Trembling With Fear – Valentine’s 2025 Edition!

On the Surprising Benefits of Organic Fertilizer

By: Remy Kaldawy

 

I buried my girlfriend in an empty plot of land in my garden.

My garden is my pride and joy, my masterpiece— every evening after work, I spend hours tending to it. Nothing escapes my attention: each stem, sprout, bud, and fruit exists by my consent and yields itself to my design. I can grow whatever the weather affords, as long as I stay determined and persistent. From my kitchen window it’s a beautiful sight: a patchwork quilt of greens, reds, and yellows draped over the rolling hills behind my house.

One evening, not long after I buried her, I noticed that a sapling had sprouted from the plot where she lay. It was so small that I nearly missed it— a slender green stem glowing defiantly in the light of the setting sun. Pulling it out wasn’t an option, knowing what lay beneath, so at first I decided to turn a blind eye. But it grew, and it grew quickly, too quickly for me to ignore. The stem thickened into a trunk: pale and robust, low-hanging branches spread outward in every direction, turning the air into a maze of wooden fingers; cream-colored flowers blossomed along each branch in thick fragrant clusters.

Before long, the tree bore a single fruit. I was in my kitchen finishing up dinner when I noticed it. I set down a bowl of half-made salad and went outside to investigate. As I approached the tree, I could see that some of the roots had dug themselves free of the earth, and that the fruit, upon closer inspection, was an orange. But it wasn’t an ordinary orange— I stumbled backwards I was so startled— for it had the shape of a fully-formed human heart. Passing my hands over the orange, I could locate the ventricles, the aorta, and lumps where arteries and veins ought to connect. I hesitated for several moments before I picked it from the tree and returned to the kitchen.

I set the orange on my kitchen counter, and for a while I didn’t know what to do. For some reason I still can’t explain, I decided to taste it. Holding my knife like a scalpel, I carefully traced an oblong incision and separated away a flap of peel, revealing the glistening red flesh beneath. The inside was under so much pressure that juice trickled from the opening, shiny and opaque beneath the harsh kitchen light.

I scored the rest of the rind with the tip of my knife, then carved into the fruit, slicing along white segments of pith to extract wedges of flesh in smooth, even strokes. Juice gushed out of the cavity, squirting onto my hands, landing in shiny specs on my clothes, streaming in narrow tongues along the countertop and dripping softly into the sink. A sticky sweet sanguine scent wafted upward from the wedges as I lined them up on a fresh dinner plate.

The moment I bit into a piece, it burst like a distended organ, releasing a flavor that was acidic yet sweeter than candy. While I chewed on the pulpy residue, a single sliver of juice escaped the corner of my mouth, tracing a line down my chin before I could wipe it away. I looked down, and my hands were stained bloody red past the wrists.

I garnished my salad with slices of an aorta and a ventricle.

As the days progressed, the tree bore more and more of the strangely shaped fruit. Upon its branches hung young healthy hearts and old hearts worn out by time, giant hearts with arteries the size of a fist and frail hearts with congenital defects. They danced in the wind to the tempo of the rustling leaves and fell to the ground, becoming overripe corpses that slowly fermented in the heat, covering the rotten black pits that were once their comrades; the unburied in heaps beneath the tree that birthed them, necrosis leaving a zesty odor in the humid air.

Nobody could know about the tree, or else they would ask questions— where it came from, how it grew so fast, what lay beneath…

To make the tree less conspicuous, I took care to pick it clean of fruit every evening. Suddenly I had more oranges than I could ever want, and I had to come up with ways to use them. Hearts crept into each of my recipes, until my dinners were stained blood red and overwhelmed by a cloying citrus sweetness. But the tree bore more and more hearts, faster than I could cook them. I had to eat them raw; when that wasn’t enough, I crushed them with a mallet into glistening blood-red marmalade. When my jars ran out, I stuffed them in my fridge, in my freezer, in every open cupboard and drawer of my kitchen, in every nook and cranny of my home.

The only option that remained was to chop down the tree. It existed in defiance of my will, and now I would remove it from my garden once and for all.

I entered the garden under the cover of nightfall, pitch black save for the moon’s soft glow. A breeze stirred, and the tree swayed gracefully in the wind. Slivers of moonlight slipped through the narrow gaps between its thin leaves, eliciting pale glimmers from the head of my axe.

At first the wood was soft and pliant. Every swing landed true, driving deeper into the trunk. The oranges tumbled from their branches, landing near my feet and rolling into other parts of the garden. Beneath the bark, however, the wood became tougher, and I had to exert more of my strength with each strike. I lost track of how long I had been swinging, aware only of a growing soreness in my arms and back. With ragged breaths my lungs strained to inhale air which was so saturated with humidity that I could feel it resisting my every movement.

My head beat like a heart, and the hearts strewn on the ground throbbed in unison.

Finally, I set the axe down and stumbled backwards, my chest heaving, my shirt soaked through with sweat. The tree stood shrouded in a soft silvery glow, dancing in the wind as though my attack were merely an annoyance. Indeed, I had hardly made a dent.

It was only a matter of time before one of my neighbors noticed the tree. After all, the fruit on its branches could be seen from far away, gleaming bright orange beneath the clear blue sky. The neighbor’s questions seemed harmless enough, but my heart still sank to the pit of my stomach.

That damned tree towering triumphantly over my garden had thwarted my every effort to control it; I was afraid it would never stop growing, its roots snatching up the rest of my garden, then my yard, then my house, until every crevice of my life would burst at the seams with branches and leaves and hearts pounding, pounding incessantly.

Eventually I acquiesced to my neighbor’s pestering and gave him a basket of oranges. He thanked me the next day: he thought the fruit was delicious, and their peculiar shape intrigued him. Word spread fast, and soon I found a line of inquisitive neighbors outside my door, curious to see the fruit. Before long the entire town was talking about the famous heart-shaped oranges from the tree in my garden.

A reporter came from the local newspaper to write an article about the tree. Despite my objections, he insisted on taking a photograph of me posing in front of it while holding an orange. I could hardly maintain my composure under the camera’s glare. The pounding of my heart, pinching in my chest and nausea in my stomach reached a climax when the shutter flashed.

The article was in the paper the next morning; I had made it to the front page. The orange cradled in my hands looked even more like an amputated heart in the photograph’s monochrome. Meanwhile, I stood unencumbered, my gaze locked on the camera. To my surprise, my face was washed over with an impenetrable calm. My smile conveyed subtle satisfaction.

The town lost interest in my tree soon after the article was published, and once more my garden and I were left in solitude.
The tree still bears fruit to this day, though more slowly than it used to, at a pace I deem acceptable. Whenever a girl stays over for the night, I give her an orange as a gift. They usually find the gesture charming, and some even believe it is a token of my love.

I Was Made to Love You

By: Jasper Dent

 

He starts with bits of bone and scrap metal, whatever he can scavenge from dead animals and the junkyard. The skeleton is the frame around which everything else will be built, so it needs to be sturdy and unbending. It requires time and patience, a steady hand, and some creativity.

He has all of these. There is no one to interrupt him in his workshop, no one to come looking for him if he spends hours, days, weeks locked away, toiling under the dim and flickering lights until his eyes and hands ache, until he is light-headed with hunger and thirst.
He wants the frame to be able to withstand whatever this cruel world might throw at it.

His first attempt is too weak, and his second crumbles under its own weight. He returns to the drawing board. The scent of hot metal and singed bone lingers in the air, settles in his hair and clothes. He burns his hands welding, and the bright flame leaves spots dancing in his eyes.

Finally, the skeleton is complete. It doesn’t look like much, on its own. The rough shape of a man, laid out in iron and bone. But it gives him hope, and he can see the rest of his creation taking shape around this skeletal frame. He doesn’t give it a name, not yet – he thinks he’ll let it choose its own name, when it’s ready. But he begins talking to it. He has no one else to talk to, after all.

He tells it about his day, which is always the same. He plays audio books in the background while he works, recordings on philosophy and science and theology and history. Sometimes he plays classical music, or jazz. These are all things that he’s heard are good to play to your child, and while this creation is certainly not his child–it will be larger and stronger than him, strong enough to protect them both–the advice is still something he takes to heart.

He wants it to understand that the world is beautiful, even though it is also harsh and cruel.

He uses wiring for the nervous system. There’s no need for most organs, as it won’t eat or drink or breathe. But he wants it to have a brain. And a heart. These he leaves for last, for they will be the most difficult to obtain. Even more difficult, it turns out, than he had at first expected. Young and healthy people rarely die sudden deaths that leave those precious organs undamaged or unclaimed.

He takes to lurking around cemeteries. In the blistering sun, in the freezing rain, day and night. He searches for freshly dug graves and uncovers them, looking for bodies that have what he needs. He watches funerals, clusters of people huddled around pine boxes, quiet and solemn. He sees them hold hands, embrace, crying on each other’s shoulders.

He wonders what it would feel like to be that close to someone. To trust them enough to let them see your pain.

The bodies he digs up, even when they don’t give him the organs he needs, nonetheless give him something of value–skin. He wasn’t sure, at first, what he wanted to give his creation to protect the delicate workings of its insides, but now he knows that he wants it to have skin. So he takes some from each body he uncovers, just a bit here and there, only the freshest cuts. Back in his workshop, he stitches it together, lays it over his creation.

He has given it the shape of a man. The shape he wishes he had. Tall and strong, imposing, a form that commands respect. Every day, every new bit of skin he adds, every delicate adjustment and refinement he makes to the form, to the shape of the face and the hands and the arms, makes him ache with want. With need. To be held by those same arms. To kiss those lips he cut so delicately from a face that no longer needed them.

But this being that he has forged with his own hands will lie still and lifeless without a beating heart.

As the weeks go by, anxiety turns to dread. Fear that perhaps, after all this planning, he will fail, that it will all be for nothing and he really will be alone forever; a void too black and absolute to even contemplate. Just when he is on the verge of giving up–of laying down next to his creation and taking a scalpel to his own skin–he finds what he’s looking for. A young man, killed in a freak accident that broke his neck but left the rest of him mostly undamaged.

He waits for the mourners to disperse, for the grave to be covered, and then under the dark of night he sneaks back, digs up the coffin, pries it open, and uses his surgical tools to extract the heart and brain. And then, after a moment of consideration, the eyes. He places them all in the containers he brought with him and carries them, oh-so-carefully, back to his workshop, leaving the shovel and the unburied grave behind him.

His creation is waiting for him.

It looks monstrous, under the greenish lights, but also beautiful. So beautiful it almost takes his breath away, with its patchwork of skin, the stitching so fine and neat, its chest, chiselled by his own knife. He needs a moment before he can begin, because he’s shivering so badly with anticipation. Once he has steadied himself, he starts to transplant the heart and brain, and when that is done, he sews up the skin around, sealing them in. He places the eyes into the empty sockets of the skull. They were blue, once, but are now foggy with death. He can only hope that that will change.

His creation is complete. All that is left to do is revive it. Trembling, he connects the body to the electrical current. It has all come to this–this divine moment of truth.

He flips the switch. Light flares and a deafening hum fills the air, horripilation racing across his skin, his teeth aching as the electricity surges, ebbs, and surges again. The lights overhead flicker wildly and burst. The backup lights come on. The creature spasms, contorts, writhes, and he holds his breath, his heart frozen in his chest, waiting.

The creature lies still. And then, slowly, it turns its head. It sees him standing there and makes a noise that sounds like a growl but comes out as a crackle of electricity from its artificial voice-box. Then it strains against the bindings that fix it to the table.

He steps forward, intending to release it, but it heaves upward, the bindings snap, and it is free.

It sits up slowly.

“You’re alive,” he whispers, his voice tiny in the vast darkness of the workshop.

It turns to him. Swings its legs over the side of the workbench, its feet settling on the ground with a heavy thud.

“You’re alive,” he says again, louder this time. “You’re – oh, you’re beautiful.”

The creature looks at him for a long, long moment and he is unable to move, caught in its gaze.

Its eyes are clear. There is intelligence behind them. Consideration. It’s aware, it’s thinking, and this realization brings tears to his own eyes, because it’s everything that he wanted and more.

When the creature speaks, it is with the tinny rasp of the voice box. It is the first time in years that anyone has spoken to him. It is music to his ears.

“Come,” the creature rasps, and spreads its arms wide.

He falls into them, sobbing with relief.

He feels the creature’s strength, the solidness of their arms as they hold him tight.

Tighter.

Squeezing, crushing. He feels his ribs snap and the air leave his lungs.

All he can think about is how beautiful it is to finally be loved.

 

Knots

By: Michelle Koubek

Only ten minutes before I had to leave, and I was brushing my hair. Long, black, and naturally frizzy like moss, it hung down to my shoulder blades. It never laid the way that I wanted it to, and most of the time, it fought me when I tried to brush out its knots.

That’s why I was using a new brush that I had ordered online, advertised for its persistent success.

It didn’t seem that special with the first strokes. It caught halfway down my scalp, and I had to yank it out. But by the tenth stroke I thought that my dark hair appeared shinier, almost like it was sweating from the pressure the brush applied. So, I continued brushing, until my phone rang.

Dad, I read before clicking ignore.

I went on brushing, thinking about what Scott might be wearing when he picked me up. It wasn’t often that we went out. You could say this was a special occasion.

After all, it was Valentine’s Day.

Except, I wasn’t much excited, feeling more like this would be an evening that I would want to forget. I wondered why there wasn’t a name for such times as the scratching went on, the brush running down my hair.

One stroke, two strokes, three strokes; knot.

Then, my phone rang again.

Stop calling me, I planned on texting my dad. I’m fine.

The problem was that the brush wouldn’t release my hand.

My right arm rose and fell, the pressure on my scalp increasing slightly as the brush returned to my head. I grabbed my wrist with my left hand and yanked, but the motion continued. There was nothing I could do to get the brush to stop, and my phone was still ringing on the counter before me. At last it was quiet.

The brush went on flattening my hair, pressing down hard, so it raked over my right ear cutting it, and making it bleed. I glimpsed the tumbleweed of hair in the metal prongs as the brush passed by; I felt the teeth of the brush impaling my scalp. It was about to begin another stroke, and I wondered how much hair would remain by the time Scott got here.

He would be here any minute. This is where, I’m not proud to admit it, I couldn’t stop imagining how I would look.

Would he think, ‘Poor thing,’ or grimace at how unsightly I was? I had let myself go in the past few months, something that happened occasionally, during what I called my ‘Inescapable Rainy Days’. Still, it was worse lately. Worse since I noticed that Scott was no longer tugging my hair when we were intimate, as if he was afraid of hurting what was already fragile.

The brush was stuck again, struggling to remove itself from a particularly complicated knot.

It pushed in, then out, pounding my head with its wooden handle, making it difficult to concentrate on anything else. I helped it along by grabbing some scissors and snipping the tangled bits of hair away with my left hand. A large gap was left where my hair used to hang around my face. There was a moment when I was free of it, before it moved my hand a little further back and continued in the same way. But the place the brush migrated to was smooth, so it went around to my left side, which was also knotless as could be.

I realized this brush was never going to stop, even when all the knots of my hair were gone. It wasn’t going to stop until everything was unknotted.

This wouldn’t end until the brush unknotted me.

My phone chimed, and I read the text from my dad.

Are you happy?

I don’t know, I thought. I didn’t reply.

The brush kept scratching my skin, passing over the long waves of hair like they didn’t exist. It was digging in so deeply; I fell to my knees.

I wasn’t going to be able to unknot myself; not in the way this brush desired. How could I, when I was so confused?

How could I, when it felt like every inch of me was twisted?

Then, I heard Scott knocking on the door.

I pulled myself up and staggered out of the bathroom, the brush still attacking my head with violent smacks. I passed my reflection in the hallway mirror and screamed. I saw the bald patches on my scalp and tried to cover them with the hair that was left.

Scott knocked again, calling my name more frantically in response to my screams, and I reached for the doorknob as my phone rang. Neither Scott, or my father would leave me alone. They were too concerned.

The problem was, I was more knotted than ever.

The brush kept racing down my hair, attempting to smooth out what would always be frizzy. I could hear it now, the teeth of the brush scraping into my skull. I imagined the metal grazing my brain underneath.

Maybe that’s what its goal was along: to burrow deep enough that the sad parts of me could be scooped out and discarded.

I can’t really say, because I found the strength then to snap that brush’s handle off with my free hand, using the wall for leverage.

It clattered to the floor, the top half dangling motionlessly in the last place that was brushed. With a whimper, I extracted it and let it drop to my feet next to the remains of the handle. I watched it lie there as I felt the tingles of my hair regrowing at the roots.

When I looked in the mirror, it was as if nothing had happened.

I grabbed the door handle shakily and let Scott in. I told him everything was fine.

To my horror, he believed me.

In Memoriam

By: Jae Hoole

 

 

The graveyard was silent save for the priest’s prayer. A sparse crowd of mourners stood around the freshly dug grave, their heads bowed. I arranged white lilies at a headstone nearby, my face concealed beneath a dark hood as I watched the funeral.

The priest raised his head, wishing peace to all those who could hear, before departing for the nearby church.

I lingered as the crowd dispersed, then silently crossed the cemetery until I reached this new grave. The sodden earth clung to my skirt as I knelt. I clutched my remaining flowers tightly, tracing my fingers over the name engraved in the stone.

 

***

 

“His Majesty, King Adam of Anetalia!”

My hands gripped my skirt, heavy with green velvet. King Adam burst through the doors like a thunderstorm, crackling with energy.

“Welcome!” he boomed with a blinding smile.

“And a Happy Valentine’s Day to you all! I hope you all will find cause to celebrate tonight!”

He rubbed his codpiece meaningfully, his smile turning sinful as the crowd around cheered and raised their glasses.

“Well, don’t just stand there!” King Adam pointed to the string quartet in the corner.

“Give us some music!”

The first few notes danced from the violin. The King beamed, then swept into the crowd like rolling fog, taking no notice of the breathtaking finery adorning the hall around him. He ignored the swaths of scarlet cloth draping the walls, the red roses and white carnations filling every vase, and the extensive buffet of delicious food spread across six long tables.

No, his interest was singular: women.

And there were many, at least four dozen from all corners of the kingdom, each one looking the same as the last. King Adam favored light hair over dark, red-heads were his favorite; pale, unblemished skin delighted him, pockmarks and tans did not. He preferred narrow waists, especially when aided by a tight corset. Gowns in jewel tones, especially blues and greens, caught his eye. And only simply jewelry–basic pendants, rings, and earrings–were all he allowed before his attention began to wander.

These women now manifested in his path, one after the other, each one casting her eyes down as they preened at his attention.

“You’re beautiful,” he told them all.

“A rose among thorns. A pearl among oysters.”

But the moment the words left his lips, another would catch his attention. Then he would flit away like a leaf in the winter wind.

As his focus turned to the daughter of the ambassador to Thumberla, I took a sip of wine for courage. Then I walked with purpose towards the banquet, as if I fancied a leg of the bird dripping with orange sauce. The King didn’t notice my presence until a plume of scarlet wine splashed across his expensive white shirt. Only then did he whirl like a tornado, his face dark with wrath.

“Who dares-?”

I gasped in shock and curtseyed low, pressing my head against the floor.

He stopped, taking in the sight of me as I whimpered, ignoring the wine soaking my skin.

“I am so sorry, Your Majesty. Please, forgive me.”

He sank to one knee, lifting my chin with a single finger.

“My, what a mess,” he murmured, his anger melting away.

“What’s your name?”

“Marie, Your Majesty.”

“Rise, Marie.”

I did as he commanded, brushing the dust and broken glass from my gown. His eyes raked over me, lingering on the emerald pendant resting between my breasts. Then he snapped his fingers. A servant appeared next to him, pressing two glasses heavy with more wine into his hands.

He offered one to me, and I dipped my head as I accepted it.

“Thank you, Your Majesty.”

He extended his arm, “Walk with me.”

He led me to his private table, just off the floor where couples twirled with ecstatic glee. Women glanced my way as they spun past, their expressions guarded. I did my best to ignore them.

“Tell me, little Marie,” he said. “What do you do when you’re not spilling wine on your king?”

I blushed. “I try to be an apothecary, Your Majesty.”

“Ah, at the little shop by the bakery?”

“Yes, that’s the one.”

“How charming.” His gaze lowered to my bodice. “I’m glad you found your way here tonight.”

I smiled as sweetly as I could. “As am I.”

“I have often described this woman or that as a rose among thorns.” He lifted my hand to his lips. “But for you, I think that is actually true.”

The gleam in his eyes made me shiver.

Over the next hour, the King told me story after story about himself. He told me of glories of which I’d already heard, and of planned conquests. I listened intently, humming with interest at each new tale.

A bottle of wine later, he roared with laughter and pulled me to the dance floor. My face was as red as the rose petals floating through the air around us, but he paid no attention as he spun me, showing off his latest conquest to the crowd. I could feel every eye crawling over my skin, evaluating the king’s choice and wondering if I would be the one to last.

The music finally died out well after midnight. The crowd trickled away from the hall with soft laughter, the grand fireplace dimming to a few smoldering embers. I stepped back from the King’s side and sank into a curtsy.

“Thank you for a wonderful evening, Your Majesty. It was truly the best I’ve ever had.”

His hand landed roughly on my shoulder as I rose. “The night is not yet over.”

I tried to smile. “What does Your Majesty have in mind?”

“I believe my bed will be to your liking.” He took my arm. “Come with me.”

The King’s bedchamber awaited at the top of a flight of stairs. As grand as the rest of the palace, the four-poster bed alone could fit five people. Rich purple velvet and fine white silk made up the curtains and sheets. A fire already burned low in the blackened fireplace, the stone around it decorated with curling vines and angels. A wine cabinet sat against the wall by the window, clean glasses ready for use on top. Paintings of rulers past and present adorned the walls, though one appeared to be missing, the wall discolored in the shape of a large frame.

I shrank back, hiding my face with my hair. “Oh, Your Majesty…”

He chuckled, his grip on my arm tightening. “Don’t act so shy now, Marie.”

“Yes, forgive me, it’s just…” I flicked my eyes up. “It’s so much grander than I imagined.”

He nodded, then went straight to the wine cabinet, pouring dark red liquid into two glasses.

“A little something to calm your nerves,” he said, offering one to me.

“Your Majesty is very kind,” I murmured. “Though, may I make a request?”

“And what is that, my dear?”

I pulled a small vial from my pocket. “Would Your Majesty take this tonic with me?”

“Oh?” He took it, running his fingers over the heart etched into the glass. “And what exactly is this tonic?”

“Goat weed and ginseng. It’s meant to prolong virility.”

He chuckled. “And you just happened to have this on you?”

I cast my eyes down. “I had hoped to find a lover this evening.”

“And so you did.”

He set his glass down. He wrenched the cork from the vial, then tipped the entire bottle into his glass. “To the loveliest woman in the world,” he said, raising his glass to me.

I raised mine without a word.

He downed his wine in a matter of seconds, barely wincing at the bitterness of the tonic. I set mine aside as he wiped his mouth, then beckoned me closer.

“Let’s put this to good use.”

I nodded as he stripped himself of his shirt and breeches. I made a show of removing my jewelry, then reached for the back of my gown as if to loosen the stays.

He blinked at me as he laid on his bed, his eyes growing clouded.

“My little rose,” he murmured.

My hands paused. “I have a question.”

“Then ask it, my dear.”

“Do you remember the name of the girl you chose last year?”

He frowned, his eyes growing unfocused. He didn’t answer.

“I’m not surprised, as she looked like all the others.” I folded my hands in my skirt.

“Her name was Angelica. She was the innkeeper’s daughter.”

A spark of recognition.

“Oh yes. Lovely girl, that one.” His voice was slurred.

“Where is she now?”

His face darkened like a storm cloud as he tried to sit up. “What?”

I stepped closer to the bed.

“What about Agatha? Or Jessamine? What about Queen Caroline?” My voice echoed across the stone. “They all disappeared after last being seen with you at the Valentine’s ball. So what did you do to them?”

His mouth opened and closed like a fish as he struggled to get up, his face flushed with wine and rage. “You dare-?”

“You don’t actually have to answer that.” My voice trembled as my nails dug into my skirt.

“I was so afraid for Angelica that I came to find her. But I was too late, and instead of taking her home, I had to watch you bury her in your little private graveyard.” Tears burned my eyes.

“You ruined her dress. She worked so hard to make it.”

He tried to reach for me but fell back against onto the bed with a gasp.

“Who are you?” he asked, his voice growing weak. “What have you done to me?”

“I’m an apothecary, Your Majesty. And that tonic wasn’t goat weed or ginseng.”

I climbed onto the bed and leaned over him, my lips brushing against his ear. “It was golden valerian.”

A gurgling sound erupted from his throat. He scrambled against the sheets, but his limbs refused to hold him up.

I pushed back up, reaching for my wine as the fog consumed him. It wasn’t long before he lay pale and still like a corpse.

Only then did I drop my glass and scream for help.

 

***

 

King Adam’s name was hastily carved into the headstone, barely legible in the dimming light. His supposed mourners had already vanished into nearby taverns, the sounds of celebration spilling forth. Few will miss him, and I am glad for it.

I glanced back at Angelica’s grave, my heart aching as the white lilies waved in the breeze as if to thank me for what I’ve done.

I carefully arranged the golden valerian around the King’s headstone. Then, with a smile hidden by my hood, I pressed my ear to the ground.

There, piercing through the earth, was the desperate sound of scratching.

Two Hands, Six Limbs

By: Sarah Katz

Get off the grid, they said. It’ll be easy, they said.

When in doubt, escape from the hustle and bustle of people and get out to the wilderness.

All in time for a frosty Valentine’s Day.

The hike certainly proved easier than expected–easy slopes, scenic routes. The best part was the solitude. Well, aside from her obligatory Wildebot, custom-designed to accompany outdoor travelers and complete with SOS protocol.

Wildy, she decided to call it, just before setting out for an on-foot journey, leagues away from the cares of the world. Far from her ailing father, her crumbling career, her broken relationship.

What was once an indubitably perilous wilderness for many, now seemed ripe for the picking with Wildy at her side.

And who really needed a valentine with a trusty bot around?

Even as the radio on the car ride over warned of a growing frost set to hit the valley, she was sure the little, four-legged silver ball at her side would warn her of anything amiss. After all, humanity had all but outsmarted the surprises of nature.

When the first gusts of wind whipped around her cheeks, she paid no mind. Wrapping her scarf closer about her throat, she checked to see Wildy still dutifully at her side. When the little bot missed the dip in the path before them, she didn’t immediately move to anger; it was probably on her, for assuming the machine wouldn’t have flaws the way a human would.

Still, it wasn’t as if such shortcomings erased its lack of cruelty and non-judgmental nature. She would gladly take an oversight here and there over the usual insults and nagging.

It was the perfect little valentine.

So, when she and Wildy ended up at the ledge overlooking a canyon, with icy gusts billowing about her heavy jacket, she swallowed her pride and pressed the button to activate Wildy’s SOS signal.

Static.

Slanted raindrops swept across them both.

More static.

Silence.

Circuitry gone frosty.

The path behind them proved an impossible mudslide. She opted to try again in the morning when the sun would warm and dry the mud. She and Wildy would make it out and back to the slog of her life.

The frigid night gnawed at her like a rat feasting on flesh. Her eyes stung to the point where she could only fumble with frozen fingers to pull the immobile Wildy onto her lap.

Strange…four limbs. Like a human, but not. Not arms or legs, just limbs. Like the many surrounding trees. If Wildy had arms with hands, maybe her tears would be brushed away rather than frozen on her cheeks. Maybe her fingers would have lasted a touch longer before going blue and brittle enough to crack.

But Wildy had only metal limbs. Limbs that as the night drew on, fused with the warm leather of her crimson jacket and the frozen skin of her hands as she cradled it on her lap.

#

When the storm passed, the next sunrise shone upon a strange sight.

A bizarre creature, blue flesh of a darker hue than the clear sky, with an all-but-featureless head. Four limbs adorned the creature’s middle, with two thicker limbs below, dangling over a muddy ledge.

A closer glance would show what almost looked like two hands melded to the four limbs.

Impossible to tell where either ended or began. A symbol of true, if unconventional, companionship. Neither human nor machine.

A two-handed, six-limbed creature overlooking the canyon below.