We are so excited to share with you the themes for our next issue! Be sure to read our submission guidelines and send us your very best work.
This year we are really hoping to receive short essay submissions and more art! And be on the lookout for our editor's thoughts which will be forthcoming throughout next month.
0 Comments
First published by Cold Creek Review.Sara was undoubtedly a witch. I don’t even think she knew she was a witch, but I knew. We met in biology lab my sophomore year of college. Both of us were the perpetually early type, both of us were constantly nose deep in a book, and both of us were draped in too many layers for fall in Texas. Naturally, we were fast friends. When we finally started talking, Sara told me she was an English major. She was just taking biology for fun. The words, “People do that?” instinctively slipped out of my mouth before I could even think to say them. “Do what?” “Take classes for fun?” “Isn’t college supposed to be for learning?” Our lab teacher was a three hundred pound red head who spat when she spoke. She explained that our first assignment would be to dissect a worm, then a frog, a rat, a shark, and a cat. Then she brought out the worms. It was the slimy texture that did it for me, and I knew from that moment I would not be able to cut open a single creature during the class. “That’s ok, I’ll do it. How about you just record it on your phone so we can study the video later?” Dumbfounded, I nodded. You would have thought the lab teacher asked us to feed the worms to children by the way I reacted. Sara just pushed the sleeves of her cable knit sweater up to her elbows like she was about use her hands to knead bread. Instead, she used them to slit open the worm and reveal its tiny parts. For the next hour we poured over the creature trying to guess the names of the pieces that had formerly kept it alive. Finally, our lab teacher came around and pointed at all of the appropriate parts with a pin. When she dismissed the class I found myself asking, “What happens to the worms now that we are done?” “They get thrown out,” she said as she started clearing up the lab tables in the front of the room. Believe me, I’m not an advocate for worms. Everything about the creatures disgust me, but I was devastated by the news. I packed up my things in the haze of my own distressing thoughts. Sara chased me down the hallway and opened the palm of her hand. There were spots of gold inside her green eyes that glimmered like flecks of hope. She had stolen our worm. We decided to bury him in the yard in front of my dorm. The gothic kids who were outside smoking wandered over to see what we were doing and accidentally found themselves attending a funeral for a mutilated worm. Sara made everyone hold hands in a circle around the grave. Over and over again she whispered, “Best wishes as you make this transition into new life.” Soon, the entire group was muttering the phrase. Eventually the circle broke. Sara left me with a hug, a knowing smile, and said, “I’ll see you next week in class.” The next morning I saw a worm inching its way across the sidewalk on my way to class. I wondered if maybe this worm had been related to our biology worm. Maybe it had ventured all the way from south of campus to crawl across this sidewalk just as a way of thanking Sara and me for giving its fellow worm the kind of funeral a worm would deserve. I decided right then we would bury all of our class projects. The next week proceeded much in the same fashion, but this time Sara dissected a frog. When she slit open her stomach, we found it was filled with tiny black eggs. Sara and I both cried until we got her in the ground and long after. We buried her by the river that ran through our school, and our salty tears covered the grave. We had our first argument over where to bury the rat. I thought he should be buried by the worm in front of my dorm, but Sara insisted he needed to be laid to rest with the trash. I finally won the argument by pointing out that burying him in the trash would be no different than letting him be thrown out with the rest of the dissected rats. Sara finally agreed to let him be buried in front of my dorm, but she pulled an old banana peel out of a trash can and laid it on top of the grave like a headstone. The gothic kids thought we had gone too far with that one. The shark was a real adventure. At that point we were fully dedicated to giving each creature a resting place that felt like home. If we were sane, we could have just buried the shark near the river like the frog. However, we were obviously not sane since we were on a mission to bury our biology projects. We stole a cooler from a frat boy and put the shark on ice. In the dead of the night we drove to the beach. As the sun rose along the horizon, we watched as the shark disappeared into the dark salt water. Of all the burials, we knew the last would be the hardest. The class was set to dissect the cat in our last class. It would be stored for a week until our final exam, and then we would have to name all of its parts one last time. I was in agony over leaving the cat in a freezer for a week, but it didn’t seem to bother Sara at all. On the dreaded day, I showed up for class early as always. I didn’t start to worry until time seemed to slip right past me, and a cat appeared in front of me. It would have been a cute little thing if it wasn’t wet with formaldehyde and frozen in fear. I was surprised no one had taken in the silver cat with three white paws. It would have made such a cute house kitten. Sara never showed up, and after all of this time avoiding the dissections I would have to begin with the most compatible of creatures. The scissors cut through the skin like paper. I found myself pulling back the muscles of the cat’s chest with animal like precision. Sticking the pins through the flaps and onto the board bothered me the least of all of my tasks. For a moment I wondered if I had been a fool to let Sara be in charge of the dissections the whole semester, but the moment passed. I was done and stood looking at the blood left dripping on my hands and the body of a cat’s carcass on the table. A week passed and I still hadn’t heard from Sara. I brought two cups of coffee to our final exam. I was certain that she would show up to that. It was our final mission, and I had no clue how we were going to steal the cat. The lab teacher arrived fifteen minutes late, and there was still no Sara. Everyone filed to the freezer in the back to collect the dead cats for the final exam. I looked through the racks three times for my silver cat, but it was nowhere to be found. “Did someone take my cat by mistake?” I asked the class. Everyone shook their heads. The lab teacher wrung her hands as she made her way back to the class. “Just pair up with this group here,” she gestured to a pair of sorority girls who looked at me like they’d rather eat glue than share a dead cat with a nonconformist like me. I walked around the garden in front of the biology building after I finished my test, kicking at the grass. Something had happened to Sara, but the gnawing feeling inside of my stomach told me to wait. Somehow I just knew she would meet me in the garden soon. I was just about to head home when a silver cat with three white paws came trotting along in front of my path. She stared up at me with spots of gold inside of her eyes glimmering like flecks of hope. I sat down on the ground in front of her and whispered, “Best wishes as you make this transition into new life.” About Kassie ShanafeltKassie is a social media manager living in Brooklyn, NY. Her work is forthcoming in Coffin Bell Journal and has previously appeared in Enclave. She is the founding creative director of Millennial Pink, an online community for fellow creatives. Social media links: https://twitter.com/mpinkofficial To read more check out Cauldron Anthology's Issue 3.
Dear Readers,
Though our magazine is not exactly a year old yet, it is a new year, and thus we decided to gather all of the wonderful contributions from 2017 into this Year 1 issue. Please enjoy reading all the wonderful pieces we have received. Special thanks to Elisabeth Horan for allowing us to use her photograph Creeping as the cover art for this issue. 2017 has been a great learning experience; launching and putting together this literary magazine has been so rewarding! I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for everything you’ve done to support us here at Cauldron Anthology from submitting your work, to reading the blog, to sharing our tweets and helping us get out into the world. Thank you to my editors and staff as well. Thank you to Sarah Little, the co-founder and poetry editor who has always been there to bounce ideas around with me and make suggestions. Thank you to Lauren Walsburg, our fiction editor, for adding a valued voice to our discussions. Thank you to Tierney Bailey, our art editor, for putting together all our lovely issues. And last but not least, thank you to Grant Pearson, our copyeditor, for catching all the little details. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Abigail Pearson Editor-in-Chief
As a fun new idea for our blog, the editors and I have decided we're going to start putting together playlists for our readers. Our first is inspired by our themes for issue 3, we have quite a few ranges of genre in this so we hope you all find something you enjoy. If anyone has suggestions for more songs, do let us know!
My co-founder and friend Sarah and I have been dreaming up more ways to talk about Cauldron Anthology, and so we've come upon the idea of a contest.
Right now our twitter following is at 185. We would love to get it to 200! So here's the deal. Once we reach 200 followers we will be opening up a flash fiction contest for you all. There will be no official theme, but we'd like you to stick to mythology that inspires you as a woman and feminist. We would like the flash fiction to be no longer than 1,000 words, but it can be as short as a sentence. Thank you all and we can't wait to see what you are inspired by! Milkweed cannot cry out to fruit-stained fingers, explain how it feels to be pried open, weeping opaque drops. Insides are loosed to catch the wind and scattered in another's delight. It cannot call to them who fling out soft boned arms. Today, they may be flighty, dizzy creatures whirling skirts in the timeless burning before evening. No prophetic warnings, just a silent watchfulness, a seeing, prescient stillness. It knows time will catch them out one night, too late when the womb turns to silken down encased in fibrous armor. Their mothers will look for them in the witching fog. They find only the milkweed pods now swollen. About Amy KotthausBio: Amy Kotthaus is a writer and photographer. Her poetry has been published in Ink in Thirds, Yellow Chair Review, Occulum, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Gnarled Oak, and Section 8. Her photography has been published in Storm Cellar, Crab Fat Magazine, Quantum Fairy Tales, and Digging Through the Fat.
Twitter: @amy_kotthaus I saw my death. I saw my death and she called me forward, it was my turn to greet her. The invitation stood hanging in the air: It smelled of sumire, and momo, but the flowers could not hide the stench of decay. I reached forward and accepted her invitation, I reached forward and accepted my death. For a time, all was peaceful, then I smelled the fire burning, the skin falling off her like meat sliced from a bone. The look in her eyes told me of her fury; she would have her revenge. She invited him forward and I watched as I remembered how she had done that for me, but back then her eyes were clear, now all they revealed was the fire pit in her heart. The revenge was not to belong to her, instead her body became rot and she was no more. It was too much for her mate who cleaved the fire demon in two and begged to see his wife once more. Izanami could not be released from the Underworld though, as she had already eaten of its fruit. She was trapped now: Her final invitation. About David PineDavid Pine grew up in the deep south of the United States. He grew up reading stories and poetry about ghosts, ghouls, and goblins. Now he writes stories and poetry about ghosts, ghouls, and goblins.
You must be a man of stone; my flesh will not kneel to flesh, soft and dying. The fever scalding my lips consumes any skin kissed, burning it away to a heap of sinewless ribs. Piles upon piles, enough to build the horse on which I wait for a hard man to pull my hair like I ask without the strands dropping off and becoming black asps biting poison into a meaty calf. You must be an immovable man Compel me to pray, prostrate myself in divinely unfamiliar supplication. Press my searing lips to the cold marble of your feet, cleansed with rose water by dedicant priests. I crave the steeped petal taste of you. My ears ring with a sharp silence at the absence of a binding order, and my wrists sting with matching bands of blistered skin, missing the chill of silk red ribbons; they are the veins that bleed us into each other. About Amy KotthausBio: Amy Kotthaus is a writer and photographer. Her poetry has been published in Ink in Thirds, Yellow Chair Review, Occulum, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Gnarled Oak, and Section 8. Her photography has been published in Storm Cellar, Crab Fat Magazine, Quantum Fairy Tales, and Digging Through the Fat.
Twitter: @amy_kotthaus “Ten points if you can touch the door.” “You think I’m stupid? No way I’m getting that close.” “Chicken.” “Well, you touch it if you’re so brave.” “No way. She prefers boys. She’d smell me for sure if I got that close.” “Yeah, right.” “It’s true! Everyone says so. She’ll take a girl if she’s hungry enough but it’s the boys she really wants. More meat on their bones, I guess.” “You’re lying. You’re just too scared.” “Whatever; believe what you want. I ain’t touching that door.” “Well, neither am I.” The children both shifted position, as much to mask their mounting nerves as to ease the pins and needles snaking up their legs. Half an hour is a long time for a pair of eight-year-olds to have been crouching in the undergrowth, after all, but such is the power of the rumour mill when its spoils reach the malleable minds of young boys and girls with hot summer days to fill. The object of their fascination? A single house on the outskirts of town, built to shun the bustle of the streets beyond and cloak itself in the dappled shade of towering oak trees. More specifically, they hoped (and feared) that they would catch a glimpse of its supposed inhabitant; the old hag said to snatch wayward children and make a meal of the naughtiest amongst them. Some towns have the Bogeyman; others the Chupacabra; some have been touched by enough real-world tragedy to not have need of fairy tales. This town, however, has the wicked witch in her run-down cabin in the woods. There are those who say she is wholly fictional, nothing but the product of a sleepy village mentality in a place with little else to occupy the starring role in its campfire tales; others who claim to have seen her as she pulled back the curtain to peek out at the world, throwing open the door to give chase to any curious children who dared to venture close enough, her hair frazzled and her shrieks piercing; others still who shrug off the rumours as malicious slander, certain they have served this so-called witch in the local shop when she wandered in to town to buy bread, milk and raspberry bonbons; just a regular old woman who prefers a slower pace of life. “Find some more stones,” said the boy. “Bigger ones this time. We gotta make sure she hears us.” The girl turned away from the house and began gathering the stones she could find without leaving easy eye-shot of her brother. Once her puppy-fat arms were full, she resumed her position and shared out the plunder. “Okay,” said the boy, “remember to aim for the window. It’ll be louder, and if she comes to check out the noise we’ll get a good look at her.” “I still don’t think this is such a good idea.” “Come on, just imagine how much everyone at school will freak if we can say we saw her with our own eyes.” “That’s if they even believe us.” “Don’t be such a spoil sport. We can’t back out now, chicken.” The girl pulled her arm back and launched a stone in an arc that ended with a smack against the window, splinters of glass raining to the ground and a spider’s web of cracks fanning out from the centre towards the worm-eaten frame. “Stop calling me that,” she said, face flushed blood-red. “Jeez, I didn’t mean you to hit it that hard.” “You shouldn’t have made me angry.” “You’re angry? How do you think the witch is gonna feel when she sees that?” There was a pause. “Maybe we should get out of here,” said the girl, dragging her hands down her dress to wipe away the film of mud and sweat that ran along the pathways of her palms. “… Well, Dad will be wondering where we are by now.” “Exactly. We’re not giving up…” “Yeah, we just don’t wanna get in trouble. I mean, we can’t come back tomorrow if we’re grounded.” “Mm-hm.” “Let’s go.” The children scrambled to their feet, discarded stones tumbling down the banking towards the house. Both stole hurried glances at the broken window as they hurried home, each careful not to let the other see the furrows that wrinkled their brow. “Are we really gonna come back tomorrow?” asked the girl. “I dunno. I think I might be bored of the house now.” “Yeah, me too. Let’s do something else tomorrow.” The whistle of the breeze through the trees at their back swallowed up the sound of their sighs, thick with candy-sweet relief. *** Nestled amongst the wool of a cushion torn open in curiosity, a mouse prepares to welcome her first litter. The sound of fragmented glass settling upon the floor like scattered stardust worried her. After all, she chose this place for its stillness, all previous semblance of life having fled the confines of these four walls long ago. Shredded newspaper clippings foraged from the cabin made ideal insulation for her new home; her babies soon to be cradled by crisp slivers adorned with whispers of a story long forgotten in a town left many miles and many years ago: ‘FIRE’… ‘CHILDREN’… ‘DEATH’… ‘MOTHER’… ‘HEARTBREAK’. She luxuriates in this fragile sanctuary, her heartbeat slowing as peace resettles like a downy blanket once more; a near silence broken only by the creak of old rope and the brush of tiptoes against cold, hard floor. About Callum McLaughlinCallum McLaughlin is a passionate bookworm, crazy-cat-person in training, and freelance writer based in Scotland. If he isn’t writing his own works of fiction and poetry, he will most likely be found reading someone else’s.
Blog: https://callummclaughlin.wordpress.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Callum_M1 i was always told i was destined for greatness so i am here to stand before you now you thought i was slain but the ravens, swans, and horses sewed me together with the hands of both the sun and moon every tree, every flower, every ocean knows my name and my purpose; i am a warrior of love and light the queen of the dreamers who will never be vanquished especially not by the hands of any nightmare perhaps your monsters should've done their homework i will etch you so far deep into the underworld that you will not be found by the caretaker of the deepest pit of hell whose agony will surrender you to the eternity of time. About Linda M. CrateLinda M. Crate's works have been published in numerous anthologies and magazines both online and in print. She is a two-time pushcart nominee and the author of the Magic Series. She has four published chapbooks the latest of which is My Wings Were Made To Fly (Flutter Press, September 2017).
You can find her on: https://twitter.com/thysilverdoe https://www.instagram.com/authorlindamcrate/ https://www.facebook.com/Linda-M-Crate-129813357119547/ |
Categories |