by Sophie Hammond
Trust me, he says. Like itâs that easy.
The funny thing is, for him trust isnât easy at all. He always has to be the one in charge, the one keeping the blindfold wrapped around my eyes, the one arranging my hair so that it falls in rough choking silk across my mouth and nose. If I ever offered to do it the other way aroundâto blindfold him, to hold him steady for the unforgiving gaze of the cameraâheâd panic. He wouldnât protest, but his eyes would go wide and desperate and his knuckles would clench white around the steady base of the tripod.
So I donât offer. Instead I stare blindly, through layers of hair and crĂȘpe, as he soothes me like I need it. His slow, patronizing voice is perhaps the very opposite of soothing. It sets off itches beneath my skin, shuddering waves of goose pimples, and my stomach clenches. Far more soothing is the anger, dark and hot, which pulses through me like a second heartbeat. This he cannot control, no matter how much he wants to.
Sophie Hammond is sixteen years old and a senior in high school. Her writing has been recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards and her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Moledro Magazine and the 2016 Navigating the Maze teen poetry anthology. She is an alumna of the Iowa Young Writersâ Studio and has read on a teen writersâ panel at the Bay Area Book Festival. You can find her on Twitter @SophieCHammond.
Amanda Bergloff is a science fiction/fantasy writer who has had stories published by Darkhouse Books (Stories from the World of Tomorrow) and World Weaver Press (Frozen Fairy Tales.) She is also a surrealist artist who loves all things pop-culture, and the interior of her mind looks like 1950s sci fi pulp art. 
An empty house lived at the end of his street. Trees like claws stopped other kids, as if they grabbed ankles and wrists and hoods of sweatshirts. He found a way there by looking somewhere else, sidewalk-crack-sidewalk, then dead grass. Up. White oval shapes lingered behind black windows. In. A slamming back door echoed staple-guns putting up his HAVE YOU SEEN THIS CHILD posters. Three years later, after his classmates had grown into pimples and too-short jeans, he came out, hollow-eyed and shaking. He struck the trees, also, with a wet axe from the living house, his body now a manâs body, sweating hard. They took him to a hospital, depressingly white and clean and smelling like medicine, but he still saw the house by not looking. When the demolition cranes came, they were like hands that scooped shingles off the roof, the strange Victorian spires crumbled, broken plaster and creaking timbers screamed, undefined white shapes tumbled down in a cloud of dust. The house at the end of the street died. After, he went home with a face blank as a sheet of paper, something so normal and unwritten, and, in the night, his memories clutched at him, as if they grabbed ankles and wrists and hoods of sweatshirts.
Karen Bovenmyer
Anne E. Johnson is based in Brooklyn. She writes speculative and historical fiction, both for adults and for kids and teens. Learn more on her website, 
Maureen Bowden is a Liverpudlian, living with her musician husband in North Wales, where they try in vain to evade the onslaught of their children and grandchildren. She has had seventy-two stories and poems accepted for publication by paying markets, including âGrievous Angelâ, âThird Flatironâ, Alban Lakeâ, âMad Scientists Journalâ, and âUnsettling Wonderâ, among others. Silver Pen publishers nominated one of her stories for the 2015 international Pushcart Prize.
Erick Mancilla works day and night trying to find the door to that Other Dimension. He writes short stories in the hope The Key will be found within one of them. He is a blogger at 
Born in Meissen, Germany in the winter of 1984, 
Christopher Walker is a writer and English teacher based in the South of Poland. His work can be found at