Size / / /

Content warning:


The thin wind whistle of the shinkansen, screaming, roaring through the dark. You’re in it, you’re in it all: the rattle of the rails, the shuffling-muttering of hundreds of passengers nestled in the one long limb of you, the creamy, fatty ice cream cups served off the trolley that are as hard as ice. You’re not a vacillation or an oscillation but a simultaneous throe.

Hundreds of stories are playing themselves out within you. Gods. Individuals. Nuts, grommets, motor oil. The businessman-baby-pomeranian-mother-litigator-old-woman-gravel-stones-gum-stuck-under-your-seat-in-cabin-eight argues with the funeral-director-father-suitcase-makeup-artist-diaper-bag-ice-cream-travel-agent-secretary-trees sweeping by outside the window(s) (s) (s) (s) (s) (s).

You love the mountains. The mountains do not love you. You whistle through them with the tip of your blunt blue nose shearing joy. You feel their big old hearts pounding under your wheels. Some of your individuals sleep—some wake, then press their noses against your cool glass to inhale the mountain’s bodily dark. The buzz of the polite automated voice inside your speakers tastes like living.

Somewhere inside you there is a woman sobbing. In the small bathroom of cabin five she presses her hands to her own face, sucking in big heaps of your air. Her tears slip down your bathroom sink. Through the pipes you carry them along gently, until they join the rest of you. You filter them across your thin mesh tongues. They taste like sublimating sorrow. You hope she will take comfort in this dark interior.



Sara S. Messenger is an SFF writer and poet residing in Florida. When she’s not playing fetch with her cat, she reads poetry collections in the sun. Her short fiction has appeared in Fantasy Magazine and Diabolical Plots, and her poetry has been previously published in Strange Horizons. If you enjoyed this work, her full portfolio and other musings can be found online at sarasmessenger.com.
Current Issue
18 Nov 2024

Your distress signals are understood
Somehow we’re now Harold Lloyd/Jackie Chan, letting go of the minute hand
It was always a beautiful day on April 22, 1952.
By: Susannah Rand
Podcast read by: Claire McNerney
In this episode of the Strange Horizons Fiction podcast, Michael Ireland presents Little Lila by Susannah Rand, read by Claire McNerney. Subscribe to the Strange Horizons podcast: Spotify
Friday: The 23rd Hero by Rebecca Anne Nguyen 
Issue 11 Nov 2024
Issue 4 Nov 2024
Issue 28 Oct 2024
Issue 21 Oct 2024
By: KT Bryski
Podcast read by: Devin Martin
Issue 14 Oct 2024
Issue 7 Oct 2024
By: Christopher Blake
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
Issue 30 Sep 2024
Issue 23 Sep 2024
By: LeeAnn Perry
Art by: nino
Issue 16 Sep 2024
Issue 9 Sep 2024
Load More