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The Belsnickel

by Liz Zimmers

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Mary Alice Sherwood disappeared on Halloween night. Every bit of her, right down to her crooked bunny ears and the powder puff tail pinned to her white coat, vanished into the chilly, bonfire-smoky dark of her quiet Woodside suburb. She was eight years old, trick-or-treating with her peers under the relaxed supervision of a young sitter, and she was never seen again. The respectable households of Woodside shrank in upon themselves in shock and disbelief for a time. Neighborhood watches became vigilant once again, and parents confined their children to their yards. Now, as Christmas approached, holiday furor and excitement displaced the sharpest spur of fear. The Sherwoods’ tragedy had faded a bit from the forefront of neighborhood conversations. After all, no one knew them very well. They kept to themselves, in the lonely cul-de-sac of Hemlock Circle. The search continued for little Mary Alice. the police patrol car still made its rounds several times a day. The residents of Woodside would have gathered in sympathy around the Sherwoods had they been welcome. They were not. (Continue Reading…)

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Thirteen Ways of Not Looking at a Blackbird

By Gordon B. White

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I.

I am a baby boy. In the bathtub, looking out, past my mother as she cries and holds the already wet washcloth to her eyes. Over her mouth. I am looking into the full-length mirror on the bathroom door.

I see no one.

I do not see my father.

A severed hand floats in the air. Drops of blood fall to the floor, splattering out on both sides of the border between the linoleum and carpet.

No one says, “I’ve sinned again,” as my mother cries.

 

II.

Our house is the one that looks perfect from the sidewalk. The siding is new, the eaves and trim are painted and bright. Gutters clean; lawn thick and green; picket fence as straight and white as teeth. The dogwoods bloom like big, pink brains in the spring, and lavender and bee balm fill the yard with their scent in summer.

Inside, we have a door in the kitchen that doesn’t lead anywhere. It has three silver locks—three like the bears in the story. A papa, a mama, and a baby, just like us.

At night, after she’s finished reading me fairytales and has turned off my light, I lie in bed and listen to the family of locks in the door to nowhere tumbling open and then back into place. The house shakes as heavy footsteps don’t go downstairs. Sometimes, too, I can almost hear other sounds that drift up through the ducts as if the house is singing sadly.

I ask Mama about it. I get her to hold her breath and put her ear to the vents.

She tells me that I can’t hear anything. That there’s nothing there. After that, I don’t hear it anymore.

 

III.

Because Daddy works until all hours, Mama is the one who tells me how the world works. Even though she didn’t get to go to school, her parents’ house was filled with towers of books and old papers that seem to grow from the piles of trash on the floor. She tells me that everything she knows, she knows from reading. I don’t realize it until later, but she’s closer to my age than Daddy’s.

I can ask her almost anything. How the flowers grow, how the TV works, why is the sky blue?

“Did you know,” she tells me, “that hundreds of years ago, back in olden times, people didn’t have a word for ‘blue’?”

I shake my head.

“And without a word for it, they couldn’t see it. Not like we can. I mean, it was there, right? But it wasn’t something they could make sense of.”

I can ask her almost anything, but only almost.

The sting of her hand is like a hornet and the red shape of it burns through my cheek. “You don’t ask about what he does,” she says. “You don’t see nothing, you don’t say nothing. Never. Never ever. You understand?”

Too stunned to cry, I nod.

“Good,” she says. “Good boys keep their mouths shut about business that ain’t theirs. They don’t talk about it and they don’t think about it.” She shakes her head. “Bad boys go to hell.”

 

IV.

I am in the kitchen and it is dark. The clock radio says 12:47 in red numbers that glare like eyes from the counter. I waited until the light beneath Mama’s door was off before sneaking down the hallway, each step seeming to find a new groaning board beneath the carpet, but I am now barefoot on the linoleum. I search the cabinets, trying not to make alarms of the pans and glass baking dishes as I search for the marshmallow cereal I know Mama has hidden. I’m only allowed one bowl on Saturdays, but I want to feel the chalky sugar on my tongue.

From behind the door to nowhere, I hear a crash. A thin gleam seeps from under the base of the heavy door, and there is a pounding that grows and grows behind it, as if rising from the empty ground beneath. The silver locks in the door tremble and shake, falling out of place.

The door to nowhere opens.

A naked woman with hair in a matted fury stands there. Blood drips from her fingers and mouth, black in the clock radio’s red glow, but she stands illuminated from behind by the light from a place that doesn’t exist. She sees me and her eyes widen; her mouth splits as if to laugh.

“Door?” she asks.

I point off down the front hall. She runs, bare feet smacking against linoleum, then wood.

But now there is a howling. A storm rising from nowhere. As it bursts into the kitchen, I don’t recognize the center at first, with its face marred by four ragged furrows. My eyes sink into those finger-deep trenches and I fall back as the maelstrom rages—screaming, shouting, smashing.

By now my mother is here, too, and when she says his name, I realize the storm is my father. The angry face coalesces back into the one I know, as it does, the thunderhead and ferocious gale which shook the kitchen dissolve into a fog.

I run back down the hall to my darkened bedroom. I am wrapped in a blanket and staring out the window for that naked woman, wondering if she’s cold, when the red and blue sirens descend.

 

V.

The law doesn’t know what to make of Mama. A dozen people think real hard about what she didn’t do and didn’t not do with no one, then throw up their hands. The man in the black robe says she can go but God help her. He shakes his head, says God help us all.

I can go too, because I’m so young, but part of it is that I have to talk with a lady once a week for what seems like forever.

Mama tells me it’s not a lie to say you don’t remember if you really don’t, so if I forget I won’t be a bad boy or liar. Good boys don’t talk about their fathers and mothers to strangers. Good boys don’t say what they did or didn’t see.

Good boys don’t say yes or no. They just say that they don’t know, sorry.

 

VI.

We change our names from nothing to something. I was so small that even the internet doesn’t know who I was when I wasn’t. And we have to leave the house, of course, but we make a go of it. Mama works, I go to school, and we come right back afterwards to wherever we happen to be that week.

Sometimes, though, when I look in the mirror or in the empty TV screen or the window at night, I see a face I don’t recognize. Or more precisely, I don’t. I ask Mama about it, but she says nevermind. It’s nothing.

It isn’t that we never talk about it. In fact, Mama talks everything over with me again and again until I remember clearly the empty wheelbarrows being pushed out of the basement I didn’t know we had. Until I remember garbage bags with nothing in them, carried out from the freezers by men in masks and white paper suits.

My memory of the old house is a field of yellow caution tape around empty holes between bushes of lavender and bee balm that nobody dug, men and women kneeling beside them and covering their faces with their hands in front of nothing at all.

 

VII.

My daddy is still alive. I ask about him sometimes, where he is, but the sting of Mama’s hand is a reminder I don’t often need. She’ll never take me to see him, she says, because while she’ll always love him, we need to move on.

We stay with her parents for a while—Gammy and Pawpaw—but they look at us like strangers. I hear them lock their bedroom door at night and Gammy would rather sit on the porch until Pawpaw gets home in the evening than be inside when just Mama and I are there.

“But you must have known?” Gammy says one night at dinner.

“I didn’t see anything,” Mama says.

“You must have guessed,” Pawpaw says. “I mean, so many—“

“I didn’t see nothing!” Mama slaps her hand against the table, rattling the silver. She stands but doesn’t leave. “I told them all, there was nothing to see.”

Pawpaw looks at me, squints. “What about you?”

I look at Mama and she glares at me hard enough across the table that my cheek begins to blister in the shape of her palm.

“No,” I say. “Nothing.”

“Not even that night? The one that got away?”

I don’t even need to look at Mama. I just shake my head and look at the chicken on my plate. Pawpaw spits on the floor by his boots.

“Disgusting,” he says.

 

VIII.

I look in the mirror and try to make sense of what I see, but I don’t have a word for who or what that is. The context is missing. The parts are all there—eyes, nose, lips, ears. They hover in an arrangement that should be recognizable, but the parts just don’t connect. I feel like a Mr. Potato Head without the potato.

In one of Pawpaw’s towers of paper I find an old library book on muscles and bones. The cover is like nothing I’ve seen before, a woman’s face and neck and shoulder leaning over as if asleep, while the secret world of roads and rivers beneath the skin is opened up. It makes me feel heat and shame, but it comes to live beneath my bed. At night, I push against and peel back myself where I can, trying to figure out what I am made of, inside and out.

Back in the mirror, I grow obsessed with the connective bits and parts in-between, learning new terms for the parts of the strange face I see: glabella; infraorbital furrow; infraorbital triangle; nasolabial furrow; philtrum; chin boss. In the fairytales Mama used to read me, having the true names always seemed to be a kind of magic and, for a few moments as I point and name them in the mirror, I think that I can almost see how I fit together.

But no. The longer I look, the more I realize the pieces are there, but something inside is missing.

I say my name over and over as I stare my reflection in the eye, as if catching the goblin in darkness and calling out “Rumplestiltskin!” might bind him. But that’s not my name—it’s not either of them.

I try to picture what it is inside of me, but I have nothing. So many memories of nothing and the things that no one did.

 

IX.

I dream I am back in our old house. I am in the kitchen, sitting at the table in front of a bowl of marshmallow cereal but I can’t find my hands to lift the spoon. As I’m sitting there, though, nothing begins to move around.

The front door slams, but when I peer out, the hall is empty. The heavy clomp of approaching boots shakes the walls and I want to cover my ears with the hands I can’t find, but as the footsteps stamp around me in circles, I can see nothing.

Frozen, I watch the refrigerator door open. A red and white can floats from inside, hisses as the tab is pulled, then pours out into thin air only to vanish. The cabinets swing open and closed; the faucet off and on; the knife drawer in and out. Then the crash of footsteps stops right beside me.

Over the years with the lady from the court, I have become accustomed to the sensation of being held down and pinned open as if for examination, and that familiar weight comes to rest on me in the dream, even though no one is looking at me. The needles of it burn like Mama’s slaps, but deeper and redder, piercing outward from somewhere within. Then nothing ruffles my hair like a faithful dog and shuffles over toward the door to nowhere. The three locks obediently twist themselves over one by one. The door swings open on its own.

A sudden crash of thunder and the kitchen is dark, as if the power went out. The only light comes from the doorway to nowhere. Another crash, but this time she is there.

All I can see now is that woman who came up from nowhere. She is standing there, naked and angry, bleeding as if born back from the nothing below, and my heart begins to race. There is something in me that is responding in a way I don’t have words to describe—a wash of heat and shame and desire and anger all at once.

I wake up and the sheets are a mess.

The look of repulsion on Mama’s face when she does the laundry in the morning says everything.

I still have the book on anatomy I stole from Pawpaw and I laboriously study all the terms to try and understand the woman. All the folds of muscle; the deposits of fat and flaps of skin; a tree of bone decorated like Christmas in tinsel of nerves and veins. Naming the parts helps me feel steadier, more in control. At least while I’m awake.

But I have the messy dreams again. Again. In a fit of shame, I cut the sheets into little pieces and throw them away, only to get caught a few days later stealing a replacement set from K-Mart. They call Mama to come take me home, but she won’t even speak to me.

 

X.

I want to tell someone, but I can’t. I open my mouth real wide sometimes when I’m in bed or when I’m at my new school or even when I’m in the bathroom. I just open it and try to make a sound that would maybe trick the words into coming out, but it just curdles into the most sickening groan.

The lady I’m made to talk to asks me what I remember. I tell her nothing. She asks me what I dream about. I tell her nothing. What do I want to tell her? About the nothing, nothing, nothing, but she only smiles and checks something off on a piece of paper.

We meet less and less as the years go by, until by the time eighth grade is done, the lady says I’m doing just fine. She says we don’t need to talk about it anymore.

 

XI.

I can feel my body changing. My brain too, squashed and pulled as the plates of my cranium shift. I am still having those dreams, and when I go to school or the store or the park, I can’t help but see that woman. Hiding behind trees. Down the bread aisle. Again and again—naked, bleeding, about to laugh.

I find out Daddy is dead more than a month after it happened when I hear some kids at school talking about it. At first it doesn’t register because the name they use wasn’t his real name. Butcher. Strangler. Ripper.

The words they use don’t reconcile with what I didn’t see.

But as they keep talking, one of them says his name—the one I used to share with him before Mama and I changed it—and for a moment I’m a baby boy again. I am in the house where we don’t speak of things Daddy doesn’t do.

But there’s a hole there in the house. A swirl of shadows that moves in and out of doors, through the halls, around me in the kitchen. A blank spot the size and approximate shape of my father, but one that bends light around until it slips by unnoticed. Did Mama and I talk so much around it that I became blind?

Well, the other kids are talking about it now. Saying the police had to dig up the backyard. They start listing out the pieces that were found and the ones that weren’t. They’re describing the tools. The basement behind the door with the three silver locks.

I can almost see through that haze in my memory of the house. I can almost …

The others say that one night, one of the girls fought back. She got away. Unlocked the door.

And like a flash of lightning, there she is standing among them. Proud and naked and my father’s blood on her hand and in her mouth. That same surge of desires and distress washes over me, making me hot and dizzy, but now I see clearly. I see that she’s the one who took it all away from us. She’s the one who talked. Who is talking now. Who—

When the teachers finally pull me off the other students, they drag me to the principal’s office, but first we stop at the boys’ restroom and they tell me to wash my face.

I splash it and feel a sting, but looking into the mirror I see nothing. There is nothing on my face or behind my eyes. I hear whispers from no one behind.

The principal is yelling at me, demanding to know just who I think I am. What are my parents going to say?

I can only laugh.

Nothing. I’m no one’s son.

 

XII.

“Mama,” I say, “I need to talk to you.”

There’s a hole I have to fill. A gap in my understanding.

“I need to talk about Daddy.”

“No,” she says.

“Please? I don’t know if what’s wrong with me is like what—“

A crash like thunder.

“Nothing was wrong with him. Nothing is wrong with you, too.”

 

XIII.

I may as well be a baby boy. In the shower, looking out through steamy glass, past the hooks where white towels hang like the damp skins of childhood ghosts. The side of my face burns, hot and red in the shape of a hand across my cheek. I am looking into the full length mirror on the bathroom door.

I see no one.

I do not see myself.

A severed hand floats in the air. Drops of blood fall to the tile floor, splattering out across my toes and mixing with the water as it swirls down the drain.

No one says, “I’ve sinned again,” as no one cries.

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The Body Remembers

By P.A. Cornell

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It takes a moment before it hits me that the screaming’s coming from my own mouth. Funny how the mind works. I catch myself debating whether to continue or just shut up. My leg—where it used to be anyway—is nothing but mangled shreds that remind me of pulled pork and I opt for silence. I grit my teeth against the pain and watch the leg reform from those shreds of bloody meat for a moment before I have to look away from the unnatural sight of it. There’s no escaping the metallic scent of blood though. The only thing that can compete with it is the acrid tang of my own sweat. Most people don’t notice sweat smells different when it comes from fear. Stronger. More acidic. Trust me, I’ve been at this long enough to know.

Too damn long, actually, but my tour’s coming to an end. Two more weeks. That’s all I’ve gotta last and I can go home, back to normal life—or to whatever semblance of normal those of us who’ve walked through hell can get.

I force myself to look down at my leg again and see it’s slowly coming back, which is more than I can say for the fabric of my pants that’s missing from the knee down. Nothing to do about that. Around me, gunfire and explosions continue. In the brief gaps between them, the others yell across the battlefield.

“Go, go, GO!”

“Orlovschi’s down!” I hear, before Noble runs past me with an apologetic look on his face. I don’t blame him for not stopping. Not much he can do for me and the cover here isn’t much to speak of. Nothing more than the remains of a low brick wall, no more than two feet high—lower where chunks have been blasted away.

“On your six!” someone yells, followed by an explosion.

A body falls to my left—too damaged for the treatment to regenerate before the Reaper got its icy claws on it. I instinctively try to move away, but I don’t get far with just the one leg, and the other one burns like it’s on fire.

“Come on!” I tell it. Waiting for the leg to finish regrowth. I glance at the body. They’re face-down, so I can’t see who it is, but by the shape I guess it’s Paradas. Build looks about right. And I catch a glimpse of what could be a dark brown ponytail sticking out from under her helmet. I look away. Fuck. I liked Paradas.

I keep my head low, trying to see past the dust and debris to where the enemy is. We’re still holding ground but they’re pushing back. I’m not safe here. Some injuries you don’t heal from. Or so they tell us. I look at Paradas, still unmoving. No one knows what happens when one of us dies. They take the bodies. Not the enemy—our side. They recover them all no matter how bad the war zone. The official line is they don’t want them falling into enemy hands, on account of the treatment, but most of us think it’s us they’re hiding the dead from.

There’s talk the treatment can regenerate us even after death. If that’s true, what would it do to a person to come back from that? It’s that fear alone that’s kept me from sampling the taste of gun metal before squeezing the trigger. There damn well can be a fate worse than death—worse even than this endless cycle of horrific injury and regeneration. That’s why I have to last through the next two weeks. It’s too late for Paradas, but the rest of us still have a shot.

There’s movement to my right and my body reacts before I consciously register that the face belongs to a stranger—that the uniform bears the colors of the other side. Only later, in my nightmares, will I recall the way he brought his weapon up to target me. Right now, it all happens too fast. He’s still taking aim when I raise my own gun and blow his head to pink vapor. It looks like spray from an airbrush. I see it all in slow motion and know my mind will replay it for me in luxurious detail later. I have a permanent front row seat to that show. Part of the price I paid for the good health I enjoy.

The blast of air hits me before I see the hover overhead. It doesn’t come all the way down. They lower a claw and grab Paradas by the midsection, lifting her into the air like one of those antique coin-op machines you used to win toys from. I watch her body disappear into the hover’s belly and then it’s out of there as quick as it came. They don’t do a damn thing to help me. I know the drill. I’m on my own out here.

The foot’s finally done forming. It looks pink and damp, but I know that won’t last. I wiggle the toes, then slowly get to my feet, still keeping as low behind my cover as possible. The leg holds my weight but still feels like it’s burning—which it shouldn’t, but I don’t have time to worry about that. It can wait for my report, so the powers-that-be can read it over before ignoring it. “It’s all in your head,” they like to say.

Funny how the mind works. Yeah…just fuckin’ hilarious.

My right boot’s gone, which means I’ll be negotiating the battlefield on nothing but a bare sole. But knicks and scrapes should heal before I notice them. Just gotta hope I don’t get more pieces of me shot off before I make it to decent cover. The phantom pain makes me unsteady on my new leg, so I hobble a little but fight through that, telling myself it’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not fucking real. But god damn does it ever burn all the same. After a while, adrenaline gets me running full tilt, diving over one of our barricades where Wiebe and Davis are laying down cover fire.

“Thanks,” I say, as I come in for a landing, then turn to fire back toward the enemy while Davis reloads. She’s fast. Quicker than me on my best day, and she’s back firing on the enemy before I’ve managed to do much.

“How’s the leg?” Wiebe asks, seeing my pant-leg and boot are gone, and putting two and two together.

“It works,” I tell him. He shrugs. He knows what it’s like. Lost a good chunk of his shoulder last battle. A hand the one before that. Looks good as new now though. That’s the problem. We all look intact on the outside—wish I could say the same for the inside.

They don’t tell you what it’s like when you sign up. They sell you on the good stuff, leave the rest as a surprise for you to discover on your own later. Some people win the DNA lottery, but most of us get stuck with genetic flaws that have been doing the rounds in our families for as far as we can trace back. Me, I scored asthma, an irregular heartbeat, flat feet, and anxiety, to name a few. Add to that the stuff that comes at you after you’re born. Everything from seasonal allergies to getting hit by a car. Some of us get lucky—others not so much. I was one of the latter.

It’s all good though. You can buy replacement parts for just about anything these days. There’re enough labs growing body parts in vats that you can take your pick. Spin the nearest globe, stab a finger down, and see which lab you got. They’re all good. New lungs, new heart, new feet, and they’ll throw in a bonus treatment to regulate that brain chemistry too.

So long as you can afford it.

That’s the catch. This shit don’t come cheap.

Sure, some employers cover the cost on condition you work off what you owe. But the interest keeps building, and you never seem to put a dent in it. So, when your buddy who’s a soldier tells you over drinks one night the Army has a better offer, you listen. You nod as he tells you about regeneration. How it can fix any shit you’re born with and heal anything that goes wrong after. And all of it free of charge—all you gotta do is serve our country.

Just show me where to sign.

We look up to see air support—about damn time. Thousands of our drones. They target the enemy with pinpoint precision and make short work of their front line. The survivors have no choice but to fall back. We live to fight another day.

Hovers come to carry us back to base. Strapped into my seat I can still hear the cacophony of battlefield noise. It stays with me even as the distance grows, like when you get a song stuck in your head. The worst possible earworm. I flex my new ankle, watch it move the way it should, but still feeling like it did when it got blown off. With the adrenaline no longer pumping like it was, the pain intensifies so I reach into my kit for meds, taking the pill dry and crushing it between my teeth in hopes it’ll get absorbed faster. But it does nothing, and by the time we’re back at base it’s all I can do to keep from screaming.

Technically, the treatment’s still in its trial stage, so when any of us get wounded like I did today, we have to report to Doc Flemming so he can evaluate us for his ongoing study. As the treatment’s developer, his collaboration with the Army means he gets an office on base. This works out for the Army because if anything goes wrong, he’s there to deal with it so they don’t have to. I’m just hoping he can give me some relief from this pain.

When I arrive, his secretary tells me he’s busy, points me to a chair where I’m to wait. I try to distract myself by watching a wall monitor replay one of the ads for the treatment.

Bio-replacements and repairs can be costly, and even out of reach for some. Join the Army and let us take care of your physical health with our patented regeneration treatment. Enjoy the body you were meant to have—free of ailments and impervious to injury. Speak to one of our recruiters today.

Nowhere in the ad is there mention of the nightmares, the flashbacks, or the phantom pain I’m currently experiencing. Nowhere does it say that the physical injuries heal, but the body remembers all the same.

The office door opens, and a man dressed in a civilian’s business suit and carrying a briefcase leaves. The secretary gives me a nod and I go in.

“I’m told you’re experiencing some discomfort, Corporal…” he says, in lieu of greeting.

“Orlovschi, Sir. Stan Orlovschi.”

He doesn’t look up from his work or ask me to take a seat, so I’m staring at the top of his bald head, wondering why this asshole hasn’t taken his own treatment to regenerate his scalp. Should’ve asked that question before I signed anything.

“I’m a civilian, Corporal. No need to address me as ‘sir’. Please describe the discomfort you’re feeling.”

“It’s more like excruciating, mind-numbing, pain that’s slowly driving me out of my mind,” I tell him.

Now he looks up, but his expression’s one of annoyance, rather than sympathy.

“And you’ve had your latest booster? You’re getting all the calories required to aid in your regeneration?”

“Yes, to both.”

“Well then, let’s see what the scanner says. Which limb is it?”

I point to my right leg, and he gets up and grabs a portable health monitor from his desk, then uses it to scan my leg from the knee down. He stares at the device and frowns.

“These scans look normal. Your leg is completely healed.”

“That might be, but it still feels like it did when it was hamburger on that battlefield,” I say.

“It’s psychosomatic,” he tells me. “I’ll give you something to help you sleep. I’m sure you’ll feel better after a good night’s rest.”

In my mind I’m calling bullshit, but right now I’m desperate enough to take any drugs he’s willing to give me.

“Thanks,” I say, like a good little lab rat.

---

The drug Flemming prescribed does knock me out, but it’s not relief I feel when the nightmares come. My subconscious mind’s a sadistic sonofabitch. It runs a play-by-play of today’s battle, featuring highlights from previous ones. I get to watch my friends die again in the most creative and colorful ways. I watch pieces of my own body get blown off, and once more feel the pain like it was live. The dreams come nightly but they’re especially dark and detailed after missions. Mercifully, Wiebe shakes me awake after a while, freeing me from this monster that lives inside my mind.

“You were screaming,” he says.

“Sorry.”

“No sweat.”

The irony is I’m drenched in sweat, and I recognize the scent of fear in it again. I sit up and watch the others go back to sleep. No one resents me for disrupting their rest, they all get it. The nightmares come to them too. Waking life’s no vacation either because that’s when the memories attack, worse than any enemy we’ve faced. They come again and again no matter how much you try to think of something else. Like the pain in my leg, they’re relentless.

I rub at my calf and think about the first time my leg got blown off. The time before this one. I wonder if the pain I feel comes from that first time or the latest. Not that it matters. It’s part of me now. Real to my mind even if it doesn’t show up on scans.

Doctors throw the word “psychosomatic” around like it erases what you’re feeling. They ignore the fact that if it’s real for the mind, it’s real. Our bodies heal from almost anything. But the memories, the suffering, the fear—the treatment can’t fix that.

So we find other ways to cope.

I get up and quietly search my kit for what I need, so as not to disturb the others, then head for the showers. I sit on the floor of my favorite stall—the one with the good drain—and pull my pantleg up to confirm the leg’s still there. My eyes see perfect, new skin over intact flesh, but my mind screams at me of pain. So, I take the tool I brought with me, the knife I was issued, and cut a long line along my left arm, wrist to elbow, letting the blood drip into the drain.

The cut burns as I glide the blade across my skin, but I don’t stop. “This pain is real,” I say aloud. The cut has healed by the time I get to the end, but my leg still hurts. I go again, this time a quick slash across the forearm.

“This pain is real!”

I do this again and again until morning comes. By then I’m exhausted. Numb. I feel nothing and I hope it’ll last for at least a while.

We all have our ways of coping with what we’ve been through. We don’t talk about it. We endure. At least I won’t have to endure much longer.

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It’s not long before they throw us back into the meat grinder of war. The Army and Doc Flemming each have something to prove. The treatment benefits them both. Flemming’s gunning for the Nobel—his little miracle will no doubt change many lives for the better. Just not ours. The Army gets soldiers they don’t need to send home after major injuries. Soldiers they can keep reusing—a virtually inexhaustible resource. The more times we come back from battle, the closer they get to approval for the treatment to become standard.

This time at least we didn’t lose anyone. Still, once we’re back in the mess, we eat in silence. I read the others like my grandad used to read his morning paper. Wiebe seems jumpy, Davis more withdrawn than usual, Noble’s eating like the food’s his enemy. The rest of the company just seems tired. We’re all tired. Tired of the flashbacks, tired of the pain—both real and imagined, tired of the tense muscles, panic attacks, the urge to run with nowhere to run to.

Noble stands suddenly, lifts his tray, and slams it down onto the table sending rehydrated eggs flying in all directions. Then he leaves. No one says a word. He was one of the last ones to sign up and has at least a year to go. We’ve all had such moments of frustration and rage. We all will again.

As for me, I rub my leg under the table, trying to massage the pain that’s returned since the battle. I consider my usual way of coping, but head back to Doc Flemming’s instead as soon as I get a chance. If this is something they might use on civilians one day, he needs to understand the treatment has no effect on emotional and psychological trauma. I need to get him to stop ignoring that.

“The pain’s back,” I tell him.

“I’ll give you another sleeping pill.”

“That won’t help,” I say.

“It helped last time.”

“Not exactly,” I tell him, though I don’t elaborate on my methods for coping. “There has to be something you can do. The battles, the injuries, they stay with you. Our bodies heal no matter how many times you throw us out there, but they don’t forget—and we don’t get to choose what the body remembers. I only have a short time left to go, but I have to think of the others you’ll keep sending out there after I’m gone. Not to mention the fact that this pain in my leg may be something that stays with me.”

Flemming gives me a curious look. “A short time left to go?”

“Until the end of my tour,” I clarify.

“I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way,” he says. “The contract you signed gives us the right to renew your tour as many times as is necessary for this study.”

I must not be hearing right.

“What?”

“We’re collecting data from every injury one of you sustains. Speed of healing. Other effects. It could be several more years, even decades before we know enough to determine whether the regeneration treatment is something we should continue with.”

“But that…can’t be right.”

He sighs, and reaches for his tablet, opening a file that he then turns for me to see. I recognize it as the contract my buddy showed me in that bar. Only I don’t recall him mentioning this wasn’t a regular tour of duty. I do remember the words, “standard contract.” Maybe he didn’t know. Or maybe they made him a sweet offer, so he didn’t volunteer that information. It doesn’t matter anyway because it was on me to read the fine print. I have no one to blame but myself.

I feel sick to my stomach—an alien sensation since the treatment makes it so we no longer get sick.

“You’re not gonna let us go,” I say. “Not ever.”

“Let’s not be so bleak, Corporal,” Flemming says. “Every study comes to an end, eventually.”

I think of Paradas, and how the study came to an end for her. I think about the rumor that even death can’t stop regeneration and wonder if it really did. I break into a sweat, but my limbs go cold, all except the one that burns with pain. I picture the years to come, being torn to shreds again and again, my body healing as my mind falls apart. And that’s if I’m lucky. That’s if I don’t end up like Paradas.

It takes a moment before it hits me that the screaming’s coming from my own mouth.

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The Evaluator

by Premee Mohamed

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There’s a dish of milk balanced on the trailer’s top step, something dark surfacing in the white like a shark. As I knock and wait, I try to figure it out: a Hostess Cupcake? A Ding-Dong? You leave your best, after all.

Inside, Mrs. Bruinsma makes coffee with the lightly champagne-coloured water from the tap. Mine cools in a chipped and faded Snoopy mug while I explain why I’m here, pushing a business card across the sticky tablecloth.

“Are you with the government?” she finally asks.

“No, ma’am. We’re a private company.”

“Do you have… equipment? Are you going to do tests on her?”

“No. She’ll be fine. You can stay and watch if you want.”

She’s not listening, and nothing I’m saying, I figure, is the deciding factor that gets her up from the table. I follow her outside, careful not to touch the teetering offering. We walk past a dozen trailers, some clearly abandoned, others more ambiguously so, and head through the fence marking the border of Meadow Hill. (Continue Reading…)

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The 2023 Halloween Parade

by Alasdair Stuart

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This year you pass through a stone arch to reach the Parade. The churro stand is to one side, the bouncer to the other. You can’t quite tell if the bouncer is checking if you’ve been to the churro stand or if you’ve got your wristband. You do know both are pointedly ignoring the plate of raw meat on a nearby small table. There’s a notice, the familiar bone coloured paper and Silian rail, reading ‘Please take your seats. The Parade is about to begin.’ You walk through the arch and see… (Continue Reading…)

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Darke’s Last Show

by Jonathan Louis Duckworth

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I’m still smiling when the rideshare car pulls up. Silver Honda Accord. Driver: Raul. 4.9 star rating, meaning some monster gave him a petty 4-star review once—there is no circle of Hell low enough. Raul’s a handsome kid, maybe twenty, lots of hair product, a fade shaved onto the back of his head, a winning smile, and soft-spoken. I take a quick shine to him.

Traffic’s light for a Thursday night in South Beach. It should take half an hour to get to where my friends will be expecting me, not that I’m in a rush. The car’s body trembles from the bass of an impressive sound system; I feel each pleasant pulse in the roots of my molars.

“You mind turning it up, kid? I like this one.”

Raul’s surprised. “For real? No offense, but you seem a little old to be bumping Shorty BoomBoom.”

If only he knew how old. “I try to keep up with things.” (Continue Reading…)