Et Sequitur Magazine

Issue 1 (May 2022)

Spirit, Hold

By A.J. Cunder

A ghost once haunted my canvas. On a winter solstice, as the dying sun snuck through the crumbling window of the art gallery, a white silhouette appeared in my frame, translucent as though his artist had forgotten to finish his body. Perhaps he was a remnant, a memory lingering in the oils. He faced me, my arm frozen half through his chest, features inscrutable amid warm shades of amber and gold, cerulean sky folded down to embrace us...

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Issue 2 (July 2022)

Drawback

By Lindz McLeod

The bench in the gallery looks comfortable—padded with plush velvet—but the girl’s parents don’t approve of lingering, especially in places like this. The walls are a deep, comforting garnet, like being tucked inside your mother’s cheek, squirrel-close; like being blown, dandelion feather-light, on the hearty strength of your father’s yawn. The family examine each artwork for a similar period of time—frequently a question is asked and answered on both sides—before they move on at a relentless, glacial pace...

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Issue 3 (September 2022)

An Ordinary Tale of Extraordinary Desire

By Kiersten Gonzalez

Gregory looks out the window of the cramped office to the forest. A mystery lingers in the mist rising from it. And the whisper of leaves…like spilled secrets. For years, he had walked in the little city below—on a lunch break, avoiding work—to gaze at the monastery on the hill. The colored glass glinting in the sunshine, the enchanting harmony wafting down…he’d nearly drop the sticky, glowing screen in his hand, as if the world contained in it ceased to exist.

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Issue 4 (November 2022)

Splice

By Shih-Li Kow

Sofia falls asleep reading a book at the beach and her two-year-old daughter drowns in the sea. The beach is deserted, there’s no one to help, and she’s racing, wading, crashing towards Angie. She pumps Angie’s thin chest with half-remembered CPR, choking back panic, singing “Baby Shark” to time her compressions. Emergency numbers run through Sofia’s head—her husband’s, her sister’s, 999, her doctor’s—until she remembers the most important number of them all. She dials the hotline of her insurance company.

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Issue 5 (January 2023)

Memento Maurie

By Andy Contari

Malachai could smell death. It wasn’t the stench of a rotting carcass, but rather like an autumn orchard when half the harvest falls and ferments. His parents never understood, all those years ago, when Malachai asked why their parakeet smelled like the mushy brown apples in their yard. His mother had shrugged and told Malachai the smell would go away eventually—nothing lasts forever, except God and apple trees, she’d always say. They thought, perhaps, Fergus had gotten into the trash, or perhaps Malachai had taken him outside to play where fallen apples gathered beneath their ancient tree with its limbs clawing the sky.

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Issue 6 (March 2023)

Formal Objection to the Repeal of Ordinance 162...

By Kevin P. Keating

For ten years, Pullman served as president of our homeowner’s association. We always trusted his judgment, but you can certainly appreciate why we began having doubts. On a soggy May morning a year ago, without notifying the board or calling a meeting, Pullman hired a surveyor to mark his property line. Two days later, he hired a landscaping crew to remove from his backyard all of the shrubs and decorative dogwoods that were then in full flower. That weekend he rented a backhoe and paid a union operator to grade the yard and create a gentle slope around the white oak behind his house. This task completed, he had hundreds of feet of lumber delivered and neatly stacked behind the house. In the evenings, while walking our Labradoodles and Wire-Haired Griffins around the block, we spied Pullman wandering among the wooden pyramids like some suburban pharaoh contemplating the prospect of his embalmment. He made no mystery of his intentions. Last summer, he’d promised his two boys he’d build them a tree fort, and now he was making good on that promise.

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Issue 7 (July 2023)

What I Told the TV Host

By Mandira Pattnaik

My girlfriend was murdered but she keeps sending me emails and tagging me in tweets. I’d expect that. She always had a knack for being quirky. Besides, one can always schedule them. Maybe she did. Who doesn’t? It’s hip to make your boss think you’re working at 2 AM when you are not, especially if you’re in a sales job like mine, and you are marketing miscellaneous credit loans no one would take if times weren’t this bad. I wouldn’t mind her random shock-treatment for fun, but tonight, as I was getting ready to come here, my first chance at being half-a-celebrity because the world wants to know what happened to Sheena Bolshevi, about what all I know, about what she told me, I curiously received a call. And it was from her.

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Issue 8 (Winter 2024)

Ludwig

By Kiersten Gonzalez

“How’s your drink, Vivian?” he asks—The Date whose name I can’t remember—as he adjusts his faded gray sweater for the sixth time. His question blends seamlessly with the ones before it. What’s your favorite season? Are you a morning person or a night person? Any siblings? Are you always this quiet? How did your last relationship end?

“He’s such a bore,” Ludwig says, sitting beside The Date at the bar. If it weren’t for their vastly different outfits, they would both look nearly thirty. Ludwig’s wearing the same outfit he has on every day: a dark jacket with long tails at the back, a red silk vest, and matching neck scarf with gold thread accents. Fortunately, he’s removed his top hat since we’re inside, otherwise he’d look especially ridiculous. He’s a relic from another time.

But only I can see him.

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Issue 10 (Summer 2024)

The Words Beneath

By Michael Harris Cohen

“This is it,” Lily said.

It was just a smear of green on a lonely hill, an old cemetery in the middle of nowhere Bulgaria. Gravestones leaned like bad teeth, the names and dates long eroded.

It was our ninth graveyard in three months and I knew it wouldn’t be the last. Because the last one was supposed to be the last, and the one before that.

All of it. Us.

Lily dropped her backpack to the ground. She didn’t bother with the pretense of taking photos, not anymore. Maybe that had been a lie—her whole Death Calendar thing. Who knows? She’d given up with the photos after the fifth graveyard.

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Et Sequitur Magazine