Chthonic Matter Quarterly Winter 2025 – CM Muller

​ “ Are you ready?” ​ “ Let ’ s go!” she squealed. ​I pushed the door open and saw nothing but blackness. ​ “ Is there a light?” ​I fumbled for the switch. “ Nothing,” I said. ​ “ Is it going to happen?” asked Kaylie. ​ “ I don ’ t know,” I said.

“ Maybe.” ​ “ Can I go too?” ​ “ It ’ s not your birthday,” I said. ​She was pouting in the dark. I knew she was. But that ’ s how she was made, she was the baby of the family. She ’ d always be the baby. ​As I traveled into the blackness, I felt myself grow, lengthen, fatten. My mind exploded with a thousand implanted memories. ​I took a deep breath, filling my great lungs. ​The air was cool and smelled like the ocean.

I didn ’ t care that it was cold. I would never care. Mom knew all of my favorite places. The blackness was not so black anymore, and when it dissolved completely, I was on a beach. ​I swallowed, letting my hands run down the length of my body. I was tall now, like Mom. I wore a sundress and flip flops and I had money and a job and maybe a husband and maybe kids.

Waves crashed, rolling in, their white churnings giving birth again and again. ​I tried to keep every one of those seconds, to swallow them up and make them a part of me forever. I ran along the beach to fall in love with the length of my stride. I cherished my breasts and hips. ​Children screamed somewhere down the beach. They played and thrashed in the sand. ​I walked to them, it ’ d been a year since I last saw them.

They were the same age, just like me. Two boys, both with brown hair and eyes, three and four. ​ “ Mom?” said one. ​The word sliced through me. ​ “ I ’ m here,” I said. ​ “ Can you help us with this?” ​I got on my knees, smiling. “ What are we making?” ​The younger one said, “ A sandcastle.” I loved how he said it, pausing at each syllable. ​ “ You ’ re both doing so good,” I said. ​We went to work, crafting the spires.

I pulled bobby pins from my hair to carve doorways and sawtooth battlements. In between, I drank in their determined expressions and clumsy hands. ​I relished every second, while it lasted. ​It ’ s the best Mom could do—or would do. As my hours waned, the darkness crawled back to me. It took me into its arms and made me feeble, child-like.

Volume 1, Issue 4 (Winter 2023) Typeset & Edited by C.M. Muller © 2023 by Contributors Fonts: “Night” & “Cormorant” Cover art: via Shutterstock www.chthonicmatter.wordpress.com Garbage Juice Harris Kauffman / / / My dad had to “ pull a lot of strings” to get me a spot in the sanitation trainee program.

He “ put it all on the line” for me. But even though I passed the course, I eventually showed him that I “ didn ’ t have what it takes.” ​He devoted his life to sanitation work. He didn ’ t expect the same of me. He just expected me to honor the job when I asked him to hook me up. His expectations weren ’ t met. ​Those days, I was drinking around the clock and betting my salary on horses.

I lost a lot on California Chrome in 2016. More than I had in the bank. I asked my dad for help, and he laughed. ​Maybe because I was drinking, I thought about buying a gun to get the bookie, Travis, off my back. ​It was more than a passing thought. I met with these two gangsters, Conlin and Scott, who offered to sell me one. A Browning Hi-Power, untraceable.

They said they scooped it up from the river while going “ magnet fishing.” ​We were making small talk while we waited for the gun (one of their guys was grabbing it from the stash house “ offsite”). That ’ s how they found out I was a sanitation worker.

They perked up. ​ “ Sanitation? Like, garbage?” ​ “ Just like garbage.” ​I thought Conlin and Scott were going to ask me to help them get rid of a body. I ’ d already thought about how I could feed Travis to the truck, so I guess that ’ s why my mind went there. But that ’ s not what they were interested in. They wanted the leachate. ​ “ Leachate? Like, garbage juice?” I asked. ​ “ Yeah, garbage juice,” Conlin said.

​I really wish that ’ s as weird as it got.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 492d8577e20da7c9
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 509,370 bytes (0.486 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 75
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 152.46 minutes
• Total Words: 30,492
• Total Characters: 163,572
• Average Words per Page: 406.56
• Average Characters per Page: 2180.96

Most Frequent Words

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