io9 is proud to current fiction from LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE. As soon as a month, we characteristic a narrative from LIGHTSPEED’s present subject. This month’s choice is “The Darkness Between the Stars” by Richard Thomas; you’ll be able to hearken to an audio model here. Get pleasure from!
The Darkness Between the Stars
by Richard Thomas
Buddy and I deserted our hydrogen nomad on the fringe of the wastelands earlier than trudging across the rusted chain-link perimeter of the deserted fairgrounds, ready for the blast of steam and guttural earthly moan to flee from the fractured soil, signifying that it was clear to enter the world. Remnants of outdated know-how lay scattered so far as the attention may see: tubes of corroded brass, mangled springs, and cracked gearwheels mingled with discarded water bottles and decomposing rubbish baggage—half-covered in mud and ash among the many weeds.
For a half-century, the unrelenting components and cruel salvage crews had ravaged and plundered what was as soon as a powerful sight to behold. Each construction of the theme park had been lengthy since flattened, erased, torn down, or stolen, to the purpose that solely the legends and tales remained—mindblowing displays and theme park amusements with a supernatural twist. We knew what these barren acres used to carry, however in case you didn’t know the historical past, it will be straightforward to overlook the patches of grey concrete hidden beneath the silt, the light numbers and directional arrows stenciled on the cracked pavement in a yellow so washed-out that it was virtually white, and the spotlight of our visits: a singular concrete obelisk with a purple metallic door.
To us, it was a spot to flee—away from our helicopter moms, short-tempered fathers, and dead-eyed siblings all jacked into the similitude, too glued to their screens to ever enterprise out into this analog world.
Buddy and I have been the one kin both of us had left, actually, the one ones we may belief. The summer time days have been dwindling and the ultimate yr lay earlier than us. Past that, commerce colleges, and sorted employment, mundane duties, and a obscure promise of marital bliss—an obvious assure of sentimental flesh that we hardly understood. So we stood there, youngsters actually, this one nail head bursting up by way of the earth ready to be hammered down, a spot to satisfy within the wee hours, the limitless nights, and the wet afternoons that by no means appeared too heat.
Buddy stood a great foot taller than me, and thicker in each manner. It was as in case you had taken one in all me, had me swallow one other me complete, after which had that mass increase in each course. With lengthy brown hair and a easy face, we typically referred to as him Conan, or Tarzan. We, being the jerks in his statistics class, or the jocks on the scatterball staff. He was as loyal as a German shepherd, a great buddy, not an alarm bell or purple flag on him. He suspected nothing, and noticed no hazard on this second.
It didn’t matter what we did collectively—city spelunking, tunnel hacking, taking pictures wharf rats down by the contaminated river, or slingshotting rocks on the drones that crisscrossed the fields of rotting corn husks that surrounded this forsaken plot of land. We at all times had enjoyable collectively—because it was the corporate, the sincere dialog, the straightforward goals we shared—that made it definitely worth the journey.
We stopped subsequent to the purple door, its titanium body dinged and tarnished, historical chrome hinges straining to carry up its apparent weight. The concrete round it was chipped, however extraordinarily thick, and there was no seen deal with to be seen. Regardless of our willpower to get inside, three summers of our primitive efforts—hammers, crowbars, shovels, and sledges nicked from our fathers’ sheds—had yielded no progress and merely added to the already worn-out paint job of this mysterious entryway.
“Derek, take a look at that,” Buddy mentioned.
“I see it, I see it. That’s new.”
Subsequent to the door and brutalist outcropping was a metallic field, like some outdated milk cooler, the lid open, and full of padlocks. There have been keys scattered in there as nicely, coated in mud, mendacity there for hours or days, who knew.
“When have been we right here final?” I requested Buddy.
He scratched his head, “Weeks? Extra?”
I turned again to the door, and noticed that it was surprisingly ajar—seven latches, unlocked and bent. The hole within the doorway appeared to develop wider with each step nearer, as if welcoming us into its ready embrace, or maybe just like the mouth of a fantastic beast getting ready to devour us. Up shut, the blackness throughout the doorframe appeared to be undulating, viscous and impossibly darkish, and in some way I knew, it was virtually sentient. I had been so targeted on the inside that I barely seen that Buddy, who stopped strolling in some unspecified time in the future, was now not beside me. A primal urge deep in my intestine screamed for my physique to cease shifting too, however I used to be floating away, untethered from the protection of my life into this darkness from between the celebrities, drawn in by the irresistible name of the void.
“I’m getting into,” I mentioned, glancing over my shoulder with a sly grin.
“Derek, no,” he yelled, taking one step towards me.
I wouldn’t see him once more for a number of years.
• • •
I don’t keep in mind being pulled in, solely the door snicking shut behind me, as if pulled tight within the wake of my motion. Inside, it was an eternity in a closet, each cavernous and claustrophobic, oppressively silent, like an anechoic chamber the place your individual heartbeat can drive you mad. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, a console with varied levers and buttons revealed itself within the sourceless dim mild. The pungent scent of ozone pushed a metallic style deep into my throat.
After I opened the door to share my discoveries with Buddy, a safety guard in a darkish blue uniform with a thick mustache and lengthy brown hair spilling out from underneath his cap sat together with his arms crossed, sleeping, in a metallic folding chair. My buddy was nowhere to be discovered, and throughout us lay nothing however an limitless sea of jet-black pavement. The fields of rotting corn have been gone, the chain hyperlink fence had vanished, together with each hint of the ruined park. It was as if a large steamroller had trundled throughout this plot of land—an enormous machine, a number of tales excessive, 100 toes throughout. On the distant edges of the asphalt stood towering partitions, topped with sweeping searchlights and barbed wire, simply twenty or thirty toes excessive. Up above a rocket ship headed to the house station on the moon—they’d lastly completed it, the shuttles have been operating now.
I will need to have made a noise—a whimper maybe, or a moan, the door squealing because it opened again up, my respiratory louder than I assumed.
The guard awakened and jumped to his toes.
“I can clarify, officer—” I began.
“Recover from right here,” he yelled.
I did the one factor I may consider in that second. I ran again inside. However earlier than the door closed, I heard his voice, panicked and acquainted.
“Derek, wait . . .” he screamed, lunging for the door, his eyes extensive open.
After which I used to be gone.
This time, for for much longer.
• • •
Because the door slammed shut behind me, I stumbled ahead, banging into the management panel, my head careening off of one thing strong, and I began to go underneath.
The darkness pushed in on me, wrapping round me like a festering blanket as panic crushed me, time slipping ahead. I attempted to push upward, out of the depths, like a drowning diver struggling to seek out the floor.
However I failed.
Mendacity on the chilly metallic ground, sweat coating my physique in a determined sheen, a bitter movie of remorse and despair, figuring out the time I used to be shedding, my friendship, my life.
How lengthy I used to be unconscious, I have no idea.
• • •
After I opened my eyes, it was quiet, a dim mild throbbing in the dead of night. A pointy ache erupted from my left temple, a crust of blood flaking away underneath my delicately probing fingers. Groaning, I stood up, turned the latch, pushed on the door, and stumbled out into the chaos.
The warmth was the very first thing I seen. That and the fog. It was like stepping out of the frying pan and into the fireplace—the scent of sulfur, wind gusting scorching and foul, because the land round me hid within the hazy mist. It was cloudy, smoky, exhausting to see, moist and thick, the world round me out of focus. Panic danced throughout my goose-pebbled flesh in a wave of discomfort, my lungs resisting each breath. Sweat ran down my face in indignant rivulets, my intestine clenched in knots.
I stood there, making an attempt to see, in search of a landmark, any signal of the park I used to know. On the bottom in entrance of me a metallic chair lay in wreck—bent, rusty, and damaged—items mendacity right here and there, indentations within the filth. Hoofprints, toe prints, a smattering of smaller toes operating this manner and that, after which a number of that have been a lot bigger, greater than my head.
Past the dusky thick curtain of this actuality there have been unnerving sounds—nice heavy thuds that shook the earth, adopted by a high-pitched screech from someplace above me within the fog, after which indignant, sharp barks within the distance. The air above my head swirled and a darkish presence flew over me, swooping left after which proper, solely a faint suggestion of motion, a swimming black on muted grey on soiled white.
A shiny object on the bottom by the chair received my consideration, as I puzzled how lengthy I ought to stand out right here, how dangerous this actually was—predator or prey, eat or be eaten. So far as the meals chain, I felt smack within the center.
I took a number of hesitant steps earlier than a column of flame erupted with a poisonous belch within the distance, a maelstrom of warmth taking pictures excessive into the environment, pushing meager, russet mild by way of the grey fog.
I picked up the tarnished badge and turned it over in my arms.
It mentioned Buddy.
A chittering from behind me snapped my head in that course. Above the open door of the concrete closet that was my solely refuge got here a hiss adopted by a stream of white, sticky substance, encasing me in fibers that, inside moments, numbed my pores and skin and deadened my limbs. I fell to floor, unable to maneuver, my flesh spasming with ache.
From out of the gloom, eight disjointed legs appeared over the doorway, jet-black and blanketed in coarse hair and fibers, supporting a bulbous head coated in shiny black eyes. Its jagged, metallic mandibles clicked collectively because it danced with rapturous glee—coming up and down, its pulsing underbelly glowing purple, because it got here nearer to my susceptible physique.
Its shadow engulfed me, a musky scent of bitter flesh and rotting meat filling my nostrils, overpowering my lungs and burning my throat, inflicting me to gnaw the within of my cheeks in a jabbering panic.
After which as shortly because it arrived, the hideous creature disappeared, in a single whooshing motion, a harsh wind sweeping over me, a number of feathered legs reaching out, hooks pulling at me, tearing the online, and pulling it off of me in nice, sticky strands. It disappeared into the looming sky with hardly a sound, a fantastic bellowing caw making my cranium ache. Oily black feathers stuffed the air as metallic gears and pins rained down round me, a melodic cacophony as they struck the exhausting floor beneath me.
As I handed out, the toxins from the webbing lastly engaging in their job, the earth reverberated, shifting my physique in painful lurches towards the doorway, as one million shiny beetles conveyed me to the opening, the door closing with a delicate click on.
• • •
After I awakened, a chilly certainty encased me. How lengthy had I been out this time? I stood within the darkness, the console black and quiet, after which I shoved the door open and was greeted by a fantastic nothingness.
As if standing on the fringe of an empty elevator shaft, or the rim of the Grand Canyon on a moonless evening, what lay beneath me was eternity. My thoughts reeled and I lurched ahead, greedy on the door body in desperation, one foot suspended over the chasm, my eyes straining for something recognizable within the darkness beneath it. Swimming within the pitch have been black currents, oily slicks that shifted their shapes, as right here and there a spark of sickly yellow mild exploded with a brilliance that dazzled me. I moaned gently, exhausted and bewildered, my eyes closing towards my will, leaving the afterimage of the flash burned into my retinas.
I attempted to see once more.
Twitching out and in of the darkness have been coils of phosphorescence, a muted sienna lined in a shiny purple with pinpricks of squirming black tadpoles dotted throughout its floor—none of it making sense. In a flash, I felt the entire of the void surge in the direction of me with a violent urgency, a starvation rippling throughout its murky substance, a determined shriek piercing my ears. I pulled on the door to close it out, but it surely resisted my efforts, the encroaching abyss relentless in its endlessness, tugging on the door, my flesh, my thoughts. With each ounce of my remaining vitality, muscular tissues burning, tendons straining, I ripped it free from the darkness and pulled it closed, tears streaming down my face, blood pooling in my eardrums.
After which a distinct sort of darkness wrapped round me, pulling me underneath.
• • •
After I regained consciousness, the door hung open a crack, a sliver of ethereal mild leaking inward. Within the faint glow from the management panel, and in a rage of madness, I turned each knob I may see to the left, all the way in which right down to zero. When my fumbling arms discovered the enormous lever on the far proper facet of the console, I yanked it downward after which slammed the door shut.
“Do what you’ll!” I yelled into the darkness.
After which I collapsed on the ground, and violently wept.
• • •
When it felt like the correct amount of time had handed, I barreled into the door, flinging it open extensive, banging it towards an alley wall. Standing earlier than me was the OmniPark, in all its glory and prime. A Victorian mansion constructed of dense masonry in odd geometrical shapes and a glassy conservatory loomed close by, brick partitions rising up round it, and within the distance a botanical backyard, like none I’d ever seen. Statues of harmless cherubs mingled with a number of planting beds full of vivid flowers, and thick, inexperienced decorative bushes trimmed into the form of hourglasses. A continuing ticking stuffed the air, as a fantastic many clocks have been displayed past the glass home windows, brass and metalwork in every single place. Above and into the gap a monorail ran on a monitor, gliding silently in a circuit across the park.
Past the fences of the backyard and previous the partitions of the mansion I may hear revelry, the scent of grilled meat and fried meals, the laughter of kids blended with the shouts of parental steering, and the clanking of metallic rides. There was half a glass dome to 1 facet, and past it a collection of caves, with monumental mammoth tusks over the primary entrance. On the farthest level was an area station, with its chrome-topped rocket ships gleaming within the daylight. And to the opposite facet, two completely different paths prolonged into their displays—one made out of stone, and the opposite filth. The previous appeared to be constructed out of cells and membranes, microscopic creatures as massive as individuals, and vehicles. The latter some type of primordial forest, with prehistoric bushes and ferns, an enormous dragonfly mounted over some eating corridor, its translucent wings refracting mild.
I took this all in as if my thoughts was a digicam set on long-exposure, absorbing an awesome quantity of colours, sounds, smells, and sensations.
The maelstrom of stimulation made my head swim.
All I wished to do was go dwelling.
I struggled to catch my breath, as two people engaged in an animated dialog on the different finish of the alley—a lanky man in an impeccable swimsuit, hair slicked over, glasses perched on his nostril, and a lady with darkish hair, in a classy gown, a mess of brass pendants and charms encircling her neck. From this distance it was exhausting to inform in the event that they have been preventing or simply excited, a clipboard in her left hand, the person glancing at his watch. After which they embraced in a kiss, fast and passionate, earlier than parting, glancing towards a door behind the mansion, after which in my course.
Their gaze held, each of them frozen for a second, after which they walked my manner.
If I’d had the vitality, I may need climbed again inside, however the exhaustion of my travels solely made me weep silently, as they approached me, grins sliding throughout their faces.
“Son, are you okay? You look matted and misplaced. I’m Dalton, and that is my spouse, Evelyn. That is our park. And from the seems of the open door right here, you appear to have stumbled throughout one thing that I assumed was locked and secured.”
I may solely nod, his face form and beaming, her eyes glowing with pleasure.
“How did you get again right here? Can we take you dwelling? You from round right here?”
They continued to stare at me, after which his spouse elbowed him, and whispered in his ear. They regarded me up and down, taking in my classic denim denims, my mycelium leather-based high-tops, and my t-shirt with the phrase SUPREME on it, biking by way of its preset loop of colours and patterns.
“On second thought,” Dalton mentioned, “I don’t know if the place you’re from is the appropriate query.”
“Too true. Extra like when are you from, my pricey?” Evelyn requested earlier than smiling, clutching her clipboard to her chest, purple lipstick framing her white tooth.
I informed them in regards to the destruction of the park, the way in which I’d gone ahead, after which again, the issues I’d seen alongside the way in which, and what I’d left behind. They nodded at each unbelievable element with no trace of skepticism. Evelyn retrieved her purse and withdrew a field of Animal Crackers, the lions and elephants inside their cages a welcome snack. This was adopted by a big plastic bottle full of an oversweet orange liquid that might solely have been Tang.
When Dalton stepped contained in the metallic door with a small flashlight in his tooth, I didn’t have the vitality to warn him, not to mention cease him. I may hear him clicking buttons, cranking dials, and the unmistakable sound of the big lever being pushed again up once more, pointing up towards the celebrities.
“I’m sorry for what you’ve been by way of,” Evelyn mentioned, her hand on my shoulder a comforting presence whereas we waited for Dalton to emerge. The gardens loomed past her shoulder, but it surely was as if I have been mendacity down in these kaleidoscopic flower beds as her fragrance drifted over me—hypnotic jasmine and gardenia with refined violet and sandalwood beneath. I knew that scent, as my grandmother used to put on it.
They name it . . . Chaaaaarlieeeeee!
And I smiled for the primary time in hours, days, eons.
“Whenever you get again, Derek, you have to destroy it. It’s a harmful invention that we haven’t discovered methods to wrangle but,” Dalton mentioned as he stepped out of the machine.
“I don’t know if I can.”
“Do your finest,” Evelyn chimed in.
I regarded again down the alleyway, and there stood two unusually acquainted individuals—a buzzcut man in slacks and a striped shirt speaking to a lady with a little bit of bob in a peach pantsuit. I couldn’t take my eyes off of them, and but, I wasn’t certain why. He supplied her an ice cream cone and she or he leaned in to lick the highest scoop. He smirked beneath his aviator glasses, they usually each laughed. They have been virtually unrecognizable after which all of it slammed into focus.
“My mother and father . . .” I started.
“This second in time was chosen,” Dalton mentioned, as I pulled my gaze from the alien model of my mother and father I’d simply seen. “Time beats us all down, son. Your mother and father have been as soon as younger and important. However it’s best to get going, I’m afraid. Ripples might be made.”
He was proper—I needed to depart. Earlier than issues got here undone.
Evelyn gave me a delicate hug earlier than Dalton shook my hand with authority and ushered me again by way of that purple metallic door. It took all of my braveness to seal it once more behind me, scared of the place the infernal system may take me, however the very last thing I noticed gave me a second of peace. Dalton and Evelyn smiled arm in arm, their eyes twinkling with tears, beaming with satisfaction for what they’d constructed, burdened by unhappiness for what had failed. They now had affirmation of one thing past their park, one thing greater than us all. Their life’s work had led to one thing extraordinary, and that appeared to fill them with hope.
I’d take it.
• • •
After I stepped exterior once more, Buddy was smoking a cigarette and tapping his foot, trying pissed off and impatient.
“Dude, what the hell,” he mentioned, dropping the butt, and stamping it out. “You have been in there an hour! I attempted tugging and banging on the door, but it surely wouldn’t open. I virtually referred to as the . . .”
I rushed ahead and threw my arms round him as if to forestall myself from being pulled again into the machine. He didn’t hug me again, remaining stiff as a board, in shock, however I wouldn’t let him go. He will need to have seen the desperation in my eyes the second I had stepped exterior as a result of he didn’t say a phrase till I launched him.
“Hey . . .” he began with a mixture of confusion and anger in his options.
I gripped him by the shoulders, holding him at arm’s size, tears welling in my eyes. He softened on the sight of my pained expression, recognizing in me a deep terror, having been shaken to my core, and in a feverish panic I recounted all of the issues I’d seen, each visceral element oozing out of me into the current second—bitter, and shiny, virtually sticky to the contact.
“I have to see it,” he mentioned, stepping previous me towards the gaping maw that had practically swallowed me ceaselessly.
“No! Buddy, no!” I yelled, and he stopped lifeless in his tracks. The curious grin on his face shortly washed away, blood draining from his face as he acknowledged the barely-contained madness in my eyes.
“We have to lock this up, straight away,” I mentioned. “Now.”
I grabbed the door and slammed it shut, a whimper that begged to show right into a crying jag, sliding the latches over the hooks, one by one. Whoever had opened this door earlier than us, wherever they have been now, this portal needed to be closed.
“Hand me the locks,” I mentioned. And he did.
One after the other, I locked it shut, spinning the dials on some, clicking the others shut as we gathered the keys out of the bin.
On the gap within the chain-link fence, we bent the wire mesh again into place, securing it to the put up as finest we may so it regarded intact from a distance. There wasn’t far more we may do, besides inform everybody that there was nothing right here, nothing value exploring, discouraging them from going inside, hoping that the dried-up, drifting topsoil may quickly cowl the place fully.
Two keys have been in his pockets, and two in mine. And as we walked dwelling in silence, the nomad’s battery lifeless, I dropped one in a sewer grate, a plink down beneath, adopted by a whining of gears as an automatic sewer bot investigated the noise. Later, he’d toss one in a dumpster behind the cosmetic surgery mall, the sickly candy scent of liposuction waste filling the air. I informed him to lose the opposite one, and to by no means inform me what he did with it. I’d flush mine down the bathroom, later that evening, wrapped in a bit of bathroom paper, as I watched the water swirl hypnotically into oblivion.
Earlier than we parted, on the intersection on the highest of the hill, the place north was his home, and south was mine, I attempted to clarify.
“Buddy, I . . .”
“It’s okay, man. I get it. And actually? I don’t actually wish to know. Some issues, as soon as they’ve been seen? They will’t be unseen.”
“As soon as they’re recognized,” I continued, “they’ll’t be unknown.”
We stood with our arms stuffed within the pockets of our denims.
“Like my grandfather’s funeral,” Buddy mentioned with out taking his eyes off the horizon. “He regarded so grey within the casket, like an affordable wax dummy of the person I liked. Then, afterward, within the alley behind the funeral dwelling, I noticed my aunt kissing some employees member, half her age. On the trip dwelling, my father pulled over and vomited on the facet of the freeway. Simply left the automobile door open, bent over within the weeds like some child at a frat get together. His face was like he’d seen a ghost and he couldn’t cease trembling so I needed to drive the remainder of the way in which.” He slipped a cigarette out of the crumpled pack and lit it, letting that first exhale drift up into the evening sky earlier than he spoke once more. “I may have completed with out that day totally.”
I took the cigarette from him, inhaled deeply, and handed it again. As I exhaled it up into the evening sky, my ordeal appeared so distant now. Fading already.
“Tomorrow we discover a new passion,” I mentioned, and we managed to share a half-hearted chuckle.
That fall, and into the spring, we’d hack our encephalobots for extra credit, rig the evaluations for our future employment, take a bullet prepare to the west coast, and kiss some artificial women. We’d lastly take a shuttle to the moon, the Earth and our issues right here diminishing in measurement with each mile of journey into the nice past. We’d yell at one another, beat one another mindless, then finish our friendship over slights and betrayals, each actual and imagined, earlier than choosing it up the following day, or the day after, as if nothing ever occurred.
• • •
After I received dwelling that evening, I crept by way of the facet door, ready to listen to the scolding voice of my father, or confront the anxious face of my mom. However neither occurred. They hadn’t even seen I’d been gone.
I handed my outdated man in the lounge full of cigarette smoke and canine hair, slumped in his light brown leather-based recliner, sporting his perpetual scowl whereas engrossed in a documentary on historical Egypt. He didn’t even acknowledge my presence standing out past the sunshine of the tv.
“Dad, I simply wished to say thanks for your entire exhausting work, for the whole lot you do for this household.”
I left it at that, unsure if he was able to listening to me. As I climbed the steps out of view, glancing again for only a second, his eyes met mine, and I swore for only a second he softened. He didn’t reply, earlier than returning to his present, however his expression had mentioned greater than sufficient.
I handed my mom, hunched over the fragile glow of the magnifying lamp in her stitching room, buzzing alongside at her workbench, surrounded by cluttered cabinets of sample books, piles of vivid materials, and limitless spools of thread in each potential coloration.
“What are you engaged on, Mother?” I requested.
She raised her head, mouth open barely, pausing in mid-stitch.
“Fixing a hem in your favourite denims. You’re so tough on them.”
“I like these denims,” I mentioned. “Thanks for taking such nice care of me.”
She stopped working for a second, a twinkle in her eye, biting her decrease lip, the needle catching a gleam of sunshine.
Earlier than she may reply, I shuffled down the corridor, so keen to seek out my mattress, and collapsed on prime of the covers to the acquainted sound of the heater downstairs kicking in. A lingering scent of fried hen drifted up by way of the ground vents, paired with vanilla from a close-by candle, and a faint trace of lemon-scented cleaner.
I closed my heavy eyelids and slipped right into a ready dream.
As a result of I nonetheless may.
Concerning the Writer
Richard Thomas is the award-winning creator of 9 books: 4 novels—Incarnate, Breaker, Disintegration, and Transubstantiate; 4 collections—Spontaneous Human Combustion, Tribulations, Staring Into the Abyss, and Herniated Roots; and one novella of The Soul Customary. He has been nominated for the Bram Stoker (twice), Shirley Jackson, Thriller, and Audie awards. His over 175 tales in print embrace The Greatest Horror of the Yr (Quantity Eleven), Cemetery Dance (twice), Behold!: Oddities, Curiosities and Undefinable Wonders (Bram Stoker Award winner), The Hideous E-book of Hidden Horrors (Shirley Jackson Award winner), Bizarre Fiction Evaluate, The Seven Deadliest, Gutted: Lovely Horror Tales, Qualia Nous (#1&2), Chiral Mad (#2-4), PRISMS, and Shivers VI. He has additionally edited 5 anthologies. Go to whatdoesnotkillme.com for extra data.
Please go to LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE to learn extra nice science fiction and fantasy. This story first appeared within the August 2024 subject, which additionally options work by Okay.A. Wiggins, Dominique Dickey, Cat Rambo, Matthew Hughes, Archita Mittra, Oluwatomiwa Ajeigbe, Deborah L. Davitt and extra. You possibly can look ahead to this month’s contents to be serialized on-line, or you should buy the entire subject proper now in handy book format for simply $3.99, or subscribe to the book version here.
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