Dawn Tasaka Steffler

Hi friends, I’m struggling to promote and pre-sell my debut collection ALL THAT BLUE. With the way that Finishing Line works, pre-orders are everything. If you can, please do pre-order. I will be forever grateful! 💙 finishinglinepress.com/product/all-th…

MICRO MAYHEM Mythic Micros by @SophieKearing @skullsnflames76 @Koss51209969 @KennethMGRAY2 @jackiebrown20 @KaceyKells @jdclappwrites @KMWriter01 @PaulBrazill @SteveGone58 @ThraxMaximilian & @KellieScottReed Curated by @NathanBorn2010 / Nathan Pettigrew #MythicPicnicTweetStory === I'm honored that Mythic Picnic invited me to curate Micro Mayhem. I sought out authors who I feel write bangers, and I couldn't be prouder of how this project turned out. Thank you Mythic Picnic and the 12 contributors for making this happen. Nate === You’re Welcome by Sophie Kearing / @SophieKearing . People assume there’s something wrong with me. That I just don’t understand things. Well I guess that’s true. I don’t understand things. But I do feel them. And I feel…bad. Every time she thinks about me, I feel it. Darkness curls around me in a dizzying corkscrew. That was one. * Clutching her frayed scrubber, she penetrates the bottles with frightening savagery. When she lays me down on the changing table, her face contorts with revulsion. Her hands grow florid as she scours me in a too-warm bath. She is tired. She is tired. She is tired. That was two. * She starts sending me to a place where there are other kids. She’s a little happier. I’m a little happier. But neither of us is as happy as my cohorts. They smear finger paints across blonde tabletops and eat Play-Doh and clap triumphantly. But all I can seem to do is retreat to the familiar apathy of the play kitchen, rubbing my forearms with the scratchy dishcloth. She takes me to the doctor. “At this age she should at least be putting a few phrases together.” She shakes her head. “A word here and there? ‘More?’ ‘No?’ Surely ‘Mama.’” She pinches the bridge of her nose. She is tired. That was three. * To this day I have never uttered a syllable. It’s assumed I just don’t connect with others. Well I guess that’s true. I don’t let shit like empathy or relationships get in the way of what needs to be done. I look at her face, now marred with smudges from her dusty grave. Though she looks like she’s sleeping, there’s an inquisitive quality about her. She definitely wants to know why. I gather some dirt on my shovel and sift it over her. “You—” I squeak. Clear my throat. “You were always so tired, that’s why. So I’m giving you a dirt nap, Mama. You’re welcome.” This is also three. But times it by ten. Ha. . Sophie Kearing is a writer of dark fiction and strange poetry. Tweets at x.com/SophieKearing. === FLYING HOME by Brian James Lewis / @skullsnflames76 . It’s a hot night and I’m sitting at the light when an Olds Cutlass rolls up next to me like it’s a car show. The maroon paint gleams under the streetlights as the driver revs his huge engine and flicks the lights. Wanna race? My ride is a primer-covered, four-door sedan with no gleaming anything, just a handful of stickers for decoration and a tiny Chevy V-8 barking under the hood. Grandma’s grocery getter gone punk rocker. Just for fun, I flick my lights and rev back. Sure, let’s go. The Oldsmobile’s driver turns to look at me and even in the dashboard’s dusky glow, it’s impossible to miss his sneer. I’m sure he plans to leave me in the dust while his ego inflates like an Airheads commercial. But me and some friends have been working on my engine out in the factory parking lot during breaks. Now it’s time to see how good a job we did. We’re both revving up and creeping forward when the light turns green. My boot mashes the gas, making the Chevy scream though dual straight pipes like an angry cat. “WHAAAAHHH!” The Oldsmobile bellows a reply, tires smoking as it lurches forward, ready to put me in my place. Later, chump. But before the Olds gets past us, my Malibu rockets into second gear, slamming me back into the seat so hard I bite my tongue. The maroon hulk appears to be going in reverse, my grey fender pulling ahead. You sure about that? We’re neck and neck, engines roaring, but the distance between us grows until he’s in my rearview mirror and fading fast. “Whooooeeee!” I can’t stop shaking, but I can’t stop smiling either. “We. Just. Beat. An Olds 4-4-2!” I crow, patting the dash as we fly home. “Gonna have good news for the boys tomorrow!” . Brian James Lewis is a disabled writer with PTSD who likes blurring boundaries and celebrating diversity. Catch up with him on Twitter @skullsnflames76, damagedskullwriterandreviewer.com Shooter Lit Mag, The Awakenings Review, and Trajectory Journal. === The Expatriates by Koss / @Koss51209969 . 1. Their wallets whistle solo in breezy gazebos. On the table, clusters of Arak Saggi in beaded bottles. They have no cares for tomorrow, no worries, nor work to be done. Brown bodies in dervish dresses flutter in rhythm to citars and tombaks, their mysteries rattle in hips and bone. Expats watch through glassy eyes; they might own a piece of some god as a birth rite. They might, themselves, be deities. Their only thoughts are of throbbing, what is mysterious and taboo, and the throttle of power surging through them, not a word, but something pre-lingual, base, a groining. They sit in their baggy white suits and fedoras, occupying the night, those gods, deciding which body to take home. 2. Clever and quiet, he burgeons in the freedom of extinction. The Caspian tiger bides in rumor. Undetected, he creeps along the greens near the edge of the patio, intrigued by the pale, white-suited men who somehow eclipse the event with their glare. Soon one would stumble through the gate, unsuspecting, their defenses dulled by drink… He would be swift. The trick of this hunt is to snap the neck and leave no remains. The gods here come and go. Some are hardly noticed. . First published in Harpy Hybrid #11 === Notes From a Dead Man by Kenneth M Gray / @KennethMGRAY2 . Most writers have a muse. I have a haunted typewriter. I picked it up at an estate sale for Charles Wangford, the deceased crime novelist and all-around pain in the ass. He wrote the Jake Rattle novels A New Way to Die, Comb-Over Corpse, and Death by Haiku, and he is one angry dead writer. I read somewhere that he was pretty pissed off when he was alive too. I think he misses the booze and fighting with his critics. He probably misses touching stuff, too. I’ve been meaning to ask him, how does a ghost choke the chicken? Do they still feel the urge? Yeah, probably better not to know. Oh, and he despises adverbs and being called Chuck. I’m Kevin Murkle, a struggling writer currently working on my Tank Bronson private eye novella. Working title: Violent Zen. Chapter Six: Tank Bronson spinning drop-kicked the door off its hinges and grabbing the thug by the throat and ferociously throttling him in the face until he succumbed to the macho power that is Tank Bronson. The room grew chilly, and the stale smell of cigarettes and whiskey hung in the air. “What’s up, Chuck?” I said, knowing it would rankle his ghosty ass. “Jesus H. Hemingway!—ferociously throttling—in the face?—succumbed? What the hell is a spinning dropkick?" The room got colder. “What did I tell you about goddamn adverbs? Adverbs are crack for lazy writers. Your prose is so purple it woke Prince from his grave.” I knew I was in for a tirade. “Your tense is out of control! You went from the past to the present and back again more times than Marty McFly.” If it gets any colder in here, I’m going to need a sweater. “It’s neo-noir-street-punk, Chuck. Any notes so far?” I knew he was incorporeal, but I swear I felt his bushy mustache on my ear. “It’s absolute horse shit. Lots of violence and little Zen, and FYI—real men don't write novellas.” . X- @KennethMGRAY2 Instagram- @graykennethm bluesky-@kennethmgray.bsky.social === Poppy by Tamela Miles / @jackiebrown20 . Kit took a draw from his pipe, silent. “You want to give Poppy a better life than she has here at my beautiful Bellefleur? With me and her family?” Elijah nodded. “Yes.She’d be among the freed blacks with all the benefits of life. Or, as many as possible.” Kit guffawed, startling him. “You mean she would be free to visit your bed.” Elijah’s expression gave away nothing. “I’m not sure what you’re insinuating, Mr. Thibodeaux. I assure you—” Kit waved a hand, wearing a sly smile. “Oh, you’ve been swiving her for awhile already. Don’t be coy about it, Delaney.” He leaned forward, eyes gleaming with meanness. “You want Poppy, who I watched birthed into this world, rest her mama’s soul? Pay the price!” Elijah clenched his jaw, stomach tightening. “What price?” Kit smiled with dark glee. “The counteroffer stands for one day. After that, it’s off the table and there will be no further negotiations. Leave your father’s business and work for me, for the length of seven years, as a subordinate. Perform well and you can have Poppy.” Elijah drew a deep breath. “I cannot do that.” Kit chuckled, leaning back. He drew from the pipe. “Then you don’t want her, son.” Elijah gasped as Poppy moved swiftly across the dining room, clutching a heavy silver candelabra. He quickly rose to stop her, as she swung it in a sweeping motion and bashed the back of his head. Kit dropped on the floor, lying motionless. Elijah gaped, then ran to her. Her lips curled. “Liar! You promised he could marry me!” She moved to strike the older man again and Elijah caught her arm. He shook his head. “Oh, Poppy. What have you done?” She met his green eyes with her penetrating brown eyed gaze. “Not enough.” “We’re going to hang for this,” he murmured. A weak chuckle filled the silence and Kit struggled to move from his position on the floor, blood dripping from his lips. . Tamela is a Los Angeles native and published author of horror and paranormal romance. === DREAMS by Kacey Kells / @KaceyKells . Dreams! Wonderful, ecstatic dreams! Unattainable, amazing dreams, so unreal for a young girl... or a woman! Freedom is a concept out of reach for a female, particularly in this thriving society that is Athens in 443 BC. Because girls' and women’s lives are programmed from birth: they are given no alternative but to be obedient and submissive to their husband. Married at a very young age to a stranger twice her age, she’s an inexperienced and fragile child who will have to remain invisible and mute for the rest of her life, queen of the gynaeceum, whose only mission is to have children and weave. Her horizon is that of a prisoner, locked between four walls, her life devoted to obedience and submission to her husband. She will certainly not survive the many pregnancies that lie ahead of her and will die in childbirth. No one will ever remember her. She, like every woman (maybe apart from Aspasia), belongs to the world of darkness... because she was born a female! She’s a womb, nothing more. Her only merit will be to give sons to her husband, sons who will be the future citizens of the brilliant and powerful city-state. Thanks to the invention of democracy, Athens became a beacon for humanity. “Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it” said Pericles... but it doesn’t belong to females! Because they are worthless! Are they human? The question is relevant; in any case, they are not human enough to become citizens! But she has a dream, inaccessible but powerful, so powerful and bright that her daughters, her granddaughters, the daughters of her granddaughters, and the many generations after them will keep it preciously in their heart... and in their brain. The dream of a place where everyone, regardless of his or her gender, would be free and treated as such. === Butt-Dialed by JD Clapp / @jdclappwrites . I was pouring my coffee, getting mentally ready for another day of the bullshit that comes with being a sheriff, when I saw I had a voicemail. Nobody calls me but mom. I listened to it twice. The first listen, I knew it was my shit-stain brother Pauly, and the call was a butt-dial. After the second, I knew he was with his no-good running mate, Cheto, and they’d shot a guy outside of the druggy bar he hung at. Fuck. I gotta know. I called my former partner, Tommy Miller. “Hey man, you work last night?” I asked. “Yeah, just got in from a shit-show double 187 at The Office. Some punk got clipped and the bullet passed through his skinny ass and nailed a college girl getting into her car across the street. Fucking mess,” Tommy said. Shit. “You get the shooter?” “Not much to go on. No bullet casing. No witnesses. With all the drug sales going on, could have been anyone. And that fucking owner has no cameras or bouncers. Fucker takes his cut and looks the other way.” he said. “Maybe they’ll finally shut his ass down,” I said. “Hell, vice is closing them down pending the investigation. Of course, none of those shit-birds will talk to the detectives. What a fucking waste of time,” Tommy said. # I sat down and poured another cup of coffee. I looked at my phone, spun it on the table in a lazy arch. This should be simple. Gotta do the right thing. My loser brother made his own bed. Hopefully, Cheto pulled the trigger… I was about to call Tommy back, when I thought about my mom. Shit. This’ll kill her… And she’d never forgive me. I listened to the message again. Fuck. My piece of shit old man used to say, “The moral high ground is a fucking complicated, lonely place.” I never knew what he meant… until I hit delete. . JD Clapp lives in San Diego, CA. His new novella and story collection, Poachers and Pills, is available through Cowboy Jamboree Press and Amazon. === Sky’s the Limit by Michael Downing / @KMWriter01 . The kid’s just a punk from somebody’s crew. A corner boy. Tough, cool, full of attitude. Red Phillies cap twisted sideways, gold chains, Ecko jacket, jagged scar curling past his chin. A life that’s been one long, ugly lesson. Most days Bone wouldn’t give him a second look. But something about that sneer across the MARTA train sticks. The kind of thing that matters more than it should. The nine’s pressed against the small of his back, cold and hard. Feels it every time he shifts. Thinks about saying something. Telling the kid that respect don’t come from colors or corners, but how you carry yourself. Wonders if the kid would even listen. The train pulls into Peachtree Center. The kid shoulders past Bone, pushing toward the door. Bone follows, slow and steady. Hand slips inside his jacket, reaching for the nine. Decides words only go so far. # Jamal rushes down the aisle, head lowered, red Phillies cap pulled tight. Forty minutes late. Sixteen but feels older, the weight of the neighborhood on his shoulders. Been hustling since twelve, always moving fast, always on edge. Knows this life can swallow you whole. But not tonight. Tonight’s about meeting a producer uptown. One shot. His whole life burned to a disc in his hoodie pocket. A way out. He checks his phone. You’re late. Bring the demo. Train screeches to a stop. Jamal scans the car. Blank stares, dead eyes. Nine-to-five ghosts. None of them with dreams like him. Locks eyes with the thug blocking the aisle, his stare filled with attitude, anger and confrontation but Jamal pushes past. Not today. # A crowd gathers across from the MARTA station. Cops stretch yellow tape between poles and a fire hydrant. Nobody says a word. Nobody saw nothing. Just another Tuesday. A cracked disc lies on the sidewalk, slick with blood. The cop shakes a Marlboro from its pack, lights up, kicking the red Phillies cap toward the body. Wonders how to kill the next hour till shift change. . Michael Downing is a writer living in Georgia. === Touched By the Hand of God by Paul D. Brazill / @PaulBrazill . It wasn’t the best of times, and it certainly wasn’t the worst of times, but it still left a hell of a lot to be desired. Woody Diamond, heavily under the influence of magic mushrooms, stood at the edge of a thirty-one-story building with his arms outstretched, making the shape of a cross. His bushy, white beard blew in the breeze. We were on the roof of the Trellick Tower, a high-rise block of flats that was built in the seventies in the centre of London by a Hungarian called Erno Goldfinger. The architectural style was apparently known as brutalist, which was quite apt since the building was a monstrosity. A monstrosity, however, that was now a listed building, with its apartments selling for a small fortune. Shards of sunlight ricocheted from windows. Pigeons dotted the sky. A helicopter skirted the horizon. ‘The thing is …,’ said Woody, turning towards me. ‘The thing is … it’s very dangerous to assume that the way you see the world is the way the world actually is. I mean, we’re all limited by our experience, our imaginations … you know what I mean?’ ‘Of course,’ I lied. I was about to suggest that we head off to the warm womb of a nearby pub when a pigeon flew chaotically close to Woody and shat on him. He turned to me and grinned. And then he fell forward. ‘Oh, bloody bugger,’ I said. I ran towards the edge of the building and forced myself to look down. Woody didn’t look too good to be sure but the window cleaner whose cradle he had fallen into looked a hell of a lot worse. His screams melded with the sound of sirens. I looked up at the sun that hung over London like a big, gold doubloon and a wave of contentment washed over me. It had turned out nice, again, after all. === POETRY IN MOTION by Stephen J. Golds / @SteveGone58 . She wasn’t what I’d been expecting. Not at all. A lopsided bob colored bubble gum pink, wearing an XXL Raiders jersey like a one-piece. Whole bunch of metal in her face. Caught the whiff of motel shampoo as she slid into the booth opposite me and pushed across a piece of paper. “What’s this?” I said. “It’s the photograph you asked for.” She shrugged, perused the menu. “It’s not a photograph. It’s a piece of paper with a picture that looks like it‘s been printed off the internet.” “Yeah, it is. So what? Who takes real photos these days. That’s gonna have to do. Besides the cash’s already in the trunk of the car outback like you said.” She shrugged again and tapped a long, purple painted nail on a picture of the steak sandwich. She didn’t seem nervous. That made me nervous. I took a sip of my lukewarm coffee and eyeballed the patrons in the diner again. Either too young or too old to be undercovers. I sighed. “Are you sure you can afford this, kid?” I looked at the dweeb in the loud shirt printed on the paper. “Don’t want you going without milk money now.” The girl scoffed. Loud. A waitress glanced over. Yawned. Went back to pouring coffee. “I made half a million dollars on Only Fans last month.” “I don’t know what that is.” She grinned and licked her lips. I made a show of checking my wristwatch. Time to go. “What this guy do to you anyhow? Ex-boyfriend that cheated on you?” I asked as I shifted out of the booth. The girl lowered the laminated menu and grinned again. Him? Nothing. Just some editor for an online magazine who’s rejected my poetry for the last time.” She giggled. I grunted and tossed a twenty on the table. I never got an answer I liked. Didn’t know why I even kept asking. Told myself the editor of a magazine that published poetry probably had it coming anyway. === STEPPED ON by Max Thrax / @ThraxMaximilian . Above me, a crack of light. I am a speck of dust in the cold eye socket of Desmond the Roach’s skull—three years ago, Desmond was buried in concrete in a warehouse outside Alicante. It’s easy to remember the good times: the bags of brown heroin cut with glucose and curry powder, which even the junkies on Crescent Street refused to shoot into their veins, at least until the cravings and then they drove around with Desmond’s dope in their beat-up Nissans or stored it in their diseased and rancid apartments. The days of pillion passengers gunning down the McLaughlins across the road, or slicing the tramp Micky Conley’s cheek with a boxcutter, a wound so deep it needed fifty-seven stitches, or putting manners on the other thieves and parasites, with a colostomy bag hanging from Desmond’s stomach after he lost a kidney. Cocaine kept him alert, steroids dulled the pain: the Roach was hard to kill. After a year on top of the underworld, he moved his business to Spain. Desmond delighted in the sun, the blue and red lights, the beaches and girls of Valencia. Back home, his brother Shane was shot dead in a pub on Hogan Avenue. He stayed in Alicante during the funeral and assaulted and robbed an Austrian tourist, which brought Desmond to the attention of the Green Man. The Green Man knew him in a past life. By the end, Desmond had crawled behind his reinforced doors and dozens of closed-circuit cameras and thought the Green Man’s deal his only way out: the promise of two hundred pounds of cannabis was too great for the Roach. And too many brutal men think success needs only brutality, then find themselves victims of the brutal logic of success. Desmond was never pure, but stepped-on, diluted, too weak to hit. Buried in concrete under a warehouse floor. I hear them digging. See the light. === Fable by Kellie Scott-Reed / @KellieScottReed . running out of stories about him, and that feels like the worst thing you can say about someone. We had such a short time to collect them. Neighbors, we’d see each other on the weekends for the most part, raised children in each other’s homes. And when you die young, and in such a way where the mystery becomes the explanation. That’s what happens. You become a fable. A lesson to tell naughty children to scare the shit out of them. Only the last line written in your life is remembered. glimpses of the day but it could be a funhouse mirror’s reflection. A little backward, oblong and confusing, I still try to match my movements with the image. What I told the officer once he slogged and lumbered his way into the living room, his keys making sounds similar to the ones I’ve heard in NIN tracks so produced and distant, to tell us they found your body. I am still fresh in the terror. I ask myself now; Is that what happened? Or is it just the plot of the movie I watched about the doting father living a secret life who disappeared one morning after telling his wife he loved her? found him a day later in a corn field, shot in the head, in the last desperate days of a wet, cold autumn, the leaves so yellow, they glowed. Twisting and twirling down, with the breeze, loosed from their mother by the heavy cold rain drops; some were found in his hair. No gun, no suspects; just an open casket, a long jagged scar ineptly covered by a red baseball hat. Ten years later, I think two things aloud: thank God they found him and what a fucked up thing to say. Just like the story of red riding hood, her big trusting eyes, the grandmother, the Wolf and his big fucking teeth. === === ===

"Do not let them into your heart, she tells me, a single child hoping for a friend, a teenager dreaming of her first boyfriend. Their love is like poison." Lisobel Tang's "China Dog" trampset.org/china-dog-68e3…

"I pretended Johnny Cash was my father and my father, like Johnny Cash, was finally dead so I could finally forgive him all the ways that he’d been mean and dismissive to me" @thedrevlow's "The Ghost of Johnny Cash Sings of Fire" trampset.org/the-ghost-of-j…

I think we all knew a kid like Mandy growing up. @HouseofArcanum, thank you for letting me tell her story.

"It’s so dark inside this tunnel." Read my extended metaphor CNF, out now in Temple in a City magazine. templeinacity.com/creative-non-f…

So excited to have my story “Lou” published in @templeinacity today. Check it out! templeinacity.com/fiction-emily-…

Take a look at the newest story collection by @dawnsteffler and then check out all the other great stories in the MPTSP V11 thread ⬇️

I lost someone in February. Thanks to @ReckonReview for publishing this piece I wrote in the thick of grief.