Cactus Shadows Literary Magazine 2022-2023

Hall of Mirrors- Literature Editor and Page Designer

• I Never Wanted to be the Main Character- Prose

• A Bouquet of Roses- Short Story

• Typewritings- A Collection- Poetry

• Party Killer- Short Story

• The Insomniac- Prose

Cactus Shadows Literary Magazine 2023-2024

Weeds- Editor-in-Chief

• Baby! I'm an Anarchist- Collage and Poetry

• I am not a Jack'o Lantern- Prose

• Mud on your Face you Big Disgrace- Poetry

• Everything is Growing in our Garden- Prose (This is an outdated version but it is the published version)

This is a Metaphor

One Act Play- Written, Directed, Designed, and Produced by Rey Darby

Everything’s Growing in our Garden

You laid me down in a plot of moss. The plush cloud of the soil carpet puffed around us and brought us closer to the underworld. A portal made of bodies, of our flesh and bones ripped through the fabric holding up the living from the yawning abyss of death. You kissed me with the lips of a pomegranate seed. The skin wrapped taut around the blood and meat of your fruit, it begged to be bitten. You begged to be tasted. 

So I bit down. Hard. Broke the skin, to feel the very essence of your soul. Your blood flooded my mouth like the water of the oasis. I gasped and let it spill from my mouth, like tears from eyes. You flowed free over my skin and the waterfall rushed in. I reached up from the ground and drew you closer into our pocket between life and death. With hands of gentle silk, you plunged your arm down my throat and into my organs. Your hand clenched around my heart. I screamed into the void, curled up against the floor, hands clawed at your arms and back. The satin of your skin with care and kindness took root in my ribcage. 

Small creatures crawled free of you, released from your very heart through your veins. You dragged yourself free and left behind the creatures of your heart. They skittered along my bones; they spun the webs of their home to interlock every facet of my interior. They created a pocket of warmth, pale in the comparison to yours, the warmth you kissed down into my soul. Their home became an encasing, an encasing to hold my heart and lungs, they shielded them, used them to feed, used them to fuck. 

They placed pearls, gems like your eyes, on the shelves of my ribs, careful with the precision of your words and teeth. You’re very being took root inside me, every fiber of my body begged for you, the pearls begged to be with you. They rattled on the shelves when they heard your voice, they vibrated with warmth and excitement when your silk skin brushed up my arms like the breeze in a meadow of tall grass and golden flowers. 

Once you pressed the most chaste kiss to my inner thigh, the pearl casings crack. They shrieked with heat burning from inside them. My skin boiled, it melted and bubbled on my bones. It clung like slime to my skeleton, how I clung to you. My skin spat against your skin as my heart sparked. You whispered sweet everythings. 

The pearls shattered. Shards shot across the spun webs. It cut free of the silken home, ripped the fabric open and lodged itself in my muscle and meat. The little beings inside scampered free, eight little legs, tiny pin pricks. You laid me back down into our place. The place between life and death. The creatures surged up my esophagus, they forced my throat to bulge around them, I almost had an Adam’s apple. Your lips brushed my ear once again, the soft kind voice that whispered in my head from my chest, where the pearls of your heart hatched. I choked on their little legs and bodies clogging my air ways. They became one with the mucus and phlegm of my throat. You smiled, so soft and I cried a little spider like a tear. 

You took my lips to yours and I screamed. I screamed into your throat, down into your soul. The spiders swelled free. They launched themself off my teeth taking my spit and blood with them. I coughed and sat up. I clawed at my throat as the spiders poured out of my mouth, cried out of my eyes, and muscled their way out of my ears. They became a moss, just like the carpet below us, and grew over me. Your hand pressed through the wall of beasts and cupped my cheek with the care of a lily. The petals of your fingers hugged me close until the last spider left my insides. 

The creatures tied us together, your poetry guided them, your touch freed them. 

The “I Know The End” Effect: Playlist

1. “I Know The End”: Phoebe Bridgers- swelling, building, the car speeds up, you spin out of control, but you’re in a euphoric typhoon. The wind is color, a UFO floats in the eye, a green spotlight of its tractor beam. The world rushes and twirls around you, but you are still, in the center of release. Scream. 

2. “Sunglasses”: Black Country, New Road

3. “Gemini”: Haley Heynderickx

4. “God Turn Me Into A Flower”: Weyes Blood

5. “The Place Where He Inserted The Blade”: Black Country, New Road

6. “Right?”: Flipturn

7. “Vampire Empire”: Big Thief

8. “Oom Sha La La”: Haley Heynderickx

9. “Space Cowboy”: Flipturn

10. “Basketball Shoes”: Black Country, New Road

11. “Night Shift”: Lucy Dacus

Chinese Satellite

In the dingy motel parking lot, I sat with my dad, his friends, and my best friend in a circle of folding chairs. My dad did this every Saturday. His friends came over and parked a cooler of beer on the asphalt in the middle of the rusty metal circle. I joined in to listen, sitting crisscross applesauce on the asphalt by my dad’s legs. My friend, June, sat beside me. He leaned back on his hands with locked elbows. He mirrored the nonchalant aura of the grown men around us, as I hunched over the part of me that set me as different. 

We all turned our heads to the stars. Waiting. I’m not sure what I was waiting for, but I knew what my dad was. One of the chairs scraped against the asphalt as one of the men turned towards the group. 

“There was a sighting,” my father's friend, Craig, said, “This time in Gilbert, earlier this week.” 

“They’re getting nearer,” James said and popped his beer can open with a snap and a hiss. I tilted my head and watched as he took his first swig. 

“In the forum someone sent in a picture,” Dad chimed in. “It could be anyone of those stars by now boys, let’s not get our hopes up.” 

They all nodded and leaned back in their chairs, their gazes back on the stars. The galaxy reflected in their empty eyeballs. All of these men believed in extraterrestrials that beamed down from above and toyed with our world. Aliens that edited humanity to create a planet-wide experiment. David thought the world was flat. Craig agreed, but James and my dad thought they were crazy. 

“What if,” June whispered, “the stars in the sky are the holes poked into our container so we can breathe?” 

I smiled and huffed, “I said that last week.” 

I did say that. My dad hushed me. A childish idea, James said. Don’t listen to her, Dad said, just little girlish ideas. I flushed and held back tears looking down at the floor. I picked at the crumbling asphalt, why do I have to be a girl?  

“There’s merit to that idea,” James piped up and flicked June in the shoulder. “We’re thinking the stars are satellites and other worlds. They’re cameras watching us.” 

I frowned, I don’t think we’re that big of a deal. 

“What would they be watching?” June asked. 

“We’re a project of the ET’s,” Dad interjected. “They made us, they’re studying us.” 

June raised his eyebrows at me and I shrugged. It was always better to just let him ramble than to ask any questions. 

“Humanity is the creation of an advanced civilization, they live in a futuristic reality more knowledgeable and powerful than ours,” Dad explained. “I myself am a descendent. My mother gave birth to me on the verge of death, but the ETs saved me.” 

June looked at me again for answers. I shook my head with an incredulous look. My father was born with his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. He told the story that he was tangled up when being placed back into my grandmother’s womb. My mother always waited until he left the room to shake her head at me. 

“He’s nothing special, just like you and me,” she assured me. I tried not to notice the red irritation on her knees and wrists. She put her hand on my head and ran her fingers through my hair as I crunched hard on an apple slice. 

“Does that make you an alien too?” June asked as he tugged my sleeve. 

“No, son,” Dad took his eyes off the stars to scold. “She’s only a quarter of an alien, since she’s a girl she won’t spread the genes. That’s how aliens work, you need the man to spread the seed.” 

I flushed hot and red and looked down at the floor. June furrowed his brows. I picked up a piece of the crumbling ground and dropped it. The small pebble clattered into a new place in the asphalt. 

“Okay,” he replied, chastised. 

June looked for my gaze and when he found it, I smiled. For some reason this advanced civilization followed my father’s rules about people. I turned up to the stars and June followed suit. The stars shone so bright here, that’s why my father brought us to this motel. The small town had very little street lamps and no big buildings so the sky became so clear at night you could see every single supposed camera lens. We couldn’t see them back in the big city where my mom worked. Surely one of those worlds had different rules, surely one of them was a dream of mine like the aliens of my father’s mind. 

I liked looking up at them. In the stars, in the glittering sky, I was small, the motel parking lot was small, and real grandeur could be up in the swirls of galaxies. Not just in my father’s small head. I imagined myself floating through the sparkles. My body melted and molded to float through the gaps of the worlds. My training bra burned up off my body as I ascended through the atmosphere. I shed the skin of my father and the light of my mothers eyes brightened to a peak creating a new beautiful kaleidoscopic lens. Humanity would drip free from my body to rain back down to Earth as I discarded my human shell. My heart would burn bright gold like those stars, like those possible worlds. 

In the chairs of metal and plastic, I sit hunched over my torso. My heart smoldered in my ribs hid in my humanity, but in the stars the jewel of it would be free. 

“Dave, Dave, Dave,” Craig slapped Dave’s thigh with the back of his hand repeatedly. “James, Robert, look!” 

A star shot across the sky and stopped. It froze in a new place in the sky, vibrating. An anticipatory hum cascaded into our ears. 

“Dad?” I asked. He shooed me off. June grabbed my hand; I squeezed back. My father’s scraggly jaw unlocked and hit the floor. His empty eyes widened. Slowly, he stood up. His eyes never left the sky. 

“They’re here,” he whispered. June’s fingers tightened on mine. 

The vibrating star grew bigger. It neared our atmosphere and with a bright flash of light it entered the world of Earth. Flash and a swoop and a large gray circular saucer appeared above the motel parking lot. Its sleek metal hull paused and hovered up and down as if it was thinking. A glass dome topped the saucer and green lights flashed in a circle around the bottom of the ship. The low hum of the ship reverberated throughout the motel and made my ears to itch from the tickle of vibration. 

“Dad?” I tried again. My voice shook. 

“For fuck’s sake kid, shut up!” He roared. He threw his arms out, almost hitting me off my feet. I snapped backward with a quick exaggerated blink. I couldn’t think about it for more than a moment; a trap door on the saucer slid open with a metal shink. 

“They’re here for me, finally,” Dad said with awe. He lifted his arms up like a reverent disciple of a god and walked into the center of the circle. “Finally who I’m meant to be. Here. Take me home. Take me away from this boring meaningless life!”  

I tugged on June’s shirt and started to back away from the saucer and my father’s group. Another heavy thunk thundered throughout the motel. Our pace accelerated, our hands held tight to each other. 

“Yes, please, take me!” My father screamed and fell to his knees. A green beam of light shot forward from the saucer. It blasted past my father, over him, as if he wasn’t even there. It landed on me, and shrouded my form in a green spotlight. 

“What?” I whispered and my dad yelled. 

A weight in my heart lifted in my chest. My feet left the ground and as if a rope had been tied around my waist I lurched backward. 

“June!” I cried and latched onto his hands. My legs kicked as if I could run away in the open air. June pulled me back toward him. His heels dug into the asphalt. 

“It’s okay,” he whispered. Time seemed to stop. The spotlight left only him and me. I pleaded with my eyes, don’t let go don’t let go. He squeezed my hands and nodded with reassurance. 

“It’s going to be okay,” June said, and let go of my fingers. The world shot back into focus and I floated backward once again. June smiled and I swallowed to steel myself. I turned toward the spacecraft to take it head on. 

“NO!” Dad yelled. “You have the wrong one! It’s me, I’m one of you!” 

I flinched at his shrill voice. 

“Take me away,” I whispered. The thrum of the ship grew closer. The vibrations rumbled through my bones. 

I accepted my fate into the beam of light and reached up to the saucer. My legs trailed behind me. My chest burned around the gem of my heart. My ribs began to crack and my exoskeleton loosened and fractured like the shell of a cicada. 

“Welcome home,” a layered voice boomed in my mind. “Our child.” 

My skin began to melt. Humanity shed itself off of me like a lizard molting. My human shell dissipated in the air like a star’s glitter. A new body bloomed from underneath the molten cage, no identifiers to be seen, something completely new, foreign and mine. My eyes glowed and fractals of light and color overtook my vision as the ship swallowed me. Home, I thought. Home. 

The Olympus

I met Dionysus in a bar. The gay bar downtown, Dionysus came every day, the very walls felt like him. The building had the  neon sign of a mountain haloed by clouds (no words, too obvious, Dionysus said). It was a night of wildness, a Friday, the planned beginning of my descent. I wanted to bleed wine through the weekend, never wake up on a Monday morning again. But Dionysus trails a hand along my shoulders, and like a fool I lean in. Silk ribbons wrap around my neck and shoulders with the soft gentleness of skin. So cloying, so delicate. Though, I didn’t remember then, even silk can burn. Dionysus’s liquid skin brushes over me; he disappears into the crowd with the sway of a fairy’s hips. The lights swirling in the heavens, hazed over by the fog of body heat and cigarettes, hides the god’s glowing eyes from the world. No one mistakes them for human, but for kind instead. 

I am blind, blindly in love with a beast. In a bacchanalian haze, I come back to the bar for Dionysus the next night. 

He isn’t just the god of wine. He’s the god of revelry, and madness. He’s the god of a lavender cider. The lavender cider in my hand. The lavender cider I sip on while leaning against a wall. Music thunders in my ears from the bones of the earth. The pounding pushes the walls closer and closer; they push me closer and closer to him. The smoke covers his gaze, but the piercing purple of them strike through the cloud. Lightning. Thunder as he stares down from Olympus. His delicate hands hold a glass of wine. The glass is crystal and ornate, I see visions of swimming in that pool of blood. 

I swivel as the alcohol stings my throat and the heady haze of the room floats into my ear. It billows around my mind, the sweetness of the lavender melded with my spit, purple eyes on me. The vines of madness constrict my tongue. They trap the illusions upon my taste buds. The smoke hooks itself inside my head. Within the folds of my brain, it burrows like a parasite. A bejeweled worm sinks its clawed teeth into my meat.  It burns behind my eyes, flooding my irises. Mulled wine red bleeds over the brown and curls up in my gaze like a snake around prey.  My mouth waters, the salivation demands a taste. 

Creature, a voice says. 

Monster, another whispers. The same voice, it is all the same voice. The whisper spills forth and reaches for my other ear. A claw unfurls from my eardrum. The whisper tugs the small misty hand and unlatches me from the wall. The solidity of the world and my body liquidates and I am no longer corporal and lucid. I am at the mercy of the bass in my bones, the cider, the wine. The music rises from the floor. The walls give forth to it. Pulsing with the bass. My hips undulate, I convert to rhythm. The river of the dance floor meanders, taking me on a slow lull of sweat and skin. The cider in my hand vibrates; it dances on its own. I take a sip. Tendrils of light and music wrap around my legs like the vines holding a building upright. They embolden my chassé. My hands pluck non-existent cobwebs from the air. The cider turns to wine and the dribbles of it stain my lips like a dark orchid. The fags around me laugh in a similar stupor, our bodies turn into one flesh, one beating being. 

Little monster, would you be my creature? A different voice but the same one dips into my ear. It isolates me in the crowd. The crowd overtakes my vision at the same time it falls out of focus. The voice’s hands wrap their arm around my waist and suddenly something solid braces against my back. He splits my mind with sharp expansion; fog bloats the space. The solidity poofs away in a cloud of a marlboro red. The wine, the cider, the mead. My head, a lake, an ocean, a bottle. The wood of the floor creaks, purple and red light breaks free from the grain. Bodies part for the fog to pull me closer. Hades and Olympus compete from the ceiling and the floor. 

The fog gives way to skin. A soft hand on waist, hip bone sits perfectly in palm. The smoke caressing cheek and neck shifts into another hand of delicate plump skin. Sweet life and flesh pulses beneath the peel. His fingers slip between my vertebrae and hook around my neck. The cider pulses in my head as if the music throbs from within. 

Bump. Bump. Bump. In the crooks of your body, I find my religion. A voice of the past croons. I feel her in my bones, I feel Ampelos’s smile in my mouth rather than my own. The world slows around the two of us. I’m fool enough to sigh into the hand cupping my cheek. He doesn’t love me, he loves someone gone. I am willing to believe otherwise, anything to be wanted, anything to feel alive. People of tulle gauze twirl in a whirlwind, we cavort in the eye of the typhoon of alcoholic rain and wind of smoke and breath. 

“Against the wall, beautiful flower,” he says out loud now. “Jump into the water, the dolphins don’t bite.” 

Soft lips brimming potency, illusory beauty. The moon breaks through the skylight of his eyes and blinds the world. It blinds me to everything but the god. The faces of the bar disappear, they are just bodies, bodies that dance, bodies that sweat and embrace one another. We’re an ocean he walks on. The ocean he explores, the ocean we are at the mercy of, the ocean that spilled from his lips and drowned the bar. 

The god’s hands are on me. Everyone’s hands and bodies are on mine. The storm takes us again. Dionysus does not let go; he postures over me with a clawed hand in my hair. We swirl, hips press against hips. His hands melt into my lower back. They meld into my very soul. Claws wrapped in a vineyard dig into my heart. The tendrils push into my veins, I shudder, my legs give out, the floor gives out. The power of a god holds us all up, his roots have sunk into our muscle tissue, they make us dance and yawp in manic revelry. Our bodies become the soil for the god’s playthings to grow. The crowd grows closer, the music grows louder. Our bodies all tangle like the tendrils of trees seeking water. Seeking life. The vineyard spills out of my ears and weaves itself into my hair. The grapes hang like earrings. The god bites one off from beneath my ears. His soft lips make me forget any plan I had to die. Dionysus rises from the ground, his feet leave the floor. He lifts me with him, a hand under my chin, and another around my waist. 

As we rise I feel horns of ivory and bone break free from my skull and skin. They rip through the flesh of my head, gore pours out of the new wounds. The horns curve around my ears and cradle the fruit growing from my eardrums. The vines grow around the horns and Dionysus smiles with closed lips. Memory trembled in his pupils. The images reflected in mine, and for a moment I thought I knew the god. For a moment I thought I understood. I ride the bull with horns sharper than mine. Dionysus grabs my arm tight, memory and fear swam from him to me. The emotion sinks into my blood and I can feel my body sag with the weight of it. The weight of a god’s hope, infatuation, obsession, the weight of a god’s grief. Drool drips from my mouth and my starry gaze confuses it for my own insides. The god’s other hand grips my face and I look to the sky. I see myself in the stars, the moon glares down, he yanks me back down. 

A little monster, a little vine on the wall, the god rumbles. Be here, with me. 

An eye of a grape’s flesh opens on his forehead. The sweet red blood flows free from it. It burns the paths of tears down from his eyes and over his taut skin. The tears drop onto my outstretched tongue. He holds my mouth open with a thumb on my lower lip. His grows claws like a serpent’s fangs. With a gentle curve, his claw punctures the fruit of my lips. My own blood pools into my mouth; it mixes with the ichor of The Olympus, alcohol, blood, life. He smiles with sharp teeth and I swallow. 

My little monster.