Why a Spider Needs a Parachute

by J. L. Akagi

I was the only person who knew that my friend Haru wasn’t a woman. They told me so a long time ago, but I only saw Haru as they were once.

The story goes like this.

It was the kind of New York summer that began in May. The hot wind up the coast brought in tropical storms and giant Joro spiders. The humidity created a jungle mist in Brooklyn so dense I couldn’t discern what was condensation and what was spider web. On my treks to the subway each morning, I’d walk face-first into at least one of the webbed parachutes the giant spiders used to glide.

Haru and I spent most weekends waiting out the heat, crowded in front of Haru’s window AC unit. Even in the airflow, I poured sweat from my temples and pits, but Haru remained dry. Never a silken hair out of place. This was something I suspected men loved about Haru: their physical and mental composure. Men loved feeling as if Haru needed nothing. (Continue Reading…)

Last Train from Deadwall Part TWO of Two

by André Geleynse

The second time Knucklebone tried to kill himself didn’t work out any better than the first.

Sometimes, during the endless months of repair work on the endless track, Knucklebone and the other mechanical revenants amused themselves by crushing coins and other small bits of metal under the wheels of the train. Coins would fly off into the gravel bed, pancaked into paper-thin discs. Nails became miniature swords and tiny cogs spread into misshapen stars. The construction crew collected the most interesting shapes, trading them among themselves as an underground currency.

There wasn’t much that could crush a piece of hammered titanium, such as the one that housed Knucklebone’s aether core. But he was willing to bet that six-hundred tons of iron and bone just might get the job done. (Continue Reading…)

Last Train from Deadwall PART ONE of Two

by André Geleynse

The first time Knucklebone tried to kill himself, he’d already been dead for one hundred and thirteen years. He’d died in a workplace accident, which meant it was within their legal rights for the Cogsmith Railroad Company to bind his soul to his reanimated skeleton and hand him the invoice. Ten thousand chits for the soft tissue removal alone, plus a hundred thousand more for the brass gears, pneumatic muscles, aether core, and an impressively shitty diesel-powered engine to pilot his skeleton.

Knucklebone made about six chits a day. His family had written him off entirely after his death, so outside help was right out. After the first two decades of undead servitude, he’d learned about compounding interest and realized paying off his debt simply wasn’t possible this side of eternity. He’d have to find another way out. (Continue Reading…)