Issue 135 December 2024

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Editorial: Imagining a Future

by Rebecca Halsey

December 5, 2024

Does anyone have visions these days? Or is it just authors?

As I write this essay, the global climate summit ends with no commitment regarding moving away from fossil fuels. At one point during negotiations, representatives from the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) walked out in protest. It seems pretty certain that we will surpass the 1.5°C desired limit first proposed and agreed to in the Paris Agreement.

And here I am, trying to become something of a prophet.

What comes of us all? Will it affect my kids? My grandkids, assuming I have any? It’s so hard to tell, and the feeling is a bit like waiting for the other shoe to drop.

In search of a vision of the future, I have been periodically working my way through Michael J. Benton’s Extinctions: How Life Survives, Adapts and Evolves. This text has been both frightening and reassuring—frightening because the biggest die-off of species occurred in conjunction with a rapid increase in temperature (a.k.a. “Hyperthermic event”) back in the late Permian.

So many plants died, there were no roots to hold soil in place and massive landslides have been recorded in fossil beds.

So many animals died, there’s a gap in fossil fuel creation. No life means no decaying carbon to create oil.

And yet, life came back. Earth continued. On the other side of death is rebirth. We see it every year, we celebrate it every year, at this time of year. On the other side of darkness—light.

For this reason, I’m thrilled to see a candle in the foreground of this month’s cover art, which was custom made by Kirsty Greenwood using a technique in which she marbles paper by hand, then uses the variations in the design to inform an overall sketch. Something akin to divination if you ask me.

Within this issue, I wanted to place stories that moved forward in time. We start in the present day with “The Caged Budgerigars” by Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar. I could have selected any number of pieces about the changing world, but I went with this portrayal of a woman struggling with her inability to have children because it mirrors the intimacy of another mother’s story within this issue—”A Soft and Silent Glow” by Liz J. Bradley, which takes place in a distant, dystopian future.

But before we get there we have to survive the relatively near future. Emma Burnett’s story, “Plastic-eating fungus caused doomsday[2][3],” shows us how even our best intentions can go horribly awry. And, in “Why I Quit Teaching at the Villain Academy,” Tina S. Zhu depicts a sharply split (purposefully divided even) community in the epicenter of climate catastrophe.

Beyond the disasters many have predicted, what will come? In “Bone Birds Fly,” Malda Marlys suggests it will be stark, but even among this bleak landscape, her heroine Grace is determined to make connections to others that might have survived.

Finally, we recover.

By and large, concerns for social order, AI takeovers, and climate catastrophe are clearly inspiring a lot of the fiction that we receive here at FFO. But I wanted to end this issue (and this year) with a vision of the future that is hopeful. We leave 2024 with D.A. Straith’s “A Year in the Life of the Drowned Wastewater Plant East of Bellmarsh Village.” Straith gives the ecosystem itself a voice, and treats the presents of a lone human as a good thing, as a sign of restoration.

* * *

Acknowledgements

This concludes a full year of issues for me as the editor-in-chief of FFO. I want to say a big thank you to the entire staff of the magazine. I couldn’t possibly put out an issue every month without their help. Another big thanks goes to our patrons, without which we wouldn’t be able to pay our authors and artists. And a very very special thanks goes to my friends and family who didn’t blink an eye when I told them I acquired a fiction magazine last year.

I still have so much I want to do. We just received our letter of determination from the IRS officially giving us 501(c)(3) status. And I very much want to rebuild our website, providing more intuitive access to our archives.

Here’s to a new year filled with hope in the face of uncertainty!

* * *

Ⓒ Rebecca Halsey

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The Caged Budgerigars

by Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar

December 6, 2024

My eleven-year-old son Wasim slides his book bag from his shoulders and runs towards the new birdcage, his eyes brimming with excitement.

“Thank you for these beautiful birds, Ammi,” he says.

“Glad you like them,” I ruffle his hair.

He peers at the silent birds, then scrolls through my phone and reads, “These birds are budgerigars, not parrots. The one with the brown spot above its beak is the male, and the other is the female.” He furrows his brow to think hard. “We’ll call them Raja and Rani. Okay?”

I smile and ruffle his hair. “Yes. Whatever you say.”

Wasim asked for winged pets on his birthday because Salman next door has a talking parrot. I inquired in the neighborhood and found the number of a local bird dealer. This young man with a long scar on his right cheek and a silver earring dangling from his left lobe brought me two birds—yellow-green as ripening mangoes.

“This pot is for nesting when the birds are ready.” The earringed man pointed to the clay pot, open on one side, hanging in the center of the slatted cage. His eyes drilled into mine as I pulled the dupatta over my head for modesty. “Don’t disturb them when they’re in there.”

After a week of making video clips and feeding bajra seeds to the birds, Wasim’s interest fades. The budgerigars become my companions. They watch me as I roll out rotis and serve them hot for my husband before he leaves for his carpenter shop. Not a word is said between us. After having Wasim, I had two miscarriages followed by a stillbirth. Now, my husband doesn’t talk to me, doesn’t take me out, doesn’t reach his arm to find me in bed.

“You should thank Allah that the man hasn’t brought home a new wife,” my mother says when I complain to her over the phone.

 I try to teach the birds to say, “Allah, Muhammad,” as Salman’s parrot does before launching into a litany of “sister fucker, mother fucker, dog fucker,”—words it has picked up from rotten-mouthed ruffians roaming the alleys of our neighborhood. Wasim tells me that the budgerigars can’t mimic human language; they are different from parrots.

After a month of hopping around the cage, the birds sequester themselves in the nesting pot. I remember the earringed man’s words. Rani might be ready to lay eggs. I feel a sting of envy as Raja swoops down to the feeding bowl and brings seeds and nuts to Rani, feeding her lovingly with his beak.

One morning, I find Rani lying on the cage floor with Raja squawking and flapping around her. “Her egg might be stuck,” Wasim reads from my phone before leaving for school.

I remember the painful clenching of my abdomen when the midwife fed me a bitter potion to induce the stillbirth. Putting my petty envy aside, I embark on helping this budgerigar mother. I call the earringed man. He mixes a pill in the birds’ water bowl with his veiny hands, the hawk tattoo on his arm peeking from his short sleeves.

“This will ease her out,” he says, eyeing my cleavage through the neckline of my kameez. Although his gesture is downright lewd, I enjoy the attention to my assets—still firm, having suckled only one child.

He caresses Rani’s head with his dirt-nailed finger wedged between the cage slats. After Raja drops the medicinal water into Rani’s beak, she’s back on her feet, tilting her head to look at the man with grateful eyes.

“Good girl, brave girl,” the earringed man says, exhaling with relief. “Once she lays the eggs, they’ll take 21 days to hatch.” He presses a hand on my shoulder, his armpits reeking of cheap perfume, his clothes soiled with bird excrement. “Don’t worry, call me anytime.”

Rani flies back into the nesting pot. Later, I see two pale eggs tucked under her. I mark the day on my calendar. Now, whenever Rani ventures out of the nesting pot, Raja pecks at her, commanding her to resume egg duty.  Male dominance prevails in all species. Yet, I don’t interfere. The budgerigars know better than me to care for the eggs.

I observe the nesting pot during the day, shine a flashlight at night to make sure the birds are alright, my ears waiting for the weak trill of a baby. It’s the 23rd day when I see the two eggs lying unguarded on the cage floor beside the water bowl. Raja and Rani are quiet in the nesting pot above, averting their eyes from the fragile ovals.

“These eggs are bad,” Wasim says, his fingers playing on my phone. “The parent birds have abandoned them.”

Birds know. I waited for the midwife to tell me after the baby’s movement inside me stopped for a week.

Guilt pricks my skin—the curse of my womb has rubbed onto the caged budgerigars. Their sad little faces peek out from the pot, their feathers puffed up, their beaks clamped shut. One in grief, they stare into a common nothingness. I try to lure them out with a sprig of fresh coriander—something they used to fight over—but they don’t budge.

I mop the floor, dust the furniture, and scrub the dishes to take my mind off. Yet, the pain overpowers me, flings me on the floor, curled up, my knees touching my elbows. The abandoned eggs stare at me accusingly.

I pick up the phone to call my mother but pause, doubt that she’ll be any comfort.

The alleys outside seem uncharacteristically quiet. No vegetable vendors or fake pashmina peddlers screaming their wares. No children fighting over torn kites. No ruffians guffawing or cussing.

Next door Salman’s bird breaks the ominous silence, “Fuck the world, fuck everyone.”

I rise from the floor and swipe away my mother’s number. My fingers scroll and find “Earringed Man” in the contacts list and press call.

* * *

Ⓒ Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar

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Plastic-eating fungus caused doomsday[2][3]

by Emma Burnett

December 10, 2024

Science Fiction

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the End of Plastic (2029) article, about the Tremella purgare fungus, released into the Gulf of Mexico following the TransAm War Oil Spill, and the knock-on impact of the attempted bioremediation. This page has been listed as a level-3 vital article in Earth. If you can improve it, please do.

 

Deadly fungi?

Can an expert in this field please expand on or link to the meaning of ‘deadly fungus’ in the opening sentence. Deadly fungi is a disambiguation page and as a non-expert I am uncertain whether it applies here. -8ditor

 

Update details

There’s some updated research explaining the spreading mechanism the fungi used to move from sea to land. The spores eject hard, and once airborne, can latch on to any oil-based synthetic material, and then they grow and digest it. Here’s the ref: (Spread of mycelium oil to plastics) -jamirazzz

Dumping an untested fungus into the environment like they’ve learned nothing from biological pest control. -8ditor

I think it was tested (Lab Results – FUNGUS.PDF). Just not well enough, I guess. -SamePanicDifferentDisco

 

Article name

Doomsday doesn’t seem like a good fit for this article. It’s supposed to focus on the introduction of the oil-digesting fungus introduced into the Gulf of Mexico. -Kinoko

It does that in section one tho, look: Development and introduction into the ecosystem. It’s causing major chaos. -DoraTheExSpora

Chaos isn’t the same as doomsday. Suggest re-naming to ‘Unintended consequences of fungal petrochemical control.’ -Kinoko

 

Remove image

The picture of mushrooms sliced up on pizza can be confusing and may be dangerous. -thatplantguy

All suggestions that T purgare fungus might be edible in the future should be removed to prevent potentially fatal mistakes. This includes any links to edible fungi in the initial description. -jamirazzz

 

Level-3 change to Level-2

Can an expert please confirm whether we can upgrade this page from Level-3 to Level-2 to reflect the current shitstorm now that plastic everywhere is basically disappearing? -Kinoko

I second this, the damage it’s causing to health equipment is crazy! 

[This guy’s pacemaker disintegrated]. 

And there was that airplane that got holes in it while it was flying. Look: [Watch this airplane turn into swiss cheese!] -DoraTheExSpora

That footage needs to come with a trigger warning. I’ve unlinked them from the article. -thatplantguy

 

Misleading statement: Jelly seas???

Section four talks about the fungus (fungi?) eating all the microplastics in the ocean. But it talks about the seas turning to jelly, which is a misnomer. Sure, they’re more solid than previously, but when the plastics are all consumed, the fungi will die and it’ll become water again. -47.71.232.208

Yeah, but that’s going to take a while. And look, [U gotta see this dude walking on water] and his shoes melt because of the doomfungus. Plus, all the fish and things are gonna die before the seas are free of microplastics.

Img.png

Img2.png -DoraTheExSpora

Is there a way to revoke edit access if DoraTheExSpora doesn’t stop posting triggering things? -thatplantguy

This stuff is really happening, though. You can’t deny it. -DoraTheExSpora

 

Death toll

Updated figures rolling in from accidents and medical issues in section four. Suggest this be moved up to the intro section to keep it easier to locate/update. Also have made a list of things that contain plastic that people might not expect to suddenly break down. Like clothes and orthopaedic implants. -SamePanicDifferentDisco

These figures are changing daily. Will add a link to the UN mortality stats page. -8ditor

 

Sealing off computing equipment/bunkers

Has anyone else moved into their prepper bunker? Just checking if they’ve managed to sterilise everything before sealing in. -jamirazzz

I just switched everything in the house over to metal. Like, the keyboard is an old metal typewriter that I rigged. -DoraTheExSpora

Remember that this is not a chat room. But, yes, everything in the bunker looks ok so far, everyone settling in. Nice to be away from the city, too. -SamePanicDifferentDisco

 

Temporary lag

Had to move to a new bunker, didn’t realise the sealant around the windows was sus. Plus, internet went down because a bunch of equipment got eaten. The UN mortality page has been moving too fast to keep this page updated. Suggest just putting a link in the page intro. -jamirazzz

I think we should big up the numbers, so more people take it serious. Not like this dude [Watch this fool explode after drinking water with doomshroom in it!] -DoraTheExSpora

Petition to ban DoraTheExSpora for recidivism. -thatplantguy

 

Any updates?

I noticed there’s not been any updates for a few days. Family bunker life is keeping me busy, and so is managing the water situation. The filters were not designed for this. -SamePanicDifferentDisco

 

Checking in

Internet has also been very patchy the past few days. But if anyone has any updates, please feel free to post here. It would be good to know how regular contributors from different parts of the world are doing. I heard on the news that the seas haven’t actually turned back to liquid yet, and that’s really impacting things like weather. It would be good to hear from you folks. -SamePanicDifferentDisco

 

Still not heard anything

It’s been a few weeks since the last post and there’s been no updates. I don’t know if that means your internet is just down, or worse. Some internet services must still be running, because the UN is still updating their death toll, and there’s still news coming in through the radio. Anyway, I hope you’re all doing ok. -SamePanicDifferentDisco

 

Steampunk saved me

Glad I went with metal! Even bunkers aren’t safe, look [Doomfungus ate thru insulation and got this family!] -DoraTheExSpora

* * *

Ⓒ Emma Burnett

Originally published in Nature:Futures, June 2024. Reprinted here by permission of the author.

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Why I Quit Teaching at the Villain Academy

by Tina S. Zhu

December 13, 2024

1. Because I never wanted to be a teacher in the first place.

2. Because I graduated from the South Florida Villain Academy with the goal of becoming a professional villain.

3. Because my father had always talked about how much he loved his villain gig, until he didn’t.

4. Because my telekinesis only worked during the new moon and the full moon, not consistently enough to be a government-certified, first-class villain or even a mere henchman.

5. Because I was stuck in a dead-end job, delivering pizza on a motorboat part-time outside the climate-controlled dome while working my way up from substitute teacher to full-time Villain Academy staff.

6. Because the pay was still shit even as a full-time teacher, but you got subsidized housing under the dome during the worst housing crunch in a generation.

7. Because villains were part of the problem, too.

8. Because my father was said to be the greatest villain of all time but had been reduced to broke trailer trash living outside the domes.

9. Because when my best student Ezra asked me whether he’d be able to afford a place under the dome big enough for their parents and siblings right after graduating, I lied and said yes.

10. Because my father refused to move in with me and leave his beloved hero livestream, reliving his glory days vicariously, all day, every day.

11. Because the fights were all staged and choreographed.

12. Because the public needed a distraction from the “once-a-century” superstorms and flooding that were now happening twice a year.

13. Because I organized this year’s Miami-Dade Hero School vs.Villain Academy Field Day livestream and wrote the script so that Ezra looked like he was about to get away with the golden trophy before the heroes pulled a buzzer beater to steal it back.

14. Because everyone loved an underdog story arc until the underdog was actually close to winning.

15. Because the rain during the Hero-Villain Battle of the Decade had turned into a thunderstorm, fucked up my father’s magnetic field powers, but didn’t fuck up his pride enough for him to want to accept my help after he couldn’t book any more villain gigs.

16. Because one day Ezra went home when it was raining and didn’t come back the next day.

17. Because Ezra’s parents were too busy watching the 24/7 streams to evacuate from the storm before the heavy rain came.

18. Because both the heroes and villains were too busy rescuing important people the day after to bother with families living outside the domes.

19. Because cliffhangers for staged action sequences were more exciting than boring rescue sequences without three-act story structure.

20. Because I took my old boat and visited my father’s trailer after school that evening, discovering nothing more than a few bloated wood planks.

21. Because the principal called with bad news about Ezra and his family.

22. Because it was a new moon.

23. Because I lost control of my powers on the way back from what had been my father’s home and caused a 7.0 earthquake.

24. Because I leveled both the Villain Academy and the Hero School and injured at least five heroes on the corporate payroll.

25. Because official reports attributed the quake to the remnants of fracking hundreds of years ago.

26. Because nobody wanted to admit they don’t know the real cause of the earthquake since it wasn’t preplanned for the streams.

27. Because I looted the ruins of the school for all the yearbooks I could find with Ezra in them and took the framed photo of my father from what was once the lobby.

28. Because the news kept playing that photo of my father, even though he had always hated the lighting and the angle it was taken from.

29. Because I dumped the yearbooks and the photo into the storm drain to lighten my load, the wet pages and cracked glass now free food for the gators and sharks rumored to live in the sewer system.

30. Because I fled into the swamps before the pros arrived to search for the real villain behind the earthquake. No self-respecting “champion” would ever venture outside of the domes and into the canals like a common pizza deliveryperson. If they want a villain, I’ll be their villain. Maybe I’ll finally make my old man proud when he sees me on the stream from his couch in the sky, watching me dodge heroes on my boat.

* * *

Ⓒ Tina S. Zhu

Comments

  1. Yvonne Eliot says:
    December 13, 2024 at 6:43 pm
    Oof. This hits hard. [Looks out window at world….]
  2. Erin says:
    December 29, 2024 at 11:41 am
    I frickin’ love this. Wild and angry and oh so very timely. I’ve read a lot of ‘list’ stories recently, but this one really got under my skin. It had lovely, crazy, satisfying immediacy.
  3. Lisa says:
    March 13, 2026 at 12:22 am
    This format is so neat! That was so much packed into a short read but the tension increasing with every “Because” was great. Awesome piece!

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Bone Birds Fly

by Malda Marlys

December 17, 2024

Bone birds fly with the tide they once knew. The tide’s a pitiful thing now, the sea so small, only a twitch in the rotting salt along the plastic pebbles of the beach. But bone birds are nothing but memory. If you raise a new wall in their way, they’ll beat themselves against it until they’re battered to dust.

If the wall falls, the dust rejoins its fellows, a year later or a century.

It’s not quite a living to net bone birds. But no one will question your sitting somewhere high, in the burned ghost of a barn or the skeletal crown of what was once a tree, if you’ve nothing better to do. They’re easy to catch, flying heedless as they do. Most people won’t try it. Bone birds are sharp. They don’t understand change, but the years they think they’re living in offered them enemies. They know how to bite.

I know how to be bitten.

They catch things, the bone birds. Tidings. Scraps. They’re faster than smoke sometimes, so when you land one freshly scorched, you’ve some warning of the next wildfire. You’ll find things wound around claws and caught in bone cages. Seeds. Trash. Littler birds, the alive kind.

Well. Usually not alive by then.

 I share the flotsam they bring from the sky, and so people in town let me be. But the reason I haul my sorry self up among the bone birds is to send things away.

I write. On cardboard and wrappers and fragments of newsprint, scratched into slate and stone, carved on driftwood.

Is it better where you are?

Do you have a name?

What is your sea like?

My mother called me Gracie.

How many fires this year?

Our last tree died last monsoon.

I saw a cat once.

There’s never space for more than a few words. I can’t claim I ever put much thought into them. I don’t even imagine anybody reading. I did when I was a child, and the habit of hope might be excused. I do it now to prove to myself I’m real. Sometimes I find a fragment of my own message still nestled in a bone bird’s ribs. I’m not sure how far they go, but they do come back.

Maybe they circle the world. They don’t remember how to stop. Our sea was something else, once, when the moon was whole and the ocean one fat, sleek monster.  She lives on in her thousand toxic daughters, but the bone birds belong to that rich and long dead sea, even where she’s gone, even where she burns.

I think somebody wrote me back once. The bit of wood was flat and slimy and faintly green. I could hardly read the words. Why was six afraid of seven? The rest was broken. I don’t wonder about that person. But I kept the relic until a rat ran off with it.

Even rats don’t bother me when I’m up in the sky. I crawl and climb at least as well as the bone birds fly. My legs have never done me any good. I had a wasting sickness as a child. It took my mother and half the town away clean.

But one or two less fit limbs than usual will tell. Even I’m not surprised when I overbalance and tumble from that last dead tree. People’ve expected it for years.

I haven’t time for a full thought as the sky rushes away. The crack comes. I feel it more than I hear it. Pain’s not the word. Maybe I don’t have live nerves enough for that. Maybe when everything is pain, nothing is.

It’s short. Nothing to be done. I don’t expect rescue. I think I hear shouts, but mostly it’s roaring. Then I don’t hear.

* * *

I have a little more sense than the bone birds. Sometimes I know I’m dead. The sea’s shrunken now, further from the ruins of my tree. No one lives here anymore, so no one minds me. I climb until I run out of height. If I don’t fall, I wait for the birds. And I write. Letters come much harder than they did. 

Gra

G

cie

tree

brds

fffffffffire

Sometimes its only scratching. But the birds don’t mind. And I haven’t run out of things to write on in ages. I have pieces of myself. When the last one goes, when the last tooth and knuckle and tendon are hidden in a bone bird’s beak, I hope that one finds a reader. I don’t mind if they’re dead, too. I just don’t like to think of the bone birds circling alone.

* * *

Ⓒ Malda Marlys

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A Soft and Silent Glow

by Liz J. Bradley

December 20, 2024

The fair market price of a single, undyed candlestick was one dollar. Not that anyone had dollars anymore. So Agnes Renfrew accepted all sorts of odds and ends and bits and bobs in exchange for the treasured beeswax tapers.

Each Wednesday, without fail, Mrs. Singleton would knock on her door, carrying a basket of pickled onions, or canned potatoes that she would exchange for seven candlesticks. She was a no-nonsense woman, who would never dream of displaying a candlestick decorated with green–or most shockingly red–in her window, so Agnes kept the more scandalous waxes in a drawer. They would barter, not because Agnes thought she was being taken advantage of, but because Mrs. Singleton would be offended if she didn’t. And like clockwork, she would exit her house and travel back down the lane a quarter of an hour later with an empty basket and seven bone-colored candles.

Mr. Tannenberry preferred to pay his visit on Thursdays. They were her slow days, and she never minded his lingering visits as he inspected her most intricately carved candles. Ever since his wife died of radiation poisoning a few years back, he had taken up her routines, and always traded generously, as if the more he paid, the greater the protection the candles would provide. Agnes pushed away this thought. She hadn’t felt the candles’ magic in years, and it brought an unpleasant pressure and heat to the space behind her eyes.

Agnes never voiced her thoughts about Mr. Tannenberry to anyone. Their time together felt sacred, suspended in a delicate bubble, keeping their separate sorrows at bay, if only for a time.  

Today, his chapped and wrinkled hand paused above the candles displayed in a regimented line like a squad of soldiers.

“Are they not to your liking?”

“No…it’s just,” he pulled back his hand. “I love when you have the ones that look like flowers.” Agnes knew this of course.

“Unfortunately, they take a bit more wax than the others, and lately since the bees disappeared…” Agnes looked away, her lips in a tight line.

“Do you ever think about going south?” The suggestion hovered, heavy in the air between them. “A young woman like you could make the journey. I’ve heard of safe zones–”

“Could you ever leave?”

“No.” He twisted the ring he still wore on his left hand.

A bitter taste flooded her mouth. Tannenbury would never understand. His wife died after a full life– he didn’t fail the way she had. She had gotten too comfortable in their wax scavenging trips to the narrow safe zones. A mother is supposed to protect her child. The rest of Tannenbury’s visit was tainted by a thick fog of guilt.

On Friday morning, the sun rose into an unusually clear blue sky. She smiled at the raucous knocking at her door. She opened it, and in a whirlwind of dust, a little blonde boy tumbled in.

“Ms. Renfrew,” the gap in his teeth and inattention of youth made her name sound like ‘Whenfoo.’ “Momma says I gotta get eight candles ‘cause it’s an extra special week!”

“Is it now?” she said with a grin, opening the drawer where his bundle of candles was already waiting.

“Yes!” He was practically vibrating. “It’s my birthday! Momma says I can light an extra candle on my birthday, and it will keep me safe all year!”

“She’s a smart lady,” Agnes said, unable to hide the smile on her face. She dug out a candle dyed a pale yellow from the springtime dandelions. The tiny flowers were some of the only pretty things left. Stubborn and undeterred, growing in the poisoned soil beyond the settlement. They reminded her of the boy, sprouting and reaching upwards toward the hazy skies. What a blessing to still have birthdays in this ruined world.

“Here, I’ve got a special candle just for you.”

The boy’s face lit up, and he chattered away as she added the candle to the bundle. She held out her hand, and he dutifully handed over the single shiny quarter. It was not enough. But he never had enough. Agnes turned around and slipped the coin behind the ribbon and tied a bow over it, as she always did.

“Now take this straight to your momma, and don’t shake it,” she said. The boy nodded, as he always did. On impulse, she ruffled his hair like she used to with her own son. The motion was so natural. The boy smiled and ran off, but Agnes’s chest went cold, and her vision blurred as she stared at the chunk of blond hair left tangled in her fingers.

Night came quickly. Agnes sat at her table, melting the cut edges of the ribbons she would use to secure next week’s bundles. The repetition of the familiar task brought her no comfort. Her hand scraped the bottom of the drawer as she grabbed the last one. There were never enough.

As she swept the pile of ribbons into their drawer, her eyes lingered on the locks of her son’s light brown hair she kept hidden there. She flipped open the chest pocket of her dress and pulled out his photo. Her son’s eyes smiled under the curtain of sandy brown bangs. He was only gone from her side for a moment, but in the radiation-soaked wasteland, that’s all it took.

Agnes took her candle to the window, setting it in its ceremonious place. She imagined herself walking out the door and through the empty street, turning South, away from the contamination and death. She had seen enough death for several lifetimes.

Her hand rested against the cold, dark glass as she watched the candle’s flame dance in its reflection. She closed her eyes and held the photo over her thundering heart. He would have to forgive her for leaving. With a quick breath, she snuffed the candle, because, despite wishing, the tiny flames did nothing to keep the genuine terrors at bay.

* * *

Ⓒ Liz J. Bradley

Comments

  1. Oziaus says:
    December 24, 2024 at 1:36 am
    I love the act of world building with crumbs, and this piece does that pretty well. I have always had a soft spot for candle makers too. All in all, this was a fun find!
    1. Liz says:
      January 9, 2025 at 11:42 am
      Thanks for reading! Slow reveals are some of my favorite things to practice in writing, so I was so glad to see your comment. 🙂

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A Year in the Life of the Drowned Wastewater Plant East of Bellmarsh Village

by D.A. Straith

December 27, 2024

In spring we swell full with waters from upstream, brought down from broken mountains under the power of the nearer sun. Our pale ice-blanket weakens, then cracks, then splits into floes, then reintegrates into watery darkness. Warmed, we wake from sleep. At sunset our rocks trade the hooting calls of loons, drawn by the clarity of our waters, strained through by the zebra mussels that have hold of our ancient buildings. Frogs, until now dormant, wriggle free from sediment and begin their hunting and dying. In spring our waters are deepest, our concrete tanks invisible from the surface. The mussels make their homes in our office spaces, in our aerators, in our lockers.

The skeleton of a truck re-becomes a reef. A human from the village assesses our waters, then jumps in, defiant of the cold. The pads and flowers of yellow floating heart build dense mats that overwhelm our banks; the human emerges, shivering. Rain begins to fall, the world continues to warm, and when the human leaves, a bit of our concrete washes away.

Once, humans loved us as much as the mussels do.

* * *

Our waters heat as the sun creeps ever upward in our sister sky. The insects thrive: mosquitoes and blackflies and dragonflies whose nymphs emerge from the waters, reach their apex, and eat and make children. Our drifts of plankton, starved and suffocated, are fewer now than last year. We do not remember what came before the zebra mussels that coat our rocks and blanket our concrete rooftops. Nor does the human, who returns more than others to swim in our too-clear waters. If we do not remember our ancestral past, then we know our present: the human, gasping for breath at our broken surface, diving again and again to examine our deep-down ruins. Our digester is their greatest interest: scum-skinned, spherical, half-buried in sediment and anchored in the earth. A pike noses through the deep weeds in our south and surveys its territory. The human’s fellows gather our zebra mussels, but they do not like them. They are never hungry enough to pose a threat to the mussels.

The human—our human?—smacks a blackfly from its wet thigh, not maliciously, only in the course of things. It comes, dives, goes away in a dozen repeated migrations. Meanwhile our remaining detritivores do what they can to maintain us. We cannot keep up with our own slow death from incompletion, but we do try. We do survive.

* * *

The cooling days begin. Even those of us who have not lived longer than a year see signs of change. We, too, must change. Loon parents begin their migration, leaving their children to make their own way south; pikes stalk schools of prey. Yellow floating heart will cling to our shores as long as it can; the zebra mussels will wait until the cold truly reaches them to go dormant.

Our human knows our invisible places now. Its migrations are fewer but never briefer. And today, using a tiny dull blade, they chip mats of mussels from the spherical digester to reveal the fibreglass beneath. Surely they must know it will develop a skin again.

But what is an attentive human except a priest? What is a beloved place of pilgrimage except a shrine? We have always been divine—the loons know this—but our ruins are human-made. Perhaps our priest recognizes something in our spherical digester. It puts magic into the structure by loving it well.

Out of gratitude, out of desire, out of desperate need, we put our magic—the sum of all our creatures—into the human in return.

Its heartbeat joins our thousands, and that heart rushes suddenly. The human pushes away from our digester, but in plankton and in pondweed we reach out. Bubbled breath, shaped around a cry, surges up through the water. We encircle the human with our magic. Its heart settles. Flailing arms slow to a purposeful tread. Gaze points inward.

No, little one, you are still your own; we have taken nothing away. We only give you the gift of our wholeness. In exchange, we ask for a time of stewarding.

And so we are the lake, we are the buildings beneath the water’s surface; and we are with our priest. The ice-blanket closes over our waters. Crayfish comb our floor: we live beneath, recovering from the year’s movements, and we are also in the village. We are lakeside and sleeping bivalves, and we are sitting fireside and sewing, and we are powering a new magic as our priest learns to clean water (the power of mussels) and hunt more sharply (the lesson of the pike) and speak with birds (the wisdom of the loon).

We are unforgotten. The balance is tipping into place.

In spring, we will begin again. This time we will have help.

* * *

Ⓒ D.A. Straith

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