Shelter in Place

by H. Marin

I questioned when the seafoam alien sky turned black in the middle of the day and the two suns batted and finally closed their eyes behind the gathering clouds like they were shy but when the bruise-purple funnel dropped down from the center of the darkness, recognition splashed us cold and there wasn’t time for questioning or screaming just running and grabbing whatever wasn’t nailed down or impossibly heavy or so large that it wouldn’t fit in the cellar and as Pa grabbed little Michael by the scruff of his neck and set off for the storm door the freshly- colonized planet’s three-hundred-and-seventy-first street sign ripped free from its hole and made for them like a heat-seeking missile and I nearly bit through my lip when I realized that Pa had never come to any of my dressage competitions on the old world where the horses had hair coats instead of loose pink skin and only four legs and he wouldn’t understand that he should serpentine—serpentine! I screamed, but my words were whipped away—and as the pole flew through his right side and came clean out the left and as the metal rectangle stamped with New Hope Farm Road struck Michael’s head with a final wet smack I asked myself isn’t this why we left Kansas when the pavement boiled and the twisters wouldn’t quit; isn’t this why we left Earth

H. Marin is a disabled queer author of dark speculative fiction. She is the former Managing Editor of Radon Journal, and in her editing work champions marginalized narratives. She is a current MFA candidate at Fairfield University. She lives in New England with her partner in literature and in life, her two children, and her two black cats. Her work is forthcoming in If There's Anyone Left's Volume 6. Find her on Bluesky at hanmarin@bsky.social.