Listen to a reading of this story by JP Relph:
Grow Your Own
We’re open for subs through May! Please send us your freshest shoots, entangled rootballs, buds ready to burst into the promise of bloom. Think dark and earthy as beets, or light and vibrant as green tomatoes. Sow seeds in the turned soil of our heads. Bring us fizzing lemonbalm dreams, sour sorrel nightmares.
Splay me like an espalier, my sweet pears exposed. Take your pruning shears to the very heart of me, snip, snipping until I’m a gnarled woody core. Feast on my ripe flesh until I’m nothing but pips you spit in the dirt.
Reptiles
Subs closing soon! We want your slither-slam pythons; muscular and brutal, a hot sting with no cure. We want your spiny-shift dragons; hissing and puffed, basking in restrained aggression. We want your slow-strut tortoises; ancient and intelligent, worth waiting for.
Tempt me from my shell, charm me from the basket. Carve me into trinkets gathering dust on dressing tables. Forgotten, unnecessary. Bring an unbearable cold, so I slow, rot inside, fall to coma. Kiss my skin to shed, leave me raw.
Alien Encounters
Beam us up some awesome words, we’ve launched! We’d love to see your abductions, your intimate probings, your unidentified objects. Your peaceful friends and ruinous enemies. Words that’ll burst from our chests in screaming blood spray, gestate in slippery eggs, beg to go home. Take us to the stars, another galaxy. Teach us, change us, melt us into our constituent parts.
Strap me down on cold metal, opened up and slowly emptied. Stab and slash and burn and freeze in the name of exploration. Fear my differences, despise them, covet them. Bury me deep so nobody is sure I ever existed. Evade me, even as I fade to atoms.
Your Cat
Issue 666 is taking submissions! Give us something wicked and unrepentant. Fool us with all the soft and sweet, a rumble in our chests, then flash a claw, a meat-stained fang, and eviscerate us. Be capricious, clingy, utterly impenetrable. Dump something hot and fetid in our litter box, leave it exposed, leaching. Wrap your words around our legs, flirty, then trip us up.
Get a fucking dog. Love it more than me. Keep its balls in your pocket. Be entranced by its ridiculous smile, its unrequited devotion.
Bride
You are cordially invited to submit to our Spring Wedding Issue. Sweep us off our feet with your awkward proposals, your tipsy impulsiveness. Walk us through your gothic churches draped in lilies, your orchid-strewn not-like-the-brochure beaches, your registry office quickies with petrol station carnations. We need your borrowed blues, your instant regrets. The best man still sticky on your legs under all that tulle.
I don’t.
JP Relph is a Cumbrian writer hindered by a chronic health condition and four cats. Tea helps. She frequents charity shops to source haunted objects. JP writes about apocalypses a lot (despite not having the knees for one) and her collection of post-apoc short fiction was published by Alien Buddha in 2023. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions and Best Microfictions. JP recently got a zombie story on the Wigleaf longlist which was perhaps the best thing ever.Â