SALMAGUNDI v2 Mythic Micros by @amy_grech @Madeleine_write @kgrose2 @TLTomljanovic @franeymountain @Bookish_Ash @BlaiseMarcc @ZaryFekete @MEProctor3 @TejaswineeRC @merlinflower & @OfferKuban Curated by @NathanBorn2010 / Nathan Pettigrew #MythicPicnicTweetStory === === Meddlesome Man by Amy Grech / @amy_grech . Exiting the train at 75th Avenue, a deserted station just after 11:00 pm, ascending the stairs, a weary 52-year-old author unintentionally letting her guard down, unzips her black bag, emblazoned with MARC JACOBS NEW YORK in gold lettering, anxious to rid her hands of repulsive train crud. Her heart thrumps in her chest like a jackrabbit when she spies a 30-something disheveled man wearing a camouflage jacket, black pants, and matching shoes lurking near the exit. A devil in disguise. A native New Yorker, she’s well-aware that means trouble. He approaches, eager for a handout. “Hey, goodnight…hey goodnight,” he squawks urgently, like a demented parrot, bouncing on the balls of his feet. Polly wants a cracker! She averts her gaze quickly downward. A maroon splotch the size of a plumb makes her queasy. Is that blood fresh, the woman wonders, as she weighs her options — Queens Boulevard, North side — her usual point of egress — and Queens Boulevard, South side, which requires her to cross eight lanes of treacherous traffic to reach her apartment safely. The meddlesome man paces between the two. Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, quick like a bunny, she scampers to the North side. Outside, the woman glances over her shoulder. Luckily, she’s alone, for now… . Amy Grech has sold over 100 stories to various anthologies and magazines including: 10 by 10 Flash Fiction Stories, Apex Magazine, Gamut Magazine, Punk Noir Magazine, Roi Fainéant Press, Space & Time Magazine, Tales from the Canyons of the Damned, Yellow Mama, and many others. Alien Buddha Press published her poetry chapbook, A Shadow of Your Former Self. She is a 2x Pushcart Prize nominee. She is an Active Member of the Horror Writers Association who lives in Forest Hills, Queens. Visit Amy Grech's Official Web Fright: www . crimsonscreams . com Bluesky: bsky . app/profile/amygrech.bsky . social Ko-fi: ko-fi . com/amygrech Medium: medium . com/@crimsonscreams X: x . com/amy_grech === === A Dish Served Cold by Madeleine Armstrong / @Madeleine_write . Every summer, my in-laws throw a family garden party and everyone brings a dish. In previous years I slaved over rich curries, crispy bhajis and sweetly spiced cardamom cakes, but they always turned their noses up, muttering about the funny foreign flavours when they thought I wasn’t listening. This year, I can’t be arsed. “I’m making salmagundi,” I announce during our weekly call. “Salma-what now?” my father-in-law says. “Is it ethnic?” my mother-in-law asks. “After your last curry I was on the loo for days.” Why do old people think everyone wants to know about their bowel habits? “It’s like a salad,” I say. “Not spicy.” Their relief washes down the phone line. When the big day comes, I take my time over the dish: layer upon layer of wafer-thin ham, topped with succulent tomatoes and crunchy lettuce, finished with pimento-stuffed olives, quartered hard-boiled eggs, and the pièce de résistance: some carefully selected prawns. Beautiful, if I say so myself. When I place the salmagundi on the heaving picnic table everybody coos, all the aunts and uncles and cousins crowding around in a way they never did with my other dishes. My in-laws take the choicest ingredients, including most of the prawns, and tuck in as I nibble on breadsticks and supermarket tzatziki. My husband, with his aversion to shellfish, steers clear. It takes less than an hour for my mother-in-law to turn green. She rushes inside, holding her mouth, before we hear the strains of her vomiting through the open bathroom window. That sets off my father-in-law who, with nowhere else to go, retches into a manicured flower bed, splattering the begonias with salmagundi chunks. “Oh dear – something you ate?” I ask. The aunts and uncles and cousins look panicked. There’s just one prawn left on top of my salad. I’m surprised no one noticed how out of date they were – but then, my in-laws never did have much taste. . Madeleine is a Pushcart Prize-nominated author who dreams of food-based revenge. She lives in London. Twitter/X @Madeleine_write; Bluesky @madeleinewrite. bsky. social === === The Weight of Yesterday by Karen Grose / @kgrose2 . Long gone, Gran’s love knew no bounds a smile of stardust her hugs shelter, soft and safe her kindness my first taste of home. Gran’s hands were always moving quick and practiced blue-green veins bulging under peppery skin, all-purpose, baking cookies and then knitting striped socks afterward while I waited at her elbow. My childish mouth watered as she prattled, the needle’s staccato click-clack keeping time with what Gran liked to call her tales wartime stories, family secrets, opinions unfulfilled dreams, hopes a desire for a better world. Older now, I wish I’d listened more carefully to have lingered in those moments together instead of being mesmerized by the shiny cabinetry on the seafoam cupboards and too focused on how long it may take those cookies to cool before I could grab one off the counter and run outside to play. Today I yearn for those stories I’d give anything to hear Gran’s tales one more time to lean in and ask questions to hold her gnarled hands to feel her magic, my source of strength. I wish I could have slowed down back then I wish I could have been more present I wish I could return. . Karen Grose is a crime fiction writer from Toronto, Canada. Her debut novel, The Dime Box, was selected by Amnesty International for its 2021 Book Club. Flat Out Lies, All June Left Behind and What We Keep Silent followed. She has flash fiction, poems, and short stories published by Roi Faineant Press, Paddler Press, Punk Noir Magazine, Epistemic Literary Magazine, Hooghly Review, Bunker Squirrel Magazine, and Superior Shores Press. She is a member of Crime Writers of Canada and the #thrillsandchills writing group. Track her down on X: @kgrose2, IG: karengrosewrites, FB, or at www . karengrose . ca === === The Dinner Party by T.L. Tomljanovic / @TLTomljanovic . The wine. The small talk. The ex. The look. The wine. The appetizer. The simmer. The stew. The wine. The meat. The knife. The tension. The comment. The confession. The fight. The silence. The guests. The host. The pause. More wine. The desert. The dishes. The coffee. The clean-up. The call. The cab. The night. The next. The text. The smile. The meme. The moment. The car. The buzzer. The bed. The breakfast. . T.L. Tomljanovic is a flash fiction writer based in British Columbia, Canada. She is the guardian of a dog the size of a donkey, an avid reader of anything with dragons, and a superhero in her own mind. She also won the Welkin Earth Genre Prize, and is a Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction nominee. Find more of her work at tomljanovic . wordpress . com === === First Real Job by Paul MacDougall / @franeymountain . They warned me about the rats. Bloody big things that would bite if aggravated. Best to avoid at all cost and wear thick, leather, steel-toed workbooks just in case you have to boot one out of the way. Boots with good soles so you don’t slip. Bats were different. Odds are they wouldn't bite me, but their guano could carry some deadly fungi called Cryptococcus. If you breathed in the shit you could get meningitis and die, or maybe survive but be blind. Who needed that. Avoid bat guano at all costs. Wear gloves and a dust mask. Plus the mask can help keep out the smells. It's a sewer after all. The place stinks no matter what good it does by carrying away storm water and human waste. It still stinks. Then there were the odd critters dummies let loose after their life as house pets expired. All manner of snakes, lizards, iguana-type things. You name it. They were down there. Not as many as the rats, but plenty big enough. Once I saw a six foot snake just a few yards in front of me. Talk about near messing your pants for sure. The biggest problem was the gases that might be present. Methane could blow you up, carbon monoxide could asphyxiate you and sulphur smells make you wretch. But that's the life of a big city sewer inspector. How you going to know if the concrete is giving way, a pipe is going to burst or a huge disaster is right below your feet. There were a lot of risks alright. But I took the right safety courses, wore the proper clothes, carried gloves and masks, had my inoculations. I never saw it coming. I roamed down the wrong tunnel. Perturbed a pretty messed up junky. They live down here too. Shoot up in the sewers. Carry knives. Stick people. The one hazard I was never warned about. Two-legged kind. I'm in no shape to inspect pipes and drains or do anything now. It was the last real job I ever had. . Paul MacDougall is a writer, playwright and columnist from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. He writes fiction and non-fiction and has had numerous plays produced in Cape Breton. === === Chopped Fine by Ashley Mangtani / @Bookish_Ash . The death house sent up its order, and nobody in the kitchen could place the word. Duplantier thumbed it into his phone by the fryers. An old English supper, chopped meat, anchovies, boiled eggs, onion, grapes, whatever the larder held, served on one plate. He soaked raisins for the grapes the commissary lacked and laid his anchovies out like commas. Renee Ostrander, twenty-four, drove Dawn Marie Cole home after close. Dawn Marie, nineteen, ran her nursing flashcards in the passenger seat. Emory Dean Hatch had cut the battery cable in the lot. He offered a jump. He drove them to the Bonnet Carré levee. Raped them on the riprap. Strangled Renee with her lanyard, then held Dawn Marie under the shallows until the cards came loose and floated. A catfish trotline brought them up, day eleven. His grandmother had made salmagundi in Ascension Parish from church-supper leftovers, chopped fine so charity reached the table as plenty. Nine years old, holding the bowl steady, asking to do the chopping. The state asked him what he wanted. Renee's last meal was half a sandwich eaten standing at the register. Dawn Marie's was gas station coffee, most of it still in the cup holder. He ate almost all of it. The raisins had swollen. Exactly right, he said, tell the cook. On the witness side, Renee's mother and Dawn Marie's grandmother sat at a table laid with no cutlery. The warden asked for last words. He said forgive me, Renee. He was looking at Dawn Marie's grandmother when he said it. One plate. Everyone eats. His fist came open at 12:19. The plate came back at 12:31. Duplantier scraped the rest, a coin of egg, the tail of one small fish, into the bin with everything else, chopped fine, past telling the meal from the man. . Ashley Mangtani is a slipstream writer whose work explores ecological and social collapse. Drawing on an M.Sc. in Environmental Science and as a fiction reader for Ploughshares, his work appears in Litro, Washington Square Review, Expat Press Flash Fiction Online, HAWKEYE, Neon Dystopia, Apocalypse Confidential, etc. Read more at ashleymangtani . com === === Revised Parameters by Patricia Russo / @BlaiseMarcc . I had a thought, he says. Don’t laugh, that still happens sometimes. It occurred to me that under the grass, there is more grass, we just can’t see it. Though not under, exactly. I don’t mean like it’s elephants all the way down. It’s more like sideways, but not exactly that, either. Sideways in all directions. This hidden grass, this additional grass, is softer than the grass we can see, more tender. You could lie down in it, and float, the way you can in an ocean, or in a dream. He looks at me, but I’m busy recording the readings for this timemark, which again indicate that all systems are functioning within the revised parameters. Not the original ones, but most definitely within the revised ones. I’m about to make a comment about this when he asks, Could you open the windows please, and I have to tell him again that it isn’t possible to do that. But you can look out of them, I say. There’s one right beside you, and you never look out of it. You can’t see vacuum, he replies, then, after a moment, adds, And the stars are so very far away. . In addition to Mythic Picnic, Patricia Russo's work has appeared in One Art, Identity Theory, Michigan City Review, The Bloomin' Onion, and Verity La. === === A Hive That Burns by Zary Fekete / @ZaryFekete . My name is Elaine, the mercury has hit 100 every day this week, and I have done everything that I can for my bees. Every afternoon I sit in the backyard, close enough to the hive to hear the soft murmur of their wings. They speak this quiet language to one another every day, a low vibration that thrums right through the soles of my shoes. All of the books say that bees don’t do well with weather over the mid 90s. I thought about trying to move them today, but the books also recommend not doing that. You shouldn't disrupt them when they're already stressed. This one is the third hive I’ve attempted. The first two died away, leaving nothing but empty, waxen ghost towns. Hives require a lot of work and often the bees can’t seem to make a go of it. They are expensive, and people grow frustrated quickly. But this hive, this third one, crackles like a fire. They have a will to live that matches the heat. Yesterday, that fire spilled over the fence. My neighbor marched down the street to my front door, her face was red with heat and anger. She informed me that her son had been stung three times in the past week. “The audacity!” she had shouted, her voice cutting through the heavy summer air. “That you should keep that hive! That you could pretend to control so many thousand!” Now, I am back in the grass, near to my hive, near to my queen. She hadn’t meant wrong, my queen. On hot days like this, bees are commanded to stop focusing on nectar and to start bringing water back to cool the hive. The neighbor's boy must have stood between them and a puddle. They probably felt threatened. Bees become more defensive when it’s hot, and they want to protect their queen. I understand. That’s what I’d want. . Zary Fekete grew up in Hungary and currently lives in Tokyo. He has a debut novella (Words on the Page) out with DarkWinter Lit Press and a short story collection (The Written Path: A Journey Through Sobriety and Scripture) out with Creative Texts. He enjoys books, podcasts, and many many many films. Twitter and Instagram: @ZaryFekete Bluesky: zaryfekete . bsky . social === === Cave Dweller by M.E. Proctor / @MEProctor3 . There used to be bears and mountain lions. Many of them. And packs of wolves. We, I, don’t smell them anymore. Coyotes still roam. Less of them it seems, from the yips and howls. Small fare comes this way, occasionally, to find coolness in the heat of summer. The slithery, the crawling, and the furry keep me, us, fed. The hive doesn’t need much. Scarcity makes the hive drowsy. I, we, can sleep for so long, time has no meaning. Time only matters for the prey. They live and breathe, do their foraging and hunting, and then they are no more. The hive is as old as the mountain, born from molten rock and part of it, as ancient as the world. We, I, have memories of turmoil and destruction, of the hive being much bigger. The world itself must have been bigger then, before it started feeding on itself and shrinking. Maybe I, we, are doomed to become smaller too and disappear like all creatures of wonder. But not for eons more, because something new is hovering near our domain. It’s smaller than a bear, noisier than anything we’ve fed on before, and its smell is strong. The edges of the hive, awake now, vibrate with the scent of flesh and blood. Maybe the prey will be curious and explore, all prey are curious. Maybe it will seek shelter from the sun, the cold, or the rain. And if it doesn’t, the hive can wait. Prey always come back. . M.E. Proctor writes the Declan Shaw PI series. Book 3, The Way You Say My Name, comes out in September. She’s the author of two short story collections, and the co-author of the retro-noirs Bop City Swing and Kansas City Breakdown. She’s a Derringer and Shamus Award nominee. Website: www . shawmystery . com On Substack: https:// meproctor.substack . com === === The Happiest Kingdom by Tejaswinee Roychowdhury / @TejaswineeRC . Azad Bose didn’t know the ‘when’ of the thin air that spat him out on a stone road draped in sunset, but he knew it was time travel for two reasons. First, the place looked like a period-piece film set. And second, just moments ago, he was outside the United Science Organization HQ, leading a protest against the Time-Travel and Teleportation Project. By evening, the locals had absorbed him completely, though neither side understood the other’s language. They dressed him in a patchwork bottom drape like themselves, and brought him charred meat and slices of a strange lemon. He would have been flattered by their hospitality if he weren’t unnerved by their oddly serene faces and thoughtless eyes. They marched him to the palace and introduced him as “A Sad.” The king, an equally serene-looking character, hopped forward, hugged him tight, and squealed, “A Sad!” “AZAD!” he protested. “A SAD! A SAD! A SAD!” The palace echoed amidst claps. Frustrated by the dystopia and his inability to snap back into his timeline, Azad decided to do what he did best. He shot out of the palace into the market square and climbed onto a stack of crates. Without the luxury of words, he resorted to mime. He let out a battle cry and pointed aggressively to the palace gates where the king now stood. He then ran around the market collecting props. He placed a roasted goat leg on a table and, from a wicker basket, hurled randomly at it: potatoes, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, the strange lemons, and a couple of boiled eggs. Azad looked at the crowd—clearly inspired by his performance, he thought—pumped his fists into the air, and roared victoriously. Just then, the king emerged and threw a block of cheese at the goat leg, and the crowd erupted. Celebrations continued through the night. Everyone got a plate of this new dish. Azad looked at his portion, and hunger hit him like a bag of bricks. Through a mouthful, he finally smiled. . @TejaswineeRC is a founding editor of @HooghlyReview. === === Revel by Merlin Flower / @merlinflower . The injustice of the plate was overwhelming. I looked at the leaves. Five of them, three brown and two green. When the grays went from zero to eight in an otherwise ordinary night, I had used the henna leaves from the garden and Indigo powder to convert them to a different color. However, in the alchemy between the leaves, they cancelled out each other leaving me with the exact number of white hairs. Surprise! Rubbing salt to the wound, there was no dressing on the plate. I checked again. Five raw leaves with a sliver of a tomato. Did they really cut it into five million pieces? ‘How is it?’ asked the chef who somehow materialized nearby while I was deep in thoughts. The chef smiled at me like an astronaut re-entering the planet, as his assistant joined him. At 900 Aussie dollars this was eating money. Follows that, I should just chew them with eyes closed. But still, leaves? ‘Fantastic, Any dressing,?’ I asked, adding, ‘I wouldn’t mind a pizza underneath these leaves. Like a hibernating frog emerging to find a floor of concrete, he gasped. I saw the cunningness in the eye of the hunter changing as one of us become the prey. In slow motion, he looked at his assistant, aghast. Faster than Houdini, both vanished from sight. ‘Did you know? Snippid is the smell of wet leaves?’ I told my eight-year-old niece. She shrugged, not wanting anything to interfere with the taste of roo meat in the mouth. I dreamt of a simple burger filled to the gills with red or white – edible-moisturizer. Like, not all em dashes are ai generated. And, not all moisturizers are edible. Only the assistant came back. ‘I love the plate but even a small slice of bread or breadstick would be great,’ I said averting my eyes to hide the dishonesty. ‘Didn’t you order salad?’ asked the assistant. Between the dispatch and receiving, the message had been lost. ‘No, Salmagundi,’ my niece clarified with a laugh. . Merlin Flower is an independent artist === === Ricochet: Salma Who? by Offer Kuban / @OfferKuban . Two MI5 officers stood below the large Borough Market sign. To the right, in the background, The Shard reached into the London sky, stark against its blueness. London Bridge lay nearby. Even at the entrance, the market teemed with activity. “Well, he couldn’t have picked a more public spot,” said Morse. “I don’t like it.” Shae scanned the crowd, pinching the cigarette tight between his fingers before discarding it. “Not one sodding bit.” Morse glanced at his wristwatch. “What about Tactical?” “Have them stand by, especially their armoured unit. Armed coppers running about will terrify the public enough.” Deeper into the crowd, Shae’s mind spun through various scenarios. None of them appealed. An evac order might cause panic, or worse, be too late. If there was a bomb, a shooting, anyone died, or fuck if the intel was shite, every newsie would decry the Service was screwing the pooch. “Where are we meeting the asset?” Morse asked. “Asset,” Shae scoffed. “He’s in the Market Kitchen. Imagine, this bloody Russian agent wants to chat over a pint. In public.” The radio in Morse’s pocket chirped, and he muttered something into his lapel mic. “Ricochet, the Met are getting a little jumpy waiting—” “Don’t call me that,” Shae said. “Tell them to keep it in their pants. When we know, they’ll know.” “It’s time.” Morse tapped his watch. “Come on, boyo.” Shae moved through the market’s hodgepodge of colours, sounds, and smells of produce, fishmongers, and cheesemongers. “Salmagundi in here, innit?” They’d crossed over Middle Road to the communal dining area of Market Kitchen, and Morse’s head was on a swivel. “Who, the author?” he said, befuddled. “Don’t you mean, Salman Rushdie?” Shae stopped. “Your mum, she drop you on your head a few times, did she?” He rolled his eyes, turning to enter the Kitchen. “Ah, there’s the bastard now,” he pointed. “So, not Rushdie, then?” “Don’t be twee, and let’s not make a balls of it.” . Offer, a Canadian author, has flash fiction in various publications, and a podcast. offerkuban . substack . com Twitter: @OfferKuban === end ===

SALMAGUNDI v2 Mythic Micros by @amy_grech @Madeleine_write @kgrose2 @TLTomljanovic @franeymountain @Bookish_Ash @BlaiseMarcc @ZaryFekete @MEProctor3 @TejaswineeRC @merlinflower & @OfferKuban Curated by @NathanBorn2010 / Nathan Pettigrew #MythicPicnicTweetStory === === Meddlesome Man by Amy Grech / @amy_grech . Exiting the train at 75th Avenue, a deserted station just after 11:00 pm, ascending the stairs, a weary 52-year-old author unintentionally letting her guard down, unzips her black bag, emblazoned with MARC JACOBS NEW YORK in gold lettering, anxious to rid her hands of repulsive train crud. Her heart thrumps in her chest like a jackrabbit when she spies a 30-something disheveled man wearing a camouflage jacket, black pants, and matching shoes lurking near the exit. A devil in disguise. A native New Yorker, she’s well-aware that means trouble. He approaches, eager for a handout. “Hey, goodnight…hey goodnight,” he squawks urgently, like a demented parrot, bouncing on the balls of his feet. Polly wants a cracker! She averts her gaze quickly downward. A maroon splotch the size of a plumb makes her queasy. Is that blood fresh, the woman wonders, as she weighs her options — Queens Boulevard, North side — her usual point of egress — and Queens Boulevard, South side, which requires her to cross eight lanes of treacherous traffic to reach her apartment safely. The meddlesome man paces between the two. Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, quick like a bunny, she scampers to the North side. Outside, the woman glances over her shoulder. Luckily, she’s alone, for now… . Amy Grech has sold over 100 stories to various anthologies and magazines including: 10 by 10 Flash Fiction Stories, Apex Magazine, Gamut Magazine, Punk Noir Magazine, Roi Fainéant Press, Space & Time Magazine, Tales from the Canyons of the Damned, Yellow Mama, and many others. Alien Buddha Press published her poetry chapbook, A Shadow of Your Former Self. She is a 2x Pushcart Prize nominee. She is an Active Member of the Horror Writers Association who lives in Forest Hills, Queens. Visit Amy Grech's Official Web Fright: www . crimsonscreams . com Bluesky: bsky . app/profile/amygrech.bsky . social Ko-fi: ko-fi . com/amygrech Medium: medium . com/@crimsonscreams X: x . com/amy_grech === === A Dish Served Cold by Madeleine Armstrong / @Madeleine_write . Every summer, my in-laws throw a family garden party and everyone brings a dish. In previous years I slaved over rich curries, crispy bhajis and sweetly spiced cardamom cakes, but they always turned their noses up, muttering about the funny foreign flavours when they thought I wasn’t listening. This year, I can’t be arsed. “I’m making salmagundi,” I announce during our weekly call. “Salma-what now?” my father-in-law says. “Is it ethnic?” my mother-in-law asks. “After your last curry I was on the loo for days.” Why do old people think everyone wants to know about their bowel habits? “It’s like a salad,” I say. “Not spicy.” Their relief washes down the phone line. When the big day comes, I take my time over the dish: layer upon layer of wafer-thin ham, topped with succulent tomatoes and crunchy lettuce, finished with pimento-stuffed olives, quartered hard-boiled eggs, and the pièce de résistance: some carefully selected prawns. Beautiful, if I say so myself. When I place the salmagundi on the heaving picnic table everybody coos, all the aunts and uncles and cousins crowding around in a way they never did with my other dishes. My in-laws take the choicest ingredients, including most of the prawns, and tuck in as I nibble on breadsticks and supermarket tzatziki. My husband, with his aversion to shellfish, steers clear. It takes less than an hour for my mother-in-law to turn green. She rushes inside, holding her mouth, before we hear the strains of her vomiting through the open bathroom window. That sets off my father-in-law who, with nowhere else to go, retches into a manicured flower bed, splattering the begonias with salmagundi chunks. “Oh dear – something you ate?” I ask. The aunts and uncles and cousins look panicked. There’s just one prawn left on top of my salad. I’m surprised no one noticed how out of date they were – but then, my in-laws never did have much taste. . Madeleine is a Pushcart Prize-nominated author who dreams of food-based revenge. She lives in London. Twitter/X @Madeleine_write; Bluesky @madeleinewrite. bsky. social === === The Weight of Yesterday by Karen Grose / @kgrose2 . Long gone, Gran’s love knew no bounds a smile of stardust her hugs shelter, soft and safe her kindness my first taste of home. Gran’s hands were always moving quick and practiced blue-green veins bulging under peppery skin, all-purpose, baking cookies and then knitting striped socks afterward while I waited at her elbow. My childish mouth watered as she prattled, the needle’s staccato click-clack keeping time with what Gran liked to call her tales wartime stories, family secrets, opinions unfulfilled dreams, hopes a desire for a better world. Older now, I wish I’d listened more carefully to have lingered in those moments together instead of being mesmerized by the shiny cabinetry on the seafoam cupboards and too focused on how long it may take those cookies to cool before I could grab one off the counter and run outside to play. Today I yearn for those stories I’d give anything to hear Gran’s tales one more time to lean in and ask questions to hold her gnarled hands to feel her magic, my source of strength. I wish I could have slowed down back then I wish I could have been more present I wish I could return. . Karen Grose is a crime fiction writer from Toronto, Canada. Her debut novel, The Dime Box, was selected by Amnesty International for its 2021 Book Club. Flat Out Lies, All June Left Behind and What We Keep Silent followed. She has flash fiction, poems, and short stories published by Roi Faineant Press, Paddler Press, Punk Noir Magazine, Epistemic Literary Magazine, Hooghly Review, Bunker Squirrel Magazine, and Superior Shores Press. She is a member of Crime Writers of Canada and the #thrillsandchills writing group. Track her down on X: @kgrose2, IG: karengrosewrites, FB, or at www . karengrose . ca === === The Dinner Party by T.L. Tomljanovic / @TLTomljanovic . The wine. The small talk. The ex. The look. The wine. The appetizer. The simmer. The stew. The wine. The meat. The knife. The tension. The comment. The confession. The fight. The silence. The guests. The host. The pause. More wine. The desert. The dishes. The coffee. The clean-up. The call. The cab. The night. The next. The text. The smile. The meme. The moment. The car. The buzzer. The bed. The breakfast. . T.L. Tomljanovic is a flash fiction writer based in British Columbia, Canada. She is the guardian of a dog the size of a donkey, an avid reader of anything with dragons, and a superhero in her own mind. She also won the Welkin Earth Genre Prize, and is a Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction nominee. Find more of her work at tomljanovic . wordpress . com === === First Real Job by Paul MacDougall / @franeymountain . They warned me about the rats. Bloody big things that would bite if aggravated. Best to avoid at all cost and wear thick, leather, steel-toed workbooks just in case you have to boot one out of the way. Boots with good soles so you don’t slip. Bats were different. Odds are they wouldn't bite me, but their guano could carry some deadly fungi called Cryptococcus. If you breathed in the shit you could get meningitis and die, or maybe survive but be blind. Who needed that. Avoid bat guano at all costs. Wear gloves and a dust mask. Plus the mask can help keep out the smells. It's a sewer after all. The place stinks no matter what good it does by carrying away storm water and human waste. It still stinks. Then there were the odd critters dummies let loose after their life as house pets expired. All manner of snakes, lizards, iguana-type things. You name it. They were down there. Not as many as the rats, but plenty big enough. Once I saw a six foot snake just a few yards in front of me. Talk about near messing your pants for sure. The biggest problem was the gases that might be present. Methane could blow you up, carbon monoxide could asphyxiate you and sulphur smells make you wretch. But that's the life of a big city sewer inspector. How you going to know if the concrete is giving way, a pipe is going to burst or a huge disaster is right below your feet. There were a lot of risks alright. But I took the right safety courses, wore the proper clothes, carried gloves and masks, had my inoculations. I never saw it coming. I roamed down the wrong tunnel. Perturbed a pretty messed up junky. They live down here too. Shoot up in the sewers. Carry knives. Stick people. The one hazard I was never warned about. Two-legged kind. I'm in no shape to inspect pipes and drains or do anything now. It was the last real job I ever had. . Paul MacDougall is a writer, playwright and columnist from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. He writes fiction and non-fiction and has had numerous plays produced in Cape Breton. === === Chopped Fine by Ashley Mangtani / @Bookish_Ash . The death house sent up its order, and nobody in the kitchen could place the word. Duplantier thumbed it into his phone by the fryers. An old English supper, chopped meat, anchovies, boiled eggs, onion, grapes, whatever the larder held, served on one plate. He soaked raisins for the grapes the commissary lacked and laid his anchovies out like commas. Renee Ostrander, twenty-four, drove Dawn Marie Cole home after close. Dawn Marie, nineteen, ran her nursing flashcards in the passenger seat. Emory Dean Hatch had cut the battery cable in the lot. He offered a jump. He drove them to the Bonnet Carré levee. Raped them on the riprap. Strangled Renee with her lanyard, then held Dawn Marie under the shallows until the cards came loose and floated. A catfish trotline brought them up, day eleven. His grandmother had made salmagundi in Ascension Parish from church-supper leftovers, chopped fine so charity reached the table as plenty. Nine years old, holding the bowl steady, asking to do the chopping. The state asked him what he wanted. Renee's last meal was half a sandwich eaten standing at the register. Dawn Marie's was gas station coffee, most of it still in the cup holder. He ate almost all of it. The raisins had swollen. Exactly right, he said, tell the cook. On the witness side, Renee's mother and Dawn Marie's grandmother sat at a table laid with no cutlery. The warden asked for last words. He said forgive me, Renee. He was looking at Dawn Marie's grandmother when he said it. One plate. Everyone eats. His fist came open at 12:19. The plate came back at 12:31. Duplantier scraped the rest, a coin of egg, the tail of one small fish, into the bin with everything else, chopped fine, past telling the meal from the man. . Ashley Mangtani is a slipstream writer whose work explores ecological and social collapse. Drawing on an M.Sc. in Environmental Science and as a fiction reader for Ploughshares, his work appears in Litro, Washington Square Review, Expat Press Flash Fiction Online, HAWKEYE, Neon Dystopia, Apocalypse Confidential, etc. Read more at ashleymangtani . com === === Revised Parameters by Patricia Russo / @BlaiseMarcc . I had a thought, he says. Don’t laugh, that still happens sometimes. It occurred to me that under the grass, there is more grass, we just can’t see it. Though not under, exactly. I don’t mean like it’s elephants all the way down. It’s more like sideways, but not exactly that, either. Sideways in all directions. This hidden grass, this additional grass, is softer than the grass we can see, more tender. You could lie down in it, and float, the way you can in an ocean, or in a dream. He looks at me, but I’m busy recording the readings for this timemark, which again indicate that all systems are functioning within the revised parameters. Not the original ones, but most definitely within the revised ones. I’m about to make a comment about this when he asks, Could you open the windows please, and I have to tell him again that it isn’t possible to do that. But you can look out of them, I say. There’s one right beside you, and you never look out of it. You can’t see vacuum, he replies, then, after a moment, adds, And the stars are so very far away. . In addition to Mythic Picnic, Patricia Russo's work has appeared in One Art, Identity Theory, Michigan City Review, The Bloomin' Onion, and Verity La. === === A Hive That Burns by Zary Fekete / @ZaryFekete . My name is Elaine, the mercury has hit 100 every day this week, and I have done everything that I can for my bees. Every afternoon I sit in the backyard, close enough to the hive to hear the soft murmur of their wings. They speak this quiet language to one another every day, a low vibration that thrums right through the soles of my shoes. All of the books say that bees don’t do well with weather over the mid 90s. I thought about trying to move them today, but the books also recommend not doing that. You shouldn't disrupt them when they're already stressed. This one is the third hive I’ve attempted. The first two died away, leaving nothing but empty, waxen ghost towns. Hives require a lot of work and often the bees can’t seem to make a go of it. They are expensive, and people grow frustrated quickly. But this hive, this third one, crackles like a fire. They have a will to live that matches the heat. Yesterday, that fire spilled over the fence. My neighbor marched down the street to my front door, her face was red with heat and anger. She informed me that her son had been stung three times in the past week. “The audacity!” she had shouted, her voice cutting through the heavy summer air. “That you should keep that hive! That you could pretend to control so many thousand!” Now, I am back in the grass, near to my hive, near to my queen. She hadn’t meant wrong, my queen. On hot days like this, bees are commanded to stop focusing on nectar and to start bringing water back to cool the hive. The neighbor's boy must have stood between them and a puddle. They probably felt threatened. Bees become more defensive when it’s hot, and they want to protect their queen. I understand. That’s what I’d want. . Zary Fekete grew up in Hungary and currently lives in Tokyo. He has a debut novella (Words on the Page) out with DarkWinter Lit Press and a short story collection (The Written Path: A Journey Through Sobriety and Scripture) out with Creative Texts. He enjoys books, podcasts, and many many many films. Twitter and Instagram: @ZaryFekete Bluesky: zaryfekete . bsky . social === === Cave Dweller by M.E. Proctor / @MEProctor3 . There used to be bears and mountain lions. Many of them. And packs of wolves. We, I, don’t smell them anymore. Coyotes still roam. Less of them it seems, from the yips and howls. Small fare comes this way, occasionally, to find coolness in the heat of summer. The slithery, the crawling, and the furry keep me, us, fed. The hive doesn’t need much. Scarcity makes the hive drowsy. I, we, can sleep for so long, time has no meaning. Time only matters for the prey. They live and breathe, do their foraging and hunting, and then they are no more. The hive is as old as the mountain, born from molten rock and part of it, as ancient as the world. We, I, have memories of turmoil and destruction, of the hive being much bigger. The world itself must have been bigger then, before it started feeding on itself and shrinking. Maybe I, we, are doomed to become smaller too and disappear like all creatures of wonder. But not for eons more, because something new is hovering near our domain. It’s smaller than a bear, noisier than anything we’ve fed on before, and its smell is strong. The edges of the hive, awake now, vibrate with the scent of flesh and blood. Maybe the prey will be curious and explore, all prey are curious. Maybe it will seek shelter from the sun, the cold, or the rain. And if it doesn’t, the hive can wait. Prey always come back. . M.E. Proctor writes the Declan Shaw PI series. Book 3, The Way You Say My Name, comes out in September. She’s the author of two short story collections, and the co-author of the retro-noirs Bop City Swing and Kansas City Breakdown. She’s a Derringer and Shamus Award nominee. Website: www . shawmystery . com On Substack: https:// meproctor.substack . com === === The Happiest Kingdom by Tejaswinee Roychowdhury / @TejaswineeRC . Azad Bose didn’t know the ‘when’ of the thin air that spat him out on a stone road draped in sunset, but he knew it was time travel for two reasons. First, the place looked like a period-piece film set. And second, just moments ago, he was outside the United Science Organization HQ, leading a protest against the Time-Travel and Teleportation Project. By evening, the locals had absorbed him completely, though neither side understood the other’s language. They dressed him in a patchwork bottom drape like themselves, and brought him charred meat and slices of a strange lemon. He would have been flattered by their hospitality if he weren’t unnerved by their oddly serene faces and thoughtless eyes. They marched him to the palace and introduced him as “A Sad.” The king, an equally serene-looking character, hopped forward, hugged him tight, and squealed, “A Sad!” “AZAD!” he protested. “A SAD! A SAD! A SAD!” The palace echoed amidst claps. Frustrated by the dystopia and his inability to snap back into his timeline, Azad decided to do what he did best. He shot out of the palace into the market square and climbed onto a stack of crates. Without the luxury of words, he resorted to mime. He let out a battle cry and pointed aggressively to the palace gates where the king now stood. He then ran around the market collecting props. He placed a roasted goat leg on a table and, from a wicker basket, hurled randomly at it: potatoes, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, the strange lemons, and a couple of boiled eggs. Azad looked at the crowd—clearly inspired by his performance, he thought—pumped his fists into the air, and roared victoriously. Just then, the king emerged and threw a block of cheese at the goat leg, and the crowd erupted. Celebrations continued through the night. Everyone got a plate of this new dish. Azad looked at his portion, and hunger hit him like a bag of bricks. Through a mouthful, he finally smiled. . @TejaswineeRC is a founding editor of @HooghlyReview. === === Revel by Merlin Flower / @merlinflower . The injustice of the plate was overwhelming. I looked at the leaves. Five of them, three brown and two green. When the grays went from zero to eight in an otherwise ordinary night, I had used the henna leaves from the garden and Indigo powder to convert them to a different color. However, in the alchemy between the leaves, they cancelled out each other leaving me with the exact number of white hairs. Surprise! Rubbing salt to the wound, there was no dressing on the plate. I checked again. Five raw leaves with a sliver of a tomato. Did they really cut it into five million pieces? ‘How is it?’ asked the chef who somehow materialized nearby while I was deep in thoughts. The chef smiled at me like an astronaut re-entering the planet, as his assistant joined him. At 900 Aussie dollars this was eating money. Follows that, I should just chew them with eyes closed. But still, leaves? ‘Fantastic, Any dressing,?’ I asked, adding, ‘I wouldn’t mind a pizza underneath these leaves. Like a hibernating frog emerging to find a floor of concrete, he gasped. I saw the cunningness in the eye of the hunter changing as one of us become the prey. In slow motion, he looked at his assistant, aghast. Faster than Houdini, both vanished from sight. ‘Did you know? Snippid is the smell of wet leaves?’ I told my eight-year-old niece. She shrugged, not wanting anything to interfere with the taste of roo meat in the mouth. I dreamt of a simple burger filled to the gills with red or white – edible-moisturizer. Like, not all em dashes are ai generated. And, not all moisturizers are edible. Only the assistant came back. ‘I love the plate but even a small slice of bread or breadstick would be great,’ I said averting my eyes to hide the dishonesty. ‘Didn’t you order salad?’ asked the assistant. Between the dispatch and receiving, the message had been lost. ‘No, Salmagundi,’ my niece clarified with a laugh. . Merlin Flower is an independent artist === === Ricochet: Salma Who? by Offer Kuban / @OfferKuban . Two MI5 officers stood below the large Borough Market sign. To the right, in the background, The Shard reached into the London sky, stark against its blueness. London Bridge lay nearby. Even at the entrance, the market teemed with activity. “Well, he couldn’t have picked a more public spot,” said Morse. “I don’t like it.” Shae scanned the crowd, pinching the cigarette tight between his fingers before discarding it. “Not one sodding bit.” Morse glanced at his wristwatch. “What about Tactical?” “Have them stand by, especially their armoured unit. Armed coppers running about will terrify the public enough.” Deeper into the crowd, Shae’s mind spun through various scenarios. None of them appealed. An evac order might cause panic, or worse, be too late. If there was a bomb, a shooting, anyone died, or fuck if the intel was shite, every newsie would decry the Service was screwing the pooch. “Where are we meeting the asset?” Morse asked. “Asset,” Shae scoffed. “He’s in the Market Kitchen. Imagine, this bloody Russian agent wants to chat over a pint. In public.” The radio in Morse’s pocket chirped, and he muttered something into his lapel mic. “Ricochet, the Met are getting a little jumpy waiting—” “Don’t call me that,” Shae said. “Tell them to keep it in their pants. When we know, they’ll know.” “It’s time.” Morse tapped his watch. “Come on, boyo.” Shae moved through the market’s hodgepodge of colours, sounds, and smells of produce, fishmongers, and cheesemongers. “Salmagundi in here, innit?” They’d crossed over Middle Road to the communal dining area of Market Kitchen, and Morse’s head was on a swivel. “Who, the author?” he said, befuddled. “Don’t you mean, Salman Rushdie?” Shae stopped. “Your mum, she drop you on your head a few times, did she?” He rolled his eyes, turning to enter the Kitchen. “Ah, there’s the bastard now,” he pointed. “So, not Rushdie, then?” “Don’t be twee, and let’s not make a balls of it.” . Offer, a Canadian author, has flash fiction in various publications, and a podcast. offerkuban . substack . com Twitter: @OfferKuban === end ===