Even Evan, who wore a beret and a black polo neck like we were hanging out in a 1950s New York basement. Evan, whose poetry was written by bats. I asked him once if he’d prefer to read up-side-down, ‘it might feel more authentic.’ He looked at me as though I should find myself exhausting, like quitting hosting poetry nights to focus on my actual job was the best option for me. ‘Bats process more sensory data than we ever could,’ he said. The first bat poem Evan read was about grief. In it, devastation bounced off every surface creating echoey images of impenetrable cave walls. The audience, mostly poets clutching the pieces they planned to read, was moved to tears.   As far as I’m aware, bats don’t find themselves wishing they could talk to their not-long-dead father about their troubled marriage. They don’t drop from the sky because the thought ‘I must give dad a call’ popped into their head, because for a moment they forgot he won’t be there to answer. But Evan said, ‘If we want to understand our lack of understanding, we have to embrace non-human creativity.’  Evan started sharing his access to bats with other people, had Spoken Word Nights changed to Chiroptera Slams. He swapped bar snacks for swarms of midges and introduced segregated seating, because female bats tend to keep themselves separate unless they’re ready to mate.   I couldn’t stomach the readings. I went outside, sat and watched insects bother street lights, wrote about a community who survived on a diet of nothing but moths. They had all the protein they needed, but fur from the moth’s bodies built up on their tongues, until it was impossible for them to get their words out.    --- Anika Carpenter lives and works in Brighton, UK. Her stories have been published by Fictive Dream, Gone Lawn, Goosebury Pie, 100 Word Story and others, and have been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and the Bath Flash Fiction Award. You can find her via her website www.anikacarpenter.com

On the biggest loop of the coaster, I throw up in my mouth.  Ryan promised he’d fix my fear, threw his arms wide like the chair-o-plane which whirled in circles, making me dizzy with its spin. Before I boarded, he hugged me close, swooshed a bottle from empty air like a magician on TV. 'This'll help,' he said, and I believed him. He swears I’ll be with Sasha soon, serving drinks in a smart red suit at thirty thousand feet. ‘Sky’s the limit,’ he says.  I believe him. That's what happens when you find the one. Mum said you just know. And I do. I think. By the third loop, my stomach’s doing its own rotation. It’s ok though, ‘cause I’ll be cured. Like Sasha. You wouldn’t believe she’d ever been afraid of anything. She made it all the way to business class. Up more than she's down.  'You've got to not be scared, Lil,’ he said. 'You've got to trust me.'  I get confused between the got-to and the got-to-not-tos. He said we'd got to before, so we did. After, though, he’d barely look at me. Until today. At home, he wraps me in a blanket, makes me a strawberry milkshake. I can’t look at it. My stomach’s still fifty feet in the air, a pendulum ride stuck at the top.  Later, when the bleeding comes, he says it’s meant to be. He buys a toy airplane, says there’s a mini-me inside serving drinks, puts it on my bedside table, right where the scan used to sit.  As if she never existed. At night, I trace the edges of my stomach’s empty nest. When he’s asleep, I sing softly, picture her curled like a comma, asleep in the bed of a cloud.   --- Abi lives in Brighton by the sea. In between teaching and writing mini stories, she enjoys running slowly up and down hills and playing complicated board games. Her words pop up now and again, and have been spotted in Splonk, Ellipsis, Reflex Fiction and The Molotov Cocktail.

by Lisa Ferranti          Early The mother’s hair is red, with a 1960s flip. Her dress, pointy-collared, like Jane Jetson’s. They are real I tell my mom…