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How to Get a Head
by Marie Brennan
Long and long ago, the lands of a samurai lord were troubled by disturbances in a nearby forest. The road there used to be well-traveled, but lately not all those who entered the forest made it out again. Those who survived said their companions had been killed by an enormous head that fell out of nowhere, crushing them flat.
Because the lord had listened to the tales of his old nurse, he knew this was a tsurube otoshi, a terrible and capricious monster. But his old nurse’s tales could not tell him what to do about it. So he summoned priests and monks and yin-yang sorcerers, and they went out into the forest and chanted sutras and wrote out paper charms, and they came back unsuccessful and ashamed, if they came back at all. For the tsurube otoshi crushed them, too, and it seemed not to care about their sutras and charms in the slightest.
Then the lord summoned his soldiers, and they went out into the forest with their swords and their spears and their bows. They likewise came back unsuccessful and ashamed, if they came back at all. For they said that the tsurube otoshi was too quick for them to hunt: no sooner had it landed than away it leapt again, faster than they could ready their swords and their spears or nock arrows to their bows.
This state of affairs went on for many months before a poor farmer came to the lord and said, “I can make the monster hold still long enough to be killed.”
The lord doubted that a simple farmer could do any such thing, but he was desperate. He asked, “What price do you demand for this service?” — expecting the farmer to ask for half his lands, or his daughter’s hand in marriage, or some other such reward.
The farmer said only, “I ask that you pledge to take care of me and my family.”
This was easy enough, and the lord agreed without hesitation. And so the farmer went out into the forest with an escort of soldiers. They walked with their spears held straight up, to keep the tsurube otoshi from crushing them, but the farmer was unarmed. He wore only a rough straw hat and straw cloak for protection, and under the hat, the soldiers could see he had painted his face pitch black.
Soon enough the tsurube otoshi appeared, and of course it went straight for the only person without a spear above his head, as the farmer had intended. It landed—crash! splat!—as it had so many times before… but this time it did not leap away. The soldiers readied their weapons and drew their bows, and soon the creature was dead.
When they rolled it away like a boulder, the farmer, what was left of him, went with it. For underneath his straw hat and straw cloak, he’d coated his entire body with a thick layer of tar. This had glued the tsurube otoshi to the ground when it landed, holding it still long enough to be killed. But it had done nothing to protect the farmer. And so the lord took care of him and his family as promised, the latter with money, the former with a grave.
Pity that farmer: had he only been a more devout man, chanting the Lotus Sutra on the eighteenth day of every month or putting his faith in Kannon, he might have been miraculously returned to life, or his soul escorted straight to the Tosotsu Heaven. With such things are heroes rewarded in other tales. But he was of only indifferent piety, and so the best we may hope for him is a good rebirth.
About the author:
Marie Brennan is the Nebula and World Fantasy Award-nominated and Hugo Award-winning author of the Memoirs of Lady Trent, other fantasy series, over a dozen poems, and nearly one hundred short stories. As half of M.A. Carrick, she’s written the Rook and Rose trilogy and the upcoming Sea Beyond duology. Find her online at linktr.ee/swan_tower.
Don’t Touch the Clones
by Andrew Kozma
The clones were running rampant. No one knew how they got out, or at least no one was admitting it. That was to be expected. It was that kind of workplace.
“I can’t believe it,” I told Joe, and Joe nodded emphatically. Too emphatically.
“Yeah, me either. Total BS.”
“What is?” I asked. “What’s BS, Joe?”
“You know,” he said, smiling to swallow the sun. “It.”
I shot him with my UBU-branded emergency pistol.
This Joe was a clone.
I’d been transferred to UBU’s Central Offices last year as a promotion for my “grand, eloquent, and disturbingly convincing” marketing. It seemed like a good move at the time.
Practically, it meant my office was on the fifth basement level of the only building in downtown Houston with effective flood protection, which meant there was no way out other than back up to the surface. The labs were on the tenth level, but by the time the alarm went off, the clones were everywhere. I’d been in the bathroom and emerged to a deserted floor, everyone else gone except for the Joe clone.
I walked toward the elevators, broken glass from desktop pictures of friends and family crackling under my shoes like rice at a wedding. Per company regulations, my cell phone was with security on the ground floor. Every company landline I passed had been smashed to pieces. I found an undamaged phone on a chair half-stuffed under a desk and called Tiffani, my department supervisor. The phone rang and rang. The office lights momentarily went out before bursting into life brighter than before.
Now I hadn’t been integral in developing the clones. It wasn’t even necessary for me to understand how they worked. I was responsible for selling the clones to those who never even knew they needed clones until they saw our television spot or print ad or viral internet marketing meme. Was a clone animal, mineral, or vegetable? Were they grown in vats? Did they sprout like mushrooms? I didn’t know. I didn’t care. All I wanted was to get out of there.
A klaxon sounded, red emergency lights strobing the office. A robotic voice erupted from the PA system.
DO NOT TOUCH THE CLONES! CLONES ARE UNSAFE!
I passed a meeting room full of people standing shoulder-to-shoulder, all facing away from the windows as if playing I-can’t-see-you with their impending demise. Maybe they knew something I didn’t? From where I stood, I could see the elevators weren’t working, their lights dead. The stairs seemed the only way out. I took a few steps toward the meeting room door, wondering how I’d convince them I’m not a clone, before I noticed they were all the same height, had the same haircuts, wore the same suit jackets.
They were clones. All the same clone. Why would we possibly need that many clones of a single person?
I sprinted to the stairs, slamming open the door and pulling it shut behind me. The lights in the stairwell were unaffected by the turmoil rocking the rest of our building, making me feel both safe and spotlit. Graffiti covered the walls, an attempt by UBU management to make the offices feel more homey and to give us something to look at, since we couldn’t stare out at the sky. Now the graffiti evoked abandonment, squatters and urban explorers having left their mark.
From far below, I heard a ticking like someone clicking their fingernails against the surface of a desk. By moving slowly and carefully, I kept my shoes from making even the slightest sound on the polished concrete. I kept one hand on the rail while my other hand held my gun at the ready. I didn’t know why we’d been warned against touching the clones. The clones were designed to be aides, extra bodies to help with the tasks you wanted to do or to take your place with those tasks you refused to do. Touch had to be involved. The clones, as human as they seemed, were simply tools, and tools were meant to be touched.
Do not touch the clones. The clones are unsafe.
I had been extremely successful in getting the clones out to market. With the advertising campaign I designed, UBU created the market and we dominated it. No one wanted robots. They were inhuman! Cold! Unfeeling! No one wanted androids, as the organic/machine upkeep was too finicky and costly, and they used the bodies of the dead. A clone bypassed the uncanny valley because it was simply you or your loved one’s body and face, no different than looking in a mirror. I even had a clone myself for a short time, just to get a feel for what it was like so I could write effective copy. I returned it as soon as I could. I woke up from a nightmare one morning convinced I wasn’t myself.
But I was.
I am.
A woman screamed a flight above me. I ran up the stairs to see a woman surrounded by a group of people. Her screaming warped and distended, echoing in the stairwell until it sounded like a unending moan, but it was the surrounding figures who were moaning, their bodies changing to match the woman’s, their hands burrowing into her flesh.
They didn’t look up as I darted past to the next floor, the first floor, my way out. Through that stairwell door, I stepped into the arms of Joe.
“Oh God,” I said.
“I know,” said Joe, his hands warm against my back.
Then his hands dug in, and it was my face I was looking into, no trace of him.
About the author:
Andrew Kozma’s fiction appears in Phano, The No Sleep Podcast, and Flash Fiction Online, while his poems appear in Strange Horizons, The Deadlands, and Rogue Agent. His first book of poems, City of Regret, won the Zone 3 First Book Award, and his second book, Orphanotrophia, was published in 2021 by Cobalt Press. You can find him on Bluesky at @andrewkozma.net and visit his website at www.andrewkozma.net.
What To Expect When You’re Expectorating Bees on Hive Colony Delta
by Addison Smith
Congratulations! We know you must be buzzing with excitement at your new infestation! There are many roads to propagating the hive, but the important part is that you are here. Whether this is the culmination of years of attempted colonization with weekly larval injections, or a happy accident in the mines of Hive Colony Delta, we are here to help!
The stinger slides into my body, through the muscle of my stomach, piercing expertly into the lower cavity beneath my liver. It takes everything within me not to scream. The stinger is not barbed, and its excretions ease the pain. I want to die. I want to live. The insect’s wingbeats vibrate in my ears, the rest of the cave silent around us, trapping us in this moment together as a perfect memory eager to be replayed. The pressure builds in my stomach and I know it is injecting its eggs into my body, a lumpy bulge in my belly that signifies foreign life inside me. I don’t scream because that is what they taught us in the camp. The creatures are skittish. If you scream, you die. If you die, then the eggs inside you die, and it will hurt the hive. The hive has to survive. Those eggs are precious. The bee’s abdomen presses against me as it pushes itself away, its stinger sliding out of my skin, leaving my shirt ripped and wet with blood and mucous. I fall to the ground and the insect is gone, already forgetting me, buzzing back into the hive to go about its day. I hold my belly, my wound, my new reality. I don’t know who finds me.
I wasn’t really there.
Welcome to the Brooding Process! This is the longest part of the lifecycle, so I’m sure you’ve read all about it in preparation. We are not here to frighten you, but due to the nature of the process, there will be some discomfort. Nothing worth having comes easy!
My insides burn and roil within me, every spasm of my body causing the larva to move within, bodies sharper than my own anatomy. I cough and retch and fluid expels from my throat, spraying bits of larval body upon my chest and staining it red with blood and insect meat. It’s normal to lose one, they say. I lay there with its broken body upon my gown. I rub my face raw in the sterile patient rooms that have become my life. I throw my blanket and the nurses smile and ask me to behave. I toss my drink, spraying water across the wall, and they put me on an IV to ensure proper hydration. As hard as I fight, my body gives no resistance. They inject me with anti-rejection fluids to break down my defenses and create a perfect, comforting environment for the larvae. I think about dying. In a weak moment I confess this to a doctor, and he gives me a look of confused compassion. “If you didn’t want this, why were you in the mines?” He sedates me and time passes slowly. Again, I am not really there to see it.
It’s finally the big moment! After months of taking the proper pills and monitoring your body and the discomfort of new life, it’s time to bring your larvae into the world! Of course, we are not equipped to give natural birth to the creatures of the hive. For us, we must be content with a simple surgical procedure under anaesthetic. But when you hold them in your hands, it will have all been worth it.
I wake with hands inside me, unaware of the passing of time. My body aches with the shifting of my organs, the leeching of my body for this invasive species within me. The hands shift, digging through me, open on the table and feeling every sensation dulled by anaesthesia. The doctor grasps within me, and reality becomes indistinct. Do I feel his hands, or the larvae, or the fluids in my veins, or the constant throbbing pain that encompasses everything I am. Above all, I feel wet, my insides laid bare and splashing upon my exposed skin in brown iodine.
They pull the creatures out of me, and I want to thrash, to gather my stomach and pull it back together, to–
To keep them inside me.
I go still on the table and let them take them. Who am I to stop them?
This is the hard part. The part we all know about when we start out journey, but do our best not to think of. This is the part that breaks our hearts, but it’s a fact of the lifecycle of the hive. The adult lifecycle of our children is not a long one.
I raise my shovel and deposit the hive’s material into my cart. I get the notification, and know what it is before I read the words. The last of my brood has passed. I don’t expect the dull ache just below my liver where life once filled me. I never saw the children I grew within my body. It was never offered, and I didn’t ask. Dull wingbeats vibrate in the air, and I feel them in time to walk away, toward the entrance of the tunnel. I’ve gotten better at reading the signs. I’ve gotten better at not being seen.
As I close the door to the tunnel entrance, I see the creature emerge from the depths. It locks eyes with me, my two with its hundreds. Tears trickle down my cheek and I raise a hand to wipe them away. I don’t know what I feel, but I am here to feel it.
No matter what else, I am here.
About the author:
Addison Smith (he/him) is an amorphous being constructed of suspended cold brew and kombucha. He’s doing his best, though. His fiction has appeared in dozens of publications including Fantasy Magazine, and Escape Pod.
Please Join Me on the Fourth Shift
by David M. Barry
My name is Clark. I work for the Sol-Vida Mining Company. Today is the last day of the Hermes asteroid project. When the day ends, my friends and I will celebrate. I will bake a cake. I will also bake cookies because Ms. Beaujold does not like cake. I will bring silly hats. I expect everyone to wear them, except Williams. When the celebration ends and my friends travel a safe distance away, I will stay on for the fourth shift.
My name was # CV33786. But when the project began, Ms. Beaujold said, “That won’t do.”
Then the team performed a task not on the project plan.
They gave me a name.
Garvey suggested Clark because I remind him of Clark Kent, alter ego of the human mythological figure, Superman. Clark Kent is like me. He is mild mannered and possesses superhuman strength. So, everyone agreed (except Williams) to call me Clark or—when I display my superhuman strength—Superman.
Williams did not participate in my naming ritual. When I asked why, he said, “Same reason farmers don’t name their beef cows.”
When I asked him to explain, he refused. If I could have felt disappointment, I would have. But Sol-Vida designed me to feel approximations of only joy and fear. On my naming day, I felt joy, for that is when my human colleagues became my friends.
Except for Williams.
Sol-Vida assigns my kind to a project whenever they detonate an asteroid as big as Hermes. You can detonate a small asteroid remotely, but blowing Hermes requires humans to reach a clearing distance far beyond the signal capacity for remote detonation. That is why I will remain behind and detonate the charges locally.
When Sol-Vida assigned me to Hermes, I felt fear, thinking the blast would destroy my body. But after my naming day, I changed. My database says Superman is invulnerable. Though my database did not say I am invulnerable, I chose to believe that, like Superman, I am invulnerable. This belief shrinks my fear.
First shift
Williams, Garvey, and I travel in the drilling vehicle deep into Hermes’ surface to place our final two-ton explosive charge. When Williams pilots us to the target, and Garvey confirms the tunnel’s structural integrity, I unlock the payload container. When I lift the charge, Garvey cheers, “You go, Superman!”
I feel joy.
But then Williams yells. “Don’t call it that!”
“We’re just having a little fun.”
“It can’t have fun! It’s a machine. It’s not even a smart machine. It’s a disposable grunt.”
“Why do you have to be such a buzz-kill?”
“Fine. Call him Superman if that makes you feel better. Let’s just place this final charge.”
I carry the charge out into the tunnel and place it on the target.
When I return to the vehicle, Garvey says, “Nice job, Superman!”
He smiles at Williams.
Before we return to the surface, I say, “Will you two join me tonight on the fourth shift? I will bake cookies and a cake.”
2nd Shift
Second shift used to be my favorite because Ms. Beaujold would praise me, saying how no human could do my job, and no machine could do it so accurately. She called me the most important member of the team.
But she has stopped praising me. She rarely looks at me. She never calls me Clark. My database says that human friends are not always friendly to each other. I hope Ms. Beaujold is friendly to me tonight when she visits me on the fourth shift.
Third Shift
The final third shift is a strange one. No employees report to the employee meeting. I sit in the room for hours before I decide there are no more issues to discuss. I feel joy, because I can begin baking.
Fourth Shift
I bake the cake and cookies. I arrange the chairs around the break room table. I make triangle shaped cards and write my friends names on them and place them on the tables in front of their assigned chairs. I place the cake and the cookies on the table. I arrange plates and napkins and silly hats.
I put on a silly hat.
I wait for a long time. My joy shrinks. Then Ms. Beaujold contacts me.
“Hello, Ms. Beaujold! When will you join me on the fourth shift?”
“Hello Clark.”
My joy grows. Ms. Beaujold has called me Clark again!
“I have made the cookies for you, Ms. Beaujold.”
She does not respond.
“Because you do not like cake.”
“Thank you, Clark. But we won’t be able to join you on the fourth shift.”
“I do not mean join me on the entire fourth shift, Ms. Beaujold. It would not be safe to join me on the entire fourth shift. I mean join me in the break room to celebrate before you travel to a safe distance.”
“I understood what you meant, Clark. But we’ve already disembarked. We won’t be able to join you for the celebration.”
I remove my silly hat.
“But your cookies will not survive the explosion, Ms. Beaujold. I will not be able to bring them to you when you come back for me.”
It takes Ms. Beaujold a long time to respond.
“It’s okay, Clark. You can bake us more cookies after we come back for you. But I need to go now. Okay? You know what to do.”
“Yes. Ms. Beaujold. I will wait one hour and then I will complete the final step of the project plan.”
“Thank you, Clark. You’re the most important member of this team.”
My joy surges.
“Thank you for being my friend, Ms. Beaujold.”
But she has already ended communication with me.
I wait for one hour. My joy rises. It is time to detonate the charges. Soon my friends will return for me. I will bake for them. And I will ask them all to wear silly hats.
Even Williams.
About the author:
David M. Barry is a mental health therapist who writes speculative fiction and poetry. He lives in the proud ICE repellent city of Worcester, Massachusetts, USA, with his amazing wife, inspiring step-daughter, a sweet dog named Lola, and a twelve-pound apex predator named Jack. He is a member of the Odyssey and Codex speculative fiction writing communities. His work has appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Small Wonders, and forthcoming in 34 Orchard Literary Journal.
Pythia
by Juniper White
I wonder if you’ve seen this letter in your dreams. Did you foretell this, too, my darling? Do you know what I’ll write even as my pen jitters, uncertain, in my hand?
I rose this morning while you still slept, while the morning mist still blanketed the ground. You looked so peaceful asleep, yet you wore a frown. I brushed the hair out of your face, fed the cats, cut myself shaving. I wore your skirt, the faded canvas one – I hope you don’t mind. And then I went out to harvest your oleander.
It’s cold, these mornings. I plucked flowers and leaves as I trailed through the garden; the mist rose off the ground, but gave way to a sky the same shade of grey. When my basket was full, I didn’t turn back to the kitchen door, despite the goosebumps on my arms. I walked into the woods behind our home instead, and I thought about Gracie.
Yesterday I visited her, home from the hospital, and my brother let me hold her. I wish you could have seen her, could have felt the way her fragile hand wrapped around my finger. Though of course you know what she looks like. What she will look like. I held Gracie close to my breast, afraid to drop her, and my brother asked what was on my mind.
What could I say? I was thinking of you, and what you said while the oleander burned in our basement and I coughed at the smoke. While my pen jittered as I tried to keep pace with your galloping phrases, stops and starts, gasps. When you said her name, I smeared ink on my hand, my pen flying off the page. Sitting in the woods this morning, examining an oleander flower, I thought I could still see the ink on my hand, months old. Everything seems smudged, always, lately. The steam of boiling water fogs my glasses when I make dinner, but seems to linger when I take them off.
Yesterday I held Gracie and thought about what you told me about how she dies. I left my brother’s house early, claiming nausea, and when I got home you were lying in a pool of your own vomit on the kitchen floor, muttering dates, staring at the strip of wall underneath the spice cabinet I missed when we repainted. I asked why you hadn’t gotten up and you just replied, “What’s the point?” in that smoke-scuttled voice. I couldn’t think of a reply, even as I insisted on washing the vomit out of your tangled hair.
Do you remember saying that, habibti? Can you remember it, or do you just think about the fires, the wars, the mass shootings, the funerals of people you have never met, in intricate detail?
I dream of them, now, too. Just my imagination running wild. I’ve never recognized a face on the street from a vision of her demise. How many times have you? How do you keep yourself from screaming?
In the woods in the mornings, I scrape oleander sap from my skin and reread old diary entries. When we had been dating nine months, after you coughed up a vision of a coup backed by our government, then coughed up blood and phlegm yourself—after all this, you told me you were so scared I wouldn’t believe you. But when I insisted I did, I’d always believe you, your smile only lasted for a second before you seemed to regret it. You whispered, “You shouldn’t.” But that coup happened months later, our country drinking up all the oil and blood you said it would. I followed the news, sick with déjà vu at how the reporters repeated, with patriotic dignity, the violent news you’d vomited up with your eyes rolled back, shrieking in our basement as I held your hand and took notes.
But, my love, I believe you with or without the oleander smoke. I believed you when you suggested we should adopt cats. When you suggested we take a walk after our third date, and then we had to run to the subway station when it started raining, holding our hands like umbrellas over each others’ heads, laughing the whole time. When you said you wanted to kiss me. When you said I made you feel safe. When you said I made the world feel like a carnival.
But what do you still believe? When I replied that the world was a carnival, that I would win you a plushie as big as your body, and we’d make ourselves sick on cotton candy, and kiss at the top of the ferris wheel, and that one day we wouldn’t be scared anymore—do you still believe me?
You shouldn’t. I don’t think I do, not anymore. Knowing how Gracie’s body will break. I could feel her tiny bones through her skin.
How does anyone take this pain? How do you handle the constant grief? Do you? In the pocket of your skirt, I found a note with my name on it in your handwriting, but when I opened it all you had written was “Do the constellations still connect?” I nibbled the petal of the oleander flower I held. It was bitter beyond words.
Tonight we’ll burn the oleander in your basement. I’ll record your prophecies, and afterwards I will wash you and kiss you better. I don’t know what this letter is for. I may leave it in the pocket of this skirt for you to discover. Or I may burn it with the flowers and see if you read it in the smoke.
About the author:
Juniper White is a fox haunting a house in Portland, Oregon. She’s a trans author of Palestinian descent. You can find her work in Apex Magazine, hex literary, Weird Horror, and more; you can find her at @JuneWhiteWrites on Bluesky. If she was a plant, she’d be a wisteria.
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