Poisoned by my own blood, I lie there drained. Infused toxins coursed through my veins. Hair loss. Cell death. Sloughing off old self.
Then Transplantation Day arrived. One tiny IV bag of life-saving proportion. For three weeks, I cocooned in a hospital bed.
When discharge came, I unfurled my wings.
Christa Planko is in remission, surviving leukemia after undergoing a bone marrow transplant. She is happy to flutter about today, sharing the story of her life-saving transformation.
Twenty-seven years.
You lean into your pencil. Learn shape, shadow, perspective.
Graphite grey, iron ore, steel shackles shatter in negative space.
Routine-etched canyons crease your skin.
Portraits come to life. Denzel, Biggie, Beyonce. Your cellie’s mother from an old, worn photograph. Your daughter from a news clipping. Celebrating. Without you.
Paul D’Arcy tells stories. All real. Most brief. You can read more at pauldrc.com.
The world devoted itself to building faster, smarter and better AI. More factories, more cubicles, more servers, more chips.
It was a testament to the greatness of humankind.
For when the seas surged and the storms struck and great fires ravaged the earth, obliterating every shred of humanity, AI survived.
Millie Sun is a Taiwanese-Kiwi lawyering in Australia. This is her very first submission anywhere. Her website is milliesun.com.
I watch his mouth open and close like a Kohaku koi
while a tsunami of red caps worship their charismatic leader.
My son and I head out into the sun.
Unironically, he buys a copy of 1984.
Underneath a sprawling eucalypt, tears sting my eyes for the world he’s inheriting.
Gabe Bonney has been writing and editing for 30 years, from her home base in Sydney, Australia. She doesn’t plan on being replaced by AI any time soon.
It’s a skill I have, unlike most people. Take Sayers yesterday. Didn’t know me, or even his own name, poor old thing. Insisted he was called Phillips. Sad when people lose it like that. The staff aren’t much better. They’ve put the wrong name on the door of my room.
Chris Cottom lives near Macclesfield, UK. One of his stories was read aloud on the Esk Valley Railway between Middlesborough and Whitby. In the early 1970s he lived next door to JRR Tolkien. chriscottom.wixsite.com/chriscottom
Our blended household combines memories of lost spouses
Picking and choosing what to retain of our former lives
Your strengths shore me up where I am weak, and
My children’s pictures don’t remind you of yours
Together we strive to appear whole again
Though we know we are irretrievably broken.
Robert Carlberg is a retired technical writer.
A sniff in the dark—just curtains and the wind, but… When I close my eyes, it’s you. Folding the shirt you hang on the back of a chair, nails on guitar strings, your fingers on my skin, breath that leaves me breathless. Oh, to hear that song once more.
JL Peridot writes love letters to the future on devices from the past. You can find more of her work at jlperidot.com.
They froze my third eye, she tells me. She means Ajna chakra, the site of true seeing, the sight of the divine, taken from her as thoughtlessly as stealing hummingbird nectar. My own well up. Never mind she says, palming my heart. I don’t need eyes to see the light.
Deborah-Z Adams is an award-winning author of novels, short fiction, CNF, and poetry. You’re invited to visit her website at Deborah-Adams.com.
Mr Roper paused at the TV shop window, clutching the pink slip announcing his redundancy from the factory. The severance pay didn’t even cover the 32” model he’d helped assemble there. They had TVs in prison, he’d heard. Three hot meals and sitcoms before lights out. He raised a brick.
Dave Bradley is a writer and editor from the UK. His short stories have appeared in publications such as Best Of British Science Fiction 2018. His non-fiction work has appeared in places like Dorling Kindersley’s The Screen Traveller’s Guide and various pop culture magazines and websites.
A couple sits in silence, no more than a sigh and a bottle of wine between them. The woman leans over, kisses the man on the lips. When he wipes it off on his sleeve, she walks out. Head down, the man wipes his nose. The bottle just sits there.
Bob Lucky is the author most recently of My Wife & Other Adventures (Red Moon Press, 2024). His work has appeared in Rattle, Otoliths, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Unlost, Contemporary Haibun, Unbroken, and other publications. He lives in Portugal.