THE SUCCUBUS, by Colin Heintze: the beat of wings, I pray an owl is cause enough to cower a woman-thing both fair and foul visits me each evening’s glower how many bargains, devil-struck how many hands that wicked fruit would pluck from serpent-coiled boughs to feel her breath against my ear to hold her warmly […]

FORTUNE-TELLER, by E.L. Schmitt:   A fold of painted cards across a rune-scribed palm. Inked in black and red, she tells his future nights. Across a pampered palm nails skitter, slip and show. She tells his future now in swirls of breath and song. Eyes skitter, slip and sting, blind in the fire-lit tent. Swirling […]

THE SHIP IN THE CLOUDS, by James Hutchings: I was walking alone on a wet stretch of stone that the guidebook had claimed was a beach and the sea was as gray as my spirits that day and I sighed as if robbed of my speech. And it seemed as I sighed that the world […]

THE REGION LINUIS, by Lorna Smithers: ‘Then it was that the magnanimous Arthur, with all the kings and military force of Britain, fought against the Saxons… The second, third, fourth and fifth (battles), were on another river, by the Britons called Duglas, in the region Linuis.’ – Nennius, History of the Britons.   In the […]

DON QUIXOTE’S QUANDARY, by Colleen Anderson: He had studied flags, kites and pinwheels knowing them for the harmless fry of monsters they would soon become his duty for all his tilting at windmills everything looked skewed An enemy of state of mind he sought the source of untamed, wanton might not just to cage a […]