Issue 155 August 2026

Editor: Rebecca Halsey

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Editorial: Meatsac Fiction

By Rebecca Halsey

August 1, 2026

Editorial

My favorite internet word is “meatsac.” It’s so much more visceral than “body.” So much better at conveying the experience of being a jumble of flesh and fluid. “Body” sounds too cerebral. Body is a word that can mean a collection of anything—body of work, body politic, etc.

Meatsac is always about the base, animal existence. It’s the precise indentations of your fingernails when you clench your fists. It’s the appendix that swells to bursting. The hair that falls and collects in the drain. 

The valves that gulp, the tubes that squeeze. A skintag, a rash. A tremor, a gash.

I want this issue to be felt somewhere in your connective tissue, in those nooks between muscles and bones. I want a throb to start up, somewhere beyond your heart, where no such feeling existed before. These are meatsac stories.

Will you pause to catch your breath reading “Pomegranates” by G.M. Mitchell? Will you clutch your breast reading “Milk” by Caitlin Devlin?

In “Eyeballs of My Eyes” by Abigail Guerrero, what is the exact word that makes you flinch? Is it “carbuncles,” or “nerve,” or “knife?” Sometimes you must say goodbye to your flesh, sometimes to the flesh of your flesh.

This issue has an underlying theme of how and where we hold love for our family. When and if we can let go. In “iron & garlic & salt & blood” by Nico Martinez Nocito, the walls protecting this reimagined Rapunzel rise higher and higher.

The hamster in “Meatball” by S.L. Harris is the physical tether for a struggling mind. Make sure you keep contact for the full hour for the therapy to work.

The erotic-but-heartbreaking “The Alien You Love” by Jonathan Huston, uses science-fiction tropes to capture the experience of surviving a toxic relationship.

I’m proud of myself for assembling this issue. Body horror is all too effective because of my innate squeamishness. I’ve fainted in more than one doctor’s office. But the usefulness of meatsac fiction is that it underscores what forbidden knowledge your own body holds. About you and those around you.

What quivers through those layers of epidermis? That shiver you feel up and down your spine is the product of your evolution, your own nature, screaming for you to stop.

* * *

Ⓒ Rebecca Halsey

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Pomegranates

By G.M. Mitchell

August 4, 2026

Fantasy

—and they said

oh god they said I would be forgiven

and I said I would try to forgive myself but all I can see when I close my eyes are those translucent hooves and the fragile green shoots that sprang up in their wake and then I blink and there is the pelt like shaggy moonlight, the long spiral horn like blown glass and I cannot let go of how it looked at me because that is what lingers in my dreams

those blackberry eyes and the absolute trust they placed in me

and I was so angry, I admit that now, hands shaking, the holly garland biting at my hands with its green milkteeth; I did not ask to be left in this clearing on a cool midsummer’s dawn in my best gown with lilies woven into my hair, I did not ask to be kept unrumpled and pristine like a christening gown for this moment, I did not ask, I did not ask, but there it was and there I was and we were both playing our parts like fools but it should have known better than I, who was not nearly so ageless and lithe and free

so I touched my trembling sore fingertips to my lips and bade it come closer

Come closer, a gift for you

and when it was within reach it bowed its magnificent head and I wound my garland round its neck and horn, its breath a spring breeze on my cheek, and it did not flinch even as the cut on my palm smeared its neck with a slash of bright red and then my father emerged from the firs and the dogs and the men and the falcons followed and its own blood was red

dark red, like pomegranate juice

like the pomegranate tree that grew from the ground where it spilled

whose fruit I have never dared to eat but my brother says it’s bitter, so bitter, he cracked one open and ate the pulp and seeds and he couldn’t stop crying for days

but you see, I was promised, we were promised, that if we buried its bones beneath the oldest tree in our gardens, it would revive; that ancient beings such as these are beyond such mortal things as flesh or death

and Mother was sick, so sick

so I ground the horn into crystalline powder for her broth and the bones went under the black oak that has been on the land since my ancestors first built our home and summer rolled in stifling green and was pushed away by the gentle golden touch of autumn and then winter slunk past on cold white paws and Mother was able to walk again but still the garden remained undisturbed

and finally my brother who has never been patient at the best of times said enough, he’d tasted that fruit and it was never coming back, and Father boxed his ears but he was near a man now, big enough to hit back, and he hit Father in the mouth and dropped him like a gunnysack and then it was my turn to chase him out to the garden and beg him to leave it alone because I could feel the wrongness of it all in the air like a gathering storm, but he tore into the snow and frozen earth with his bare hands like a dog

and the bones weren’t there anymore

but Mother wanders the manse at night now, restless with the cold, and in the dark echoing halls her footsteps sound like hooves

 and her eyes, once chestnut brown, are tinted purple-black like berry wine

and I am praying that I’m wrong, that I’m being driven mad by the drudgery of winter, but last night I dreamt that I found my father crucified on the branches of a pomegranate tree, a spiraling glass horn like a sword through his heart and we are all still alive but

everywhere I look, there are hoof tracks in the snow, the endless gleaming expanse of snow that blankets the world in all directions

and we are alone

and there are still so many days until spring.

* * *

Ⓒ G.M. Mitchell

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Meatball

By S.L. Harris

August 7, 2026

Science Fiction

My Calming Sensory Companion Animal is a mean-eyed hamster with bits of hair missing that I named Meatball. Dr. Joffe said the name was indicative of a mordant humor that would not be at all helpful in reaching an Acceptable Happiness Quotient, so out loud I refer to him as Cuddles, but in my diseased and anti-social mind, Meatball he remains, and I’ll just have to hope that all the work we’ve been doing in our Mindfulness and Adjustment sessions will put me over the top, Meatball notwithstanding.

Meatball is kind of a jerk. During Sensory Hour, as the other anti-socials caress their sleek cats and happy dogs, Meatball tends to bite me. I’m supposed to keep contact for the full hour, though, so I just have to grin and bear it—this is Cultivating Resilience, Dr. Joffe assures me—and hope that I don’t get some horrific bloodborne disease (Positive Thinking).

The guy in Reflection Room 217, whom I pass on my way to Mindfulness and Adjustment, has a beautiful, calm, happy golden retriever. Its teeth are missing, but after a Sensory Hour with Meatball, that seems like a plus to me. Lucky bastard. But that’s just the kind of envious thinking that made me alone outside, that led to my low Happiness Quotient and to this whole situation. So I try some Positive Thinking: maybe the animals are given to each according to his need. Maybe Number 217 is really far gone, maybe even a single digit HQ, and he needs that gentle, loving companion. Maybe I’m pretty close to Acceptable in spite of everything and all I need is an unpleasantly aggressive and probably diseased hamster.

This is the kind of Positive Thinking that I think Dr. Joffe would appreciate, but that is very difficult to maintain as Meatball happily excretes in my palm.

* * *

Today’s Mindfulness and Adjustment session was bad. I had a reaction to the new medicine, but Dr. Joffe insisted on my going through with the session (Consistency and Follow-Through In Spite of Obstacles), so my face was puffed up like a toad as I stared at the little moving images of all my failings and their inevitable consequences, then at all the ways a high-HQ, well-adjusted, pro-social me would do better. Usually, I have a good cry at these sessions, but the skin around my eyes was so swollen that I just ended up with a water-up-my-nose feeling. Dr. Joffe seemed to be shaking his head as he entered his notes, which made me Inappropriately Upset, and I used some unkind words even under the influence of medication, not at all oriented toward Positive Thinking. Even I knew coming out of it that I wasn’t anywhere near Acceptable HQ.

I returned to the Reflection Room thinking many Negative Thoughts. Not only Sadness, I have to say, but even Anger at Authority, Rejection of Established Social Systems, and Blaming Others.

“Little jerk,” I said through my puffy lips to Meatball, who was currently trying to shred my gown for nesting material. “If it weren’t for you, I’d probably be out of here.” 

Meatball looked at me with those bright dark eyes, then chomped the flap of skin between my thumb and index finger. “Dammit!” I yelled and shook him off. Roughly. More roughly than I think I could justify. Meatball hit the floor hard.

Oh no, no, no, I thought. Hurting another being with my unhappiness. Again.

No, no. I rushed to Meatball and picked him up, glancing worriedly at the cameras. Back to Square One. I looked at the little bundle curled in my hands and caressed it over and over. Please be OK, I thought. Please. I wasn’t thinking of my HQ anymore. I was feeling a towering loneliness, a desperate love.

Meatball twitched and opened his eyes. “I’m sorry,” I said, over and over. Meatball scratched and nuzzled and urinated on me with a sort of animal forgiveness that I had never felt from anyone, inside this place or out of it.

* * *

A couple days later, Dr. Joffe and some orderlies came to my Reflection Room during Sensory Hour, leading the toothless golden retriever.

“We believe you are at a stage in your journey where you could benefit from a change in Companion,” said Dr. Joffe.

“What about…?” I gestured vaguely toward Room 217.

Dr. Joffe inclined his head. “The previous Client no longer has a need.”

I winced as Meatball nibbled at the flesh below my thumb, but I did not move.

“It is,” said Dr. Joffe, delicately, “a matter of considerable significance to your social health and well-being, your progress toward Happiness and, although I want to emphasize that there is no prediction or threat being made here, the manner in which your time in our care is to conclude.”

I looked between the happy, caring, well-adjusted, expectant faces of the retriever and Dr. Joffe. I ran my smarting thumb over Meatball’s patchy coat. Little freak.

“Please give me the animal,” said Dr. Joffe.

“No,” I said, Disregarding Professional Advice. I could practically see my HQ ticking down in Dr. Joffe’s eyes.

“Opposition and Defiance,” said Dr. Joffe, sternness creeping into his voice, “are not conducive to your progress, and neither is Maintaining Unhealthy Attachments. This is, I am sorry to say, quite elementary, and reflects very poorly on both your progress and your prognosis.”

He paused. Meatball stuck his head out from the cradle of my hand with something that looked almost like a sneer. Dr. Joffe’s voice turned gentle again, but it was not at all warm. “Do you understand what I am saying? About where these Negative Actions are leading you? You want to make progress, don’t you? You certainly want to avoid continuing this distressing backslide.”

“No,” I said. Meatball clawed my palm, the orderlies looked at Dr. Joffe’s unsmiling and threatening face, and I thought distinctly and very incongruously a Positive Thought. “I’m alright,” I said.

* * *

Ⓒ S.L. Harris

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Eyeballs of My Eyes

By Abigail Guerrero

August 14, 2026

Horror

Body horror

In the beginning, you think it’s a mosquito bite, although you never saw the insect or felt the sting. The pimple is the size of a marble, red as raw flesh, and it gives you an itch so bad you wish you could tear your skin off.

“Yes, it’s infected,” the doctor says. “But don’t worry. Carbuncles are an expected side effect of the PMOS treatment.” He prescribes you some topical antibiotics and sends you home.

At night, you wake up convulsing in feverish spasms, your flesh throbbing underneath your skin, fraying the fibers of your muscles, tearing nerve and sinew apart, a reddish ooze seeping out your pores. Your back bends forward and you cross your arms by reflex, wrapping yourself in a desperate embrace as you scratch your legs, your arms, your face, your nails carving the peripheries of the bumps that emerge from beneath your skin. And as you scratch, your skin peels, and the thin epidermis layer detach from your body like a cicada’s shell and waft to the ground.

And what lies underneath isn’t your raw flesh, but exactly one hundred eyes, scattered throughout your arms, torso, and legs. Each one of them is colored with the same dark brown hue of your own eyes, as if they’d sucked out your melanin, stolen it straight from your genetic code.

Driven by morbid curiosity, you raise your right index finger and poke the eyeball in the middle of your left palm. The eyeball reddens and waters and burns, a tear rolling down your wrist. Next you clench your fist. And you squeeze it tightly, so hard that your nails scratch and dig into your own palms and your fingers start cramping.

When you finally let go, the eye is still staring at you.

* * *

You resolve to take them out by force.

You grab every spoon, knife, and tweezers you can find in the house and take a plastic chair into the shower. You put an old rag between your teeth and bite it as hard as you can. Then you lift one of the spoons, suck in as much air as you can fit in your lungs, and you start. You begin with the one in your left hand, right on the eyelids’ commissure.

Carving in, you find out the eye is jointed to your flesh through an optic nerve. So, when you’ve at last managed to place the spoon behind the retina and pull the eyeball out, you take your knife and chop off the nerve with a single slash. It hurts like hell, but only for a brief instant, during the fleeting fraction of a second it took for you to cut the flesh that bound you to the eye and feed it with your nutrients like it had been an umbilical cord.

The next ones are easier, quicker. You have both of your hands free now, and you deliver those knife slashes as if they were gusts of wind. Your skin heals as soon as each eyeball is detached, raised scars forming where the optical nerves used to be, the remaining fibers intertwining with each other and shaping reddish, tight knots.

And the eyeballs float, light as soap bubbles, swaying to the rhythm of the gentle air currents that filter in under the door, always staring at you as if you were their center of gravity. You let them fill the room as you pop them all out of your body, one by one.

Ninety-seven.

Ninety-eight.

Ninety-nine.

The last eye is on your back, out of your visual field. You do your best to remove it without piercing it, but you fail. Ooze seeps out your now open wound and spills down your back, thick drops hitting the vinyl floor below.

And strange as it may seem, you can’t help but grieve, pressure crushing your throat and chest, tears welling up in the corners of the eyes you still have.

You realize, only then, that every single one of them is important to you. Flesh of your flesh, cultivated within your entrails. They’re yours. You’re theirs. And no matter where they go, whenever they have grown old enough to leave the nest of you, they will always carry you with them.

* * *

Over the course of the next few days, the eyes grow their own dermis layers to protect themselves from the elements, from the impurities in the dry summer breeze. Tiny hairs begin to grow at the edge of the eyelids, spreading and curling as they turn into frames. And in their corners small bumps are formed, and soon they become tear ducts to keep the eyes moist and clean.

Right when you think there’s not much more your eyes can grow, thin veils of skin take shape at the back of each eyeball, and now they’ve got wings, and when they flap they buzz in unison as if they were a large swarm of mosquitoes.

The last major physical change is the materialization of their probosces. Sharp, elongated, and hollow as needles, formed at the center of the lower eyelids. You understand, instinctively, that it is through those tubes that they must be fed, but they refuse to drink the water you offer to them.

They’re parasites, after all.

You prick the tip of your finger with a knife and offer your own blood, because little is the pain compared to the fear of mourning those who you’ve birthed. Yet the eyeballs still refuse to consume what’s come out of you, because that would be an abomination, cannibalism.

Thus, knowing that keeping your children would kill them, and that watching them starve to death would kill you as well, you look at them one last time. Then, you open every door and window in your house and let them go.

* * *

Ⓒ Abigail Guerrero

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August 21, 2026

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