Flash

IDLE ANIMATION by Ryan Petersen

February 7, 2025

I made sure never to start the day. Abstained from True Conscious Hours. And yet, somehow, it went on without me. The sweat underneath my upper thighs became my five o'clock work whistle, an inarguable sign that the day was already over, before it had ever begun. Weeks went by like this. So smooth and easy that I hardly took notice. For I was a junkie, refreshing my feed with abandon, in willful avoidance of the aforementioned True Conscious Hours. YouTube was where I found the good stuff. I let the algorithm swaddle me tight, held in close by its data-driven embrace. Fifteen-to-twenty minute videos filled up my daylight hours without friction. The app analyzed my viewing habits, my click-through rates, average time spent on a page, engagement (likes, dislikes, comments) and explicit feedback submissions, among hundreds of other figures, and then offered up a viral load of For You content. Up Next was left on perpetual autoplay. My Suggested Videos offered up new, pulsating veins to tap into.The algorithm led me to the strange community of glitch hunters. Those who scoured the three-dimensional plane, in search of an errant polygon or invisible wall. They looked for exposed flaws in the game design, ones that opened up new possibilities of play. And exploits, for speedruns. A number of these videos concerned Super Mario 64, a game they treated as a sacred hyperobject, the ur-three-dimensional movement game. The creators’ focus on Mario 64 went beyond mere glitches. They imposed masochistic constraints on themselves, in limiting their button presses to the least amount of jumps theoretically possible; all this within level environments specifically designed around the act of jumping. It was a mindset akin to religious asceticism, achieved through the careful study of mathematical formulas. Equations that led to new modes of movement. And the discovery of parallel worlds. The YouTubers tore apart the fabric of the game and grafted a new reality atop of it, one more pliable to the player’s will. I watched a series of videos in one uninterrupted sitting, a film festival curated by my most destructive viewing habits.

Super Mario 64 - Watch for Rolling Rocks - 0.5x A Presses (Commentated)

Here is a play by play of what I do. First, I use scuttlebug transportation to move a scuttlebug to the corner of the Watch for Rolling Rocks platform. Then, I use scuttlebug raising to raise him to about the height of the platform. Next, I use hyper speed walking to generate massive speed. Finally, I use Parallel Universe movement to navigate to the top of the course, launch to the scuttlebug to bounce on him, and ground pound in the misalignment of the platform to get onto it. And from there, I collect the star.

The TRUE Number of Parallel Universes in SM64, Solved!

Parallel universes in SM64 are a glitch where the memory for a level loops back around, caused by wandering too far from the stage. The glitch manifests as an invisible copy of the level, with varying degrees of bugged collision or objects. This has a strong resemblance to the nature of the 'Minus World' in Super Mario Bros, which is caused by another mathematical memory error.

My usual microphone is broken, so the sound quality might be a bit bad (I'll consider re-dubbing the video at some point). Not 100% sure if anyone has figured this out before, but based on what people have told me I don't believe it's been done.

Super Mario 64 - Go to The Secret Aquarium - 0x A Presses (VC Only) [OUTDATED]

I go to The Secret Aquarium using zero A presses. Unfortunately, this method is only possible on emulator and virtual console, and NOT console. This is because if Mario goes to a Parallel Universe on console without fixing the camera in the main map, the game will freeze.

So what are Parallel Universes? Well, Mario's position is a float, but is treated as a short for testing collisions. Since shorts can only hold up to 2^16 values, some information is lost in this conversion. Following this logic, there isn't just one map, but a grid of near infinite maps spread out by 2^16 intervals. These other maps are invisible, and are called Parallel Universes (PUs). With enough speed, Mario can travel to these PUs.

The Mystery of the 1995 Build of Super Mario 64 (Every Copy of Super Mario 64 is Personalized)

On July 29th, 1995, a Super Mario 64 build was constructed that forever shook the internet. From a ghostly Wario apparition to strange cases of personalized copies of the game, this precursor Super Mario 64 version was full of many different mysteries. Many theories arose surrounding this haunted occurrence and today we'll be doing a deep dive into the bottom of the Mario 64 mystery iceberg.

(Rare) Unseen Footage Of E3 1996 Demo Of SM64 (Wario Apparition)

yep it fake ok ...

Every copy of Mario 64 is personalized?

why the f**k everyone keep saying THIS?

The Wario Apparition is a rare software glitch where an unused game sequence occurs with Wario’s head in a bowser room, in Mario 64. It is commonly mistaken to be a creepypasta. Waluigi apparition is also rumored to be in the game hidden somewhere, fake or not it’s very unsettling.

I looked up from the blue light of my laptop screen. Soon I would be called down for dinner. And have to do the dishes afterwards. Then I would eat a low-calorie yogurt cup while I watched an episode of Shark Tank upstairs. Finally, I would lay in bed for five hours. Stare at the ceiling as I listened to a podcast. Fall asleep with my fluorescent light still on. My teeth unbrushed, my face unwashed. Another day completed with little-to-no resistance. I wondered how long my desecration of Time could continue. Obscene enjoyment was derived from my days spent staring at the loading screen. The internal mantra of you were bad today, you were bad, you were very very bad—a vesper delivered with an implied smirk. From the outside looking in, I could see I was locked into a game of chicken, secretly yearning for someone to come nail me down and call me on my bluff. To finally force my hand. I wanted to be taken down so fucking bad. To be shown for the heretic that I was. But no one wanted to go there with me. Those in my general vicinity danced on eggshells.There isn't just one map, but a grid of near infinite maps, spread out in multitudes of intervals. The videos got stuck in my head. I let the Parallel Universes form in my mind, then disintegrate and rebuild, unsure of their resonance. There was a certain poetry in the Youtuber’s voice over. My position is a float. But treated as a short. I nodded along in agreement. The coordinates of my spirit. Manifested as an invisible copy, with varying degrees of bugged collision or objects. The hidden realm was left largely untapped. How did I make use of the unseen copies, the glitches in my own memory loop? There was an effort, on my part, to create meaning. With minimal button presses. The apparition’s head in the room. A ghost, trapped within the RAM of a Nintendo 64 cartridge, our names already written in the code, before we’ve had the thought of purchasing the game. An old TV screen flickered, with washed out, red-green colors. It played back the graphical abstractions. But they were cruder than I’d remembered, with flattened water textures, and a pixelated tree that stuttered in and out of existence. Yeah, it’s fake. Ok?A voice called out for me. And yet I couldn't move. I was paralyzed, caught in the thick ooze of Wasted Time. My eyes scanned the room in a panic, searching for a stray platform, a scuttlebug, anything to launch me into the next map, towards an alternate grid. I longed for an invisible place, where zero presses would be enough.

HOUSE FLY by Megan Nichols

February 6, 2025

Superstition slipped in with the last of the September flies. My hands were full and I couldn't get the door shut fast enough behind me. There was a clog in the bathroom sink where drain flies had nested. Something about my slowness made me wonder if we didn’t deserve it. Jake said to get hot vinegar if I was too damn scared of store bought bug killer. The sour smell drove him out all afternoon and when he came back he saw I had let the vinegar boil out. He headed upstairs with a bottle of bleach but found the bathroom door locked. He shook the handle, his mad rattling brass on brass. I kept the bathroom key hidden in a bag of bread flour and started buying loaves from Ms. Debbie. On Tuesday she said I had autumn all over me and could I please take off my sleeves because the sun wasn’t done yet. I told her I didn’t feel him. On Wednesday, Jake worked late so I cooked nothing and peered under the bathroom door. I heard more than I could see, a buzz louder than his engine in the drive. He came up behind me, a shock I can’t blame him for. I was captivated. A fly crawled under the door and then beside me on the floor, until it was under Jake's boot. On Thursday, I realized there was nothing in the drain but bar soap and toilet water. I wondered what they were eating. Jake left early the next morning, not mumbling like I thought, but shouting. Neighbor Mitchell came over with jam, said he’d seen all the bread I’d been carrying in and heard the yelling. I couldn’t think of what to reply because I hadn’t heard anything. On Saturday, I combed the crumbs from Jake's beard, wiped the jelly from his lips and stored the scraps in a paper napkin. He was late for the river yet drank his Busch slow while we waited for what, I wasn’t sure. When he left, he said the forest service would be burning the woods down and not to be afraid of any ash the wind might carry. I didn’t catch his meaning. I was busy shutting the front door behind him, then fishing the key out of the flour. At the flies’ door, I sprinkled the collected crumbs on the ground and blew them into the bathroom. There was no obvious reason for me to have grabbed the key. I knew from the first larvae floating under the faucet that I would never let the flies free, but I knew it in the way one knows a lie they like better than the truth. Playing pretend, I put the key in the lock and let it rest a while, imagining what it’d mean to open the doorand see what I’d let grow. The outside air was cooler now, no flies swarming picnics or slipping through windows. The neighbors had already begun to eat a little slower; begun to keep the lids off butter dishes. What would it mean to unleash the end of their ease? I pulled the key out knowing I could not open it and felt sick. A million flies thrashed inside that locked room. I pushed my forehead to the floor and the house vibrated in a familiar pattern, till I knew his boots were beside me. His hands didn’t notice the key still in the door; they carried a drill and went for the hinges. He didn’t notice how easy it could have been to open. I hollered, Jake, Jake we don’t want to know but the drill was in his ear and the screws fell to the carpet. At once the door laid him out flat, or rather the flies pushed the door down with him under it. I pulled the neck of my dress over my mouth and nose, sealed my eyes and through the pulsing air, felt my way to him. Flies were in my ears and over my body, the force of them so thick the air resisted as I pushed the door away. The flies did not disperse but were a continuous flood, layering over each other and on top of us, so that it took my roaming hands minutes before I found the key sticking out of the top of Jake’s leg. His hands found mine and pushed them away. He did not hear me as I said no, don’t make room for them in you. He pulled the metal out. Instinctively, I dug my fingers into the wound trying to fill the space but he didn’t understand. He pushed me out and I came back and he pushed me out again. In seconds the flies found their way into the flesh, eggs were buried close to bone. Seconds more and the larva was spilling out of his thigh, growing wings, laying more eggs. Maggots hatched the infection in his blood, then sped the decay. The flies forced the rot and ate it up and then they went for the blood on my fingers and the crumbs on my dress. They ate the wishes out of my belly and the lies out of my mouth and by the end of it all I understood superstition had just been a false name for knowing.

she transmogrified in my bed by Rylie Farr

January 27, 2025

My girlfriend has started a new regiment this week. She told me after coming home yesterday from work. Supposedly, this is supposed to help her achieve her “ideal form.” Every night now she is supposed to take these fluorescent green pills with her dinner. I don’t mind it too much. She becomes so sleepy afterwards, so I tuck her in our bed before sitting out on the couch for a couple of hours. Our flat is now quieter than usual.It seems the side effects are starting to take place in her body. This morning, she woke up before me squealing in front of the bedroom mirror. Her reflection seemed sickly in color that contrasted her cheerful visage. Grabbing my hands, she drew up my fingers to her cheeks. The skin there felt taut, reflecting the light from the ceiling fan. After we got ready for work, she texted me to go get some food and blankets for the upcoming weeks. Coconut, muskmelon, and vinegar for fruit flies. Her skin has begun to constrict, pulling back to reveal new valleys and canals. I asked her if she should be more concerned about her health, but she says this is natural. It’s harder to watch her stumble around more often around the apartment. I wrap cute bandages around her fingers from all the glasses she drops in the sink. Bruises color her thighs and hips. Her eyes have begun to cloud, a soft chocolate becoming milky blue. I have started to memorize where to run my thumb in circles at the front of her scalp, feeling small bumps under her skin. She asked me to help her this weekend hemming her jeans. When I run my hand along her vertebrae, she shivers while I test the new skin of hers.She quit her job. She told me that she won’t need it anymore. When my arms rest around her waist, foreheads touching, her new antennae curl in an arc and brush my ears. I asked her how much more fruit do we need to go through, and she giggled. She pressed her sharpened fingertips to my chest. Murmuring, she tells me how refreshing it feels now to breathe, to feel in her own skin. Next Tuesday, we’re supposed to get a humidifier in the mail to help her skin break smoother. The pills are starting to run out, so I have to go pick up her refill tomorrow and grab more trash bags.The night her new limbs emerged was the worst. I had just refilled the humidifier the second time while she begged to be held, covered in a cold sweat. Gently, I would roll her over on her side while I switched out the wet towels to toss into a bedside hamper. I would lay down on my side, rubbing her naked back in circles while the skin sloughed off to reveal a set of newly emerged elytra. I lean over to see her tear-streaked face, pressing my lips to her eyelids and her mouth, gently kissing where labrums fought to break out under her top lip. We both smiled. Once she fell asleep, I gathered her shed skin into a pile and shoved it down into trash bags. I got her the lavender scented ones this time.I like to watch her eat now, watching the juice run down her neck as she practices using her new, miniature mandibles. They click while she talks and when she annunciates her S’s. She told me that soon it might be harder for her to speak without proper vocal cords, so I signed up for a subscription to an American sign language course. She sits beside me while I review the alphabet, stroking my back with one of her new, dark legs that jut out from her waist. When we lay together in bed, I like to lay by her back and rub her newly fitted wings between my forefinger and thumb. She becomes more iridescent by the day. The flat has become lively again, with happy chitters reverberating throughout the place. I had to get her a pair of crutches today. Her legs were the next to go, as I watched the marrow into chitin. The thighs I would grip were now small enough to be held in my palm. As her bones start to hollow, it has become easier for me to carry her around the apartment. She covers her face whenever I decide to carry her like a princess from the bed to the kitchen for her meals. Slowly, she asks me what I will do once her transformation is done. I tell her that I will still love and take care of her regardless of her body. Her antennae wiggle in response. That night, I carried her to bed and held her tight to my chest. It felt like I was holding a bird.When I woke up this morning, the other side of the bed had a beetle sitting on her pillow. I put my hand out, watching her crawl up my arm to my nose. I walked her out to the kitchen and sat her by the sink. She spun while I cracked open a jelly from the fridge for her to squish into her mouth. Later, we went to the pet store to pick out a new enclosure. I brought her in her old water glass. She would point out which substrate she liked, what hide aways she wanted. Everyone else there was also carrying their girlfriend in cups. I set up her new enclosure in our bedroom after. She sat on my hands chewing my cuticles. She seems to really like her new spot on our nightstand by the window.My girlfriend died today. One morning when I woke up, the bed felt devoid of her presence. I shot up, running my hands and flipping up blankets and pillows, trying to find her. When I ran over to check her fish tank, I could see her on her back, arms curled up into her chest, bright green peeking out underneath. I scooped her up with my hands, flipping her over while I sat on her side of the bed. She was beautiful. I didn’t even know how to mourn. While I sobbed, cupping my girlfriend to my chest, the humidifier screamed waiting for its tank to be filled again. I decided to put her by the edge of my nightstand afterwards. When I turn in my sleep, I can twist and look into her honeycomb eyes before hiding under another blanket. I like to imagine that she is still there beside me with her cold exoskeleton pressed against my stomach.

THE SLEEPING BANKER by Matthew Binder

January 20, 2025

The factory closed the week before Christmas. The owner had moved his operations to Bangladesh. Emanuel had spent eleven years on the assembly line. It was the only job he knew. Marta, his wife, could no longer cut hair. Her condition made her hands tremble to the point that her clients had begun to complain about nicks on their necks and ears. They were three months behind on rent, the electricity was shut off. Their kids were eating crackers and trekking through the snow with holes in their shoes.Emanuel had once had luck betting on football matches. That ended, as all good things do. He owed Ahmad, his bookie, three thousand francs. The man had already taken his scooter. Now the threats began.“Your wife is very lovely,” he said. “It would be a shame to put her to work, if you know what I mean.” “You know my situation,” Emmanuel said.“Meet me tonight,” Ahmad said, “and your problem will be solved.”Emmanuel tucked the children into bed, kissed his wife, and put on his threadbare coat.A wet snow was falling. Sloshy puddles had appeared on the street. The air was cold enough to make Emmanuel’s teeth chatter. He slipped into a dive bar he had often passed but never entered. Some men were yelling at the barmaid. Emmanuel ordered a glass of whiskey and downed it in a gulp. He ordered two more and found himself quickly drunk. Ahmed was waiting on the street in the posh neighborhood he’d directed Emmanuel to. “What do you want?” Emmanuel said.Ahmad lit a cigarette. “Not far from here lives a banker. You’re going to rob him.”They walked a few blocks and stopped in the shadows of the hedgerows surrounding a grand house.“See that window?” Ahmad said. “Climb in. Go up the stairs. The bedroom is on the right. In the banker’s closet, you’ll find a large, gilded box filled with his dead wife’s jewelry. All you have to do is get the box and bring it here.”“How do you know this?”“In another life, I was a woodworker. I built his cabinets.”Emmanuel clambered through the window. The house was dark but for a sliver of moonlight through the window. In the living room, a portrait of the banker and his wife hung above the mantle. Emmanuel crept up the stairs and snuck into the bedroom. The banker was snoring loudly. There was something ridiculous about the old man’s head on its enormous pillow. Emmanuel knew that if he didn’t take the box this very moment, he never would. Do this for your family, he thought. The box sat glimmering on a shelf. He snatched it quickly, too quickly, and slammed his knee into the closet door.“Who’s there?” the banker said. Emmanuel’s foot snagged on the rug. No sooner had he fallen than the banker punched his back. Somehow in the dark, Emmanuel found the box and smashed the banker’s face. The old man staggered back and crumpled to the floor.“I’m so sorry!” Emmanuel cried. “I’m so sorry!”The banker’s eyes fluttered, his lips bubbling with spittle and blood. “Help me, please!”Emmanuel wanted nothing more than to get away, but the banker gripped his coat. The old man was surprisingly strong. Emmanuel had to wrench himself loose, finger by finger. He ran down the stairs and out the door. Ahmad stood across the street, a cigarette dangling from his lips. Emmanuel thrust the box into his hands. Ahmad opened it and smiled.“Your debt is settled,” he said. Emmanuel stumbled home and collapsed to the bathroom floor. He lay there for a long time, praying that God would not punish a man in this position. After a time, he felt better. He undressed and crawled into bed beside his wife.“Are you okay?” she said.“Go back to sleep,” he said.

NUNS & ROSES by Ana Carrete

January 13, 2025

A nun was cloistered in a convent near me. I knew her. She was the Mother Superior. She was the main bitch. Top energy. She left that cloistered convent and moved to the Midwest. I was visiting the Midwest for poetry and to fuck a writer I’d been sexting with for months. I waxed my pussy right before I went on that trip and that was a mistake. My boyfriend dropped me off at the airport. I took a pill to fall asleep on the plane. When the plane landed, my head was resting on the stranger next to me. My head was on his shoulder but he never tried to wake me up. I was embarrassed but he was polite about it. I am no longer embarrassed and it's kind of a brag. I had my head on a random man’s shoulder on a plane and I was so comfortable and he probably wasn't but he was cool with it. I wonder if he enjoyed it.When the plane landed, the writer I was going to fuck was waiting for me. He rolled my luggage to a restaurant. We had sushi. We had beers and sex. I texted the nun. She texted me her address. I didn't know nuns could live alone. The writer took the L with me to the nun’s neighborhood. The writer made a racist comment about the neighborhood and walked me near her apartment. I asked him to leave. I called the nun. She came out. She asked me to come up to her place. We went up and down a very tight staircase. Her apartment looked exactly like all the memes about the coziest lesbian homes with green walls and mismatched furniture. This was the first time I saw the nun’s hair. I had imagined it when she wore her habit. Her current congregation allowed her to wear regular but modest clothing. She could show me her hair and I liked it. Her outfit was highly nun-coded. As expected. As it should be. And I loved it. I put on a black, velvet bodysuit and jeans to my date with the nun. I had my hair down. She drove me to an area the writer hadn't taken me to yet. It was a tourist spot by the water and it was beautiful. We walked on the boardwalk but didn't hold hands. We ate Italian food. She talked about how much she loved to go camping. We got ice cream cones. We licked the ice cream cones. I had never seen her licking anything before. Her licks were meticulous. When we got done licking, we got on the wrong elevator and got lost in the parking structure. Neither of us had paid attention to where she’d parked. We were too excited. We were on a date. We kept getting back on the elevator and coming out on different levels. I was getting sweaty. She said it was the priests’ fault. I thought about giving up and getting on our knees. Asking god for help so we could find her car.I imagined her having a sexy amount of authority as Mother Superior. Making sure a sexy amount of suffering happened at all times. An hour later, we found her car. I told her I would take the L back to where I was staying but she insisted on driving. When she dropped me off, she waited for me to go inside. As you should. When you go on a date with someone you care about, you wait to make sure they're safe. I went back into the writer’s apartment. He woke me up with his dick the next morning. It was similar to the ending of Kids (1995). A drunk Casper rapes Jennie as she sleeps. He was sober and we were in bed.I forgot to reply to my boyfriend for most of my trip, so when I got back home, we broke up in his parents’ living room.

PEGGY by Daisy Alioto

January 10, 2025

Peggy got down on her knees and asked God to send her a good man. She thought she had one in Jack but her friends told her that he wasn’t a good man, or if he was, he was good in the way that men are good which is different from the way that women are good. Something about the difference between a deal and a contract. Peggy thought all goodness was the same and maybe the goodness in Jack was hiding. For six months Peggy and Jack had dinner once a week until one day he stopped answering her calls. “He’s just not that into you,” her friends said. But wouldn’t he have said that around the time they promised that they would always be honest with each other? And couldn’t he have said that before or after he told her, I feel like I can tell you anything?She called his house at doubling intervals — one day, every two days, every four days, every eight days, every sixteen. “Stop calling,” her friends said. “He’s going to think you’re crazy.” But just in the way Peggy knew Jack was good, she knew she wasn’t crazy, so why should it matter. “What if he’s dead?” she asked. “What if he’s hurt?” Then one or another friend would say they just ran into him in the supermarket. So Peggy got back down on her knees. “Kind and capable,” she thought, that’s all I want God. Then she spoke it out loud in case God wasn’t listening with his brain-ears. “Kind and capable, please.”She had three recurring dreams about Jack. In the first one he was smothering her with a pillow. In the second he was holding her under the waves while she drowned. In the third, which was the most violent, he was stabbing her in the bony place between her breasts while she held her hands up and tried to take the knives in the smooth basket of her palms instead. The dreams were eerily silent, like the moment before Jack’s automated voicemail kicked in. The only voice in the dream was Peggy’s, always asking the same question: “Why are you doing this?” Years passed and God sent Peggy several ok men. Jack died, not from suffocation or drowning or stabbing, but prostate cancer. For months after his funeral Peggy told anyone who would listen that she was disappointed in the catering. “Jack hated horseradish,” she told her friends. “Jack hated cold cuts. Anyone who knew him would know that.”

HERE LIES by Nikki Barnhart

January 8, 2025

She had only applied to work in the Halloween store because she thought it would be temporary. But this store was open year-round—the building owned, not leased, by a man named Ed, who was thin and wiry, nostalgic and ambiguous as a figure in a Grant Wood painting. The devotion he extended to the rows of ludicrous masks and cackling witch animatronics seemed more suited to the motions of a farmer, tending to something whose harvest would keep people alive, rather than fleetingly amused. Ed preferred silent, solitary work: keeping inventory, tracking shipments in the back room he seemed to live in. He wanted someone to take over the register, be more “front-facing.” “Are you a people person?” he asked her when she first came in. She lied and said yes. In the Halloween store, time was always running out, yet somehow not passing at all. Ed’s business philosophy consisted of keeping a permanent GOING OUT OF BUSINESS sign out in the front window to create what he called “a false sense of urgency” in the customer. The music that played during her shift was always the same recording Ed had made of a Top 200 countdown on Labor Day 1993, commercials and all, every day climbing the same apex towards “Heart-Shaped Box.” Then it would start its loop all over again, trapping her inside. She would think of all the other times she had heard these songs over the course of her life—these same songs again and again and now, a million times more. They were engineered for liminal spaces: checkout lines and waiting rooms and traffic jams, to give people the illusion of movement and rhythm when their lives were going nowhere. Usually this time of year, Christmas music took over, the ultimate opiate of the masses, to distract everyone from the cold fact that another year was slamming shut forever. But not in the Halloween store. The music didn’t change. It never would. That would mean something was coming; that would mean something was ending. To stay afloat, the store also sold other holiday items, stocked as if they were perennial: pastel Easter baskets of unraveling wicker, Thanksgiving wreaths of fake papery leaves, snowmen whose bodies were made of Styrofoam and crumbling glitter. It was the snowmen’s season now: winter, at least by some definitions. But this was Florida, and the seasons never really changed, not in any meaningful or significant way. That was her favorite thing about coming here: the pure indulgence in wasting perfect days, because they were in seemingly infinite supply. It didn’t matter what she did or didn’t do with each one, because another would reappear the next morning, new and clean and glaringly bright. She couldn’t possibly be held accountable to change if nothing else around her did. The store was listed on various obscure websites and in off-brand guidebooks as an “oddities destination,” although the people that stopped in were always on their way to somewhere else. Usually, they would stalk the aisles for a minute or two before walking back out empty-handed, muttering there wasn’t much to see, just the same old shit you could get anywhere in October. “Speak for yourself,” she would think as she watched them leave, staring out the display windows into the vanishing point of the horizon. The store possessed the most beautiful natural light she had ever seen in an interior space—that was its most extraordinary quality, what should have been advertised in the guidebooks. Every afternoon, the golden glow that seeped in and wrapped around her nearly brought her to tears. Its beauty had something to do with the time passing, a phenomenon that persisted outside the safe confines of the store. The light was a reminder that life was short, something which was easy to forget whenever she was inside. Even Ed’s sign out front was only a false alarm—time running out rendered merely a marketing tactic and as such, a lie. She came home at night smelling like the plastic that everything in the store was made from, the way she used to come home smelling like coffee when she worked at Starbucks, her first job, her first failed attempt to make a life for herself. But unlike the way coffee’s nutty sweetness had begun to smell foul, the pungent scent of the plastic began to smell not quite sweet, but the next best thing: unnoticeable. Like how when she was a child she realized that all of her friend’s houses had their own special scent, but she could never smell her own. The place she came from always smelled like nothing, like it wasn’t a place at all. From her view at the counter, she could see the rack of personalized tombstone decals, some of the store’s best sellers. People thought it was hilarious to pretend to be dead. HERE LIES ADAM. HERE LIES ANNIE, they went, and so on. She could see her own name hanging there, a straight shot at eye level. When she interviewed for the job, Ed had asked her what scared her the most. She considered the question, really thought about it. But then too much time had passed so she just blurted out, “Nothing.” The word lingered in the stale air of the store. She could sense it hanging over her, like a spirit. She felt it, she believed in it, but that didn’t make it real.

FREELOADER by Hazel Zorn

January 6, 2025

For several days I have been followed by a man I cannot see— a man who presses his nose to the back of my head, who laughs quietly whenever I whirl around only to confront empty space. He casts no reflection. He never speaks. Who the fuck are you, I yell. Why are you doing this to me. Always at a steady pace, never sprinting, keeping my strength, I keep space between myself and my pursuer. I make sure to pass the lodge several times, the one that used to have the sign COMMUNITY SOUP KITCHEN draped over the doorway. I got a packet of sanitary pads there once; typical goods for the homeless. The woman who handed it over would not look at my face. I remember the foundation caked in her wrinkles. Now it is locked up. Frantic, I call for help a few times with no answer. I do not believe that no one is there. The solitary yellow window on the second floor winks out as soon as I rattle the door. I give up, trying to ignore the prickle at the back of my neck. But in the dark I feel the man gaining on me. I frequently slap myself across the face to stay awake. I wander the streets circuitously, in the cold and rain, until the sole of my left shoe is unglued and flapping, and my jean cuffs fray. When my bladder becomes a boulder I squat, timing myself. He always catches up.I fall asleep on my feet, head knocked back by a lamppost. The man touches my shoulders and my stomach swings like a hammock. Fuck off, I slur. I shrug out of my coat and jog into a crowd. Pedestrian eyes travel up the tracks on my arms. I haven’t slept in days! I scream at passers-by. I can hear the soft pad of footsteps behind me, not even struggling to keep up. His laugh. Somebody fucking help me!Limbs jostle me from all sides. The concrete sidewalk leaps up to smash my elbow. In the lodge there was a plaque praising community service above the kitchen entrance. I remember a penlight shining in my eyes, blurring the figures standing around me. My shirt was wet, sticking to the skin of my chest. The rank smell of vomit hung about me like a cloud. The voice of the woman wearing cakey foundation said, “these people are such animals.”Now, I’m in an empty hospital room. The only light is fluorescent. A poster to my left takes over the wall: Understanding the signs of addiction: we are here to help. The door slides open and a young PA with a tablet asks me how my elbow feels. I do not speak, because it is too late. I know I will not have his sympathy. I focus on my breath until he leaves. I finally feel that I am able to get up and stumble to the bathroom. To the mirror. And now you will leave me here, with the man blocking my way, as I cannot look around the back of his head. He stands here with elbows bent, shoulders rising and falling in the motion of tying a tie. I, doomed to occupy the space of a shadow, cast out and grasping for the physicality I’ve lost— I am disgusting to you. As days lengthen to weeks you’ll forget my pathetic begging. Smile, and, smugly, tell yourself that everything is how it should be, of course. Nothing is the matter.You’ll make way for him.You’ll call him sir.

THIS CHRISTMAS STORY by Rosaleen Lynch

December 26, 2024

This story could be called ‘The Christmas Blues’ if I told the story of Mama's Christmas eve swaying, watching the record player playing, glass glinting blue in her hand, tears, some dropping onto her festive plastic-aproned chest, and her blue-denimed legs, and the rest soaking into the faded-blue carpet pile, her bare feet pressing them in. This story could be called ‘No One’s Coming Home This Christmas’ if I told the story of why Papa, instead of just saying no, had to work Christmas day and every day, in some lab, lying to us about fixing acid rain, when we know he owes the ‘wrong kind of people’ money, from when he said to Mama on the house phone he can't come home or they'll make her work for them too, that he's gotta pretend it's just him, until he pays it all back, until maybe forever. This story could be called ‘So Santa Hates Poor Kids’ if I told the story of what was under our fake tree on Christmas morning, and how Mama held the telephone for Papa to hear us as we open presents, pointing at her face as she makes a fake smile and bops her head and waves her arms in fake delight and we play along, and really get into it, as we open newspaper-wrapped presents of our own stuff, wrapped up and it's not even a surprise, cos we watched Mama wrap them up last night, and we're just pinning all our hopes on the food today. This story could be called ‘The Christmas Happy Meal’ if I told the story of the four of us at the kitchen table, Mama in Papa's seat and me in hers, round the KFC bucket, Mama saying it's a tradition in some places and we nod, not caring, chewing on chicken bones and wearing the newspaper hats she made, and our paper-mache wings from the school Christmas play, and Mama says she's full from breakfast and smokes a cigarette instead, and the record player plays the song ‘Its Gonna be a Cold, Cold Christmas Without You’ and we sing along, mouths full and cigarette smoke blurring the edges of this happy Christmas scene.

FAIRYTALE OF NEW YORK by Pat Jameson

December 25, 2024

The Christmas after Jo’s mom died was bad. Her older sister Jules showed up the evening before Christ’s birth, driving the 13-hour stretch from Chicago to Western Pennsylvania in one go. Jo and her dad watched on the front porch as Jules’ Prius rattled down the driveway, Brittany Spears blasting from open windows, tires crunching against the snow. The car was in poor shape, salt-covered, and trembling like a racing dog whipped past its limits.Jo’s dad shifted nervously as his eldest daughter climbed from the car and trudged toward them. His hands were folded down the front of his apron, which read: “My Spawn R The Coolest.” “Greetings, family,” Jules said. “The season is upon us.”Jo had seen her sister worse off, but not by much. Jules’ Boston University sweatshirt was covered in dark stains. There were raccoon circles where her eyes should’ve been. Her duffel bag was half-unzipped, a tumbleweed of cords dragging in the snow. “Jesus, kiddo,” her dad said. “Did you drive the whole way straight?” “I dozed off some in Ohio,” Jules said, wiping the back of her wrist across her nostrils. “And I’ve been banging down lines every ten minutes, which helps with the concentration.”Her dad made a face. “I hope that’s a joke.”“Fine, don’t believe me.” Jules pushed past him, hugged Jo, and took her bags inside.Her dad turned, bewildered. “She was kidding, right? About the drugs?”Jo lifted and lowered her shoulders.Her sister was skinnier than she remembered (“Soul Cycle,” she said dismissively), but Jo knew it was the cocaine. She figured that was why Tom, her husband, hadn’t joined her. Jules only did drugs when she felt insecure about her weight. She didn’t care enough about Tom to watch her figure when he was around. It must have been a new lover. “Don’t ask me about Tom,” Jules said. “Don’t ask me about my job. Don’t ask me about going back to school or having kids or anything that might ever come within the fucking realm of my personal life.”“Fine by me,” Jo said. Christmas Eve dinner was bottles of wine, plates of pasta as an accessory. In years past, they’d have something unique– sushi or kebabs, Mediterranean. Jo’s mom never liked typicality. The pasta was a deliberate choice, both in its blandness and the family’s ability to ignore it even as the food filled their bellies. The girls quickly finished a bottle and then another. When they drained the good stuff, they broke into the cellar and found a few old cabernets that had never been opened. They were questionably sealed, some rodents had gnawed little holes in the wax. But Jo thought it was excellent, well-aged, like drinking buried history. (This is what mummy semen tastes like,” Jules said). Jo drank until she felt sick, scarfing down breadsticks and trying not to cry when her dad started talking about the semester at school, which had been rougher than the ones previously.“Don’t worry about your major,” her dad said. He held up his smudged glass and tipped it towards her. “Explore your interests. That’s what college is about– shedding your old self and becoming the person you’re meant to be.”“I appreciate that, Dad, but I have to pick one by the spring,” Jo said. “Or else I can’t graduate on time.”Her dad was already tipsy. He waved his hand. “ You’ll find the right path, trust me.”Jules frowned into her pasta. “Jesus, Dad,” she said. “Pull it together.”“What?” “I’m just saying, don’t do that.”“Do what?”“Go all Mr. Rogers on our asses. Just admit it– your kids are fuck-ups.”“Hey,” Jo said. “Don’t lump me in with you.”“I’m so proud of you two,” Her dad said, teary-eyed. “You both are perfect. Perfect angels.”“No, I’m not,” Jules said. “Yes,” he said. “You are.”“Please stop talking.”“Guys,” Jo said.“Let’s just have a nice dinner.” Her dad let out a low sigh and rotated his eyes toward the ceiling. “Can we agree on that?’“I have to make a phone call.” Jules stood and drained her glass. “I have people who are relying on me. Business and associates and important things.”“Okay, honey,” Her dad said. “I’ll put your leftovers in the fridge.”“Whatever.”Jo and her dad sat in silence, clinking their forks against porcelain. On television, Ralphie from A Christmas Story demanded his parents purchase him a Red Ryder air rifle for the holiday. Shortly after, he beat the shit out of that hillbilly kid and betrayed his best friend for saying the F-word, nearly blinded himself with a stray BB shot. Ralphie was kind of a psycho, Jo realized. In modern days he would’ve fit the profile of a school shooter. Or a Republican candidate. Jo asked, “Can I have more wine?”“Sure, babe.” Her dad refilled the glass and looked up at the overhead fan, its blades shaking from the force of Jules marching back and forth in her room. “But you have to watch your consumption. Alcohol can be a gateway to a more–ah–complicated life.”After dinner, Jo helped with the dishes and poured herself another drink. She thought about school– whether she would major in dance or writing or maybe something useful in the real world– economics or whatever. In high school, she took Advanced Calc, and the patterns revealed themselves to her easily enough. But the idea of tabulating figures and sums for the rest of her life put a sour taste in her mouth. Being 20, being without a mother, she knew that life wasn’t as simple as all that. You removed something or someone from the equation and the results weren’t linear, or predictable, they were something else entirely. Finished cleaning, Jo grabbed her coat and decided to go for a walk while her dad wrapped presents. She cut a path across the yard, boots kicking up shallow tufts of snow in the late December light. Beneath the darkened tree line, she paused, bowing her head in reverence. The family pets were buried in the frozen dirt here– Toby the Dog, Sam the Cat, and Garfield, the defenestrated guinea pig, who met his maker via a leap of faith from the girls’ jungle gym. On nights like these– cold, forlorn, biting– Jo was grateful that her mother had chosen cremation. It didn’t seem right to put someone in the ground and forget about them, to have their only memory as a headstone, half-buried, collecting snow in the wintertime, a bunch of wilted flowers in the summer. Was that love? Paying tribute to something that wasn’t there, that had– as far as anyone knew– moved on to another plane of being? Fuck, Jo thought. The wine was making her philosophical. That happened sometimes when she drank; she felt a flash of wisdom that disappeared just as quickly as it arrived. Upstairs, Jo flopped on her bed, definitely drunk now, listening to Jules talk in serious undertones with her lover through their shared wall. It was easy enough to imagine him: older, flabby, likely with a kid in high school he never saw. The guy thought Jules touched something deep inside him– something “he never knew was there.” Jules had a type. Not a good one, but a type, certainly. In high school, Jo had found herself the unwilling recipient of many a lurid tale. Jules complained about her life, her teachers and boyfriends, varsity sports, the “hoes” talking shit. Back then it had irked Jo, her beautiful, do-no-wrong sister, bitching about the cosmic forces out to get her. Now that they were both older, Jo figured Jules had simply been ahead of her time.But here, on this night over eight years later, Jules vented to someone else. Jo heard the dry-nostril snort of her sister bumping a line and talking to this new guy, Kirk.“Kirk– no, shut up, this is serious. Okay, listen– and then my mom died. And my dad is a fucking weirdo–snort!– and I think Tom secretly had a vasectomy and is planning on moving out. Hold on a second– Jo, are you there?”Jo didn’t say anything. She was counting the watermarks on the ceiling, trying to recall what it was like to be a child, how life looked endless, rhythmic, inescapable. “I’ll call you back.”Click.“Jo.” Jules’ mattress creaked. “Were you listening to me?”Jo didn’t respond.Jules knocked on the wall. “Jo? Are you still up?”After a long time– too long– Jo said, “No.”There was a pause, and then Jules said, “Do you want to do a bump with me?”That night was the first time Jo did cocaine. She and Jules kneeled like Catholic schoolgirls on the fuzzy carpet, snorting messy lines off their Sleeping Beauty mirror. They giggled at this, the mixture of adult life and childhood sweetness, their sloppy handling of the drugs as they passed the rolled-up dollar bill back and forth. With each line, Jo felt increasingly lit up, like a candle was burning inside her chest. Overtop their frantic sniffling, the Irish Christmas song played from the living room below. It was their dad's favorite– that duet about the NYPD Choir and Galway Bay. The drunk couple calling each other every slur imaginable as they poured out their fucking hearts and prepared for the new year. “Tell me about school,” Jules said. “Any boys?” “A few,” Jo said. “But it’s whatever.”“Want to talk about it?She shook her head, “I'm good.”It was nice of Jules to ask, but Jo didn’t feel like delving into the events of her love life– disastrous as they were. There had been a fight over a boy, in particular, at a frat formal. Jo threw a drink at a girl and then the two of them were tangled together on the dance floor, swearing and shouting and hitting. Jo had been afraid of expulsion, but the school showed leniency, let her off with a warning. It was like that with her other faux pas, too– the late homework and passing out drunk in the communal bathroom. There was no shortage of sympathy from the administration or her group of friends. No matter how badly she acted, she was forgiven. After all, her mom had died. All roads led back to that. It was all anyone ever talked about. Sometimes, she thought, it was all she was.She didn’t even realize she was crying until Jules reached over and patted her softly on the head. “There there,” Jules said. “Do another line, kitten.”She decided to take Jules’ advice, dropping her face to the mirror. Immediately, she felt better. She liked the cocaine. The forcefulness of it. It was like a locomotive pushing all the bad thoughts from her head, clearing a path through the snow in her brain, the residual slush and soot. With a providential foresight, she could almost sense how tomorrow would go– Jules sleeping in late, vomiting in their joint bathroom, refusing to come downstairs for presents. Her dad, harried and emotionally drained, playing cheerful music to drown out the awkwardness. And there was Jo, stuck in the middle, feeling the cave walls of her heart collapse on itself. But that was tomorrow, and today was today. You had to deal with these things accordingly. You had to take them one step at a time. “Promise me you won’t make the same mistakes I did,” Jules said. Her eyes swiveled and popped in their sockets. Jo noticed for the first time how red and thick her capillaries were, like hard candy. “Promise me you’ll do something fucking important with your life.” Jo did another line and looked at her sister. “Yeah,” she said. “I promise.”“Good,” Jules said. “Good.She held out her hand, and Jo took it. Together, they sat with their backs against the wall, closed their eyes, and listened to the music.