The Dread Machine: Issue 3.3

By Alin Walker

In this issue of The Dread Machine...

Investigate a haunted record store, meet an accidental martyr, and marry a god. Gather the stars, catalog a new planet, and settle the feud with your twin brother.

Learn how to determine if your grandmother has been replaced by a fairy, how to build a social media following to cr

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Dread Machine
• Release date: Oct 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781957849164

Book preview

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Copyright © 2023 by The Dread Machine

All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review. Authors retain the rights to their contributions.

ISSN APPL100002727

ISBN 978-1-957849-15-7 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-978-1-957849-16-4 (Epub)

Characters and events in this magazine are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Edited by Alin Walker, Monica Louzon, and Timothy Burkhardt.

Cover by Yorgos Cotronis.

Published by The Dread Machine

https://www.thedreadmachine.com

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Acknowledgments

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Contents

1.Thirteen Ways to Dissect a Blackbird

1. Marcus Whalbring

2.House & Hevelte

2. Cecil Fenn

3.The Interior of the Roomba: An Apotheosis

3. Nathaniel Lee

4.Dispatches From the Prison Planet

4. Goran Lowie

5.Waiting On a Bright Moon

5. Neon Yang

6.Interstellar Catalog: Overnight

6. Shana Ross

7.How to Determine if Your Grandmother Has Been Replaced by a Fairy and What to Do About It

7. Greta Heyer

8.All the Dead Girls Singing

8. Avra Margariti

9.Resources Your Therapist Emails You After Your First Few Sessions Because, Really, You Need All the Help You Can Get

9. Kara Crawford

10.A Bucket Below the Chin, Soup Within Too Salted

10. Ai Jiang

11.Blood Debt

11. EC Dorgan

12.How to Build a Social Media Following to Crowdfund Medical Bills Before You Need It

12. Jason P. Burnham

13.The Wolf in my Belly

13. Akis Linardos

14.The Planet's Darkside

14. Deborah Davitt

15.Polymer Degradation

15. A.P. Thayer

16.The Green Man's Wife

16. Archita Mittra

17.Magic, Love, and Loathing in Tuesday Movies

17. Brandon Case

18.Barred Spiral

18. Taylor Jordan Pitts

19.Machina Ex Machina

19. Samir Sirk Morató

20.About Us

Thirteen Ways to Dissect a Blackbird

Marcus Whalbring

1.

Hold the knife tightly or the breast

will swallow it.

2.

Once opened, when the winds come out,

wait for them to stop,

no matter how many years it takes.

3.

Sweep the leaves from the heart

using the broom you find hanging

from the inside wall.

4.

If there are stairs leading down,

sew it all back together

and walk away.

5.

The wings, once removed,

slowly start to become forests.

6.

Do not remove the pillars

or it will all come crashing down.

7.

The left eye is an augury.

Hold it to the western light at evening.

8.

When plucking tail feathers

wear flame-resistant fabric.

9.

Those aren’t worms,

those are planets.

10.

The feathers shine purple in the sun,

at night you can only play one song

on their dark keys.

11.

When you make the first incision,

your father, if he’s alive,

will feel it.

12.

Measure the dimensions of the heart

to determine if this is, in fact, a blackbird

and not a whale.

13.

The light from its throat

will not blind you.

Look into it and translate its silence

into whatever language you speak.

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About Marcus Whalbring

Marcus Whalbring is the author of A Concert of Rivers from Milk & Cake Press, as well as How to Draw Fire from Finishing Line Press and Just Flowers from Crooked Steeple Press. A graduate of the MFA program at Miami University, his poems and stories have appeared or are forthcoming in, Strange Horizons, Space & Time, Illumen, Abyss & Apex, Spaceports and Spidersilk, Cortland Review, Pittsburgh Quarterly, Spry, and Underwood Press, among others. He’s a high school teacher, a father, and a husband. You can connect with him via twitter at https://twitter.com/marcuswhalbring and learn more about his work at https://marcuswhalbring.wpcomstaging.com/poetry/.

House & Hevelte

Cecil Fenn

The security grille is pulled down across the windows at House & Helvete Records when Lark arrives. The two owners, Nathaniel and Mel, have a trestle table set up outside in the shade of the store’s awning, but the windows are dark behind them. Nathaniel’s watching an episode of Buzzfeed Unsolved on his laptop, surrounded by neatly heaped plates of cookies. Mel watches over his shoulder, brushing back the fringe of her dyed bob; it’s a fresh seapunk teal. She’s paused in the middle of loading a tiered stand with neon green frosted cupcakes.

As Lark approaches, Nathaniel closes his computer, shakes his hair out of his face. It’s hot-iron smooth, and the sun scatters in bands along its dark length. He makes Lark think of trve cvlt aesthetic blogs: expensive black skinny jeans, vintage band merch, and cashmere turtlenecks; inverted cross earrings in solid silver; designer distressed in Dior combat boots. It’s black metal regurgitated by a liberal arts major after too much time on Tumblr.

Hey. Lark. Do you want something? On the house, obviously. Nathaniel puts a glossy stiletto nail to his lips, and Lark feels a pang in his stomach. Hunger, and a synaesthetic rush of sweetness. The blood drains out of his face; he covers his mouth. These are vegan, Nathaniel encourages, pointing to a plate of brownies.

Lark doesn’t think he’s mentioned the strictures of his diet, but Mel chimes in, too, gesturing over a dish of blueberry cheesecake bites. Vegan and gluten-free, she says.

Maybe, Lark thinks, he mentioned the food thing in an interview. Mel and Nathaniel, both indie know-it-alls, recognized Lark from the year he fronted Eros + Massacre. The band broke up four years ago, when Lark collapsed mid-show after weeks of sitting sick in the tour van, catatonic between performances and desperate to die. He has mostly recovered thanks to an intensive pharmaceutical regimen, but he doesn’t make music anymore. Eros + Massacre fell apart before tasting fame, but belated interest means their album sells well enough that Lark now cashes regular royalty checks. Still, even the thought of playing again can send him into dissociative silence.

Lark thanks Mel but doesn’t take anything. He can imagine Nathaniel passing him a napkin buckled under his Pinterest-perfect brownies, his manicured hands brushing Lark’s quick-bitten fingers. Sweat slides along the whip line of Lark’s spine. He crosses his arms across his stomach, in the space hollowed out between his ribs and hips.

He is starving. Nathaniel’s eyes on his waist and pale face, though, take the edge off his appetite.

Are you closed today? Lark asks.

We’ve got something weird going on, Mel says. So we’re having a bake sale and doing some brainstorming.

Oh, Lark answers, letting the syllable fill time. Something weird?

It’s hard to explain, Mel hedges and looks at Nathaniel, who hasn’t taken his eyes off Lark since he arrived.

I think it’s haunted, Nathaniel tells him.

Like, ghosts? Lark asks.

Mel says no at the same time Nathaniel says yes.

Lark waits for some kind of clarification, but none comes. Well, that sounds— Lark stops himself from saying cool, but his excitement is there in his voice. Let me know, I guess? I’d like to know what happens.

Mel and Nathaniel look at each other, then back at Lark. Do you want to take a look? Nathaniel asks. You like ghosts?

Lark nods, even though he would not say, necessarily, that he likes them. He does hope that there is more than the facts of flesh and time: life after death, a meaning greater than appetite, some magic to manifest desire and belief. Sometimes Lark dreams of a mirror dimension—a dark simultaneity nestled against reality—and hopes whatever shadow-self exists on the other side is doing better than he is.

Did you see something? he asks. What happened?

It just felt weird in the store, Mel says, looking at her hands. She’s always dressed in bright colors, unafraid to take up space; everything about her is generous. It is rare for her to be at a loss for words.

I know that sounds stupid. Nathaniel picks up the thread of the story. It wasn’t just us, though. Everyone was leaving, he says. It felt cold, but it wasn’t actually. I don’t know. And it sounded like—like someone was flipping through the records, but no one was there. And this tape wouldn’t stop. It just kept playing. For hours and hours.

You didn’t turn it off? Lark asks.

The tape player is broken. I ordered a new one. But it usually just auto-ejects.

Though he’s hungry for a supernatural explanation, Lark doesn’t feel particularly inspired by their account. In the telling, he thinks, Mel and Nathaniel have lost some faith in it too.

Why don’t we look again, anyway? Nathaniel suggests.

Mel undoes the padlocks and pulls back the security grille. Nathaniel goes through the door first, his hand snaking to the switch to flick on the lights before he actually steps inside. House & Helvete, designed around Mel and Nathaniel’s disconsonant tastes, is ostentatiously divided in two by a jagged line of light running down the wall, even cutting through the front desk. When Lark visits, he usually finds the two proprietors at their own sides of the register: Mel in vapourware saturates, standing to the right against a turquoise and neon pink backdrop; Nathaniel reigning over the all-black lefthand of the shop, a glossy vision of Nordic metal. The neon that separates the shop into its iconic halves flickers red in the gloom before turning on. The overheads follow, fluorescents clinking as they arc to life.

Even with all the lights on, there is something off about the shop, a wrongness Lark can sense but not see.

The tape is still going, Mel whispers. You see what we mean? A hiss and throbbing sub play through the sound system.

Lark nods. He feels shivery already, cold and faintly sick as he walks up the familiar rows of records, running his hands over the racks of vinyl. There’s a squelch of protest from his empty stomach; he closes his eyes for a moment, hoping the uneasiness will pass.

And then he hears it, like Nathaniel said: the soft slap of records being flicked through just behind him. No one is there, but when Lark turns, the vinyls are