What the Eyes Covet and the Stomach Craves

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Brunch at the All Alien Cafe, March 2024

“I haven’t eaten in a month,” Am-lei tried to say, but her mouth was so different that the words came out as a jumble of incoherent, fluting sounds.

Like a delicate crystal vase, the hard shell of Am-lei’s chrysalis cracked, spilling out the furled up, new-grown, riotously colorful wings inside.  Still wet, the wings hung from her changed body, pulsing with life, heavy and dragging her down, out of the chrysalis that had held her, dormant, for the last month.

The month had passed like a dream.  Am-lei remembered her body itching all over, and her mouth overflowing with gooey silk-spittle.  She remembered climbing up the walls of her room and gluing her feet to the ceiling as her squishy, green caterpillar skin split down the middle, shedding like a winter coat on a hot day, revealing the hardened chrysalis that had developed underneath, her new outer shell, as the rest of her melted and mutated inside. Continue reading “What the Eyes Covet and the Stomach Craves”

Techno Babel

by Daniel Lowd & Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Kaleidotrope, October 2017

“How could an insensate automaton, a mere button-pusher and lump of cargo, touch our brilliant, shining world mind?”

We are alone now, all of us.

I still remember what it was like to communicate, to share thoughts and visions, to think together.  But now, the Judgment Virus makes my mind fuzzier with each passing hour.  Soon I shall lose the ability to communicate with myself, and my own thoughts shall be as lost to me as the silent strangers that were once my friends. Continue reading “Techno Babel”

Returning the Lyre

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Kaleidotrope, January 2021

“My Orpheus had no lyre with him in Hades’ realm. Those perfect fingers had no strings to pluck.”

The snake didn’t bite me.  It bit Orpheus, and his lyre twanged discordantly as he fell to the ground.  It was the first inharmonious sound that perfect instrument had ever made.  It was the sound that started my journey.  It was a claw, hooked inside my ear, ripping and tearing away every illusion I’d had of safety and happiness, shattering my dreams of a future with Orpheus. Continue reading “Returning the Lyre”

The Fish Kite

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Electric Spec, November 2017

“He was so fragile now.  He had been all along, but when he’d been on the memory drugs, he could hide it.  A lion made of glass.”

Joan opened the door to see her ex-fiancé slumped against the door frame.  Leland was a lion of a man.  Tall, blonde, preternaturally confident.  She’d only seen him looking haggard and haunted like this once before, ten years ago, when his memory drugs had worn off.  That had been the beginning of their end.

“Come inside,” she said. Continue reading “The Fish Kite”