Kissing Thanatos

Written by Oliver Rose Brown

content warning: death, suicide

You whisper, “I don’t have to do anything? Or be anyone?”

She nods.

The usual melt into relief.

“Exactly,” she croons, tipping the cup to your lips. “There’s nothing to be said or done there.”

A hungry languor in you gives way. A swallowing of a proffered mouthful. There are none of the soap opera histrionics of cyanide, just a slackening.

You’ve gone to the blank and the numb before you’re placed in your casket. In your hand, a beachside postcard with her number on it: “To Paradise for the Idle, to Home for the Too Too Tired.”

He knows when you’re awake!

Written by Tharidi Walimunige

content warning: blood, death, violence

Sniffling muffled by a moist palm. An intruder skulks around the living room.

BANG!

Two whimpers drowned by the boom. One young observer, one pained victim. Black boots march on spilt milk and carrot pulp.

“Who’s there?” Billy blubbers, missing the mangled body and rivers of blood slithering into the carpet. The bearded man turns to him. The carols never sang of his pupil-less eyes.

“You should be asleep. Good boys don’t wait up for me.” Billy snatched, thrown, cooked in the fireplace.

Billy charred, crumbed, stuffed in a stocking.

“Coal for bad boys, Billy.”

Panic: A Definition

Written by Anindya Setiawan

It’s gone.

The shade of crimson you’ve grown so attached to. The diagonal line—always so perfectly angled. Clean. Crisp. Comforting. It’s vanished.

You feel your breath quicken and the fear leave your body as your skin tingles. There’s nowhere to go now, no words coming out of your mouth. The heat spreads over your chest like a sweltering rash. The clicking of a keyboard, the ticking of a clock in another room. You’ve done it now. The flushed cheeks. The silence.

Another quick glimpse at the screen.

It’s gone.

Unmuted. This whole damn time.