Music as a Brass Bell falling into the Sea Before she left, you thought you’d understood music. But really you hadn’t. You learned this in Greece when you watched a giant brass bell plunge into the…

minor beef[s] is a new feature where you can express your literary gripes, complaints and pet hates … Is there a writer you despise who is getting too much praise? a lauded critic whose opinio…

by David Luntz “…insane, sure, but don’t forget the moment you bumped into Poe’s ape in a gas-lit Parisian alleyway, wearing a negligée of weeping butterflies and a stovepipe hat…”

innovative + experimental horror

Work is forthcoming in or has appeared in Post Road, Hobart Pulp, Farewell Transmission, Bruiser, ergot., X-R-A-Y Lit, Maudlin House . . .

I kept having these dreams about you whose remains were everywhere

I kept having these dreams about you whose remains were everywhere

The Tree Hugger:  Don’t worry. Be happy. Adobe PDFs saved the Spotted Owl. Cool, right? ☺ The Virtue Signaler:  It’s all good. You’ll get through this (I know), besides, lab-grown beef will spare the ...

Photo by freepix.com by David Luntz A homeless man sees office workers move in a tranced circle, sometimes clockwise, sometimes the other way. He watches them from his cardboard home across the street...

“Then you can paint tomorrow any color you want,” Uncle Kev tells me in Chartres, circa 2004, walking below the stained glass windows of the...

“Then you can paint tomorrow any color you want,” Uncle Kev tells me in Chartres, circa 2004, walking below the stained glass windows of the Cathedral, when he points to the tolling bronze bells and says, “Watch first the sounds of light shimmering off them, then listen to the screams in the stained glass, and you will see the hairline cracks of spreading colors, each filament an echo of pain, loss, and regret,” and I do my best, but hear and see nothing there, and, anyway, now we are passing below a window that depicts the binding of Isaac and he says the name “Isaac” means “from the laughter,” because Sarah, his mother, was ninety when God told her she would have a son, and, yeah, sure, I can hear Sarah’s disbelieving cackle at God’s news, but apart from that I’m not sure why Uncle Kev has brought me here, because he knows I tune him out most of the time, which is when he says, “ You know the Dark Ages weren’t that dark—just look at this cathedral, this levitating, heaven-arching, stone-turned-spirit miracle,” but I’m too young to get it and to make things worse, weeks later, when I find him stone cold in the tub, the frosted glass window crowning late summer sunlight rainbow shards above his sunken head, I have no prism to pass that broken light through to make it whole again, or any other way to bring Uncle Kev back, which if I’d known was going to happen that day at Chartres, I would have stood below that stained glass window for as long as it took, until the glass exploded, and the scream Uncle Kev wanted me so badly to hear carried us back to that world where it was first howled. --- Work is forthcoming in or has appeared in Post Road, Hobart Pulp, Farewell Transmission, trampset, scaffold, ergot.press, X-R-A-Y Lit, Maudlin House, HAD and other print and online journals. More at davidluntz.com Twitter: @luntz_david

“Then you can paint tomorrow any color you want,” Uncle Kev tells me in Chartres, circa 2004, walking below the stained glass windows of the...

Photo by freepix.com by David Luntz A homeless man sees office workers move in a tranced circle, sometimes clockwise, sometimes the other way. He watches them from his cardboard home across the street...

Photo by Christopher Jeffrey on Unsplash The first seven stories in Issue 32 were shortlisted for Gooseberry Pie’s 2nd annual writing competition. Old Girls and Palm Trees by Meg Pokrass is an illustr...

She always ate a bowl of Cocoa Puffs after doing it.  The first time was unintended. Then again, so was killing Pete, although she sensed the moment she’d met him she would end up killing him.…

by David Luntz ““Violence and logic whisper to each other behind our backs.””

by David Luntz ——— A wise man does not strip-search his soul for meaning. He knows nothing’s there and he must still do the time. David Luntz has work forthcoming in or has a…

innovative + experimental horror