning' by Beth Skarupa

The Last Time I Had Fun

We stayed up all night talking, walking under the streetlamps with snow crunching under our feet. Icy roads. We were caught in a snow globe. Wait for the snow to stop falling. Shake it and wait. Wait, then shake it again.

House, Chair, Door

The house is quiet. You sit outside on the chair. I go through the door. You go into the house. I am in a chair. You close the door. It’s snowing. In the house. We break the chair. I open the door.

You Want to Live

Inside a snow globe in a perfect world with your perfect spouse and your perfect kids. Trapped in a perfect moment in a perfect life. Trapped but happy.

Erase

Can we have a do-over? Go back to ‘Start.’ Begin again. Or would that erase something essential? Something ethereal?

Live to Want You

To be who you are how you are where you are now. To be who I am, where I am, how I am now. To be who we are how we are where we are now. To want to be. Together.

Door, Chair, House

Open the door, get rid of the chair, stay in the house. Close the door, buy a new chair, leave the house. Open the door, keep the chair inside the house. The house is just a house. The chair is only a chair. Doors open and close. Stay.

I Had Fun the Last Time

We were on a road trip across the country. Just you and me, alone in the van. Talking and listening. Driving. Sightseeing. Seeing the sights we hadn’t seen before. Stopping and going. Starting and stopping. It rained, but we didn’t mind. The windshield wipers wiped back and forth. We were trapped together. Again.

'Become a Patreon at $5 A Month for Amy’s Escape Accessories' by Elena Sichrovsky

I’ve been working on this thing to solve couple’s arguments. Not talk therapy or mirror exercises or any of that puppy-pastel shit. Maybe that works if you have a second apartment in the city to run off to, but for me and my girlfriends who got cover-up tattoos over knuckle indents, we need something a little more…dynamic.

It was Belinda and her Youtube knitting channel that inspired me.

So far I’ve done a few test runs with cucumbers wearing condoms (I’m not going to subject a rat to misogyny). I got the result I wanted but not at the speed I was aiming for. I want more than a solution, I want something women will text their friends about in the middle of the day. Something they’re so excited to talk about that they’ll forget their go-to Starbucks order.

Belinda got me a focus group from her Youtube groupies.

Turned out that the exact preciseness, or lack thereof, didn’t bother the group. What they really loved was the mockup I drew of how their boyfriend or husband would react. I’m no artist, but I think I conveyed it clearly enough because everyone went

oh my god yeah exactly I just want to see him like that

(he grabs your wrist for the third time this week, blood blueing at his pressure, but you’ve got Amy’s Escape Armband under your sleeve and all you need to do is tug in the opposite direction and leave him standing there with your empty skin, from elbow to fingerprint, sagging in his shaking palms like a wet laundry glove)

(it grows back in 1-2 weeks, pink and hopeful)

(Amy’s Escape Armband expands to Amy’s Escape Anklet and Amy’s Escape Areloa and Amy’s Escape Adam’s Apple)

                                   I just want to see him afraid