Tiny Nightmares

by Lincoln Michel

  “Time for what?”

  “I didn’t need your blood, just for you to step across my hate.” At that moment, Darius’s right foot throbbed. Ms. Harriet continued. “Fred got no right being my ancestor. But I’ll let him use me. I sure will,” she said in her own voice. Then, in Fred’s:

  “Tote that barge! Lift that bale!”

  Unbidden, the two men’s bodies began to move, their bones creaking in protest.

  “IknewitIknewit,” Tavis whimpered. “Oh Godddddd—”

  “They never found my baby. Not one piece of him. But it was never their job to find him.”

  “Ms. Harriet,” Darius said, tears rimming his eyes. “Please—”

  “Not their job,” the old woman shouted, baring her last two teeth that them. “It’s yours. Tote that barge! Lift that bale!”

  “No,” Darius gasped as his body shuffled toward the water. It seeped over his ankles, his knees, and it was all he could do to turn to Tavis, who was straining to look at him as well. Tavis’s expression was blank, faraway. They were chest-deep when he said:

  “I’m tired of living, D. But I’m not scared of dying.”

  As his head went beneath the surface of the muddy water, Darius heard Ms. Harriet sing in Fred’s voice one final time.

  “Pull that rope. Until you dead.”

  Joy, and Other Poisons

  VAJRA CHANDRASEKERA

  We learn to milk our toxins and history calms the fuck down. Everything’s different since the glands were discovered.

  Every morning, after we brush our teeth—the gums are too sensitive after the milking—we go out into the world and find a partner. We sit down and we take turns to comb our hair and pick our nits. We unhinge our jaws and put on thick rubber gloves and put our hands in each other’s mouth. Some like it barehanded. We stare into our eyes while our hands quest along our gums and press to make each fang come erect.

  It has to be done one fang at a time, with plastic collection vials no larger than a thumb. It takes about half a minute to drain each side, uncomfortable but intimate, and pleasurable in that subdued way left to us after we squeezed fierce joy out of our mouths and poured it down the sink. We are pleasantly anhedonic. It aches a little.

  At first we were surprised that the glands and the fangs had gone unnoticed for so many centuries, but then we milked ourselves dry of surprise, too. Everything seems normal now. We take the world in stride.

  The primary duct transports toxins to the accessory gland, where forgetfulness is secreted into the mix before it is allowed into the secondary duct, which exits into the hollow solenoglyphous fang. The fang lies flat and hidden when not in use; the human fang is unique in that we use it to bite not only one another but ourselves. We forget bites instantly, losing seconds each time. Our mouths ache for no reason. We think we must have bitten our tongues. The bite may be unconscious or willed: forgetfulness means we can’t tell after the fact. It is now believed that historically elevated suicide rates for dentists are due to their being unknowingly bitten too often.

  Still, relatively little is known about the nature and mechanism of the glands. The pace of research is slow since we milked ourselves free of burning curiosity and ambition and most of what once constituted individuality, but so is the pace of apocalypse. The discovery of the glands comes too late to save the world, but we are free of grieving. We decide to go gentle into that good night.

  We are in no hurry to live or die. We won’t have any more children, that’s all.

  We bow our heads to sea and storm, to the unforgiving sun, the choking air. We have achieved equanimity. We are neither overly excited nor despairing to be the last of our kind.

  After each daily milking, we dispose of the collection vials full of clear and dangerous liquid. Most are poured out and the vials recycled. Some are kept for manufacturing antivenom—it’s still needed on the front lines, in those few remaining places where deniers hold out against detoxification.

  There’s a denier enclave near us, too.

  Some days we volunteer to fight on the barricades. Some days we picnic by the river. Some days we die, run through by denier bayonets as we try to overwhelm their defenses through sheer numbers. Some days we make love on the riverbank under the beating sun, naked and free. Fear and shame are gone from us.

  We have mostly freed ourselves from hope, but we retain enough of it—a little residual pooling in the glands, we think—to believe that the biosphere will thrive once humans are gone. We think it could still be beautiful.

  We have no rage, but we have made our decision. The deniers may not be allowed to rebuild the old world, because if let loose again, they will scour the earth to a dry bone.

  We still have love, you see—without jealousy or ego. We love the world so much and want it to be well when we’re gone. But we know it needs us to be gone.

  If the deniers persist in their sorties and their missions and their quests, we will continue to swarm their barricades in our millions.

  If the deniers keep sending us courage-crazed heroes, we will hold them down with a hundred hands and milk them free. So many of us started out that way. We remember the moments our hearts cleared and we looked up at the sea of calm faces above us, the gentle hands deep in our unhinged mouths.

  We will never stop coming. We know they think of us as the monsters.

  Visiting Hours

  LILLIAM RIVERA

  Right before the nurse wheels her man in to surgery, Vilma’s stomach growls loudly. She rests her hand on her extended belly as if she can comfort the growing baby inside. The gesture does nothing. Instead, her stomach barks back. Nothing can ever quell this hunger no matter how hard she tries to stay atop it.

  “Shut up,” Vilma mutters under her breath.

  The anesthetician gives her a condescending look, the look she’s been receiving ever since she arrived at the hospital at the crack of dawn to check him in.

  “We’ll take good care of him,” the anesthetician says, although Vilma hadn’t asked a question. Isn’t it their job to take care of him?

  Vilma’s boyfriend, Rogelio, stares at the ceiling. He doesn’t look at Vilma, as if by doing so the hard exterior he’s spent years cultivating will break down. The man who has it all under control. The one who whispered, “I’ll take care of you,” when he found out Vilma was pregnant. Even back then she thought of leaving his ass and still wishes she had but now it’s too late. She’s stuck with Rogelio, his clogged-up arteries, and this hungry beast inside her for who knows how long.

  “We have your phone number. We’ll call you when we’re done,” the nurse says. She hands Vilma saltine crackers and motions for her to go. “Don’t forget to drink water.”

  The baby in her belly kicks as if the nurse is talking to him. Vilma doesn’t say bye to Rogelio. He wouldn’t respond to her even if she did. He’s too busy trying not to freak out. She should at least offer him a prayer. Something. Instead she walks to the waiting room.

  The room is filled with people. Families jostle to find an outlet to charge their phones. The television is tuned to the morning show, where everyone is way too chatty and happy.

  “Here, please sit down.” A man offers his seat. She declines. She doesn’t want to sit even though her ankles are swollen. Vilma doesn’t want any part of it. They said it would take two hours for the surgery. Roughly, they said. Two hours in this hospital with these people. She can feel it. Their anxiety.

  Vilma tears open the crackers and eats. The baby calms down. She finds a seat a short distance from the waiting room in a quieter section. The only people walking through this area are the nurses’ aids taking their break and whispering into their phones. A black-and-white picture of Judy Garland hangs on the wall facing Vilma. The actress wears heavy eyeliner and a cigarette dangles lazily from her hand. She leans against Mickey Rooney, her face worn and tired. Vilma wonders who decided this picture of a trash-looking Dorothy would be the feel-good decoration for a hospital. Vilma can see her own r
eflection in the framed picture. She’s still angry at her short cut, a display of rage after Rogelio told her about the surgery. The baby kicks again. She tries to nudge the ravenous thing away from what feels like her ribs. She can barely breathe. How much longer does she have to endure it before this creature leaves her?

  An old woman sits right next to Vilma although there are plenty of empty seats around her. The woman wears worn bedroom slippers from which her toes poke out. Her toenails are long and stained black. The oversized denim jacket that covers her multiple shirts is much too big for her small frame. The woman clasps tightly to the chair as if she’s on a ride.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” the woman says. “This is a bad place for a baby.”

  The woman’s voice sounds familiar in a way that Vilma can’t quite place. Her breath smells of eggs. The stench is so strong and Vilma can feel her nausea rising.

  “I don’t care. I don’t care about this baby or this stupid hospital,” Vilma says, annoyed. “He said he would take care of us. I should have known. Trapped with this freaking thing inside me.”

  Vilma’s ankles throb from standing too long. She should move but she won’t. The old woman’s breathing is as labored as Vilma’s. They both sit staring at the picture of Judy Garland for a long time.

  Rogelio’s surgeon wears black sneakers. When he walks toward her and the old lady, the sneakers make a squeaking sound.

  “There was so much scar tissue, my instrument bent,” the surgeon says. Vilma tries to picture that, a knife bending inside Rogelio’s chest.

  “Your husband aged me twenty years,” the surgeon says with a chuckle. Vilma doesn’t laugh. “You can both see him in recovery soon.”

  “She’s not with me,” Vilma says. The doctor doesn’t hear her. He continues telling her details from the surgery she doesn’t understand. When the doctor leaves, the old lady mutters to herself. Vilma gets up and the old lady stays looking at the photo.

  The sight of his tears sickens her. He was supposed to be tending to her, not the other way around.

  “Please don’t leave me,” Rogelio says. He won’t stop.

  “We can get a cot for you,” the nurse offers, and now it’s official. Vilma will spend the night in the hospital.

  Vilma swore she would never get sucked into the sameness. Rogelio was fun at first. They did the wildest things. Then he kept eating everything. She couldn’t stand to hear him chew with his mouth open.

  The cot is uncomfortable and her stomach won’t stop making noises. Rogelio is out cold, high on drugs she can’t even pronounce. Vilma stands and walks to the vending machine. The empty waiting room feels off. She inserts a couple of dollar bills and selects a Snickers bar.

  Who made this decision to live this life? she thinks. How did she fall down this hole? Vilma walks up to the Judy Garland photo, and with her finger smears a little bit of chocolate on Judy’s face. There’s a sound of shuffling behind her.

  “Don’t you have a home?” Vilma snaps. She doesn’t like being spied on. Doesn’t want to continue to smell the sourness of this stranger’s body. She doesn’t want any of this—the hospital, that stupid cot, this greedy parasite inside her, and this moment right now.

  “I know what to do,” the old woman says.

  She reaches out and touches Vilma’s belly.

  “A hospital isn’t a place for a baby,” she says.

  Vilma’s stomach no longer growls with hunger. Instead, there’s a stillness so unsettling that Vilma gasps.

  The old woman just smiles.

  Parakeets

  KEVIN BROCKMEIER

  Not long ago there lived a man with three pet parakeets: the first appareled in jewel tones of green and yellow, the second with a blue brow that faded into a creamy purple breast, and the third an albino with a beanbag- like belly. Every day from dawn to dusk their chattering permeated the man’s sunroom, all blond wood and arched windows. It was the most calming space in the house, his sunroom, but for a single perplexing defect—a frigid patch against the back wall, roughly the size of a water tank. How was it, the man wondered, that even in high summer, at three thirty in the afternoon, when his shirt was pasted to his back with sweat, he would feel an alarming chill whenever he passed behind the sofa and to the immediate left of his credenza? Sometimes, walking in or out of the room, he would pause before he had emerged from the temperature well just to appreciate the sense of disorientation it caused him: two-thirds of his body warm and comfortable, yet the ice lopping off an arm or a leg, a slice of his foot, the escarpment of his shoulder. One day the man was polishing his hardwoods when, to access a section of the floor, he moved the birdcage into the cold patch. A silence enshrouded the birds. Their feathers flattened. Whether through tiredness or simple absentmindedness, the man neglected to restore the cage to its spot in the corner, and by the next morning, when he returned, the perches and wires were covered in a verdigris of frost. As he approached, the parakeets stood at attention. Try as he might, he had never been able to extend their vocabulary beyond a few basic words: birdseed, not-now, pretty-bird, night-night. Yet now, so quietly he would not have heard them if the air conditioner had not clicked off, the first bird said, “I do not know where I am.” And the second said, “I deserve another chance.” And “The wind here is so bitter and it never stops,” said the albino. The man felt as if someone had emptied a breath onto the nape of his neck. A marshy smell rose from his armpits. He had always enjoyed riddles, even insoluble ones, but there were riddles and then there were riddles. He instructed himself to move the cage back to the corner. Do it. Do it. But the cold of the copper bit his fingers to the skeleton. He flinched. He backed away. Without thinking, because he had said it so many times before, he asked, “Who’s a pretty bird?” The parakeets eyed him with a daunting directness. “Is someone there? Will you speak up? Let us out. Come closer. I can almost hear you. Come closer. Come closer. Let us out.” Between the bars of the cage everything was green and yellow like the grass at daybreak, or blue and violet like the last brush of the evening, or fat and white like the sun pinned in the sky, until he reached for the latch and the darkness rushed in.

  Permissions Acknowledgments

  “Harold” first appeared in Gigantic. Copyright © 2013 by Selena Gambrell Anderson. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Parakeets.” Copyright © 2020 by Kevin Brockmeier. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Lifeline.” Copyright © 2020 by J. S. Breukelaar. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Mask, the Ride, the Bag.” Copyright © 2020 by Chase Burke. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Twenty-First-Century Vetala.” Copyright © 2020 by Amrita Chakraborty. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Joy, and Other Poisons.” Copyright © 2020 by Vajra Chandrasekera. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Owner.” Copyright © 2020 by Whitney Collins. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Barrow Wight.” Copyright © 2020 by Josh Cook. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Guess.” Copyright © 2020 by Meg Elison. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Leg.” Copyright © 2020 by Brian Evenson. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “We’ve Been in Enough Places to Know.” Copyright © 2020 by Corey Farrenkopf. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Resplendence of Disappearing.” Copyright © 2020 by Iván Parra Garcia, translated by Allana C. Noyes. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Fingers.” Copyright © 2020 by Rachel Heng. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Wheat Woman.” Copyright © 2020 by Theresa Hottel. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Rearview.” Copyright © 2020 by Samantha Hunt. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Caravan.” Copyright © 2020 by Pedro Iniguez. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Lone.” Copyright © 2020 by Jac Jemc. Reprinted by per
mission of the author.

  “Pincer and Tongue.” Copyright © 2020 by Stephen Graham Jones. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Marriage Variations.” Copyright © 2020 by Monique Laban. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Doggy-Dog World” first appeared in Paper Darts. Copyright © 2016 by Hilary Leichter. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Pictures of Heaven.” Copyright © 2020 by Ben Loory. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Cedar Grove Rose” first appeared in The Halloween Review. Copyright © 2019 by Canisia Lubrin. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Gabriel Metsu, Man Writing a Letter, c. 1664–66.” Copyright © 2020 by Helen McClory. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “#MOTHERMAYHEM.” Copyright © 2020 by Jei D. Marcade. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Human Milk for Human Babies.” Copyright © 2020 by Lindsay King-Miller. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Candy Boii.” Copyright © 2020 by Sam J. Miller. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “We Came Here for Fun.” Copyright © 2020 by Alana Mohamed. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Katy Bars the Door.” Copyright © 2020 by Richie Narvaez. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Unhaunting.” Copyright © 2020 by Kevin Nguyen. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Carbon Footprint.” Copyright © 2020 by Shelly Oria. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Visiting Hours.” Copyright © 2020 by Lilliam Rivera. Reprinted by permission of the author.