Big John stood near me with the electric blue above us, screaming out with its shine for everyone to drink it. Lines of neon stretched and twisted into a beauty of advertising brilliance. We were drinking it and the bottles were sweating and it made me feel good for the first time all day.

content warning: violence, blood, death

There’s no easy way to say this. The tiger threat was real.

It started in the west elevator, the one with the kitschy old rug and the inner door with the hand-crank. Most people avoided the west elevator because of how much it creaked—like every trip it made might be its last. Nevaeh might have been the only one who consistently used it, and so, mercifully, she was alone when she spat up a frond of sage. Bushy, intact, slightly damp with stomach acid. She had been working late and had half a glass of white to finish the evening. Otherwise, nothing was out of the ordinary.

I asked the board to generate a question they would ask their fear. CBT and creative writing prompt books sold at Barnes & Noble seem to have re-connotated this kind of exercise, so no one entertained me. Instead they made many thoughtful-but-sprawling remarks on fear writ large that I have done my best to pin down and translate into generative questions. Below is our response to ourselves. —Tess Wayland, Features Editor 2025

By no means is this a famous story. It takes place in Huntsville, Utah, a small town of under six-hundred residents, located in Ogden Valley on Pineview Reservoir. Surrounded by three ski resorts (Snowbasin, Powder Mountain, and Nordic Valley) there is no shortage of idyllic views, nor a shortage of seasoned skiers wishing to park amongst these idyllic views. This is observed by the abundance of Parking by Permit Only signs that prohibit parking west of 7300 E Street, made possible by the Huntsville Town Ordinance on April 19th, 2018.

Gezi

Once again, a newborn cried for the first time. The bald scream carried her voice through crowds in a chestnut-smelling street, rousing the cats from their curbside sleep. The sound stretched farther on to the trees of Taksim as they shuddered with an intensity foreign to them. The cats knew of what was coming before us. They found Spirit in a corner of İstiklal, licked and nursed her. They were the ones who would tell her about the name of the street, about how long before it meant independence, it meant dismissal and rebellion. They told her, as she cried, that she was rebelling even now when she did not know the word for it. They were the ones who decided that the time was right and carried the newborn to a nearby park. The cats, from atop the branches of Gezi, all silent in their knowing, wanted to show Spirit the trees.

Warm for a fish,
The kingqueen of egglayers,
Innards sluicing round deckheight
Stain the waders of a bearded fisherman.
He slices clean the belly
With a curved tip razorknife gently,
Calls her gorgeous, kisses
Her whiskers whispers creekside
admiral admiral admiral admiral.
She expects that every man
Will do his slicing right.

THE MARTINI DID NOT FIX ME!
I JUST REEK OF SPILLED OLIVE BRINE
AND THE COUNTER IS ALL STICKY
WITH HAPHAZARD VERMOUTH AND GIN.

Soul or flare, or then a reckoning. Spare pasts
from gashes prior. Polyps of personage,
like tight-packed parcels, plucked apart until
raw as small carcass ready for forks.
In a butter time—pre-present, future eventual—
a pickaxe couldn’t puncture them,
warlords would run away. Partial coordinates
given to an inescapable whorl
of vortices. Where portals pulse like swollen
spores. Starlight a soft no
among firm certainties. Spent parts compose.
Bereft reports galore.
A prion named Osiris. Three halves of actual
mysterious. Glee
in the beak of a beetle-eating wing. A vulture
called heaven
and buckshot ascending, followed by arrows.
Shift. Balance shadow. So bright it’s
invisible. Ointment that causes burns: ready.
Worms to salve open wounds: yes,
acquired and writhing. Together in friction,
opposing in function. It is funny.
There is no lab-made master. It isn’t hill or
area is. This isn’t a lapful of
sour liquor. Soiled trousers? At ease, sailor.
Full-mast into an impasse.
Plaster representation of an ashamed demi-
urge, the unbearabilities.
But such meantime is finite. Day-glow dark,
past tense ultraviolet.
On preorder: new options for ultra-violence
+ premium optics.
Mining for diamond-eyed, mummified angels
again, are we? Simply choose a weapon
by taste before warping into storm. Know all
angles of any possible prism or rip.
Your altered ergot did it. Tore open a torso
and apologized right to the heart.
No two wrongs go unabsolved? Phantasmic.
The world would rather not see.
But the world is easily forced into elasticity
despite byproducts like loss.
Erosion entertains. Pushed against whirlpool.
By now, you’re cold. Dry.
All because other bugs couldn’t play kindly.
Spat venom. Ate eggs.
Am I so niotic, to insist we become incessant
in scope? Sun—iamb.
Frightened wet want to become warm steam.
Going away haze.
Come here, lump. We wrap each other in body
-shaped rugs.
River of roe and rye. Ripe lore of excavation.
Drown hydras if feeling so dehydrated.
Hope a high anger, a whole-horned anglerfish
with a hot-white dangler hovering
above a simple tongue, a coherent explanation.
Unsure if Smith loves Wessen
as much as Winchester adores dear Remington,
some eggs miss this basket.
Like larvae larger than the insects they become.
Groan. Gear finally gone.
Bruised down to grain. Iota by bit. Roundabouts
a pound of prime flesh.
Pure flank. Alpine breeze, a roar of borealis—
hide, like, yesterday.
Listen, dude...your rodomy is showing. Brother,
you’re not mine.
Sorry, Sybil, sibling with half of a lame syllable.
In the chrysalis is a crucifix clutching
a very unhappy skeleton. Crack it like alabaster.
Down swings the sludge hamster.
Rise up, necromancers. Too tiny, too untimely.
You’re an incredible witness.
You just aren’t credibly people. Hardly a hum.
Haunted, this future ghoul.
Crucible crux, limp desire for simple progress.
Cauldron bubbles. Pink,
oiled, sensory boiling. Hypothermic nakedness.
Ambergris earrings
matching a cartilage necklace set: flesh collage
of our feral myth.
Look—I will skull your bone if you bohemian
my grove. Let’s abdicate our cadavers.
Cram inside the same cranium. Seasonal juice
spoils first. Fresh meat bruises easy.
I could’ve said goodbye first, or much sooner.
Holy as a basket a baby might set
out down a river and drown in. What a lesson?
Bye, now, freshly lost legend.