THRICETHRICE FICTIONFICTION™ ISSUE No. 27 • DECEMBER 2019 • FINAL ISSUE To all the writers, artists, supporters, and readers who kept us going for these thrice times thrice years of Thrice Fiction, thank you. We’ve loved having you here with us. But we’re not done yet! Look for something new from Thrice Publishing one day, some day... THRICE FICTION™ ©2019 Thrice Publishing All content is copyrighted by their respective Published three times yearly creators and reproduced with permission. No part of this publication may be reproduced www.ThriceFiction.com without permission from the copyright holders. ™ THRICE FICTION™ Issue No. 27 • DECEMBER 2019 RW Spryszak, Editor David Simmer II, Art Director CONTENTS 2. Thrice 27 Notes by RW Spryszak 33. A Starry Sky by Barbara de la Cuesta 3. The Inside Woman by Kate Easley 37. Search by Bob Chikos 5. Alien Artifact by Craig Wilson 39. A Sacred History of Coal 7. The Light at Margate by Philip Kane by Augusto Todoele 10. Poorly Drawn Lines by Reza Farazmand 43. Expectation of Stars by Dan A. Cardoza 11. The Secret Life of Democrats 44. Admirer • Poignant • Maintenance by AE Reiff by Nigel Ford 15. Finding Factors of Very Large 46. Magnus Opus with Rodents Prime Numbers by L. Shapley Bassen by Suzanne C Martinez 18. An Encounter by Toni Fuhrman 49. Cowboy-gone by Mary K. Curran 21. Oscar in the Timeless by Bonny Finberg 54. Thrice Time’s a Charm by David Simmer II 23. The Room of Unanswered Prayers by Sharon Frame Gay 29. #connected by Jen Knox 30. Her Suggestions by Christina Rosso A guide to art & photos in this issue is on pages 56-57 THRICE PUBLISHING NFP, a private corporation registered in the state of Illinois, reaches outside the mainstream to publish the work of selected writers whose efforts, we feel, need to be seen. It’s flagship publication,THRICE FICTION, has been a platform for presenting this work alongside exceptional artwork since 2011. THRICE ARTS provides design and editing services to writers at large. Issue No. 27 — The Final Issue 1 Thrice 27 Notes RW Spryszak, Editor The plan is to take a break. Maybe a long break, maybe not. I don’t know. There are ethereal ideas about what Thrice Fiction would/could/should/ may ideally look like in the future, should we come back to it. I like the new ideas and, along with the slew of ISBNs we own, their existence may be enough of a reason to stage a comeback. What it would look like is a condition that would answer a lot of things I don’t like about Thrice Fiction’s position and function, currently. I’ve come to like a different presentation (size, thickness) than we use. I dislike the idea that it can’t be obtained in stores. And most of all I hate the idea that we reimburse nobody for their work and their talent. We make nothing – in fact we end up spending our own money – in all this. There are precious little donations. And, when we do sell the product, most of the money goes to the services that make the physical thing. Well… okay… that last thing doesn’t change no matter what we do. The only alternative is to build our own network of employee-owned print services (I know of one I’d like to use) and set up our own distribution network. Because not only do I distrust everything that ever came out of the internet, I – like most of you – am only too aware of the slow evolution to a publishing monopoly in the world that has been lurching toward control from a central master for years now. Such a thing takes time, energy, and money. And though I may have the first two I certainly don’t have the last one. I would like to see a magazine you can find on the bookstands as well as on our own online store. To hell with this Amazon crap. There are people successfully bucking their omnipresence. All it takes is the will to do it, really. I would like to see something the size of a paperback. Something that comes out, officially, “irregularly,” because I’d like to present a product that comes from a perfect mind rather than doing something we have to do because we imposed our own artificial conditions on its availability. I would also like to follow a format that features a lot of work from one writer, supported by smaller, if not single, contributions from a handful of others rather than twenty or twenty three people (as we do now). If we can do it all this way then, yes, we can actually afford an honorarium of some kind (even if it is only copies) to the writers and artists who we feature. If I can do that then I really don’t give a shit if we make money at this because money isn’t the goal, it’s the problem. So, I’m not sure when, if, or how we return. We have a ton of ISBNs we bought and I really dislike throwing stuff away I haven’t used, so there is that. Stay tuned to find out what happens to our plucky heroes next time. And thanks, everyone, for joining in. 2 THRICE FICTION™ • December 2019 The Inside Woman Kate Easley ragments of female body parts in black and of a guy killing eight nurses in the 1960s. She read about the white, confusing jolts and a man’s face against crime during the movie, all stoned and paranoid and freaked Japanese calligraphy. Gunshots. Screams. She was out on Wikipedia. He had wanted to watch the movie dreaming about the movie they watched one night because he liked experimental Japanese films, but she just when they were stoned in their old apartment. thought most of the stuff was boring and would have rather The night when the woman came to their door and scared been watching Gossip Girl or something. Fher half to death. Waking up was so bright and fake-clean So, when the knock came at the door, she could feel her smelling in that hospital, the scar over her appendix. Her throat plummet into her stomach and there was this crazy body part removed a few hours before. Someone moaning beating drum through every centimeter of her flesh; it was behind the curtain and patters of nurse feet in the endless the most scared she had ever been, she was sure. They didn’t hallways that zigzagged around and around like the NIMH have the lace curtains then, over the window on the door. experiment with rats. No lace curtains, just a blonde-haired head with a face and She was on painkillers and the TV was on and she bruises and a nothing expression. He didn’t see the woman, thought maybe she was still dreaming because of what didn’t hear the knocking, and he started laughing because he she saw. On TV, they were talking about the woman who thought she was just terrified by the movie. knocked on their door that night, her head was floating And then they were both at the door, her telling him inside a lurid blue rectangle. She wanted to call him: her ex. not to open it for a random person and him giving her an To call him and tell him that the woman’s head was on the annoyed look because obviously he wasn’t going to do that. TV, right there on channel six, right next to the coiffed news He had long known not to trust people knocking at the door lady with a symmetrical face. She wanted him to laugh and because his mother drilled that into his brain when they joke about how much weed they used to smoke and inquire got to the United States. The pouring rain had drenched about why the woman was on the TV. To dream about that the outside woman’s hair. She looked like an actress in a movie and then see the woman’s face, pixilated and sparkling romantic comedy about to tell the guy she loves him except there above her on the black box attached to the wall. How her face was bruised. fucking weird is that, she thought. The outside woman looked at her, the inside woman, They had been watching that creepy avant-garde but not at her ex. The inside woman left the outside woman exploitation movie with no real point, she thought, other standing there alone, got a piece of paper from a drawer than to show women getting killed. It was based on the story somewhere, and wrote a note: Sorry, I can’t open the door. Issue No. 27 — The Final Issue 3 Are you okay? The outside woman pulled an iPhone from a like people hadn’t loved her. She could have called a couple reusable shopping bag and took a minute to type something, friends from the office to give her a ride home, but an uber then held the phone to the window, screen against glass: No was just easier. The driver was not friendly, not human-like minutes left on this phone I need a taxi. Lumpy bruises on in his interactions with her. As they drove from the hospital, her arms and face. suburbia squeezed them like a weak hand, allowing parts to The taxi was called, and the outside woman waited on seep into unseen dimensions. It was so dark, she thought, for the porch.