They do not close
The living are pretending
To be dead
And vice versa
They are pretending
The doors and fortochkas
Are closing
What used to live and grow
Is decaying
With a blue fingernail
Her little fingers
The boys are screaming
The boys are screaming
Motionless
Her little fingers
Hiding her nakedness
In the skirtalls
If you can love
Then love desperately
If you can float
Under zero gravity
In her room
In her room
Any vulgarity
And all the liberties
In her room
In her room
Oleg Hasanov (Russia)
THE DEVIL OF THE SANDS
Oleg Hasanov is a writer and translator, and also the founding editor of the international literary project, Horror Without Borders. He lives in the city of Chelyabinsk, where men are so tough that they light cigarettes off meteorites.
Don’t believe in what you see, or madness will creep into your soul
like grains of sand, and waves of dunes will hide your tracks.
The thirst for blood has led him to you – keep going,
don’t look back, or you are doomed to be imprisoned,
to be swallowed by this ghostly world of dreams…
Your caravan vanished in the desert of deception,
taken by storms blowing for fifty days,
these blinding, suffocating walls of dust.
And the fine sand castle,
which you have built,
will now become
your home
forever.
Michael Mulvihill (Ireland)
LIFE BLOOD
Michael Mulvihill was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1978. He eventually, in his late teens, became a bookworm completing degrees up to the Master’s Level in Addiction Studies, Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and Social Sciences. His initial fictional work was surreal short stories of horror which have been featured numerously in Black Petals, an online horror science fiction zine. He branched out to write an apocalyptic, post-Soviet horror novel, Siberian Hellhole, which was translated and published in Georgia. His latest novel, Syriacide, features The Syrian War. He is an avid reader of history and is fascinated by world events, South Africa, the USSR, and the philosophical idea of a dystopian society. At the moment he is writing a dystopian novel. An avid martial artist and film buff, he trains constantly in Kenpo Karate and loves to also relax whilst watching films.
In the meantime,
Take of my life blood,
Drink it whole,
It is all I got to give,
You have asked for everything,
It is there with a noose.
Laura McGlashan (England)
INHERITANCE
Laura McGlashan is a mature creative writing student, mother, and lover of written word. Laura is a poet and passionate about bringing a raw renewal of energy to creative nonfiction.
At five I am freckles and pigtails.
I inherit Marvin Gaye from my mother.
My father disappears the way cotton candy does when a tongue turns itself inside out.
At Twelve I am Donnell Jones.
I drink a fifth of Vodka and find my father between the sheets of other people’s beds.
Do you wanna love me?
At Sixteen I am DMX.
I am sewn back together after she’s born.
My mother’s indifference tastes a lot like the colour a fist paints itself when it unclenches.
Is you with me or what?
At Twenty I am Wu Tang Clan.
People who love me give my father’s violence back to me in mirrors.
Bring the motherfuckin ruckus. 
