Today the transformation was creeping upward, but he knew better than to try and predict it. Some days his consciousness was lost before the human form of his bottom half dissolved; rendering him ignorant of both the transformation and where his legs would carry him in the minutes before they were immobilized. Other nights it was a gradual fade from left to right that held him in the ecstasy of a man with two minds. Tonight he knew only of the dreaded window of being paralyzed but feeling more awake than ever in his life.

Photo credit: Sarah Ann Loreth

She was his life's greatest work. His impression upon her was as tangible as hands clasped across her eyes. But he trained her so well that his body physically shielding her wasn't necessary. He dedicated his life to her innocence. He left and she aged but her eyes never dulled. She smiled wildly and without restraint, uncorrupted by self-awareness. She was forever blind with her eyes wide open; just as he intended.  

Photo credit: Alex Stoddard

The tree broke through the ground in the middle of an unkempt cornfield. It had long ago been taken hostage by a tangle of vines whose knotty braids slithered up the length of the trunk. In the winter when the leaves fell to the ground the rough sketch of a face could be seen in the blanks between the branches against the sky. The frail vines arched and coiled around the tips of the tree forming eyes and a mouth in the familiar location and proportion. The mouth stood in a line perfectly parallel to the ground, void of expression except for when the wind blew from the northeast corner of the field. The wind would disrupt the branches and bounce the features of the face; creating the illusion that the mouth was smiling, maybe she thought, in remembrance of the land from whence it came.

Photo credit: Robin Mellway

He thrashed until his memories banded apart, until they frayed and became separate. And in a violent final flail his inner most demons lay exposed. He then stood motionless as his layers congealed leaving behind a few translucent visages that floated away and disappeared within the walls.

Photo credit: Nir Arieli

I asked Molly where all the balloons go that children let loose into the sky. She said they sit at the ceiling of the cosmos, but soon there‘d be so many collecting that the ceiling would lower and they’d all be within reach. We decided to reach them first. The attempt was modest but we knew others would come. 

Photo credit: Zhu Ming 

In a moment shorter than the sun was high the shark weighed down and snapped Lily in two. Her heavy lunch kept her bottom half bobbing to the rhythm of the waves. From the shore it looked like Lily had found a new friend.

Photo credit: Randy P. Martin

They sprouted years ago in a field of four leaf clovers. Their legs extended into roots that bore miles into the ground. They threaded so intricately that they netted the entire mass of earth between their farthest points. The roots were their kite string tethering them to the ground, but the twins struggled relentlessly to free themselves. Each morning they coiled around each other and sunk their untrimmed nails into the ground to hold position. And each evening the roots responded. Torqued from the ground they retreated a few inches from yesterday's depths. The twins salivated for freedom and their hunger kept them working. Escape was imminent.

Photo credit: Lissy Elle Laricchia

He dragged his silky gilded tongue across her eyes as she slept. What remained bled through her skin and soaked her dreams. She dreamt in fast foward and awoke with the glimmer of a past life in her eyes. 

Photo credit: Bojana Tatarska

After the clouds passed she committed to building a house made completely out of jello that would reflect the colors of the sunset. When the colors shone brightest she would pull down the blinds and bottle the colors for a rainy day.

Photo credit: Jessica Neuwerth

I didn't understand why the water never flooded our neighborhood. I could see it from the road and it looked higher than where we were standing. It was ready to unleash itself with the slightest bit of encouragement from the wind. Turning I saw Ms. Holmes sweeping her porch. I figured she was battling some dark thoughts to take to on such a dull activity so religiously. I used to picture it, Ms. Holmes standing at her window sweeping the floor two houses down when a wall of water infinitely high and wide jetted through the street. I imagined how big her eyes would be the moment before she got swept away.

Photo credit: Jovanna Tosello

Sometimes as a kid I went to my mom’s water aerobics class. Goggles on I would dive under and listen to the instructor’s garbled voice bark directions. I waved my arms like a conductor pretending to command the action. Their fleshy folds billowed like sails, pocketing the water and resisting their movement. It looked slower than slow motion. Slower than walking even.

Photo credit: David Parody

She had a crisscross pattern of wrinkles splattered across her face from a lifelong habit of expressing conflicting emotions. 

Photo credit: Unknown

He stared so intensely he lost awareness of where he was. Awakened by the desire to remember, he held up an invisible camera and clicked his tongue; the action meant to reiterate the importance of preserving the memory. They stood as if without a crowd; wild and curious. Their flesh hugged and curved around their skeletons at mountainous angles. He thought they looked like a band of mobile pedestals with flat planes the heights of coffee table tops and banister knobs. Handsome in a beastly sort of way.

Photo credit: Gordon Chalmers

We told stories of him sitting in his rusted out rocking chair high atop the atmosphere and how he was able to watch us all. We imagined that he never left his chair and as a result became fixed to it, his clothes covered in rusty soot that resembled the color, taste, and smell of dried blood. Cecilia suggested he had special horn-rimmed glasses that allowed him to see through the Earth with just a thin plane of pulled cotton separating the civilizations on either side. Cecilia and I would always argue about whether someone down below could disappear by standing directly under someone on the Earth up top. I said she was ridiculous but I thought about it constantly.

Photo credit: Lissy Elle Laricchia

Dressed nearly too well to be noticed it was the red paint on her fingernails that distinguished her from the wallpaper and the blue in her eyes that arrested his attention. Ralph had been craving his encounter for weeks. Diana, the sharp tongued columnist for the Jamesland Gazette stood at the edge of the room convincingly focusing her attention on the hem of her sleeve. Undeterred by her indifference Ralph approached; his flush face and nervous grin not going unnoticed.

But that was 50 years ago...

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Mrs. Henderson was wearing just the right shade of metallic lipstick that early morning as her head tilted at just the right angle as her neighbor's sunburnt lawn caught her eye. Every element aligned that day to turn the world's lights out. The light reflecting from every surface funnelled and pooled into a single beam that landed in the exact middle of Sally Winderfield's aboveground pool. As the last glimmer of light slipped into submersion Sally jolted from bed. Clutching her mother's enamelled mirror she thrashed to the pool's floor to return the light from where it came. She held the beam with bated breath and in the seconds she paused Mrs. Henderon's lipstick had faded; an amount slighter than slight but enough to prevent the light from returning.

Photo credit: Elle Moss

She was a vessel of her surroundings. Even as a child she knew it would happen. One day her eyes opened to the world and the world flooded in. It gushed in and slapped against the walls of her body until she was overflowing. Full of the mountains and the skies and the fields her outline dimmed and she was lost.

Photo credit: Greta Tuckute

Memory by memory they wove their lives together anticipating a forced separation. When the time came the others twisted, scratched and growled at their construction but not a single fiber relented to unravelling. With a feral snarl the others left the knotted heap distressed and ratty but unbroken.

Photo credit: Hannes Caspar