Breach: Issue #07: NZ and Australian SF, Horror and Dark Fantasy

By Breach

**Featuring Alfie Simpson's "Sub-Urban", winner of the 2018 Aurealis Awards Best Horror Short Story. Congratulations, Alfie!**

Breach's seventh issue continues our grand tradition of finding the best short fiction from New Zealand and Australia. Tee Linden's Australian Gothic tale "Waiting for the Other Shoe to" kicks things off, and it doesn't let up until the closing lines of Hari Navarro's horrific fantasy "The Naked Astronaut".

In between, find Lee Murray's steampunk re-imagining of an iconic Frank Sargeson short story, and fresh from her win at the Australian Shadows Awards, our resident Body Horror Queen Claire Fitzpatrick is back with a classic gore fest of bugs, self-esteem issues and motherly love (or lack thereof). In "Sub-Urban", read the story that gave our editor nightmares, and Kiwi author Ronnie Smart returns with an honest-to-God sonnet. Oliver Hayes provides the "Scarab"-inspired cover art.

Breach is a bi-monthly digital magazine with a focus on new and emerging Australian and New Zealand writers and artists. Thank you for supporting independent publishing!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Breach
• Release date: Nov 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463739983

Breach

Breach is bi-monthly online zine showcasing Australian and NZ writers and artists, with a lean to sci-fi and horror. Our focus is on new and emerging Australian and New Zealand writers and artists, and helping them get their work out into the world. Publishers of Alfie Simpson's "Sub-Urban" (Breach #07), winner of the Best Horror Short Story at the 2018 Aurealis Awards. Our stories have been shortlisted for numerous awards, including the Aurealis, Australian Shadows and the Sir Julius Vogel Awards. We only publish what we love and believe in and we champion our authors every way we can.

Book preview

Issue #07

Science Fiction, Horror and Dark Fantasy from Australia and New Zealand.

ISSN 2209-2196

Copyright © 2018 by each individual author as noted.

All rights reserved.

Find us online at:

breachzine.com

facebook.com/breachzine

twitter.com/BartholemewFord

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Cover Art by Oliver Hayes

Design and Layout by Peter Kirk

Edited by Peter Kirk

Published by Breach

Thank you for supporting independent publishers, writers and artists.

Contents

Tee Linden — Waiting for the other shoe to

Lee Murray — COG1

Claire Fitzpatrick — Scarab

Ronnie Smart — Traumatic Reflections

Alfie Simpson — Sub-Urban

Hari Navarro — The Naked Astronaut

Waiting for the other shoe to

Tee Linden

Tee Linden is a member of the NSW Writer’s Centre. Her articles appear twice monthly at The Sydney Feminists. Her short stories Bounds and The Witch are included in anthologies from Margaret River Press and Stringybark Publishing, both in 2018. Her work has been published in AntipodeanSF, Meow Meow Pow Pow and Pink Cover Zine and is upcoming in various literary magazines. Find more at teelinden.com

Sheila died three months ago. I know this. I was there. I also know she’s coming for me. And there’s nothing I can do about it. She wears the shadows. She wears them like they’re fabric. She wears them like she’s death.

I sit on the empty floorboards by the battery-powered work light, stinking and red eyed, with three-day-old beard sprouting from my cheeks.

I know she’ll come tonight. She comes every night. Looking for a way in, looking to take what’s hers. Looking to pay me back. And she’ll get through my meagre defences eventually, if not tonight, or the next, then another. If it’s another, why not tonight.

Tonight is as good as any other.

***

The god forsaken horse flies.

During the day, they crawl on my calloused knuckles. They skulk across my face, spread tiny fly feet over my lips and stroke my closed eyelids. Then they set their saw blade mouthparts against me and they scissor the skin open for my guilty blood. Taking it in tiny sips. For her.

There is no release. No respite.

With a thousand minute stings, they wake me during the day — the only time I can sleep. They won’t leave me alone. Their buzzing is deafening. They’re loud as a jet engine readying for take-off. Their buzzing feels like it damn near shakes the house.

Only the female horse fly needs blood.

My Dad told me that, beer in his hand as he slumped in a fold out chair before the fire at our campsite, his pocked face glowing orange from the flames.

Only the females bite.

Of course, he said. Of course it’s the females that cause the trouble. Isn’t that