“Your masochism hurts me,” Rachael said, staring down at him.

“Doesn’t that make me a sadist?” he asked. He couldn’t judge how far up she was on the stairwell; her head was tiny.

“If you enjoy hurting me, yes. Otherwise, no.”

The little boy who lived in the apartment with the always-yelling mother tried to push past her. He was carrying a red ball. When she wouldn’t move, he peered over the rail to see where she was staring.

“Hey, Roger!” the boy shouted. “Tell your girlfriend to move!”

“Hey, Kennard!” he shouted. Kennard grinned, probably because no one else remembered his name. Roger was glad he remembered. “She’s not my girlfriend!”

The silence hung like a great crimson exclamation mark welded to clear glass. Rachael gasped. She wrenched the ball from Kennard and hurled it down the stairwell.

Faster than a hummingbird, Roger caught the ball with his face.

Chas is an English teacher who lives with his wife — also a
teacher — in South Korea.

I am a nameless lying next to a nameless. She, after a long lapse in words or moans or movement, says “There would be fewer divorcees if the movies would just stop calling it ‘making love.’” And I realize she says those things that I want to hear and she doesn’t what I don’t. She has become I with red hair and lipstick and a skirt too short for her legs and she would stay a nameless for as long as I couldn’t come up with a name for her and she was perfect.

Alex Schillinger is a senior at Eastern Michigan University majoring in Creative Writing and English Linguistics.

I went to the movie theater after an algebra exam. Didn’t cost much to see the show. Firefly light bulbs lined around the sign over the teller. There wasn’t any line to go in. Some seniors from school talked outside, they smoked cigarettes and looked at me but didn’t say anything. Popcorn was cheap and premade. They didn’t even have Coke, just a knock off. The cashier that handed me the snacks had dark hair and green eyes. I asked if we could get a hamburger after her shift, but she didn’t say anything. I grabbed the snacks and walked upstairs to the balcony on the second floor. I was the only one up there. Most of the people sat on the first floor. Wooden seats lined with thin cushions, carpet peeled off the floor and stuck to the sides of the metal legs. Gum stuck underneath the seat. I sat in the first row, close to the edge of the balcony. Some woman walked in from the side. She was older, wore a dress and had curly hair. Didn’t think much of her. She sat down in the back corner, in the darkness. Face blurred in the lightless room. She wheezed in between the sounds of wet slaps. I turned around and her legs on the front chair spread apart, she ran her fingers around her leg. When I shifted in my seat, her hand went underneath her dress. I looked around and nobody else was there. She was the only one and nobody else came in from the side. I wanted to hold her in the dark with her face unseen, and feel the fabric on her dress. But the only thing I felt was the buttery oil around my hands, and the salt underneath my fingernails. My fingers ran along the edge of the condensation from my soda, felt the cold drops run through the crevices on my flesh and only imagined how her fingers must have felt.

Ulises Palmeno is a student at Sacramento State University studying English with an emphasis in creative writing. He was born and raised in Salinas, California.

. a period grew tired of being at the end of things so moved itself to the front of the sentence while the first clause gave it a curious look snickering, “Why do you want to move there, it’s so much work,” in which the period responded, ” I don’t just want to be associated the end anymore, but the beginning, now if I could just capitalize myself ­–­––”

Johnny Sittisin is the end result of a half-baked cosmic joke with a surprisingly funny punchline. He lives his life akin to a run-on sentence. One day he wishes to meet his spirit animal in the form of Snoop Dogg, or rather, he hopes that Snoop Dogg is his spirit animal. However, he would settle for Woody Allen. Currently, Johnny has no idea what to do – which is why he is in grad school.

Thousands of abandoned books crammed into the shelves hugging the Book Collector’s walls. Paperbacks and hardcovers. Ripped and yellowed pages. White pages with thick uncracked spines. I wandered around for nothing in the smell of decay and forgetfulness. Books whispered their names with hot breath against my ears. The old and brittle leather backs wearing embossed titles and authors’ names, echoed between the heavy claustrophobic towers. But something unfamiliar, “New Age” – can that be fiction? – attracts the electrons under my skin: Astral Projection: The Out-of-Body Experience. Creases along the binding made its name difficult to read, seducing my idle fingertips to undress. All the others around watched as I pulled the lesser book from its shelf, sighs from expectant volumes loosened dust to drift aimless among our silence. My left thumb ruffled its pages; I stopped in the middle with no reason. Just to see. It was all words anyway, absurd geometries painted on thin corruptible fibers waiting to give over to time. They all waited. Staring. No subtlety, no reservations. From my hands black ink poured cacophonous characters on to my feet and the tiled floor, like echoing bricks against thick glass bottles. And faster, smaller shapes followed; slippery pieces of soft sounds forming partial sentences around my ankles and up my shins. I closed the book to stop the inky typewritten words from spilling more over me and the store, but the sealed pages continued to leak the dark pus that mumbled phrases in languages I don’t know, and now escaping was impossible, my legs bound in the lost information. Other books began to drool their contents, mixing religion and fiction and history and art and music, millions of words like blood cells were born and died in the churning homogeny, while the black rose about my navel, crawling up my chest and shoulders. Astral Projection floated before my eyes, laughing, all it contained spewing into my mouth as the black void slapped under my chin.

Second year masters student from CSU: Sacramento. We live stories. We are stories. And so we must tell stories, in any form. For me, I write. It’s what I know how to do. What I love to do. After six years now, I still have no clue what I am doing, but I write and will write until all turns to black.

Welcome to the May Day party, the hello parade. Welcome to our quiet space, our glass paintings of Christ breaking. Here we present a box of matches and light candles for loved ones lost. In springtime we think only of the dead, plant seeds in shallow graves. Daffodils trumpet good morning but wilt away by noon. Lord, it’s hard to say our hellos and goodbyes in one breath. Lord, it’s hard to stand and kneel and eat breadcrumbs and be reborn. Matches flare like small kernels of hope and victory. Welcome to the fire dance, cremation of palm leaves and silence. Welcome to the forgiveness party, the farewell parade. Take home an egg and wait for your fortune to hatch. Learn to pray. Lord, hear our prayers. Lord, we hope only to be the last candle left burning.

Stacey is a New Jersey poet with her heart in the south. She likes to climb mountains and splash in the sea. She is currently crossing the country with her trusty kayak.

The organization of matter and energy, in its aggressive mysteriousness, permits scandalous relationships. It turns out that your most intimate molecules, electrical impulses within your meat, are cheating on you. That feeling you’ve been getting, that bodily euphoria, that clarity of mind and tangled bloom of purpose? It’s your mitochondria bringing you breakfast in bed because they feel guilty, maybe a little sad that you’re not onto them.

See, there’s this whole other kind of sentient being. Its particles aren’t spatially close in a way that permits blah blah blah etc. The science isn’t the point. The point is that while you’re grabbing groceries the nerves in your hand are acting simultaneously as the speech patterns of some immaterial investment banker. When you swallow you’re contributing a single heartbeat. And you have no choice in the matter, none at all.

It’s fun to imagine, for a while. Your irrelevancy is part of something larger, occasionally. You never know which time you blink is one of their big business deals. You never know. They draw their cells from everywhere, so it’s not just you and them. You’re sharing and they’re sharing and complexity is exponential. You cannot pronounce their names, or compare your sets of senses.

Really all you can do is shock yourself. It’s like a hiccup for one of them, when there’s a static shock. So if you shock yourself, they’ll feel it. It won’t change their day, but they’ll feel it. Just wear sweaters more often, and zone out. It’ll happen. They’ll remind themselves that they can explain the sensation, that they can curl immaterially inward and drink some immaterial water and blah blah blah etc.

The point is that despite your best intentions, you are not alone.

Justis Mills edits First Stop Fiction.

Black pixelated void between channels and then he falls into place block by block: distorted pan and scan stretched to the brink across widescreen. His edges jangled, non-Euclidian anyways. He chews his tongue, fingers distended curls.

Gavin Rossdale is very thin, his cheeks sucked in like they’re creeping up into his sinuses. His mouth is moving but the audio comes in broken jags, taking its sweet time to fall from the satellites. “- have been really different between Gwen and I, since her, uh, transformation.”

Oprah leans forward, hologram eyes unblinking and dilated like a ravenous bird of prey watching for movement below. “She was one of the first women to change, tell us a little bit more about that.”

He rubs at red nostrils that makeup can’t cover, scratches at the back of his neck for a long time. He takes so long that the camera switches back to Oprah’s smug features for a half-minute of dead air. “I’m uh. It’s taken a bit of time to adjust, but things are getting back to normal. Kingston’s starting to get used to mommy’s new, uh, look.”

Cut to a glam shot of a green mass of sinew and gaping maws modeling the year’s hottest garland of diamond-encrusted veils (undulating but still concealing Gwen’s more immodest maws.) Brief moment of disorientation and I shiver in my leather harness. Sticky warmth against my testicles as my wife’s tentacle stirs to give a lustful tug.

Oprah’s face flickers as the hologram’s processor struggles to interpret what passes for emotion from the Great Beast that Was Once Oprah and weakly renders a noncommittal half-smile. “Gwen was also the first of us to show the world her true form, to really embrace her new shape and show that you can be an unfathomable, monstrous being but still retain sexual agency in a male-dominated world. She’s done a lot to blaze new trails for the New Woman. No strangers to press scandals in the past, how has this been different? Has it been difficult for you and little Kingston?”

On screen, Gavin sweats through the makeup, exposing malnourished gray flesh in rivulets across his face. “I just need to, uh, make sure he doesn’t get into Gwen’s chamber near mealtimes. We’ve had a few, ah, calls – close calls. Child services dropped by a couple times.”

Gavin takes a sip while my wife and I stare transfixed at his gray face. I shift in my crouch as my wife’s tentacle gropes with greater urgency. The chains connected to my harness rattle like bones as they snake along the concrete.

Oprah mimics Gavin’s movement and reaches for the fiction that is her bottle of water, the camera tracking it; the bottle shimmers briefly as it aligns to the hand of her simulacra. Dasani. “Close calls, sure. So the change has caused some tensions in your marriage, yes? How are you coping?”

Gavin winces and stalls a few seconds taking a (now unnecessary) sip of water, his eyes shining, now, with excitement. “I’m working on a new project, working with some, uh, translators to become fluent in Gwen’s new speech. Then I’m going to write some lyrics in her language. I’ve got some guys signed on, and it’s going to be this really heavy, heavy shit. But with some softer vibes here and there. Y’know? Edgy and experimental, but very much like what I did in Bush.”

Behind me the fleshy mass of my wife undulates and sheds the few garlands of garments she wears to bed. I see her reflected in the television and I grow turgid.

“That’s all very exciting, Gavin – canIcallyouGavin? You know, there are rumours circulating that it’s possible still for men to breed with women and bring hybrid children to term. Have you and Gwen talked about this? Have you considered doing so with Gwen?” Oprah smiles a warhead’s grin. And the camera switches to Gavin, his eyes focused offstage right, ostensibly staring at The Great Beast that Was Once Oprah and then he vanishes as the screen goes black. My wife lets the remote clatter to the concrete floor and holds forth with a hissing slutter that I’ve come to realize is what passes for a come-hither call in her new tongue.

The chains jerk and I let fear – gibbering, incoherent – contort my face. I know she likes it that way. I turn a smile into a grimace as she tugs again at the chains. I start to scream and she pulls with greater urgency. Just before I crest the edge of her chitinous nest, I half-smile at the throbbing in my prostate – at the warmth spreading through me from the pit of black bottomless lust inside that threatens to drive me mad.

Rob Parker lives in Waterloo, Ontario with his girlfriend and cat. He has his Masters in English & Film Studies from Wilfrid Laurier University. He’s pretty into dorsality, grindcore and Rabelaisian dick jokes as affirmation of bio-agency.