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Red Ashes

Posted on September 2, 2025 by Julia B

Nothing, save sunlight, had touched this land in a millennium. Animals, even the insects and worms, had yet to repopulate this far south. With no food to draw them, the migratory birds had changed their routes; when marine life strayed too close, they soon joined the decomposing wall of flesh that was still sinking to the ocean floor. The ships that had sought safe harbor a thousand years past should have rotted into nothingness, but the lack of microbial life had left them well preserved.

Overhead, a drone hummed. The sound echoed over the water; in contrast, the overgrown remnants of the city swallowed the noise.

Illie watched the images flickering on the monitors. The quality was somewhat grainier than ze had hoped, but the expedition had made it to the edge of the dead zone later than expected. At this time of year the sun would neither truly set nor truly rise, but there were still periods of darker and lighter, and right now was darker, nearing twilight. The cameras the drone was equipped with could make the switch to infrared, and in brighter light the pictures were crisp, but until Illie could respec the lenses the fuzzy photos were all the monitors would display.

Even so, the images Illie could see were breathtaking.

Boats, what must have once been great ships, lay shattered. Here the ice was still thick enough that, throughout the heating and cooling periods, the preserved remains of humans still rested visibly, only partially sunk into the ice. Illie made note of that in zir logbook. The archaeologist, Henri, would need to take ice samples to determine how long the dead had been there. Previous records had indicated another crew had been sent, almost eighty years ago, but even that recently this site had been deemed too dangerous for public knowledge.

Atomic fallout had been the cover story, for centuries. And as the expedition’s instruments confirmed, there was an increase in background radiation here. Records from around the surviving world even confirmed the dropping of more than one hydrogen bomb. But the levels weren’t on par with the total lack of life. Even nuclear waste from power plants wouldn’t have had this effect.

Illie tapped zir fingers on the table in front of zir. Puzzles and mysteries, mysteries and puzzles. Infuriating. The governments of the world past had been more scared of the truth than the consequences of it.

A shadow caught zir eye. Illie tapped the microphone icon and spoke, slowly and clearly. “H-X-Seventeen. Re-perform sweep pattern alpha, starting -” ze mentally counted back the time- “five seconds ago. Please.”

On the right-hand monitor a chat box was open; the drones were all outfitted with the latest AI, to give the controllers access to more complex instructions. Zir words appeared in the drone’s command box on screen; ze tapped the “confirm” button, and watched the live feed again, leaning in to spot what it was that had caught zir attention.

Written for this prompt

Marianas

Posted on September 2, 2025 by Julia B

It is a well established fact that the human body (or bodies of the more-or-less human) floats (well, more or less). Human bodies tend to be at least a little less dense than water.

Despite this, a human (more or less) was caught beneath the waves, under several tons of pressure. Her bones creaked and her muscles twanged in pain whenever she tried to sit up; she didn’t know how long she had been down here, but she was almost certain it was over a month. Years? A week? Light didn’t make it down this far. Very little did.

The silt washed over her face; she shook her head, and an unseen cascade of slow-motion mud swirled out from her hair. Not breathing had gone from panic inducing to merely uncomfortable, a constant pang in her chest and weakness in her limbs that she had learned to ignore, but dirt in her eyes hurt.

What was it Dawn had said, back when they were last together? Something about the difference between pain and dying.

More ooze washed over her. She felt a tickle at her mouth. Not another bug, she prayed. Though she wasn’t sure what would be worse; one of the huge crustaceans that trundled along, occasionally trying their claws at eating her, or one of the rippling amoeba creatures that could flatten into almost any shape. Those things could get places.

She spat/blew out the water in her mouth and lungs, and whatever had rested on her face decided it had better things to do.

She missed eating.

That was the last thing she had been doing on the surface -eating. A really delicious supper, shrimp and buttery mussels, spaghetti, and a divine dessert that was several layers of puff pastry wrapped around a frozen chocolate-dipped assortment of fruits. Dawn had smiled and asked if she really wanted to do this. It was a beautiful evening, with waves lapping at the bow, the timbers of the boat creaking with the wind.

They had been anchored near shore, a seemingly swimmable distance to land. We’re immortals. What’s the worst that could happen? she asked. She had swum in pools before, even if that was thirty years ago. The ocean was beautiful and dangerous, but nothing could hurt her.

There’s a difference between never feeling pain and never dying. Dawn had smiled as she said it, her teeth glittering in the last rays of the sun, but it was only to soften the admonition.

Don’t worry. If I sink, I’ll just walk home, she had replied.

Dawn would probably be searching for her.

Probably.

For now, though, she would wait.

50/50

Posted on September 2, 2025 by Julia B

In dreams, bones danced. Flowers bloomed in the eyes of a murderer, but withered on vines that instead grew hearts, beating a rhythm out to the sound of an ungodly scream.

Nash groaned as the cat yowled. It was 6am in the land of the living, and if Nash wanted to be clean before classes started, they had to wake up at the dark side of dawn.

One burning hot shower and a breakfast later, Nash stood at the gates of Emrys Preparatory for Young Witches and Wizards. It was an odd mishmash of architecture. The original building had been a squat fortress, something that could have been taken for a watchtower on a dark night, with a single large entryway, thick wooden double doors. Various administrations had since added their own aesthetic flourishes. The administrative wing, built in the Tudor style, bumped up against the ornate, Victorian-era Modern Astrology Tower, which was dwarfed by a brutalist wing -probably the cafeteria and associated labs. And, of course, the elaborate Grecian motifs on the low wall enclosing the courtyard where the throng of hopefuls had congregated for the admissions exam.

“Do you think you’ll make the cut?”

Nash jumped, startled. The speaker, standing in the dew-damped grass, had a worried face surrounded by frizzy green hair, and was chewing on a stick of gum rapidly.

“Ah… yeah, maybe. I hope,” Nash said. The green-haired speaker chewed nervously on and said, “I mean, my mum says dad was a wizard, but I think he was making it up to impress her, you know?” The speaker dug into a pocket and pulled out a gum pack. “Want some?”

“Er… sure.”

A voice cut through the sounds of the crowd. “Alrighty kiddos, queue up!” Nash looked around; the doors to the school hadn’t opened yet, and not everybody seemed to have heard. They shrugged, and, along with the kid with the frizzy green hair, started towards the front.

Once the last prospective student was in line, the doors swung open and the trials began.

Some of the students, those whose families had elected to join the Registry generations ago, had received their letters and were shunted to private rooms, where their level of skill could be tested. Most of the remaining students were dreamers, kids who had heard tales of magic or seen somebody in action, but whose families had never yet produced a magician.

And then there was Nash.

As the line shortened -the inevitably disappointed walking off in a huff, or bursting into tears, or just walking quietly away -a shine had begun to spread over the building. Mum had told Nash about this, and had fixed their specs so that it wouldn’t give them a headache when they got too close. Still, every so often they had to rub their eyes.

“Don’t worry,” hissed the green-haired kid from behind Nash. “I’m so nervous I could cry too.”

“I’m not -” Nash began, but was cut short as the young woman in front of them was shunted off to a group of students waiting in the hallway. The examiner, who glowed brightly in Nash’s eyes, beckoned them forwards; as Nash stepped up, they blinked rapidly to clear their gaze as the glow briefly grew to encompass Nash and all sound from the outside world fell away.

“Name?”

“Nash.”

“Family name?”

“Er…” the tricky part. Mum had warned Nash she would curse them with her dying breath if they took her name to the school. “None.”

The examiner raised his right eyebrow. “None? As in, you have none, or your family name is, in fact, none?”

Nash felt their face getting warm. “My mum would kill me if I told. Sir.”

The examiner raised his left eyebrow. “One of those sorts, is she? Doesn’t trust the confidence of the Registry?”

“Not as such. Sir.”

The examiner sighed. “You’re the second one today, too. Well, out with it. Why are you here?”

“Because I’m a solid 50% sure I’m a wizard.” And Mum told me if I didn’t get some training I’d be the death of her, they added mentally.

“And the other 50%?”

“Witch. Sir.”

The examiner raised both eyebrows but made no comment. It wasn’t until they were walking towards the group of new students huddled in the hallway that they processed the fact that the examiner had accepted them. Relief washed over them and their legs turned to jelly as they approached the other kids.

The Hungry One

Posted on September 2, 2025 by Julia B

The only thing that keeps us sane is the knowledge that we know we are not crazy.

Perhaps sane is too strange a word -still able to experience the truth, perhaps? Experience -so subjective a term! And yet it is all we have. No tools, no instruments of science can record that which I –Which we have seen. Seismographs show only the result, not the cause of the great movement through the vaults of the Earth. Photographs smudge rather than interpret the path of light taken, the path that reveals

the path that reveals

I cannot name it, it is too much

Sanity. We must keep our sanity. Mary skinned a child alive. It was done in a fit of clarity she says and upon the final shudders of the small frame, it moved with an inhuman might -and so she was correct -she was indeed the same, sane woman who started this–

I cannot call it adventure. Adventure implies a beginning, an end, a trajectory and at least a certain agency of the adventurer. Adventures are gone on, told of, lived through and dreamed of.

Nor is this a story. A narrative. I cannot comprehend that there might be a pattern in anything I now set down upon the page.

Set it in writing -more, or less dangerous than not? To write is to introduce others to the world. The real world, the world stripped of its niceties and lies and laid bare upon the table for all to see -to bring another into this world?

I must be insane.

There is no beginning. No end in sight. But my experience- that is infinite. That I can write, point for point, and have appear rationally, in the same order in which I must have experienced it.

Mary has been eating something she doesn’t want us to see.

Mohammed is, in my estimation, too calm. Something must have snapped in him when —

I don’t know when. Perhaps the rest of us are too easily agitated.

A week ago I didn’t know what it felt like to have a knife pushed through my meat, my tendon, to the bone of my right arm. Thank god I am left handed. Sinistrous. Backwards. Inverted. The nuns couldn’t beat it out of me, no, I was strong then as I am strong now, as unbreakable as an oak, as I have always been, no, the nuns can tease away my flesh and show each other my slick bloody bone and I, I, I will still rise.

A week ago. Yes. My introduction to the frailty of truth.

A week ago I walked through the streets at midnight. Bait. I was bait, you see. Murderers had been targeting those of my description -young, brown, tall women, between the ages of eighteen and thirty, one or two victims outside the age range, yes, but serial killers don’t always work from a precise checklist. Their forearms and hands would be found, arranged reverently, with symbols of an uncanny script sliced into them. Most were believed to be descended from indigenous groups, which -well, serial killers kill within their community and race most of the time. Our profile -a satanic, or perhaps just cruel -Native himself, and himself because women killed more quietly. All girls -women -young ladies on record had disappeared between midnight and three a.m. -the witching hour, the hour we are at our weakest, our defenses lowered.

He would, we thought, find them on their ways home from work or partying, or at a party -his presentation had not changed since the beginning of the spree -experienced, we decided. Nobody paid attention when the brown girls went missing, nobodynobodynobody my mother told me nobody will remember your name nobody nobody will help you who is this nobody who loves me?

Nobody would care about them and so would I.

Bait. I was bait. Supposed to find and lure him in. A body cam on at all times, a squad a block away -he must lure his victims, we thought, not a main street slasher, hit-and-run– no. He would spend time with the girls he chose. Indigenous, eighteen to thirty, tall, female, nighttime.

Their right hands, hacked up to the elbow, cut and decorated like a child would decorate a mother’s day card, or a butcher would decorate her walls. Signs and signs that repeated but that hurt to look at, made your vision swim, your brain squeezed and drip out your ears if you thought too hard. The hands, left on the doorsteps of wherever the women were seen last -last -if only it had been their last -some cuts had begun to scab -they were alive the whole time, before they were dismembered – no other way, we were told, no other way to close the gates but I don’t believe her, I don’t believe her, you see?

Bait. I was bait.

They had other bait. They took the bait. All of the bait. Fish swallows bait even if it hooks itself in the process. Eaten alive, wriggling and slimy.

He is scraping my mind, he is looking. Looking for a way in, out there.

Mary was in the squad car a block away when I was taken. I had a taser, just in case, but I didn’t expect her, she who smiles. Nice old lady out too late, could you help me find my car keys, smiled at me. Hair like my grandmother’s, iron grey, braids wound tight, thick eyelids and bags from age underneath them, laugh lines creased her near-translucent skin, skin so fine I thought of parchment, of paper, of accidental rips and tears. She smiled. A stabbing pain, a pricking pain, and I woke up miles away.

Mary followed. The old were not as helpless against technology as they might have been, these old women, but were old and so did not think to turn off the iPod in my pocket -they threw the phone and the camera they could find away but mp3 players couldn’t track you, just music, beautiful music, soothing, electrifying, whatever you need it to be, music, just noise in a pattern, I hatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehate

Mary and her partner tracked me. He died before backup arrived. The old women know many things. A child offered a lily. Torn to pieces, the child’s tongue growing like a tree, splitting. She told me. Mary told me. There are eyes watching us, she says. It must be true, for if it were not she would be insane, and she must not.

The old women were kind. They brushed my hair, sang me songs, drugged the warm but not hot tea and cookies, hid hallucinogens in my food, changed my clothes, bathed me, fed me. They carved the name of the Gatekeeper into my arm with tiny blades so sharp, blades so thin I only felt it once the air stung. I cried for Mary. Mary cried for her partner. Mohammed cried for his sister. I knew his sister, as in the way of the Bible, carnally, the carnage, the carnival, carneval, the festival of meat, of flesh, eaten as sustenance, protection against the coming fast.

He comes.

Mohammed’s sister. I didn’t know I knew her until the morning light touched us with its pale, dusty fingers and showed me everything. The snow. The blood. The lymph flowing through. The world, stars, sun, everything, her breasts, wrists, her brow furrowed in confusion, slow to get the joke, though fast to understand. Soft hands, where his were rough and cracked, they touched together, I could feel her in him as the sun filtered into the warehouse. Blood, you see, I could hear the blood now. They had fed me the blood of Mohammed’s sister.

I never knew his sister. I have forgotten her name. She told it to me once.

The Gatekeeper was as kind as the women. Mohammed watched from the shadows and Mary from the outside of the walls. That is why she is sane and we are not. We must be. We are the only ones who can be so. Damn. Sane.

To be sane. To hear the rustle of leaves in the wind, the drop of every particle of water from the sky. The sound of ice melting. I see the grass growing. It’s very distracting, you know. Conversations are hard when you can see the layers of skin peeling off. Sanity. I am sane.

Mary and Mohammed found the other bait. I listened to the feeling of their blood on my tongue. The dead were my sisters and cousins and lovers and mothers all in one, the old women thought our blood best, to close the land. Terrible, they said, but what if all mankind were as sane as us?

I can hear the Gatekeeper tapping at my skull. He is soaking into my bones. The old women cluck like hens telling me I should have let them amputate, before it’s too late, but May and Mohammed wouldn’t. They saw the Gatekeeper too. They can hear what I hear, maybe, but they can’t feel what I feel.

Nobody came for the brown girls. I could have kissed nobody then. The Gatekeeper is a bridge and I am his anchor. They cannot know. They cannot know. Mary is too sane to let me live. But I cannot lose all my arms.

I will bleed and if I bleed he comes, but if I stay alive he will eat

he will

he is

Hunger. I am hungry. I have eaten only the salt of my sister’s wounds. I must -shall be -how far away is death. Three minutes, three days, three weeks is what they taught me. Three minutes, they knocked me out. Three days, they drugged me to see what wasn’t there to prepare me for what always was. Three weeks -it has been one.

Two left.

Mohammed says the walls are transmitting our thoughts to the old women. I saw him laughing to my screams as they cut my flesh with ragged knives, but I know that was just a dream. If it were not, why would he be here? He saw the

Mohammed saw it. What was

There were things beyond the Gatekeper. He is bound to the land, wherever he sets foot, and must eat of it, and I am the land and the and is in me, older than bones and blood, older than stones is the Gatekeeper. Humans dreamed him, gave him form, and he was born into this world and so he existed before us, moving in unoccupied spacetime, as it were.

The things beyond.

If he is not full, they will be hungry.

If they are hungry, they will come.

I feel the Gatekeeper tapping at my skull.