Ananconfabulation

by Mar Vincent

Our homes are buried, so we built tunnels. From Tomas’ window to mine, from Ryan’s to Kimber’s and back to Tomas’ attached garage where it has little windows up high in the door. A rabbit’s warren of passages just wide enough for our juvenile bodies.

I remember the day it happened. Opening curtains and seeing the sun, the trees, the clouds. Opening them again, only a few hours later, and seeing nothing but solid gray against the glass. Time keeps moving the cat clock on my wall and the appliances in our kitchens tick forward, but is it day or night or real at all? I don’t trust that time is what it used to be.

The TV stopped working, and the internet, even the radio, so all we could do was guess what had happened. Was the whole world buried, or just the neighborhood around us?

Tomas lived next door, so that tunnel was the easiest. The first place I thought to go. Both of us started digging through from our own sides as though we’d planned it (we hadn’t), and shouting for each other when we got closer (like we sensed it) until we lined up the tunnels to connect. Light came in from his side, through the ashy-concrete stuff that made the walls (that made the world), and then his fingers poked through, and I wasn’t alone anymore. (Continue Reading…)

Birds of Fortune

by Kelsey Hutton

Water droplets still glistened on each of the griffin’s feathers, catching light on dark brown wings and tossing it about like they were old friends. Each stroke of the wing beat back gusts of air forceful enough to talk their way into any closed-door affair; enough crows had been caught in their turbulence to know to stay away, although a few young’uns liked to surf the griffin’s currents, on a particularly daring day. Wind whistled a jaunty tune as it streamed by, while the sun nestled deep into the griffin’s satiny lion haunches. She kept her powerful back legs pulled in tight, for better aerodynamics, but let her long tufted tail swish about.

Lady Griffith didn’t hold back. It felt deliciously good to pump her wings — as wide across as a ten-year-old ash tree, its sapling days long gone — and luxuriate in the smell of a fresh kill — meaty and tangy, like all good tropical fowl — still hooked in her beak. A clear runway of sky, a few picturesque snow-topped mountains in the distance, her eaglet safe in his nest atop the spear-like Douglas fir just over the next ridge — what else could a griffin want?

It had been a long incubation period with the eggs. Over a month. Even with nest exchanges, allowing Sir Griffith to occasionally take his turn perching on two agate eggs the size of good-sized gourds, her powerful front talons still craved something to crush in their grip. (Continue Reading…)

Peppermint Tea

by Rachel Gutin

Simi huddled in their borrowed coat and tried not to shiver as they reached for the stuffed roll their housemate had set out for them. No matter how many down coats and thick woolen sweaters Kari lent them, they couldn’t shake the chill from their bones. They ached to be back home, where winter never got this cold.

But home meant Gran, and Gran was gone now. Had it really been six weeks since she died? (Continue Reading…)