The Weaver and Other Hundreds — Avah Dodson
In the clearing, the shadow nymph eyes the girl, its gangly, knobby limbs splayed. Crooked teeth protrude from its lips. Brambleberry juice stains its maw.
The girl’s face is stained with blood. Her father has been on another drunken rampage, bruising her body with his fists. On such days, she flees into the thicket, though never past dusk, lest her absence reignite her father’s wrath.
Light fades as dusk passes. The shadow nymph smiles malevolently. Are you lost?
But this girl knows malevolence, and she is not lost. The blood on her face is not her own.
She smiles back.
_____
I’m sorry, was all she said, after she threw the wine glass that scarred Hannah’s legs. And after she was hospitalized a second time for overdosing. And the night she left us forever.
Hannah always resented Dad for not being able to pick up the pieces. I’m sorry, he’d say, when his best wasn’t enough, his voice echoing our small-town desperation.
Before Hannah boards her plane for NYU, she unclasps the pendant Mom gave her and folds it into my hand. I rub my thumb over it the way she would, then look up to her. I’m sorry, she says.
_____
The florist asks where I take the six dollars of peonies every Saturday. I smile without my eyes, explain that I give them to you, to be close, to breathe in deep. She says you’re lucky to get flowers every week. I nod, but not in agreement. You are lost to them. Six dollars from my wallet every Saturday, then a six-minute walk to the cemetery, where the flowers wither six feet over your heart. Sometimes, what hurts the most is remembering the way you breathed—as if every inhale was a bouquet of peonies, sweet and soft and whole.
_____
The Tesla whirs to a stop. She strides into the Goodwill with a designer bag slung over her shoulder. The bag contains a cashmere sweater, still tagged.
She does not notice the one in ragged sweats shuffling inside with constrained despair, a castaway caught in the waves, searching for solid land or golden sails.
Their eyes meet. She suddenly feels out of place. The cashmere spills out onto the counter, and she reaches to secure it. Next to her, hollowed eyes glimpse the weave and long to feel its softness.
Manicured nails and weathered, grimy fingertips briefly touch, then part.
_____
She notices how he always polishes his plate, not a smear or crumb left behind. He says something about not wanting to waste food.
He looks at the pristine porcelain and remembers being too full to finish dinner, his uncle’s red rage, the shattered plate, white shards mixed with bits of food. He sees one last grain of rice sticking to the plate’s edge, horribly out of place, and quickly pries it free with a wave of relief. He feels her gaze and looks up, suddenly ashamed.
But she had an uncle too. She touches his hand, sad and knowing.
_____
They sit next to me at the sewing table, unspooling colored threads with their hands—hands bloodied, hands abandoned, hands holding flowers, hands immaculate, hands reaching out to touch other hands.
Most of these threads I have held before. But, today, my hands are empty. Today, I am here for them.
I grab the old man’s thread: thin and pale and frayed. Then the girl’s: thick and red and resilient. Then the uptowner’s: plush and silver and gauzy. Then the others. I roll them between my fingers to remember their coarse softness. I tug. I twist. I tie.
I weave.
Avah Dodson’s works have won recognition in the Adroit Prize for Prose, YoungArts Competition, Scholastic Writing Awards (National Gold Medalist), Sacramento Literary Review Short Story Contest, Patty Friedman Writing Competition, Bluefire 1,000 Words Contest, Royal Nonesuch Humor Contest, Storytellers of Tomorrow Contest, WOW! Short Story Contest, and Kay Snow Contest, among others, and have appeared in The Louisville Review, Press Pause, Sacramento Literary Review, Blue Marble Review, Incandescent Review, Echo Lit, Parallax, The Milking Cat, Voices de la Luna, Apprentice Writer, Stone Soup Magazine, Skipping Stones Magazine, DePaul’s Blue Book: Best American High School Writing, and others. She is a graduate of the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop and is currently Director of the Creative Writing Team for Incandescent Review. She lives in California.
I Read that Pigs Scream Like People — Zoe Younessian
It happened after Bill’s farmhand went missing for the last time. Ma suggested that Palmer take his place, and Palmer didn’t hesitate to agree. He hated pigs but he hated the boy who came before him even more: a fool he’d watched stumble through his neighbor’s fields, who got lost periodically and wore a cherry-red flannel that marked him like a searchlight. Now he’d wandered off for good. Palmer smiled at the thought. On his first day at the job, when Bill handed him two buckets of scraps and a key to the pigsty, he’d felt his heart flutter in his throat with something like satisfaction, though Bill had only rolled his eyes.
“Don’t get lost,” Bill had said. Palmer cheerily assured him that he wouldn’t. Yet now, standing at the pigsty doors, he almost wished he had. The room smelled worse than he could’ve imagined, and mountains of hay piled against the wall prevented any light from trickling through. Dozens of pigs erupted from the darkness at his entrance. Palmer met their beady gazes and shuddered. He pulled the doors closed behind him.
In the grand scheme of things, it didn’t make sense that Palmer disliked pigs this much. Some of his earliest memories were of Bill’s pork: the smell of his bacon on Ma’s stove, the plate of ribs on their kitchen table, Palmer and his brothers descending on it, ripping into it, unstringing the dripping crimson sinews from the flesh. What a shame the animals themselves were so vile, Palmer thought. He loved the taste.
It was this taste that Palmer tried to recall as he trudged deeper into the filth of the pigsty. In the blackness, the boy could only guess where the trough was. As Palmer walked forward, the bodies of the pigs cloaked his feet, prodding him at every step he took. He raised a leg to kick them away.
Then all at once Palmer found himself at his knees. He retched. He felt nudges from every direction, scraps puddling around his feet. His fingers curled into something soft. When he raised it to his face, and the pigs parted for a moment from his hands, and his eyes had finished adjusting to the dark, he caught a glimpse of cherry red.
That fool. That stupid boy. Palmer didn’t understand how such a small person could even get past the pigs to leave his flannel there. They crowded all around him now, filthy masses that moved and seemed to talk, ramming their faces against the soft of his body until he yelped. No one would be able to hear him over the squeals of the animals. Palmer groaned. How could they be so desperate for food so disgusting? It reminded him of something he’d read once: that pigs were smart creatures, that they could adapt to eat anything. That they learn to love the taste.
Zoe Younessian is a writer from Connecticut. She hopes you have a great day.
Not Cut Out to be a Princess — Delilah Cameron
“Not everyone is cut out to be a princess. You’re proof of that, my dear.” I hear it over and over in my head—a nonstop chant, a chilling reminder.
And maybe she was right. My own mother did know me quite well. She was never sentimental or loving, but no one expected her last words to be an attack on me. The crown princess. Her daughter.
Elliot claimed she was just referring to my free spirit. And yes, I did have a tendency to neglect my responsibilities—but I always got the job done eventually. She was always stressed out by my procrastination. I swallow the lump in my throat before anyone notices.
“Elizabeth…” says Elliot, definitely catching my emotional moment. Must be twin instinct or something. Twinstinct. “I’m sure Mom didn’t mean it like that. She probably was just pushing you like she always does—did.” He swallows, running a hand over his face. “To… I don’t know. Make you stronger?”
I close my eyes and take a deep, rattling breath. Her perfume still clings to my sleeves. I press my lips together and shove the thought away.
The door creaks, and Isabelle pokes her head in without knocking, her eyes shiny and red. The bed dips as she clambers up beside Elliot. In the silence, I can almost hear Mom’s voice—or feel her touch. Memories flood in: her brushing my hair, reading poetry, laughing at dinner. My chest aches.
Three quick knocks startle us before Ryan steps quietly inside. Elliot and I share an uncertain glance. Ryan’s never been one for family moments—he must really be hurting. He spent most of his time with Mom, tucked away in the library reading ancient poetry.
“General Maddock told me to hand this to you, Elizabeth.” Ryan slides a folded note across the blankets. I don’t have to read it to know what it is—security details for my coronation tomorrow.
I heave a deep sigh. “Why couldn’t you have just been born five minutes sooner? Five minutes!” I exclaim, pretending to be frustrated. Honestly, I am a little jealous he wasn’t forced to lead a country just because of birth order. I mean to sound playful, but some of that bitterness seeps through.
He doesn’t laugh. He just looks at me, his crystal-blue eyes heavier than usual. He’d make a much better monarch than me. We were only born four minutes apart, but those four minutes decided everything. Four tiny minutes destined me to rule hundreds of thousands of lives I knew next to nothing about.
You’d think there’d be some kind of qualification… a test, maybe.
“Like you would let him!” Isabelle interrupts, rolling her eyes. “You always have to be first in everything, Lizzy.” Her plump twelve-year-old face is still streaked with tears. It must’ve been a lot for her—seeing Mom so limp and…
I shake my head to clear the thought and manage a smile. She isn’t wrong. I do like to win—especially against my twin.
Elliot reaches out and takes my hand. “She has a point, you know.” He smirks, catching Isabelle’s hand with his other. Isabelle and I each take one of Ryan’s, even though he grunts in disapproval.
“But seriously,” Elliot’s voice softens. “When have you ever let anyone tell you who you are—or push you to do something you don’t want to do?”
“I…” He’s not wrong. I may be a terrible procrastinator, but I’m strong-willed. And nothing—not the press, not the people, not the court, not even my own mother—can make me doubt what I’m capable of.
And then it clicks. Maybe she was right. I wasn’t cut out to be a princess.
I was made to be queen.
Delilah Cameron is a young writer based in the United States who creates stories about identity, resilience, and the unexpected paths life takes. She spends her free time reading, daydreaming, and writing short fiction under her pen name. Though new to the world of publishing, she hopes to inspire readers with characters who discover strength in themselves, and dreams of one day publishing a full-length novel. She sees the world as a glass half full, believing that even small stories can make a big difference.