The March Wind
Davin Ireland

Vic Fenton clutched his Puffa jacket tighter to his chest and leaned into the icy gale blowing down Troubadour Street. Up ahead, taxis whizzed along the empty boulevard in search of fares that had long since dribbled from the cafes and ailing bingo halls, their absence mourned only by the wheeling gulls. Vic put his head down and watched flagstones disappear beneath his peeling shoes.

The Mash House was a squat, four storey pile of seafront masonry the local council should have condemned years ago, but hadn’t on account of the facilitative role it played in modern beachfront society. Masquerading as a back-packer hotel, the building’s middle two floors were actually a brothel that made easy money exploiting the town’s surplus of economic migrants during the off-season. Vic had only secured a room there because he had promised to clean the stairs and reception area every Tuesday and Friday for nothing. Apparently, even the whores had better things to do in winter.

He slipped into the lobby, exchanged a curt nod with a little boy who sat in the corner flipping languidly through a magazine he had probably read a dozen times before. His father was a regular here. Vic mounted the stairs two at a time, didn’t stop till he reached the nominal sanctuary of the third floor.

Penny hadn’t moved in the time he’d been gone. She lay curled beneath the sheet like a human comma, a brief pause in the story of a relationship that was fast running out of options. You can’t stay with somebody just because you pity them. That was the last thing Eamonn, the self-proclaimed playwright from across the hall, had said to him before catching the train back to Derby. Wise words from an ignorant prick. But he had loved Penny once, and wasn’t going to abandon her now, just because her health was failing.

The Diesel Mnemonic
Ryan Neal Myers

It takes Sonnyboy three years to find the Buyer again. But since this truck stop looks, smells and sounds just like all the others -- especially on a snowy night like this -- he feels as if he never left. He's bigger now, though he carries his weight well, looks like he can put it wherever he wants: the end of his fist or the steel toe of his boot. His Levis have lost their knees, and his leather jacket its luster, not to mention its fit. His beard grows in dark, uncombed tangles.

The Buyer sits alone in a corner booth, thick in the arms and chest, hairless from head to toe, sleeves rolled to the elbow, meaty hands spread on the table top. Damn, if he doesn't look exactly the same. And the empty shoeboxes are there, too, stacked next to him on the bench.

Sonnyboy sits across the aisle at a table for two, and being so close to the Buyer makes his heart pound hard. The knife in his right boot makes him itch, but he likes to think he won't need it. He's taken down men bigger and faster in places much, much worse than this.

A trucker sits across from the Buyer, knob-knuckled hands slowly chafing. He's a boot-and-belt-buckle type, not Sonnyboy's kind at all. Sonnyboy listens close as they speak.

"Five hundred dollars," says the Buyer, his voice as smooth as a freshly graded gravel road.

"For what?" says the trucker.

"To write it down."

Sweet Rocket
Jay Lake

Listen up, you little oxygen sinks. I'm fixing to tell you a story about Grampy Pressure Hose and the Sweet Rocket. You'd better mind, you all, 'cause out here in the Deep Dark every minute of your life is another sixty seconds where it's easy to die. Father Jove might smile upon us all, but he ain't no kinder than hard vacuum, and his love is distant and stormy.

Now this here story happened right here in Haven when Grampy Pressure Hose was just a little sprat, not much bigger than a baby eel in a new-scrubbed 'cycling tank. Hosehead, his mama called him then. Little Hosehead could fly a broomstick on hull maintenance better than any gang boss, and he'd been checked out on intraorbital shuttles too, on account of it was the only way to shut him up. Hosehead had an eye, an ear or a hand for everything there was to set himself to.

This one time not long after they lost old home Earth there was a damage control scramble after a pebblestorm holed number three and number four service bays. All the shift bosses and all their gang bosses were down there working every able spacer in Haven, chasing them microleaks and tracing every dark-damned wire, conduit, hose or pipe in the place to look for pinholes and cracks. It was a big job, a man-killer, and they were working triple shifts with drugsleep on stand down. If you don't know how ugly that kind of business is, well, blessings on you and hope you never have to learn.

Anyway, this was one of the great scrambles, the kind they sing about in the bars late hours. Weren't nobody over age of twelve in all of Haven wasn't needed bad working the hole patrol, but even so Regs say someone's got to mind the boards. Can't shut Operations off cold on account of an eye and an ear always got to be on the emergency bands. As a result, Hosehead was minding the boards up in Operations. And him all of eight t-years.

Wild Among Hares
Sarah L. Edwards

It wasn’t fear that drove me to people, nor loneliness. It was hunger, aching dull and hollow, that took me knocking at this door or that one, offering my service. Though the housewives wore varying shades of kindness, none had work for me and none cared to ask me in. It was the hair, I suppose, gray, wiry stuff that wouldn’t lie flat. Or my eyes, a bit jumpy and wrinkled around the edges from staring down the road too long. Or maybe it was my dress that left them uneasy, what with the streaks of sweat and dust and the fraying around the hem.

The night air, blushing and coy and damp after the spring’s first warmth, brought me smells of the outer places. As a girl I went where they led, seeking out hares, whiskered and mustached, and there I guarded their secrets and knew their pains. I strayed from the ways of people as long as I pleased. But wild things die young. Long ago I’d learned to wear the garb of mankind—when I needed it.

At the last house I pulled the scarf tight over my silvered hair and shrugged, settling the hare deeper in his pocket in my shoulder-pack. I walked past a grazing pony to the dim-lit house, not much less shabby than I, and tapped the stranger’s knock.

In a moment, a beam of light slit the black slab of house, and a man stood shadowed in the doorway.

“What’s your business?”

I held my token to the light: a hare’s tail, dyed crimson.

Hard Rain at the Fortean Café
Lavie Tidhar

The diner stood off the highway outside a small town optimistically called Hope. Hope was being stuck in the middle of the Northwest and wishing you were someplace, anyplace else. And Hope was also the name on the tag pinned to the dead woman in waitress uniforms that was currently lying against the wall inside the Barbie-Q Roadhouse. I had to stop myself from worrying at the connection: looking for patterns when sometimes there are none at all.

I wasn't worried about Hope (the waitress, not the town). I didn't get called down here for a murder: shit, murder is an honest-to-God American pastime. Just look at the statistics. No, I got called in because of the Marilyn.

The Marilyn was also dead. All in all, there were five dead people in the Barbie-Q: two waitresses; a balding man who – from his bag full of cheaply-printed catalogues – was some sort of a general salesman; the diner's manageress; and Marilyn. They had been shot by a machine gun, probably an Uzi. Marilyn's head left a red smear against the glass of the booth she sat in. She was there alone.

What the hell was a Marilyn doing out here?

The Diadem
Mikal Trimm

“Wake up, princess. It’s your birthday.”

Daddy told her that, long ago. Back when he was still Daddy, not Dad or Father. Back when she still felt like a princess.

Back when she still believed.

“Oh, she’s in dreaming-angel mode.” Mommy-Mom-Mother whispered in a voice still gentle, even after all this time. Julia wanted to giggle, remembering the days when Mom—no, Mother, would sprinkle glitter around her sleeping form and swear it was angel-dust the next morning.

But that was in the days of tooth-fairies and Santa and a giant pink bunny hopping around with a basketful of kaleidoscope-colored eggs.

I’m sixteen, guys. I don’t need this anymore.