Flash Fiction: A Study of Enemies-to-Lovers, by Rose S (MATURE CONTENT)

We kiss. The first things I taste are blood and sweat, the flavor of the vitriol that soaks our past and the war of our wills. But underneath the iron and salt, I find an unexpected, unnerving softness. I expected his lips to slice like razors. I wanted them to snag on my lips like barbed wire as I pulled away. A part of me that resists this, that wishes I had never kissed him, that wants him to stay evil, is waiting to be proven right. But the more closely I examine that softness, the deeper it becomes. It recedes away from the realm of illusion. The part of me that waits for him to be proven inhuman shrinks and crumbles, laced with destabilizing veins of empathy - his lips are fleshy, chapped, and malleable - human, like mine. 

I feel his body under my hands as I lean closer into him. The lines between us seem to blur more and more by the second. His hands land on my shoulders where they become my arms. I think my mouth opens first, but before it really matters who started it we’ve begun to slide against each other, doing things to each other’s mouths than enemies, or even friends, should not really be doing. The inside of his cheek tastes like vinegar and fruit. I find that I’ve sucked away the taste of sweat from his lips and now his skin is almost sweet, like I can taste the glucose from the cells that I’ve ruptured with the friction of my mouth against his. 

There’s almost no space between us now. When I tilt my head, he counters as if it were choreographed. I don’t know who’s leaning into who. Hands move across clothing as if we already know what we’re doing. I don’t know what we’re doing. I don’t want it to stop.

Magazine Update: Complete Submission Guidelines!

Hi, all! Since the editors have been getting some specific questions about our submission guidelines, we thought we'd post an updated version that will hopefully answer them:

Submit by emailing your work to lit.space.submissions@gmail.com. 

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Poetry: Ocean Scars, by Jack J

those ocean grey eyes of yours staring
into the space between us, screaming
into this horizonless black
of ocean and sky cut
into one, like daisies
in a chain,
like survivors –
that zealous rain, coming in strong enough and at the right angle to capsize us. the type of rain to drench
you through your overcoat on ruined commute home. when you are sprayed by the garden hose and it
stings so you scrunch up your face and bring up your hands to the glassy blade of water so that it goes
away. we scrunch up our faces and it (that sting) doesn’t go away. and if we live we are cut into one, like
daisy chains, or survivors. these things, like kintsugi, I tell you, do not have scars, for these things are too
beautiful to have ever bled.
you, as hell swims through these waves,
give her your oar and she swallows
(her gulp: the crack of thunder) and you decide
the next best thing is to
hold on
tight
and as hell rides out and into the night and
we sit in the eye of the storm, yours flicker up
and something that wasn’t there goes away – meadow
green, those eyes of yours, bright and
beautifully pronounced, and, in the calmest stretch of water yet it
is realised, how beautiful everything could be
from here, these ocean scars.
did you ever find those patches of daisies
and pluck them from their flowerbeds
to weave into a bittersweet chain
or crown of dead living thing?
I did
and as hell rides out and into the night
your eyes escape again and so
I join you in looking at those red callused hands, the lines on your palm and the joints are so white against
the dirt. thinking: what have we done? your hands, with those strong but elegant fingers, the knuckles
pronounced but by no means bony. we are moved through the long eb and flow – her push and pull –
bringing us out and, without a moment’s warning, back in. when you were small and moved up and down
in the bath as the water waved across the length, the long eb and flow – the push and the pull – and you
felt it in your stomach and then you would wait, sitting still in the bath, and the water would settle.
thinking: will the ocean, like a bath’s water, ever settle?
and though I still have my oar,
as the storm comes in again, and the rain heavier and fiercer
than before, there is no use anymore. though I tried and
I did

and as hell rides out and into the night
we are smaller than ever before.
she takes us so high, and we crash back down,
the whitecaps turn clear in our
little yellow boat, the waves shatter as we
interrupt their course.
our grandma loved to watch
choppy ocean on
stormy night
do you think
she is watching us
now?
a wave comes over us.
there is no use anymore.
I look up to you.
wave crashes like cold hell over us
filling our little yellow boat.
I look up to you, cold and wet
like a stray dog with bits of seaweed
knotted into fur and sand encrusted
around the eyes, and
you are not there anymore.

Memoir: Excerpt from Rain, by Sophia R

What was it about the wind and rain that made her want to cry? Not an unhappy cry, not a blissful cry, not any cry in particular, just a cry. Cry as the clouds wept and the hills exhaled. She walked slowly, not to any destination. Around her, heads were bowed, feet were rushing, avoiding puddles, trying to make it inside the even grayer buildings. Her glasses fogged up and started to drip. She couldn’t see, but why would she need to? As she avoided the rushing feet by stepping in the puddles, she noticed that she was walking the same route she always took when she felt like crying. It was never intentional, but she always ended up on that secluded bench. She lay down with her face up to rain and let it fall, and the sobs broke out. She stayed there until the sun cut through the clouds. Her face was a mess. She knew she couldn’t go back like that, people would ask if she was ok, she would have to respond. How could she answer that question? Just as the heads around her had done when the rain was falling, she pulled on her hood, bowed her head, and made her way to the gas station at the corner, washed her face, and slowly began to make her way home.

Photography/Digital Art: Ghostly, by Olivier N

Photography: Warmth, by Andrew R

Photography: Waiting On A Train, by Olivier N

Fiction: A Series of Randomized Events, by Vera G

It was an ordinary Monday morning. For Susan Billiam, that meant work. Filing, to be precise. What a bore! On Mondays, she sat at her desk, filing the 200 or so pieces of paperwork her boss refused to fill out. From 8am to 6 in the evening. 

This Monday morning was completely unexceptional. She woke up to her loud, ordinary alarm at 6:45 and searched her bed-side table for her glasses. Having found these, she rubbed her eyes and sat up in bed. Nothing new. The same pastel-blue walls stared back at her. She walked, somewhat unsteadily to the bathroom to take a shower. She opened the door and saw… 

“The cats… NOT AGAIN!”

In her bathroom were three funny-looking alley-cats. The same three. Always the same three. They climbed up the fire-escape, somehow opened her window and climbed into her bathroom to enjoy the different scented-soaps. This morning was no different to any of the other mornings where they had invited themselves into her apartment. The floor was covered with white fur from the middle cat, a small white and gray tabby mix with two different colored eyes. The left was an odd mix of blue and purple while the right one was warm honey-brown. The hand-soaps had spilled all over the floor and they left their bright, unnatural colors on the white tiles. The cat on the left, a ragdoll with matted fur and gray eyes purred in a small voice before jumping into the sink. The middle one, let’s call him Poka, stared at Susie, smiled and then began to recite poetry. It was his usual selection of Yeats, Shakespeare, and Larkin. An odd combination, even for a cat. 

BOOM!

A small black horse crashed into the bathroom, making the party quite squished. Susan backed out of the bathroom in surprise, still in her red-and-white-striped pyjamas. The right cat smiled and purred. The horse trotted out of the bathroom, into poor Susan’s bedroom, down the hall into the kitchen. It nudged the refrigerator door open and took out the carrot cake that Susan had been saving for her mother’s visit. 

“Hey! That’s mine!”, cried Susan in a choked, confused voice.

The horse ignored her and inhaled the cake. In one bite, all that was left was the plate. The horse began to nibble that too. It bit off a small piece, almost delicately, and munched it thoughtfully. Then, it bit off another piece, slightly larger, and ate that with the same pensive look. 

Susan rubbed the remaining drowsiness out of her eyes and pushed down an oncoming headache. First the cats, then this… On a Monday morning, too. She checked her watch. Shoot! 8:19. She was already late for work and she hadn’t even gotten dressed yet! She ran to her bedroom, pulled on a baby-blue dress, ignoring the fact (or perhaps simply forgetting) that she was still wearing her pyjamas. She tripped into a pair of plum-purple pumps and hobbled out the door, forgetting her bag. 

She was already in the street when she noticed that she’d forgotten her bag. She hobbled towards her building, when she noticed that the sky was black. Ink-black. In the middle of the morning. She looked up, considering that since she was already late, it didn’t matter how late she was. The sky was blooming into weird welts of blue and green and pink, now, swelling into oranges and yellows. This is it, she thought with a start, the end of the world. 

She had always imagined the end of the world as a grand event, something that came when everything important was over. Everything was about to end and she hadn’t even gotten to work yet. This made her smile. I guess filing isn’t all that important, she considered.

And that was the last that Susie Billiam ever considered. For at that moment, the meteorite hit the earth and her whole world exploded.

Photography: Little Peck Of Light, by Sara T

Fiction: The Jackalope, by Tessa W

My nose quivers as I stick my head out from my den into the chilly autumn air. I look to my left, making sure that my horns don’t get caught on the mess of roots and leaves above me. It’s early. Early enough that the wolf won’t be on the prowl. Every day for as long as I can remember, that wolf has been making his rounds in my neck of the woods. It makes my life difficult, really, as I have to gather food for my young, not to mention find a way to avenge the death of my parents. Five years ago, when I was just a wee jackalope, my parents were taken in the middle of the night. I didn’t get to see the face of the predator, the evil glint that must have been in their eyes when they dragged my parents away, but I did see one thing. A long, black cape, picking up the half-decomposed leaves on the forest floor. I grew up without knowing how to be a jackalope. My siblings and I were raised by the crow who lived in the trees above us. I grew up with anger boiling in the pit of my stomach, a dark need in the back of my mind to find that animal that took the lives of my parents and deprived me of a normal life and take their life as well. It was a good three and a half years before I realized something. I was scurrying back from a forage with food for my young when I heard something rustling in the bushes behind me. I paused, my ears perked up, waiting for the other animal...or thing... to advance. It snuck away quickly, so quick I almost couldn’t see it, but I did manage to see two things. One: a dark, dark cape. And two: the evil eyes of the panda that had taken my parents from me years ago.  
I’d been planning since then. I’d lie in my den at night, nestled against the packed dirt that I call home and think about what I would do. I was going to kill the panda, there was no doubt about it. But how? The wolf constantly circles my den along with the dens of the other jackalopes, knowing he’ll eventually get something. We’ve lost many good creatures this year, creatures that didn’t deserve to die. But after planning for some time, I created a plan that would work. And I was going to go through with it. 
One of the hunters had left behind a small gun. They dropped it when the wolf came out, snarling and scaring them enough that they dropped their backup weapon and ran out of the forest. I’ve kept it in a smaller pocket in my den since I came across it that day, waiting for the perfect day to execute my plan. And today it should work. 
It’s getting colder, which isn’t what usually happens at this time of morning, but I guess the seasons are changing. The pistol, tucked underneath my paw, is turned into a piece of ice by the chill and I can feel it through my fur. The wolf should be here soon, about when the sun rises. But even if I get back later than that, it’ll be difficult for him to find me. It’s foggy today. The fog comes every once in a while, and when it does arrive it comes in big, rolling waves that make it difficult to see anything around you. For most predators, this puts them at an advantage with their prey. But with the wolf, it’s different. He got in a fight with a coyote a few years back and got his nose clawed up pretty good, a chunk taken out of it. Since then, he relies mostly on his sight and hearing for hunting. I’m also in luck because a murder of traveling crows have come to rest in our woods for a while, and they caw endlessly. The wolf is going to have difficulty getting much to eat today. 
The breeze shifts, and I know it’s time for me to go. I wiggle my body out of my den, my tail brushing against the well-eroded entrance. I don’t even need to think hard about where to go, I’ve run over my plan many times in my head and I know it won’t fail me. Before I know it, my body takes over and I’m running, scurrying through bushes and dodging roots and leaping over fallen oaks and it’s glorious, so glorious, because it’s finally happening, and nothing can stop me, I have been waiting for this moment and no one and nothing can stop me. And then I get there.
The tree is one of the oldest in the forest. It reaches high up into the sky, limbs climbing far past my vision, and looms over the rest of the woods. The bark is peppered with holes from woodpeckers and wrapped with vines trying to strangle the tree, squeeze the life out of it. I can see, although it is far up, a black cape fluttering in the light breeze. I stand on my hind legs, looking up at the colossus. My ears start to quiver but I will them to stop. I summon a breath and call out to the panda. 
“I know what you did!” I scream, slowly brandishing the pistol. “Come out and show yourself!” 
There is a rustling as the panda grabs its cape and makes its way down the tree. It falls on the ground in front of me, with an audible oof. It looks up at me and the gun I was brandishing at it, and raises its eyebrow. “You’re just a scared little jackalope. You won’t really do anything.” 
I grinned, a sick smile twisting its way across my muzzle. A sound you don’t typically hear from a creature like me, a growl, escapes from my grimacing face. “Try me, you human.”  
I pull the trigger.

Digital Art: Love Bomb, by Akira L