Press Start to Play by Daniel H. Wilson, John Joseph Adams

than spend time with Jamie really was the final nail.
    The kettle hissed as the water started to boil. Seconds later both the light and the kettle went off.
    “Oh, for f—” He stopped when he heard a high-pitched shriek somewhere above him that ended so quickly his mind immediately began to doubt he’d heard it. His cholesterol-smothered heart started to work harder than it was used to. Jamie hadn’t liked that sound at all. He fumbled his way to the electricity box in the downstairs hall. “Sorry, mate,” he yelled in the direction of the stairs. “Just the kettle again.” He didn’t care if he woke Sam up. He didn’t want to be the only one awake in the house after having heard that noise.
    “It was a fox,” he said out loud and flicked the master switch back on. “Outside.”
    It was a child, his mind taunted. You know it was a child.
    Jamie went upstairs, not to find the cause of the upsetting cry, but to wake Sam up so he didn’t feel so alone. He turned on every light he passed, though it didn’t help.
    He knocked on the door when he reached Sam’s bedroom. “Sam, you awake, mate?” He didn’t wait very long for a reply. He pushed the door open and walked inside.
    Sam’s mattress was immaculate but for a small indentation on the blanket where it looked like someone had recently been sitting. On the floor was the MSII control pad at the end of its fully stretched cable. Jamie followed the cable up to the console, which was resting on the floor beneath the flat screen. When he looked at the flat screen, what Jamie saw was so incongruous that at first all he could do was stare.
    Eventually he walked over to the television. A triangular shape was jutting from the center of the otherwise black screen. When Jamie pulled at it, the whole television threatened to topple forward. It was stuck there, as if the glass had set around the protruding object.
    He saw Sam then, huddled in the corner by the cupboard, clutching his knees. His wide eyes were fixed on the dead television. “I didn’t think he could come through,” Sam said, his voice riding the juddering of his chest. “I thought I could help—Jamie—but he was too hungry. I didn’t think he could come through, though. I don’t, I don’t…” His words ended in a series of deep breaths.
    Jamie looked back at the thing poking out from the television like a paper shark’s fin. The object had no meaning to Jamie in that moment, although it would mean something to him later. It was the corner of a thin children’s book. He couldn’t see all the words on the cover, because some were clearly on the part of the book that resided on the other side of the glass, inside the television, perhaps. But it didn’t take a great leap of logic to work out the title from what he could see, and from the cover image of a young girl, sitting at a table sharing a cup of tea with a tiger.
----
    S. R. Mastrantone writes and lives in Oxford in the UK. His short fiction has won the Fiction Desk Writer’s Award and been featured internationally in venues such as
Shock Totem
,
LampLight
, and
carte blanche
. He is currently working on his first novel. His favorite games are
Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse
and all of the Oliver Twins’ Dizzy games (except
Fast Food Dizzy
, give that one a miss); he is painfully aware of just how old-school he is on this matter. You can find him at www.srmastrantone.com and @srmastrantone .

RAT CATCHER’S YELLOWS
Charlie Jane Anders
    1.
    The plastic cat head is wearing an elaborate puffy crown covered with bling. The cat’s mouth opens to reveal a touch screen, but there’s also a jack to plug in an elaborate mask that gives you a visor, along with nose plugs and earbuds for added sensory input. Holding this self-contained game system in my palms, I hate it and want to throw it out the open window of our beautiful faux-Colonial row house to be buried under the autumn mulch. But I also feel a surge of hope: that maybe this