Arcane II by Nathan Shumate (Editor)

him. He threw off the thin sheets and stumbled through discarded clothes and beer cans into the bathroom.
    The bright light blinded him, hands groping for the sink rather than the toilet, thick sludge pouring from his mouth, down his chin. He heaved into the sink, and while he didn’t feel anything come up, his throat partially cleared and Roy gasped for air. He stared at his own reflection, eyes bloodshot, face red, and a thin stream of gray liquid dribbling down his chin.
    He spit out a wad of it in the sink, felt his body numb at the sight. His eyes turned towards the open door and the apartment complex beyond it. He could still feel the sludge in his throat, threatening to come out again.
    He pulled on a pair of pants and an over-shirt on his way out the front door, running barefoot across the parking lot towards the steps leading to C3, entire body bloating out more with each step. As he reached the top and fumbled with the key he had to pause, aware of a murmuring in the air, like static with a voice somewhere in the middle of it.
    The door pushed open to show him the creature standing in the middle of the room in the darkness, its empty face aimed towards him, and though he couldn’t know it, he felt it somehow smiled at him.
    “You did this,” Roy said, voice strained and watery. He coughed up another wad of thick, gray sludge.
    “I wanted to thank you,” it said to him, voice streaming into Roy’s head, clear amidst the normal buzzing.
    “You can talk?” Roy said.
    “I could always talk. You just couldn’t understand me.”
    It walked right up to the threshold but didn’t pass. “How did you do this to me? You’re trapped in there.”
    The thing pointed towards the kitchen and the hardened mound of gray substance, then pointed towards the skeleton in the corner. “He summoned that one, thinking it could help him, but all it did was infect him. He killed it before it could do more, but the infection spread until it was too late. He managed to trap me in here before I emerged.”
    “Emerged?” Roy asked, taking a step back, throat clogging more with each second.
    “I was the infection,” it said.
    From within the apartment behind him Roy heard a woman coughing, hacking loudly, and turned towards the door of the second individual to witness this creature. “The face,” Roy whispered, every second making his body worse, dropping him to his knees.
    “When I mark them, the infection sets in—all of my future children free from this confinement, free to infect as many others as they can. Without the right tools we aren’t an easy infection to kill off.”
    Roy fell forward; hands pressed against the wood, unable to breathe anymore, gray sludge pouring from his mouth, dripping from his ears, running like liquid from his eyes. He felt himself bulging from within, stomach tearing open. He saw the splits running up his arms, only the barest mark of red visible before the gray seeped out.
    “I thank you,” the creature said. “After being confined here for as many months as I was I had given up hope. I can never thank you enough for all the wonderful hosts you brought me.”
    Glad I could help, some part of Roy thought, snorted, a short, fierce laugh shaking his frame in those final seconds when his body tore apart, and he was privileged to the brief glimpse of the thing he’d given birth to standing upright in front of him. He stared into the void of its face, and the emptiness sucked him into its darkness.
     
     

 
     
    Hurricane Drunk
     
    Harry Markov
     
     
    Tatyana’s first memory of Grandfather Grigory was when she was eight years old. The night she met Grandfather Grigory was also the night her heart learned to secrete hatred so fine that it pumped poison into her veins.
    Tatyana heard the front door open. Then there were creaks and hissing scratches from the small room only Grandmother was allowed in, but instead of the huffs and puffs that Tatyana had grown up with, she heard laughter