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issue 29

Just Another Door, by Alexandra Seidel

The house is not a house. And yet, I am a guest, a knowledge that rests in my mind with the certainty of a swift pen stroke or a happy smile. The house is mostly white, two stories tall, roofed in lichen and gray shingles. The path I stand on winds a lazy S across a lawn dotted with daisies, buttercups, and spring crocuses. In the flowerbeds, there are primroses and chrysanthemums, somewhere in the shadows to my left, a few Christmas roses avoid the sunshine. Behind the house, blue sky is too slick for even the faintest hint of clouds.

Ask a Necromancer, by Amanda Downum

In July I made a pilgrimage to the lands of the living, this time emerging for Readercon in Boston. Many excellent living persons gathered to ask questions about death and the dead. Here are a few of those questions answered in greater detail.

Vertigo, by Abhinav

That last thing is what you can’t get, Carlo. Nobody can get to that last thing. We keep on living in hopes of catching it once and for all.—Jack Kerouac,…

#587 Mourn for Relatives, by MK Zvokel

The laws concerning Jewish mourners (#587–590) are one of the thirty-four categories of mitzvot according to Rambam, aka Moses Maimonides, “a preeminent medieval Sephardic Jewish philosopher, astronomer, and one of…

Sitting Shiva, by Zachary Rosenberg

Avram Mordecai sits shiva for his dead sister Tamar with only Tamar herself in attendance. The memorial yahrzeit candle of remembrance burns auburn, lurid shadows waltzing upon Tamar’s face. Avram sits on a mourner’s seat, but the only meals laid out for him are horror and self-contempt. Tamar sits across from him, watching him endlessly.