Analena stepped around the tangle of vines and leaves. For nearly thirty years, she’d tended this garden’s dark and fertile soil. She bent and selected a summer squash, yellow and plump, lying heavy on the earth. Its skin felt hard, ripe. She used her knife with a practiced hand to cut the fruit loose from its vine. Maybe Javi would eat this. She’d cook its flesh soft, mash it with a fork.

She pulled carrots from the garden then reached for the peas. Later, she would add these into the skillet before stirring in arroz. In the past, she would have included pork. Her husband liked meat, but chewing was difficult now. There would be enough for the hospice worker to take a plate home. He had caring eyes, and Analena appreciated the help he’d given in securing the new medical equipment for Javi.

Analena stepped toward the tomato plants and caught sight of the strange light glimmering in the indigo sky. A second sun, Betelgeuse. The dying star had appeared a few months ago, on an icy morning in May; every day since then, it rose above the horizon to lead the sun across the sky. Its cold light was as bright as the moon’s, though it lacked the lunar softness. It shone with focus and violence, an unshakeable, judgmental gaze.

Analena pulled two ripe tomatoes from their vine and placed them into the metal bowl she used to collect vegetables. A buzzing rose from the zucchini leaves, a patch of green along the wooden fence that separated her yard from the next. Analena cocked her head and listened. Kneeling on the earth, she pushed aside clutches of leaves to find a tomato had fallen and rolled there. The torn and gnawed flesh lay open and exposed. Ants probed the tear and picked away the paler parts along the circumference. The buzzing grew louder, lifting from the sick decay.

Analena peered into the tomato’s cavity at a wasp half hidden and dying there. With the dull edge of her knife, she nudged the insect, and its wings flared into an angry blur, unable to fly. Bent at its tender thorax, it slipped farther into the fleshy cavern. Analena thought about ending its suffering with a quick flick of her blade, but when its wings beat again, she didn’t have the heart to kill it.

“Hi, Ana.” A voice at the fence startled her, and she steadied herself with one hand in the dirt.

Colleen, her neighbor, peered above the wooden slats; she gave a small laugh. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Analena grabbed the fence rail and used it to stand up. Embarrassed, she glanced at Colleen. “It’s all right. I’m just collecting vegetables for Javi’s lunch.”

Colleen disappeared for a moment, and Analena heard her place a step stool against the fence. Colleen stepped up and gazed down into Analena’s garden, scanning the rows of radishes and carrots, the vines heavy with tomatoes and runner beans.

“Your garden is coming along.”

Analena’s eyes moved over the plants. “Javi still loves the smell of fresh food cooking.”

Colleen nodded. “It’s hard to get used to, isn’t it?”

Analena glanced toward the bedroom window where her husband slept. Inside, Javi’s rattling breaths pushed back against the morning light. It was hard, watching the man she loved for forty years fade into the darkness of that room. Analena had stepped into the yard eager to work with her hands, thirsty for daylight.

“The supernova, I mean.” Colleen tilted her head toward the star. “Sometimes it feels like we’re not even on Earth anymore. Like we’re on some alien planet.”

Analena nodded. The star’s relentlessness frightened her. “I wish it wasn’t there.”

“You don’t have to be worried about it, Ana. It’s too far away to hurt us.”

“I know.” She spoke softly. Her face flushed, and she turned to look back at her tomato plants. She shouldn’t have shared her worries. Colleen had a habit of talking down to her like she was too old to make sense of the world around her. Analena watched the same news as everyone else. The scientists explained how incredibly lucky they all were to be alive during such an event. No one had seen a supernova with the naked eye since 1604; in truth, it was the vastness of those centuries spilling toward them that scared Analena more than the thought of any star exploding.

A stifling silence lay thick between the two women. Analena shifted her weight and lightly brushed an ant from her arm. Behind her, the buzz of the dying wasp rose from the leaves.

“How is Javi doing?” asked Colleen, breaking the silence.

“He’s in bed now. I called hospice last Monday.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Ana. Javi’s a good man. I feel bad that Jerry and I haven’t been able to visit more. We had to move my mother into assisted living, and Jerry’s been picking up extra hours at work.” She gave a light laugh. “Life’s a bit hectic in our house these days.”

“It’s all right, Colleen. Thank you for thinking of us.”

“Have you thought about what you’re going to do with the house? It’s a lot of room for just one person.”

Analena felt her breath catch in the warming air. She looked up at Betelgeuse, burning in protest of its own death. They said it was over ten million years old.

“I’m sure you could sell this place easily if that’s what you wanted. My cousin’s a realtor. I can call her when you’re ready.”

Anger flared within Analena, rising from her throat as the words burst out. She glowered up at her neighbor. “Javi’s still alive, Colleen.”

She stepped back from the garden. Her mind screamed to look away, to turn and run into the house. Instead, she fixed Colleen with an unshakable gaze. She would not crawl away and hide from this.

“Of course,” said Colleen, “but…”

“No. Javi is lying in there trying to breathe. I won’t bury him while he’s still fighting for life.”

“I’m sorry, Ana. I didn’t mean…” Colleen’s face flushed and her jaw clenched.

Analena would not look away, not this time. 

Colleen glanced back toward her own house. “We’re thawing elk meat from Jerry’s hunt last fall. I know Javi likes venison. We’d like to bring some of the meat over early next week and visit him.”

Next week would be too late. She wanted to grab this woman and force her to gaze into the darkness of that bedroom, wanted her to see the sick shadows cast by that dying light in the sky. Instead, she only nodded, letting Colleen turn and slip back behind the fence.

In the tree branches above Analena, a blackbird flitted and rustled the leaves. Morning shadows were giving way to harsher sunlight. Analena stood at the edge of her garden and felt the summer creaking past her. She gazed up at Betelgeuse. Yes, she thought. Next week would be too late.

This star had existed for an eternity, watching the first sailors cross vast oceans, witnessing ancient rituals offered to long-forgotten gods. Betelgeuse had a right to burn with anger, to light up the heavens, and die with conspicuous outrage.

Living things are different, she thought. They crawl into caves and hide under leaves to die. Going to ground, her father used to say. They curl themselves around their hearts, knees to chests, as if ashamed by the brevity of their existence. Here then gone. 

The wasp buzzed from the leaves behind her, a final effort to lift itself from the rotting fruit.

Javi would wake soon. She should go inside to sit beside him. But she wasn’t ready to let go of this moment. Not yet. The sun’s warmth caressed her skin, and her shadow glazed the leaves on the ground beneath her. Analena exhaled a long breath and lifted her face toward the sun, as if she might hold onto its light.

Sam W. Pisciotta is a writer and visual artist. He earned an M.A. in Literary Studies from the University of Colorado at Denver, and he’s a graduate of the Odyssey writing workshop. Find his fiction in publications such as Flash Fiction Online (forthcoming), Nightmare Magazine, and Asimov’s. Connect at www.silo34.com and @silo34 on Instagram, and @swpisciotta on Bluesky Social.

Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

In the time it took for Troy to realize I was truly pissed and finally leaving him, I’d already rammed my car into the side of his brand-new, jacked-up, man-confirming, white-knuckle Dodge Ram. 

In the second it took to dent the passenger-side door hiding the purple-lace thong I’d found wadded into the seat crack where I thought I’d find my lip gloss, Troy screamed like I was actually cutting off his balls. His hands clawed at his face, which was as red as a boiled lobster, and I never craved tender flesh so bad in my life. 

In the moments it took for me to back up and crash into that truck again, gravel rocketing like bullets off the wheels of my car, Troy had sworn at me using all those names women are called when they have a mind to do what they want. But those names were nothing I hadn’t heard before. None I hadn’t heard him call me before. But I didn’t stop. I kept battering that door, waiting for him to jump off the porch and throw himself between me and his truck, desperate to save what was left of everything I’d ever done for him—loaning him thousands for some crazy get-rich-quick bullshit scheme after I worked overtime cleaning rooms at the roach motel out on the highway, all while saving up so I could go to school to be an x-ray tech; covering for him when the cops wanted his whereabouts the night enough Oxys were stolen from the local pharmacy to drown everyone in that godforsaken town; cutting off Daddy when he asked me to come back home, telling him I needed to make my own choices, even though I knew I was making all the wrong ones, and Daddy knew it too. 

In the minute it took for me to do enough damage to that truck to get Troy’s grease monkey buddies riled up when they saw, I imagined all those dented edges fighting them, white flakes peeling off in ribbons like Troy’s sun-burnt skin when he went blast fishing with those assholes, those self-professed good ol’ boys who drank beer in our living room and ordered me to get them another cold one during commercials starring better looking versions of themselves. They’d have to work real hard to hammer and suck my rage out of the body of that truck. But they’d try. And they’d probably imagine me as they did it, blaming me for their failure, calling me all those names again, names that made me want to trash everything Troy ever owned or cared about. When I drove away, I saw him in my rear-view mirror kneeling beside twisted metal like he was praying at an altar for some kind of miracle, bargaining to take it all back. Like somehow, he’d become a better man.

In the hour it took for me to get my shit together in the Dairy Queen parking lot, I’d jerry-rigged my bumper back on and sat on the trunk of my cherry-red Chevy Cavalier dreaming of going home, of starting over and living up to that potential everyone told me I had, and I realized I’d had in me all along, regardless of what Troy and every other boyfriend tried to convince me of. I guzzled that peanut-butter milkshake like I was dying of thirst. Because I was. For salt, for sugar, for piercing cold. For that brain-freezing focus. For that thick creamy fat on my tongue. It all melted into such warmth, such sweetness, that I couldn’t help feeling a tiny bit like me again.

Melanie Maggard is a flash and poetic prose writer who loves dribbles and drabbles. She has published in Cotton Xenomorph, The Dribble Drabble Review, X-R-A-Y Magazine, Five Minute Lit, and others. She can be found online at www.melaniemaggard.com and @WriterMMaggard.

Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

The kids want to know what it feels like to be killed by lava. 

I tell them many would have retreated to the countryside, or run to the sea, thinking it wouldn’t reach them there. I tell them most would have suffocated before the lava reached them. 

I point at an image on the screen, What’s this?

A statue!

I affect a grimace, Not a statue.

They cock their heads, thinking. Murmurs travel through the classroom; I tune into one, Dead body.

I nod, This is a person frozen by lava. I don’t have better words. Mummified by lava? Fossilized?

One boy gets back from the toilet and looks over his shoulder at the white board, God, what’s that! I tell him to tuck his shirt in and take a seat.

They ask if any animals died too, so I close out of the slideshow and Google the Pompeii dog. I tell them to cover their eyes if they don’t want to see something too sad. 

They erupt, they ask, Why does it look like that!

It’s contorted into a ring shape, limbs flailing and mouth open just enough.

Because it was in pain.

They squirm. They don’t want to look at the dog anymore. I return to the original slideshow, where we see the face of the “statue” turned to the black sky and its knees gathered to its chest, a final protective gesture.

Madeline Crawford lives, teaches Latin, and writes in London. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in or are forthcoming from Paloma Magazine, The Mantelpiece, Vast Chasm, and Die Quieter Please, among others. She has worked as a reader and editorial assistant for A Public Space. She went to Hunter College and received her MA in Classics from University College London. 

Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson