BENNETT SIMS is the author of the novel A Questionable Shape and the collection White Dialogues. His fiction has appeared in A Public Space, Conjunctions, and Electric Literature, and his work has received the Bard Fiction Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome. He teaches fiction at the University of Iowa.
AMBER SPARKS is the author of The Unfinished World: And Other Stories and And I Do Not Forgive You: Stories and Other Revenges, both from Liveright. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Tin House, Granta, The Cut, The Paris Review, and other publications.
ANDREW F. SULLIVAN is the author of the novel Waste and the short story collection All We Want Is Everything. His fiction has appeared in Hazlitt, The New Quarterly, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and other publications. Sullivan lives in Hamilton, Ontario, where he works at an urban planning and design firm.
ESHANI SURYA is a writer based in Greenville, South Carolina. Her writing has appeared in or is forthcoming in Catapult, Paper Darts, Joyland, and Literary Hub, among other publications. She was the 2016 winner of the Ryan R. Gibbs Award for Flash Fiction from New Delta Review. Surya is also a Flash Fiction Reader at Split Lip Magazine. She holds an MFA from the University of Arizona in Tucson. Find her online at @__eshani.
LENA VALENCIA’s fiction has appeared in CRAFT, Joyland, The Masters Review, 7x7 LA, and elsewhere. She teaches at Catapult, the Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop, and One Story, where she is also the managing editor. She is the recipient of a 2019 Elizabeth George Foundation Grant and received her MFA in fiction from The New School.
MATTHEW VOLLMER is the author of Future Missionaries of America, Inscriptions for Headstones, Gateway to Paradise, and Permanent Exhibit. He teaches at Virginia Tech.
TROY L. WIGGINS is an award-winning writer and editor from Memphis, Tennessee. His short fiction and essays have appeared in Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History, Memphis Noir, Fireside Magazine, Memphis Flyer, PEN America, and on Tor.com. Wiggins formerly edited the World Fantasy Award–winning FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, and is the 2019 Coger Memorial Hall of Fame inductee for his contributions to speculative fiction in Memphis.
CHAVISA WOODS is the author of four books, including the short fiction collection Things to Do When You’re Goth in the Country and 100 Times: A Memoir of Sexism. Woods is a MacDowell Fellow and was the recipient of the Shirley Jackson Award in 2018, the Acker Award in writing, the Cobalt Prize for fiction, and was a three-time Lambda Literary Award finalist for fiction. Her work has received praise from The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, The Stranger, The Seattle Review of Books, Booklist, Electric Literature, PopMatters, The Rumpus, The Library Journal, and many other publications.
MICHELE ZIMMERMAN is a queer writer with an MFA in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work appears in Lockjaw Magazine, Psychopomp, and other publications. Two of her short stories have been Top-25 Finalists for the Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers, and in 2018 she was a Sundress Publications Best of the Net nominee. She lives with her partner and their two cats.
Index
ancestors 195, 240, 245
antique mirror 23
artificial leg 195, 199
banana 185
bathroom 74, 101, 177, 190, 207
- floor, curled on 113
- not used for sex 161
- of greasy yellow tiles 165
- with gauze and Merthiolate 84
man hiding in - 230
throwing up in - 103
beast
- who turns into a prince 25
five-headed - in heat 153
green - 88
hungry - 252
bird 9–10, 12, 19, 79–81, 84, 144, 173, 229
black - flying in circles 79
cloud of - 9
parakeet - 258
bone 20–21, 72, 107, 134, 149, 190, 192
bare -s protruding 189
- path 133
-colored Cape Cod house 73
-s creaking in protest 245
dry - 249
extra - in left heel 122
fingers as hard as - 91
hair and - 17
man- 147
brain 10
-like carnivorous plant stamen 53
dancing - to - 95
hungry for -s 167
broom
- raised like spear 216
broomsticks
legs like - 122
brother 30, 38, 50, 115, 117, 178, 180, 182
not like a - 28
burial
- at sea 125
- of one’s shadow 187
- wraith 162
camera 127, 192
police -s switched off at the time of gunshot 43
spinning in front of 51
trail - 171–75
carnivorous plant 53
carnival 4–5, 38, 163–64
cat 84
- in heat 50
- knocking keepsake 115
- meowing mournfully 83
cellar door 93
cemetery 128
-ies, trolls guarding 162
choose your own adventure 113
claw 21, 172, 176
- hammer 167
clatter
- of cloven hooves 230
cold patch 258
counternarrative
not around to offer a - 45
corpses 210
- of frozen climbers 125
cosmically positioned rock 240
creature 24–25, 68, 114, 143–44, 175, 197, 201, 206, 253
all God’s -s 93
- in shape of leg 195–96
- living in the basement 33–35
darkened hallway
naked and hairy in a - 102
demon 163, 230
- in art installation 47–50
- in the movie Legend 68
husbands defeating -s in video games 114
dog 4, 57, 96, 125, 127, 180, 187, 190–91, 236
- let out to pee 54
- park 25
- paws instead of human paws 26
- with crescent scar on face 186
good - 161
hot -s 34
Yorkie - 93
wild -s 126
gas mask 73–77
ghost 107–109, 111, 129, 242
- in painting 234
- of wheat 90
-ly white fingers 142
specific conditions -s only emerge under 106
gnarled horns 163
grimalkin 17
finger 9, 40, 56, 83, 91, 97, 102, 107, 121, 128, 141–44, 147, 166, 181, 188, 191, 206–207, 236, 244, 255, 258
final - of liquor 62
-s in bubbling mud 141
long-nailed - 39
-nails 179, 243
severed vampire -s 173–74
lick
- of the neck 158
-ed lips 80
-ed nose 96
-ed toes by foam 115
man’s face
- grinning 63
mask 181, 208
gas - 73–77
man named only the - 177
maze 127, 129, 142
meat 61, 88–90
always hungry for - 50
- stew 121
pink - of heel 76
thin strips of - 213
two slabs of - 212
milk 237
human - 219–24
-ing of toxins 247, 249–50
moaning 50, 116
moonlight 109, 142, 183
morgue 161
mother 9–14, 18–20, 29–30,
