Defenestrationism.net

by Annie Dawid
read the suite from the beginning

Still at Sea

 “Lewis, are you on this story or what?” The city desk editor, Hal Bonebrake, showed the police blotter printout to Veronica Lewis, who was drinking coffee, leaning against the window.

“What is it?” She turned, rubbing her temples. “Shit, I’m hungover.”

“Late party, huh. This looks juicy,” he said, pointing to the top paragraph. “Kid and her dad found in Forest Park after living in a tent for four years.”

She groaned. “Just what I need.”

“Well, I could give it to your buddy Goffredo, if you’re too debilitated….”

She snatched the paper. “On my way to the cop shop,” she mumbled, grabbing her laptop and heading for the door. “And Goffredo’s out of town, Hal. But smart ploy – got me moving.”

Bonebrake laughed. “Nothing like a good story to sweat out a hangover. Do it up.”

At the Coffee People near the Forest Park precinct, Veronica bought another double Americano and wrote a list in her reporter’s notebook. “Crazy vet? Homelessness. Family Services. Crime or feature?” She re-read the information and thought about her boyfriend’s sister, who had been on the streets for the last two years. Another casualty. No dad in that family, but the mom was a witch. Veronica didn’t blame the girl for leaving. Malcolm was always looking for her, every time they were in the Hawthorne, where he thought Anita hung out. “Nita-grrlla” was her street name. Fifteen years old. The girl they’d found was only 12. Veronica shuddered. Eight when she went into the woods.

When Veronica was 8, her parents had taken her around the world in a sailboat. Their year at sea, her mother called it, enjoying the double-entendre. Unlike the Forest Park family, they had money up the yin-yang, but it had been a strange brand of homelessness, Veronica remembered, showing up in ports with her naïve, trust-funded parents. She always had the feeling native people pitied her – thought her parents fools for carting her all over the globe when she was so often sick.

She wondered if the sailboat was bigger or smaller than the homeless family’s tent. At least, in the Park, the girl had space to roam, to run, and privacy in the trees. Veronica remembered how her mother broke down in Portugal, and when her father got sick from the hash in Algiers. With their Ivy League educations, her parents lacked common sense. She wondered if this street-smart dad had it more together.          

The cops had remarked that the place was immaculate, father and daughter clean, no body odor, no trash – as orderly as an Army camp. “Aha!” Veronica thought. “I knew it had to be a vet.” What if her own dad had been drafted to Vietnam? Was this father a ’Nam or Gulf War vet? Maybe this dad loved his daughter, whatever their peculiar housing situation. She slugged the rest of her coffee. In another life, it might have been Veronica herself having to answer some hungover reporter’s questions. 

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by Annie Dawid

Caught

Ray could tell they’d been discovered. The artificial odor gave it away: a woman, perfumed and/or deodorized, had penetrated their hideout.

“We’ll have to leave here,” he told his daughter, Laurel. “They’re onto us.”

“Daddy, slow down.” Twelve years old and enjoying the novelty of the feminine scent, Laurel patted her father on the shoulder, crouching beside him next to the coolers. “Remember when you said that last spring? And the summer before that? No one ever came.”

“Look at this.” He pointed to a perfect shoeprint in the cool dirt. “Tracks. Clear as day. Those other times – you’re right – I overreacted. But this evidence you can’t refute. The cops will be here soon; I guarantee it.” Removing a backpack from beneath a tarp, he assumed a military tone. “Get your clothes. Leave everything else. Don’t bother with the food.”

Two cloth bags of just-purchased groceries slumped by the tent’s flapping door, poor sentries.

“It’s late, Dad.” Laurel lay back on her sleeping bag. “All because some woman out running found our tent doesn’t mean we have to leave.”

The scalp beneath Ray’s thinning black hair reddened . “Babe. We’ve talked about this before. They’ll take you away from me – put you in a foster home with a bunch of crazies and won’t let us see each other.” He spoke quickly, his breaths shortening. “I couldn’t bear it.”

Laurel yawned.  “I’m so tired. Can we talk about it in the morning, please? I need to sleep.” Laurel closed her eyes and pretended the smell was her mother’s, a woman she barely remembered. A woman who’d been taken away.            

“All right. We’ll leave at first light.”

Still at Sea

 “Lewis, are you on this story or what?” The city desk editor, Hal Bonebrake, showed the police blotter printout to Veronica Lewis, who was drinking coffee, leaning against the window.

“What is it?” She turned, rubbing her temples. “Shit, I’m hungover.”

“Late party, huh. This looks juicy,” he said, pointing to the top paragraph. “Kid and her dad found in Forest Park after living in a tent for four years.”

She groaned. “Just what I need.”

“Well, I could give it to your buddy Goffredo, if you’re too debilitated….”

She snatched the paper. “On my way to the cop shop,” she mumbled, grabbing her laptop and heading for the door. “And Goffredo’s out of town, Hal. But smart ploy – got me moving.”

Bonebrake laughed. “Nothing like a good story to sweat out a hangover. Do it up.”

At the Coffee People near the Forest Park precinct, Veronica bought another double Americano and wrote a list in her reporter’s notebook. “Crazy vet? Homelessness. Family Services. Crime or feature?” She re-read the information and thought about her boyfriend’s sister, who had been on the streets for the last two years. Another casualty. No dad in that family, but the mom was a witch. Veronica didn’t blame the girl for leaving. Malcolm was always looking for her, every time they were in the Hawthorne, where he thought Anita hung out. “Nita-grrlla” was her street name. Fifteen years old. The girl they’d found was only 12. Veronica shuddered. Eight when she went into the woods.

When Veronica was 8, her parents had taken her around the world in a sailboat. Their year at sea, her mother called it, enjoying the double-entendre. Unlike the Forest Park family, they had money up the yin-yang, but it had been a strange brand of homelessness, Veronica remembered, showing up in ports with her naïve, trust-funded parents. She always had the feeling native people pitied her – thought her parents fools for carting her all over the globe when she was so often sick.

She wondered if the sailboat was bigger or smaller than the homeless family’s tent. At least, in the Park, the girl had space to roam, to run, and privacy in the trees. Veronica remembered how her mother broke down in Portugal, and when her father got sick from the hash in Algiers. With their Ivy League educations, her parents lacked common sense. She wondered if this street-smart dad had it more together.          

The cops had remarked that the place was immaculate, father and daughter clean, no body odor, no trash – as orderly as an Army camp. “Aha!” Veronica thought. “I knew it had to be a vet.” What if her own dad had been drafted to Vietnam? Was this father a ’Nam or Gulf War vet? Maybe this dad loved his daughter, whatever their peculiar housing situation. She slugged the rest of her coffee. In another life, it might have been Veronica herself having to answer some hungover reporter’s questions. 

The Doc Who Examined Her

“Gwen, did you get Dr. Bernstein’s report on that girl?” Dr. Javed Singh asked his assistant.

“Totally clean, she said. In better health than most of the kids with homes she usually sees.” Gwen put the folder on her boss’s desk. “The dad, too. Skinny, but otherwise healthy.”

“She checked for sexual abuse?”

Gwen consulted the report. “Yup. Nothing. Are you surprised? I was.”

“In my country, as you know, most of the population is much poorer than the people we see here. But, if you’ll permit me to generalize, Indians are in better spiritual shape. In that way, the father reminded me of men at home whose inner lives are more evolved than their material ones.”

Sun slanted onto Gwen’s desk, highlighting the photograph of her dogs. Once she’d wanted children and a partner, but a few years on the job changed her mind. “I didn’t talk to him much. But the girl seemed okay to me. I just assumed he molested her. That’s pretty sick.”

Dr. Singh shrugged. “Not when three-fourths of our caseload are abused. This culture! I know you don’t like it when I complain about America, since I brought my family here to take advantage of what the U.S. has to offer, but my god – it is sick when it comes to sex.”

“That’s why I’m so shocked: they’re homeless and jobless and isolated, but they seem to have a healthy father-daughter relationship.” Gwen looked at the clock. “It’s a good way to end the week. Unusual.”

Smiling, Dr. Singh gestured her away. “Usually you’re so depressed by the end of the day. Go early.”

Gwen gathered her things. “Thanks, Boss. Say hello to Supriya and the kids for me.”

Before leaving, he read the report again. In India, people without homes were legion, most never expecting anything different. But in the United States, it seemed, everyone dreamed of a mansion and many vehicles. A Hummer. He wanted his children to be humble, despite their immersion in American values. Before going home, he turned off the lights and meditated, hopeful.

Homeless With Dad

Davis isn’t bad. Nice parks, and everyone rides bikes here. Dad keeps promising he’ll find me a used one, but no luck so far. I miss the trees in Oregon though; it’s too hot, and the people aren’t as nice as they were in Portland. Plus it’s hard getting used to a new name: Nicole. I wish he hadn’t given me Mama’s name. But at least he lets me go to school. Of course I had to start bleeding on my first day; what a drag to live in a tent and have your period!  Plus I don’t like the smell of it. Dad says he can’t smell anything, and that I’m being hypersensitive, just like Mama. We got a letter from her, or from an aide who said she was writing what Mama dictated. I’ll write some of it here. With Dad always tossing everything, we never hang onto her letters, and I don’t know how long I’ll be able to hide this journal from him.

Laurel, we named you that because you were my prize after so many miscarriages. I used to call you my little leaf: petite feuille. God had something in mind for you because He let you live. My job was to give birth to you, and your father’s is to raise you up. I was depressed when I was pregnant and depressed afterwards. I couldn’t be a mother to you – not a mother you’d want to have. I wasn’t safe. For all these years I’ve been mad at your dad, but I know he did the right thing by taking you away. Forgive me. Nicole.

I’m going to write her back and tell her to stop asking me to forgive her. Dad says she’s sick, like a person with diabetes, and we need to love her and pray for her. It’s weird to forgive someone you can hardly remember, and I’m never exactly sure just what she wants to be forgiven for. Did she do some horrible thing to me when I was a baby? Dad won’t tell me anything. I wonder why we never go back to Maine, not even to visit, and if she ever wants to see me; she never says she does. Dad tells me I should be grateful to have one loving parent, plus another one at a distance, because some kids don’t have anyone, anywhere, to love them. He’s probably right, but still, it’s hard to share his optimism anymore, his faith that everything works out how it’s supposed to, for the best. Sometimes I’m sick of this life we have, me and Dad. Sometimes I want to run away.

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by Douglas Cole

originally published by Bending Genres
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Inlanders

They are waiting—they are watching from the lake of the dead.

I dropped off grid, dumped the vehicle, crossed over to Indian land, asked permission to stay

out here (on the edge). They said okay, as long as I didn’t bother anyone and paid rent.

I said that sounds good to me.

The high wire walkers show up when the air is very still and there might be only a few more moments of visibility as the light goes slowly. You can see them between the incoming clouds.

Someone peels out on a road nearby, sending out that gravel-skid sound. And always riding just below the radio broadcast of thoughts, trees maybe swaying and rubbing their limbs together and that warble-tone of bats, you hear the waves of the ocean like breathing, something enormous out there with all the stars inside of it, breathing and dreaming all this.

Can you buy me this medicine, please. I no have doctor. You go to pharmacy? Please buy, please. And you watch the doors of velvet delivery close behind you on a world warping with a Doppler bend to the voice saying, please buy, please, turning to the pool of black rainwater.

Another book arrived. How it got here through the barricades, the piles burning on abandoned streets, double maybe triple run of the engine truck and aid car…it’s chaos here, I tell you, so you can imagine my tears holding it, with shots going off in the dark, and my unbound joy.

Back in the crow’s nest learning the lessons of water levels and balance and equilibrium and bonds and shells and resistances and attractions and corrosives and emoluments, it seems, because all this is in that book in there and I’m out here, that the moon is a shade under full. Inlanders look out over the plains with squint-eyed curiosity and a little fear at what might arrive, the vast mystery of that empty space you can travel through for days only to come to another outlook over valleys and mountains like some threatening, stylized act of stone designing itself as obstacle course—it could take a lifetime to crack—to come at last to that immense void of the sea as if the journey only ever brings you to the threshold of another mystery.

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by Douglas Cole

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Dame Rocket

At first it sounded like someone practicing violin. The it was just someone playing violin, a sound that rose and fell as if someone were messing around with the volume or a wind he sure couldn’t feel were taking chunks of sound away.

Not light, though! You have these moments of intense clarity, riding fast on a postage stamp magic carpet from one end of the room to the deck—and I mean profound true principles, enough to get you burned as a heretic in one of these versions. But now it couldn’t pay the rent past next Thursday.

That’s what I was trying to tell you, he said, right as the blender came to a stop. Was it coconut or jasmine that most defibrillated him back into paradise? I’ve got to get out on the lake!

Maybe no one’s going anywhere, except for Andrea who came through the wisteria vine rubbing her jaw as if she had just finished giving a rough one. Permission to come aboard, she said.

It’s your dream, too.

I’m only renting.

So am I! I could never afford this.

Low nitrogen supplements made the Daphne and the Dames Rocket sing visually and point at the places where they wanted their pots moved. Sun high overall. The idea fountain quietly flowing in its place on the wall under the eave of the bungalow.

The lord and ladyship around?

No.

Ah! And Andrea lit up so fast it was like a magic trick. She was a miracle stepping out of her own creation smoke.

Join me? She said.

Why not.

And there are pales, again a principle, a physical law as solid as gravity, much like the one that pulled up its skirt when he drank this concoction he had taken to calling elixir. Then there’s Andrea’s mystery oil-soaked booster rockets. It was getting hard to keep track of the distortions.

Are you all watered or not? He said to the plants when his eyes fell down the well of Andrea’s million-mile stare. He thought to shake her, out of a sense of bio-fealty, but before he could shoot that message off to control center, she blinked, turned to him and said:

Don’t look at me!

He knew instantly that she was referring to the cavalcade of possible miss-steps and unintentional detours that might have occurred in the years she had been absent just standing there. He was familiar with that abyss. It rolled between him and many other narrative versions in which he for all he knew might not have survived the first bad wave.

Oh, there were a few missing pieces, naturally, a few gaps, intervals between then and now. They were walking in a golden wonderland overgrown vine street willow-choked and sweet sunken into summer daydream versions of several walks they’d had before, only now most of the homes were abandoned—take your pick!

And during the moon pause, she was saying, what you choose to do doesn’t have the same consequences. It’s a natural space for experimentation.

Everything has consequence.

Not during a moon pause.

Moon pause?

It’s like a gap. It’s like you get to be free from being you.

How do you now when there’s a moon pause?

It’s on the calendar.

Which calendar?

Any calendar that includes the phases of the moon.

It was Morse code now, midway into this conversation. Andrea always fragmented before him at some point.

…and he won’t answer his phone, she said. I think he got the guy. I just hope he doesn’t kill him.

He wouldn’t kill him, would he? He was proud he as keeping up even if he was on shaky grounds of clarity.

I don’t know. A monster like that? I can’t say I’d feel sorry for him after what he did to me.

No, no. Never.

Two days, can you believe that? Deserves a killing.

Absolutely.

And Tom was pretty mad.

I bet he was.

He’s got him right now, I’m sure of it, she said, shaking her head and yanking down on a drifting tree limb like she was summoning a butler. Yeah, he’s probably putting cigarettes out in his eyes right now. That’s what I would do…

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by Douglas Cole

The Ground Beneath Your Feet

I felt a jolt. The house began moving. For a moment I was weightless, then I flew to the back of the room and stopped and everything was coming at me—chairs, cups, couch pillows, plants and dirt and the whole sky. I went fast forward and hit the other wall, and then the house stopped. Can I tell you that in that time my mind leaped through every room double-checking no one else was there? Yep, just me. I had a nice bump rising on the front right top of my head. I could feel it tingling. It was warm under my hand. I’d taken a few shots to the arms and legs. The left wrist was a little twisted, but I don’t think broken. Stomach felt okay. I could see straight.

Windows on the north side of the house were still in place. What a miracle! And I could see the house did a complete face-plant into the maple trees. They broke the fall. Otherwise, the hillside was one big muddy slump that lava-like had flowed out from under and around the house and into the trees. Up above, half the road was gone.

Sometimes chance throws you a bone—the fire poker was right there at my feet. That’s how I’d get through those north windows, but looking up across the room, I mean, it looked like I could make it to the front door. First climb over the room debris: clock, couches, tables, guitars, pots—a ruin, just a ruin—and from there grab the wall edge at the little bar inset where I throw my keys. Next, hold onto the doorjamb to the entry way, and here it gets a little tricky. I’ve got the stairs on the left, doorway to the living room on the right, and ahead and just out of reach is the front door. I went for the stairway railing and got it, and that was my ticket out. From there I could reach the door, turn the knob, and the doorway fell open. There was my escape hatch.

I climbed up and out. It was otherwise a beautiful day. My neighbor, Albert, was standing at the edge of the driveway looking down at me as I climbed like a space traveler out of the crashed capsule of my house. I stood next to the front door, in a hole that used to be the land all this stood on.

“Hey!” Albert, said. “Are you all right, there?”

I looked back down through the front door into the interior mess. You know, it didn’t look like the house had been damaged that badly. There’s no more foundation, but if you could just lift it up and set it upright somewhere…

“Yeah,” I said, “I think so.” I felt that bump on the top of my head. I could already hear sirens. “I did hit my head, though.” Sirens, but now that I think about it, that might have been seagulls or my ears ringing, you know? Or the untethered spirits flopping around inside the house wondering where to go.

“How does that feel?” she asked.

“I won’t lie,” I said. It’s a little bright.”

“Hmmm. You might be sensitive to light for a while. Otherwise, you seem fine. Its amazing! But I think you should stick around for a night and let us keep an eye on you, okay? Just to be safe.”

“Safe. Yeah,” I said, because, well—

“And you climbed out of your own house?” she said.

“I did.”

“That’s incredible.

“Like The Poseidon Adventure.”

“The what?”

“The movie.”

“Oh, I haven’t seen it.”

“Never mind.”

“All right, well, you just get some rest, then. If you need anything, you’ve got the call button, there, but I’m going to check in on you—just to be safe.”

“Oh, I appreciate that.”

“You’re good for now?”

“Good. Safe.”

“Safe.” And she gave me the old buckaroo fist jab and a wink. Who knew there were people like that in the world.

And I tell you that room had a view, looking out over the bay, west, and the edge of the wharf glittering like a holiday. I don’t know what floor I was on, but I tell you this was like one of those high-end hotel views. I don’t know how safe I felt. I mean, I’ve never had a thing about heights. I like being up high. I like seeing into the distance.

Dame Rocket

At first it sounded like someone practicing violin. The it was just someone playing violin, a sound that rose and fell as if someone were messing around with the volume or a wind he sure couldn’t feel were taking chunks of sound away.

Not light, though! You have these moments of intense clarity, riding fast on a postage stamp magic carpet from one end of the room to the deck—and I mean profound true principles, enough to get you burned as a heretic in one of these versions. But now it couldn’t pay the rent past next Thursday.

That’s what I was trying to tell you, he said, right as the blender came to a stop. Was it coconut or jasmine that most defibrillated him back into paradise? I’ve got to get out on the lake!

Maybe no one’s going anywhere, except for Andrea who came through the wisteria vine rubbing her jaw as if she had just finished giving a rough one. Permission to come aboard, she said.

It’s your dream, too.

I’m only renting.

So am I! I could never afford this.

Low nitrogen supplements made the Daphne and the Dames Rocket sing visually and point at the places where they wanted their pots moved. Sun high overall. The idea fountain quietly flowing in its place on the wall under the eave of the bungalow.

The lord and ladyship around?

No.

Ah! And Andrea lit up so fast it was like a magic trick. She was a miracle stepping out of her own creation smoke.

Join me? She said.

Why not.

And there are pales, again a principle, a physical law as solid as gravity, much like the one that pulled up its skirt when he drank this concoction he had taken to calling elixir. Then there’s Andrea’s mystery oil-soaked booster rockets. It was getting hard to keep track of the distortions.

Are you all watered or not? He said to the plants when his eyes fell down the well of Andrea’s million-mile stare. He thought to shake her, out of a sense of bio-fealty, but before he could shoot that message off to control center, she blinked, turned to him and said:

Don’t look at me!

He knew instantly that she was referring to the cavalcade of possible miss-steps and unintentional detours that might have occurred in the years she had been absent just standing there. He was familiar with that abyss. It rolled between him and many other narrative versions in which he for all he knew might not have survived the first bad wave.

Oh, there were a few missing pieces, naturally, a few gaps, intervals between then and now. They were walking in a golden wonderland overgrown vine street willow-choked and sweet sunken into summer daydream versions of several walks they’d had before, only now most of the homes were abandoned—take your pick!

And during the moon pause, she was saying, what you choose to do doesn’t have the same consequences. It’s a natural space for experimentation.

Everything has consequence.

Not during a moon pause.

Moon pause?

It’s like a gap. It’s like you get to be free from being you.

How do you now when there’s a moon pause?

It’s on the calendar.

Which calendar?

Any calendar that includes the phases of the moon.

It was Morse code now, midway into this conversation. Andrea always fragmented before him at some point.

…and he won’t answer his phone, she said. I think he got the guy. I just hope he doesn’t kill him.

He wouldn’t kill him, would he? He was proud he as keeping up even if he was on shaky grounds of clarity.

I don’t know. A monster like that? I can’t say I’d feel sorry for him after what he did to me.

No, no. Never.

Two days, can you believe that? Deserves a killing.

Absolutely.

And Tom was pretty mad.

I bet he was.

He’s got him right now, I’m sure of it, she said, shaking her head and yanking down on a drifting tree limb like she was summoning a butler. Yeah, he’s probably putting cigarettes out in his eyes right now. That’s what I would do…

Inlanders

originally published by Bending Genres

They are waiting—they are watching from the lake of the dead.

I dropped off grid, dumped the vehicle, crossed over to Indian land, asked permission to stay

out here (on the edge). They said okay, as long as I didn’t bother anyone and paid rent.

I said that sounds good to me.

The high wire walkers show up when the air is very still and there might be only a few more moments of visibility as the light goes slowly. You can see them between the incoming clouds.

Someone peels out on a road nearby, sending out that gravel-skid sound. And always riding just below the radio broadcast of thoughts, trees maybe swaying and rubbing their limbs together and that warble-tone of bats, you hear the waves of the ocean like breathing, something enormous out there with all the stars inside of it, breathing and dreaming all this.

Can you buy me this medicine, please. I no have doctor. You go to pharmacy? Please buy, please. And you watch the doors of velvet delivery close behind you on a world warping with a Doppler bend to the voice saying, please buy, please, turning to the pool of black rainwater.

Another book arrived. How it got here through the barricades, the piles burning on abandoned streets, double maybe triple run of the engine truck and aid car…it’s chaos here, I tell you, so you can imagine my tears holding it, with shots going off in the dark, and my unbound joy.

Back in the crow’s nest learning the lessons of water levels and balance and equilibrium and bonds and shells and resistances and attractions and corrosives and emoluments, it seems, because all this is in that book in there and I’m out here, that the moon is a shade under full. Inlanders look out over the plains with squint-eyed curiosity and a little fear at what might arrive, the vast mystery of that empty space you can travel through for days only to come to another outlook over valleys and mountains like some threatening, stylized act of stone designing itself as obstacle course—it could take a lifetime to crack—to come at last to that immense void of the sea as if the journey only ever brings you to the threshold of another mystery.

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Our 2022 FLASH SUITE Contest is now live.

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Editorial Advisor, Mother of Dinos
and submissions reader for the !Short Story Contest!

will chill our spines with her bewitching,
“Cabinet of Wrath: A Doll Collection”

Are you scared yet?
Don’t be,
we’re all treats tonight
on Defenestrationism.net

Submission period for the
2022 FLASH SUITE Contest closes
the moment it is no longer November 1st, anywhere on Earth.

by
by

! It’s the virtual Halloween Party!
at Defenestrationism.net

Join us as we post new message across
the day of the eve of the Day of the Dead,
into the night, across the witching hour,
and even into the Day of the Dead, itself.

It’s past your bedtime,
and you’re checking your phone under the covers:

Christian McKay Heidicker
former contest judge, 2013-2019,

has a new book to follow-up his
Newbery Honor Recipient YA
“Scary Stories for Young Foxes”.

The series has been compared to “Watership Down”,
but he answered my question on such with an answer along these lines (not an exact quote of the author):

I love “Mrs. Frisbey and the Rats of NIHM”! “Young Foxes” is so often compare to “Watership Down” but that book was so dark and depressing that it is closer to “Mrs. Frisby”. She does wear a little vest and that stuff, and isn’t entirely realistic, but the message is more positive.

The new title is “Scary Story Stories for Young Foxes: the City”

In that same panel– presented by Politics and Prose Bookstore, Washington, DC–
Christian told us that the new book features ghost stories from the future,
Robots, Extraterrestrials, and more, all told in his insistently realistic style.

Purchase both from Macmillan:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250181428?q=scary%20stories%20for

Keep surfing through for special messages from our
contest judges, our co-editors, and
~~~~ from beyond~~~~

Deep after dark,
it’s time to get really, super, very-much-not-kidding scary with

Glenn A. Bruce,
contest judge for the FLASH SUITE Contest

who has a special message about his newest publication,
My Worst Nightmare: The Dead Of Night

Are you scared yet?
Don’t be,
we’re all treats tonight
on Defenestrationism.net

Submission period for the
2022 FLASH SUITE Contest closes
the moment it is no longer November 1st, anywhere on Earth.

by
by