Breach: Issue #05: NZ and Australian SF, Horror and Dark Fantasy

By Breach

Alfie Simpson's The Plant Room features one of our favourite characters to grace our pages, then proceeds to commit terrible violence. Claire Fitzpatrick and Michael Morris both channel Ursula Le Guin's dark side, while Hari Navarro's Black Holy asks what might happen if god were to die. Eugen Bacon offers a wonderful yet brief respite with Surfing on Neptune, introducing a whole galaxy of story in just over 500 words.

Cover art once again by the lovely Oliver Hayes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Breach
• Release date: Sep 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463497173

Breach

Breach is bi-monthly online zine showcasing Australian and NZ writers and artists, with a lean to sci-fi and horror. Our focus is on new and emerging Australian and New Zealand writers and artists, and helping them get their work out into the world. Publishers of Alfie Simpson's "Sub-Urban" (Breach #07), winner of the Best Horror Short Story at the 2018 Aurealis Awards. Our stories have been shortlisted for numerous awards, including the Aurealis, Australian Shadows and the Sir Julius Vogel Awards. We only publish what we love and believe in and we champion our authors every way we can.

Book preview

Issue #05

Science Fiction, Horror and Dark Fantasy from Australia and New Zealand.

ISSN 2209-2196

Copyright © 2018 by each individual author as noted.

All rights reserved.

Find us online at:

breachzine.com

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Cover Art and Desin by Oliver Hayes

Layout by Peter Kirk

Edited by Bartholemew Ford

Published by Breach

Thank you for supporting independent publishers, writers and artists.

Contents

Alfie Simpson – The Plant Room

Claire Fitzpatrick – The Town Hall

Eugen Bacon – Surfing on Neptune

Hari Navarro – Black Holy

Michael Morris – Omelas Revisited

The Plant Room

Alfie Simpson

Alfie Simpson used to write plays in the suburbs of Adelaide, and now lives in exile in the city of Melbourne. When not working on stories about being a very small thing in a very big universe, he fixes commas for Farrago Magazine. His story The Endless Below (Breach #02) was shortlisted for the 2017 Aurealis Award for Best Horror Short Story.

Hoshi thinks of it as a room full of plants, but it’s not. At least, the others tell her it’s not. She doesn’t know. She’s not allowed in.

The door is at the end of a corridor in the back part of the Beech Street building, past the labs, slotted into a corner that fate and geometry conspired to keep dark. A sign on it pronounces danger. Big, honking, red-oval, all-caps danger. High voltage, construction site, top of the cliffs. Danger. Protective gear must be worn at all times. Authorised personnel only. Hoshi’s personnel. She’s not authorised.

By day she works in the labs. In rooms so clean you can smell the bodies. By night she wanders the building alone. She’s not meant to. She’d get in trouble with security, if they ever watched back the tapes, but it hasn’t happened yet. It’s her secret. They don’t know she eats here every day. Showers here. Sometimes sleeps here.

The corridors are all without windows, all lit by fluoros. When Hoshi started here she thought it was horrible. She felt hemmed-in and breathless. She needed to see the sky. Slowly, things changed. The corridors went from cramped to cosy. The lights from sharp to soothing. Now this is the only place she feels herself. Nights here used to frighten her. Sometimes they still do, but it’s fun to be a little bit frightened.

Tonight’s not different. Not particularly. It all feels the same except that Hoshi’s going to open the door.

That’s not the plan, to begin with. Or she tells herself it’s not the plan. The plan is to wander. To contemplate