Here at Jersey Devil Press, there are three things we look for in a story: strangeness, beauty, and poop jokes. And while this collection is admittedly a little shy on scatological humor, the 18 works collected here are easily the strangest and most beautiful things we’ve ever published.

The 2015 Jersey Devil Press Anthology contains the best work from our last five years, written by some of our favorite authors. We love them in a way we’re not entirely comfortable with.

And we know you’ll feel the same.

Featuring work by Nicola Belte, Jackson Burgess, Christopher DeWan, J.D. Hager, Anna Lea Jancewicz, Liz Kicak, Christopher Lettera, Kimberly Lojewski, Ally Malinenko, Matthew Myers, Ben Nardolilli, Michael Sions, Danger Slater, y.t. sumner, Sloan Thomas, Graham Tugwell, and Yvonne Yu.

Available now. Get a copy at Amazon and Smashwords.

Ally Malinenko

When the rumor circulated that the lion had been prowling just below 59^th Street, Joseph Dix loaded his revolver and, much to the chagrin of his hysterical wife, headed for the front door. She didn’t comprehend the point in going out when The Herald reported that the mayor had the city on lock-down. But then again, Ms. Valerie Dix, née Blanchett-Sauvette, had only lived in New York for three years now and had yet to fully comprehend why Americans acted the way they did. The things she had seen below 14^th Street would never be tolerated in her own, much missed, Paris.

Ms. Dix standing halfway down the staircase held up the newspaper report that read in bright bold letters AWFUL CALAMITY and A SHOCKING CARNIVAL OF DEATH, begging him once again to stay inside. “At least seventy animals are free,” she said reading from the paper. “Joseph, you cannot go out there. This is madness.”

He stopped at the door, peeking through the side lights and then feeding bullets one by one into his revolver said, “The wild animals of the park are loose and roaming my city, Valerie. What would you have me do?”

“Stay inside like a reasonable person!” Valerie shrieked.

But Joseph Dix took much pride in always being his own man and his tolerance for hysterics, especially female hysterics, was at an all-time low. He tucked the revolver into his waistcoat and warned his wife to stay away from the windows.

Besides he knew that already this freakish experience had transformed into an opportunity. And these days opportunity was a commodity he rarely traded in. No one had expected that the cages at the Central Park Zoo would prove so inadequate. The zoo had only been formally called so since the recent city charter, and already the city was threatened. The paper had reported forty-nine souls had been lost, with only half of them identified. The description of the rhino gorging was particularly grisly. Joseph couldn’t help but question how the locks on all the cages came loose. According to The Herald, it was possibly sabotage. Regardless, he was incapable of standing by, not while Grant was fouling up the reconstruction and the depression that began last year still had her hot hands wrapped around the financial district. He had to do something. Joseph was keenly aware that his chance to do something profound was slipping by.

And in just the few minutes since he had begun talking he saw them passing by his door. One by one, walking in slow steady packs, silhouetted, sketched on the fog by the flickering gas lamps: men with guns.

Hunters.

The city was slowly transforming, in just a single day, from the center of urbanity to a world not unlike Livingstone’s jungle.

“I’m begging you,” his wife said from the steps. Joseph watched how her hands wrinkled the paper, clutching it tight. He despised panic, he found it characteristically un-American, but his wife touched something tender in him. Something unexpected. Without answering he slid back the lock and opened the front door.

The air on the street was static. In the fog, Joseph could see figures moving and he was barely seventeen steps from his front door when the first crack of gunfire ripped through the air. He ducked and scooted towards the low wall buffeting the park. In the distance he heard men shouting and then the screech of something utterly unhuman.

“Dix!”

Joseph turned and saw crouching along the wall his neighbor James Thomas clutching a rifle. Joseph scurried back towards him and the two of them sat with their backs against the park wall like soldiers.

“It’s bad, Thomas.”

“Two hundred injured, they say. The police are nowhere to be found.”

“How long have you been out here?”

“Quarter hour.”

“Seen anything?”

“Just you.”

Joseph nodded, his hand warm around his gun. The early November fog rolled slowly through the city, blanketing it in an eerie sea green glow. Joseph thought of his wife at home, imagined her pacing the upper bedroom, staying away from the window not because he had told her so but because Valerie knew, as he knew, that there was terror, terror as real as The War going on in the streets below her.

Things seen can never be unseen.

“Best of luck, Thomas,” Joseph said, rising.

“Where are you going?” Thomas hissed.

“To do what must be done.”

Even as he left he could hear Thomas whispering his name, begging him to come back. But he wasn’t going to get what needed to be done crouching alongside the park wall like a scared child. Besides, Thomas was a waste, a skin sack waiting to be filled with food and wine so that he could regurgitate more vile political nonsense. And if Joseph was going to be ripped to shreds by a lion it was not going to be at James Thomas’ side. There had to be a nobler place to die. He had missed The War by just a few years. Instead he watched his brothers leave and die, one after another, to fight for the sanctity of this Union. His father had been wounded early on but never let a day go by where a story wasn’t told. Joseph felt it, the way it dragged at his ankles, this need to do something. Something profound. Something right. Something, if not for his country, then for the city he loved.

The gas lamps flickered and every shadow transformed into a wild animal as he turned up Fifth Avenue. It was a stagnant foggy night, like a sea before a storm, the kind of night where you could smell the seawater wafting all the way up from the estuary. Valerie had begged him to vote against the expansion of the Menagerie. What nonsense she cried, wild animals in the heart of the metropolis. It was a mockery of Mother Nature.

She had not dared invoke God before Joseph. Valerie knew exactly where her husband stood on the eternal question of what lay behind the veil of mortality: firmly, though secretly, in the non-believer camp. God had left Joseph, that chilly September morning when the Lord stole through the window like a vengeful goblin in one of Valerie’s fairy stories and took with Him the soul of Joseph’s baby daughter. All that He left behind was a cold waxy pink shell. And when He did so, Joseph took back the part of his own soul that had been conscripted to the Heavenly Father and offered up instead something black and dangerous. Something that Valerie did not dare rouse.

Things seen can never be unseen.

A scream erupted just to his right and Joseph swung his pistol towards the bush next to him, which shook ferociously. From it, a monkey leapt, its brown matted hair brushing right past Joseph’s face. It stopped for a moment on the top of a carriage and observed Joseph, its face a rubbery distortion of mankind. The creature emitted another fang-baring scream and then bounded off down the street.

Its hands. Its hands looked so human.

In his head Joseph heard his own pastor from his youth telling him that God had made all these creatures for Man to have. To command at his will. But Joseph could not help but think that something that close to human was not a gift but in fact a terrible mirror.

A reminder.

Before he was able to fully collect himself, steady his own shaking hand, and continue down the street, Joseph heard the clatter of hooves and with a not small bit of relief realized the cavalry must be here. The police had been slow to respond to the emergency, but they must be finally here. Except what clattered up the pavement was not mounted police nor even the chestnut muzzles of harnessed horses but instead four panicked zebras clattering down the center of Fifth Avenue, their eyes wild with fear, nostrils flared, foam dripping from the corners of their mouths. They clattered past him, bumping into one another and then into carriage omnibus parked on the side of the street. From the corner of his eye Joseph watched a wet shadow leap onto the park wall and race after the panicked zebras.

The panther was bigger than he could have imagined, even in his worst dreams. It leapt from the wall and pounded after the zebras, taking the smaller one down by the flank just a block north of where he stood. The zebra’s scream ripped through the air sounding so vivid and so much like a dying child, Joseph was stopped in his tracks. The gun hung utterly useless at his side as he watched the blood spread like a blanket across the road.

Another shot was fired from somewhere, causing the hysterical zebra to scream again before the panther put it out of its misery with a quick bite to the neck. Then, as easy as pulling tender chicken meat from a bone, sunk its teeth into the creature’s leg and tore it from its body. The panther took its reward and with the agility of an alley cat leapt upon the wall, disappearing into the park, dark as midnight.

Joseph raised his gun, not with any real purpose, as the panther was already gone but just so he could see it. It was a sign that he had some means of protection. A reminder that against teeth and claw he was not naked and weak. Valerie had been right all along. Coming out here was madness. What was his intention really? Two hundred were reported injured already. Forty-nine killed. He glanced again at the dead zebra, the wash of blood, lava-like, working its way towards him. In the stillness of the city Joseph felt something rise in him, something he hadn’t felt in the years since he had reached into the bassinet and picked up his own dead daughter.

“How pointless,” he whispered toward the carcass of the zebra. And then it seized him. He must return home immediately. Being here on the street with this weapon in his hand, he was committing some sort of cosmic treason. There had been no place for him in The War and now there was no place for him in this manufactured city. Under the layers and layers of concrete there was still mud and earth — an earth that was teeming with life that cannot be hidden or changed or truly killed. Nature would always out. In the end it would find its way back up through all the cracks that man had felt so sure he had paved over. It would find him and remind him he too is animal.

Joseph turned and headed back towards 59^th street, back towards home and Valerie and a life that had, at one time, made perfect sense to him. His hysterical heart told him there was a path back to that. He just needed to stay on it.

At the end of the street, the giraffe was just standing there, as bewildered to find itself here as Joseph was to see it, half wrapped in the fog that rolled down the street. It stood utterly still, its legs unimaginably long — a creature that seemed to be crafted from a child’s imagination, sketched on paper and then breathed into existence here on street. Its neck graceful and arched turned toward Joseph and considered him for just a moment before it took a single careful step forward.

Joseph didn’t dare breathe watching it move slowly down the street. Its perfectly round belly, the way it lowered its head so that its long neck was horizontal, attempting to see eye-level with the man on the street. It watched him as he watched it. Naturally, Joseph meant the creature no harm, and yet here he was with a gun and no means to confess that special necessary sentiment. For a moment the giraffe bucked, rearing up like a horse, stamping a hoof against the city street and bleating like a goat.

It dared him. Or possibly just acknowledged him, a fact that Joseph embraced more fully than he had embraced the previous fifty-two years of his life. For the first time ever, he was really being seen.

Shaken by this, Joseph took a step back and broke whatever it was that had existed between them. The giraffe turned then, heading towards the avenue, away from him. It ran, galloping graceful strides, before stopping once and turning back to look at him warily.

It wasn’t until the gunfire splintered the quiet that Joseph realized he had forgotten to breathe. The animal swayed, stumbled, its long legs now a hindrance, before it collapsed in a twisted pile. In the distance he heard men yelling, disjointed cries and the stampede of feet. Something somewhere screamed.

Joseph waited until the quiet returned before venturing towards the creature. Its long neck twisted and flopped on the street like a snake. By the time Joseph reached it, it was dead, a single bullet hole through its hide close to the heart. Whoever pulled the trigger was an excellent marksman. Joseph couldn’t help but wonder if they had fought in The War. If they had taken down many others.

He kneeled down near the giraffe’s head, examining the hard rounded horns on its head, the deep long nostrils, the velvety ears, not unlike a cat’s. Tentatively he reached out and gently lifted its face. It was surprisingly heavy, the weight of this dead animal’s skull in his shaking hands. He tried but failed to avoid looking into those two black eyes. They were not round and dark as lumps of coal as they seemed from a distance but instead a dark brown iris with a tender pupil. In it, he saw his own wretched reflection. Things seen can never be unseen.

With a careful hand he reached up, extended his finger and slowly brushed its eyelashes, letting each individual lash kiss his finger before standing, placing the barrel of the revolver against his temple and firing.

ALLY MALINENKO is the author of the poetry collection The Wanting Bone (Six Gallery Press), the children’s book Lizzy Speare and the Cursed Tomb (Antenna Books) and the YA novel This Is Sarah (BookFish Books). She lives in the part of Brooklyn that the tour buses don’t come to.

Ally Malinenko

If there is no reference point it’s nearly impossible to tell how fast you’re traveling. That’s one of the first things you notice about deep space. The second is that when galaxies or, in this case, anything else arrives, they arrive quickly.

“Commander?”

“Yes MAC?” I ask, still standing on the platform in front of all that black. It seems to go on forever, and according to our research it does. The universe is expanding faster than we can track it. One day though, it will stop. And then it will contract, fold in on itself, warping time and space, pulling itself back together, undoing the Big Bang with the Big Crunch. And then it will all be over.

“A reading of your vitals says you didn’t take your pill this morning?”

“I have it here,” I say, staring down at the little orange pill in my palm. Longevity pills.

“L pills need to be taken within a four-hour timeframe.”

“I know that MAC.” I know it’s not possible, but his voice sounds concerned. As if he was capable of emotion, of empathy. As if “he” were an actual he. I toss the pill in my mouth and swallow. “See?” I say. “All gone.”

I know he can track the pill though my system without even touching me. Everything about this ship is state of the art. It’s an honor to be selected. I knew that. And it still is, even now, even so far from home, so far from my own galaxy. I still believe in the mission. What little boy didn’t dream of going to space? To be picked for a Longevity Mission was the highest possible honor. I still wake each morning with the same delicious feeling that today could be the day that I find what I was sent out here to find. Except that hasn’t been the case. Not for one hundred years.

“Commander?”

“Yes, MAC?”

“Are you exercising or would you like nutrition?”

“Exercising.”

MAC says “nutrition” instead of “food” because we don’t have food. But we do have nutrition. Prior to my mission, I hadn’t eaten meat in ten years. And yet, out here, all I want is a hamburger. Nutrition, like longevity, comes in pill form. So do mood stabilizers, but I stopped taking those a long time ago. The stabilizers made it easier not to miss things, like food (and conversation with actual people), but I found that wanting things like that reminded me that I was here, alive, in this moment. Being alone for so long, you can forget those things.

“Commander?”

“Yes, MAC?” I ask, hopping onto the treadmill, pulling off my shirt and applying the sensors across my chest. MAC will do a full body analysis, make sure everything is functioning as it should be.

“There is something coming in over the satellite com.”

“It’s probably gravity static from an asteroid.”

“I don’t believe it is, Commander.”

“Turn it up,” I say, picking up the speed on the treadmill. MAC dials up the volume and it takes a second before it fills my ship. It’s music. Classical music.

“This is what you’re picking up?” I ask.

“Yes.”

We’d sent out tons of eggs over the years — capsules full of information for any possible life form. They were filled with a history of our way of life, our planet. Messages in bottles tossed into the deepest reaches of space. We had never retrieved one — never had a response from them. That’s why the manned missions were started. That’s why I was here.

“It’s probably just an egg,” I say.

“Negative, Commander. Listen.” MAC turns down the reverb on the violins. “Behind the music is this.”

I stop jogging. Strain my ears but I don’t hear anything. “MAC you have to dial it up. What are you reading?”

“The sinusoidal wave is at 180 hertz.”

“That’s impossible.” I pull the sensors off me, and put my shirt back on.

“I’m afraid you are incorrect, Commander. The fundamental frequency is in fact 180 hertz.”

“Music doesn’t play at 180 hertz.”

“Correct.”

“Dial it all the way up, MAC.” I wonder if I’ll even be able to hear it with my heart beating in my chest the way it is. But there it is. Soft at first, then louder. It’s the sound of a woman humming along to the piece that was playing.

“Are you getting a reading?” I ask.

“Indeed, sir.”

“Show me.”

When the image flashes up on the screen my breath catches. It’s a Z-82 Airbird. The exact same model as my ship. It was another Longevity Commander. I can’t help but run the numbers in my head, the likelihood, or more so the sheer impossibility that I would run into another Longevity Commander out in all this space.

“This isn’t possible,” I say.

“Negative, Commander. The likelihood of finding another Z-82 is one in — ”

“A trillion,” I answer.

“Correct, Commander.”

How many times had I sent out that call? In the beginning I would sit in the chair and randomly press that button, the one that sends out a beacon searching for another Commander.

It never found anything. And now, I’ve just run right into another AirBird.

“Can you patch into its com?” I ask MAC. It’s a stupid question. Of course he can.

“We’re in,” MAC says. There is a feedback-like squeal that fills the ship.

“Connect with the operating system and send a link request.”

“Link confirmed and approved.”

I lean over the microphone and say, “This is Commander Shield. Do you copy?”

There is another high squeal of feedback before I hear a voice. A woman’s voice. “Evening, Commander. This is Commander Evans.”

My heart is racing in my ears. There are so many things I want to ask her I’m not even sure where to start.

“I can only see you on the satellite,” she says. “How long you expect until we have visual confirmation?”

“Send MAC your coordinates.”

They flash on the screen, mapping out her path. Evans just left the galactic center of Abell 4415. Based on her current course in two months we’ll pass each other.

“So it looks like we’re destined to meet after all?” Evans says. Her laugh bounces off the walls of my ship and suddenly I feel faint. I run the numbers again. I try not to think about how long it’s been since I’ve heard another human voice.

We talk. We trade stories about life back home. That fills the first week. I stand up on the platform edge waiting to see her ship appear in the darkness. But for now it’s just dotted with the stars of the galaxies before me.

We talk. Constantly. All day and well into the night. Or what we call night which is really just logged rest hours. In the second week, after we’ve already said goodbye, her voice comes back on.

“Commander? Are you sleeping?”

I open my eyes, lift my head towards the platform. Still just blackness. “No, what is it? Are you alright?”

“Have you ever thought about why you did this?”

“The mission?”

“Yes.”

“It’s an honor,” I say.

“Company line. Tell me the truth.”

I sigh and get out of my pod. As soon as I move, MAC fires up.

“You are awake, Commander.”

“It’s fine MAC.” I tell him. “I’m just talking.”

He runs a diagnosis of my vitals, an image of my body appears on the screen.

“Commander Shield?” Evans asks again.

“I’m here.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I did it because it’s the chance of a lifetime. I did it because I’ll see things that no one else will ever see. I’ve been traveling the universe for over a hundred years now. It’s an honor.”

“Alone.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’ve been traveling the universe alone.”

Not any more, I almost say but don’t.

“The chance of our paths crossing is incredible, you know?” Her voice is soft.

“I know,” I say, but so quietly I doubt her com even picked it up.

“It’s just incredible, you showing up now.”

“Why’s that?” I ask, still gazing out in the dark.

“I almost . . . I’ve been thinking about . . . you know, not.”

“Not.” I repeat. I close my eyes. Hadn’t I also been thinking about not?

“Yeah,” she says.

“How long have you been out here, if I can ask.”

“350 years.”

“My god, that’s . . . .that’s . . . .incredible.”

Evans laughs and the sound of it makes my stomach flutter.

I think about the longevity pills. It’s always been our choice. We take them. Or we don’t. The mission lasts as long as we want it to. When we’re done, when we’re ready to not, we just stop taking them. It doesn’t take long and it’s utterly painless. Our ships return to port on their own. They will be empty by then. Our bodies will be disposed of before docking.

“I’m glad you didn’t,” I say. Evans doesn’t answer and I fumble. “I mean, for all that you’ve seen and sent back to home. The distance you’ve mapped. It’s . . . ” I struggle for a word. “Vital.”

“Vital. Yes.”

I think of those men, millennia ago, who set sail and mapped our home world. We are cut from the same stone. There is something that keeps driving us forward, constantly. We leave our own lives behind just to know what’s out there.

“Commander?” she says.

“Yes.”

“I apologize for waking you. I’m going to get some rest now.”

“Okay.”

“We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“Of course.”

We talk every day. She sends me data from her journeys to galaxies I haven’t seen yet. I send her mine. Neither of us has ever found any sign of an alien life. Never a blip on the screen, never another ship. Nothing but space.

We make jokes.

She makes me laugh.

Each day I watch the blackness for signs of her ship. When we map our paths again, we see that we are seventy-two hours from passing.

“How close will we be?” I ask but what I want to ask is Will I be able to see you?

“MAC calculates that we’ll pass within fifteen feet of each other. Will you be on the platform, Commander?”

“Enough with the Commander. Please call me — ”

“No.” Evans yells. “Don’t tell me your name. I don’t want to know until I see you.”

“But when we are within that range, our frequencies will overload. We won’t be able to talk. The coms will go static.”

“I know.”

We come up with a plan.

I can see her ship from the platform now. A silver orb wobbling in all that dark. I don’t feel like a Commander watching her ship get closer. I feel like a teenage boy, going on his first date.

MAC warns me that communication is going to cut off soon.

“Commander?” I say.

“Yes?”

“I guess this is goodbye for a while.”

She laughs. “Oddly enough it’s also hello.”

I smile. The static builds.

“I’ll see you soon,” she says.

“Yes.” There are so many things I want to tell her. I almost try but then the static screams through the ship and I tell MAC to dial it down for god’s sake. I can see the nose of her craft clearly now. Soon our platforms will face each other and then I will see her. I stand at the furthest end so that as we pass, I can walk the distance of the wide window. So that I can see her for as long as possible.

“Pull the panels back, MAC,” I say and he does. The solar panels that protect me contract and now the window doubles in size. The nose of her ship fills my view and I gasp at the sheer size of it.

Her platform window comes in to view and there she is. Dressed in the same Commander blues as me. Her hair is cut in a shoulder-length bob. She smiles at me. I laugh with the sheer joy of seeing her, alive, in front of me. She mouths the word “hi” and gives me a little wave. I do the same.

Ready? she mouths.

I nod.

We each hold up the signs we created.

On mine I’ve written Eirik.

On hers, Monica.

Hi Monica, I mouth.

She laughs, her head thrown back and my stomach summersaults. We have to start walking now as our ships pass. She presses her hand up against the glass of her platform window and I do the same. It feels, for a brief moment, like I’m actually touching her and the sensation makes me dizzy. I close my eyes for a second and then open them, terrified of missing something. I can feel myself shaking. She’s so beautiful and alive and right here. She must be thinking something similar because she wipes at a tear. Monica is younger than me. She must have made Commander early. So smart. So brave. Monica.

My Monica.

I suddenly love her so much. I remember everything we’ve talked about this last month. I remember why I did this to begin with. I think of all those people back home, and how they are sleepwalking through their life. How they don’t appreciate every single second they’re given. Every single beautiful person they are privileged to know. Monica reminds me of that just by being here, alive in all that stretching darkness. How lucky we are, just to even have this moment together.

I want to tell her all of this. But instead I tell her I love her.

Her smile widens. I love you, too, she mouths.

I’ve reached the end of my platform now. I press myself against the window wishing I could slow our ships down.

“Goodbye,” she mouths.

“Hello,” I say and then again, she laughs.

Her ship passes completely and darkness fills my window. I sit down and think about Monica. About how lucky I am. I feel dizzy with joy.

“Commander?”

“Yes, MAC?”

“Communication link has been restored.”

“Hi, Eirik.” Monica’s voice fills my cabin.

“Hi, Monica.”

“I think that might have been the best moment of my life.”

“Me too.”

What now? I wonder but don’t want to say. We’ll probably have another month or so before we’re too far apart and our link is broken. Instead I tell her a story about the letters that Captain James Cook used to drop into the sea as he sailed to the bottom of the world. He addressed each one to his wife, Elizabeth. After he died exploring the Hawaiian Islands, they say she waited out on the shores of England for the bottles to return to her.

“That’s a sad story,” Monica tells me and I can hear that it’s upset her.

“It would be,” I tell her, “if she never found the bottles.”

Monica laughs a bit, clears her throat. “Now you’re just making things up.”

“No, I tell her. It’s the truth. When Elizabeth died, amongst her possessions were three letters from Captain Cook. All dated while he was at sea. It’s been authenticated. Somehow he found a way to still talk to her. A way to love her. A way for them to still be connected even over all that distance.”

“I like that,” Monica says.

“Good. You keep taking those longevity pills, okay?”

“You too,” and then after a beat she says, “It’s a big galaxy though. I mean the chance of us seeing . . . ”

“Not that big. Not impossibly big. Not so big that two people won’t see each other again. No bigger than the ocean was for James and Elizabeth, right?”

ALLY MALINENKO writes poems and stories and occasionally gets them published. Her first novel for children, Lizzy Speare and the Cursed Tomb (Antenna Books), is available on Amazon.