They attached a zipper to my stomach, not to my womb. They said this would help the process run smoother, faster, if the babies could consume nourishment passed broken only by mouth and saliva. I...

The mammoth crouches behind her desk, which is not as neat as she’d like it to be, and shuffles through papers until she finds a brochure. Pushing it across the table with her trunk, she taps the...

I was ten when my father took me to see the vampire. He lived in a terraced house in one of the damp little streets behind Safeway. My father parked in the supermarket car park, which struck me as...

We were taking our nightly walk when I paused, looked down at the ground at my feet. Claire paused next to me, looked down where I was looking. “Don’t do it,” she said. I’m not sure I’d even had the...

The Mongoose took out a semi today according to the uncles and aunties. There was a blurry brown streak under the front wheel and the rig skipped over the edge of the embankment, taking out the...

About hex publishes very short speculative texts on a weekly-ish basis. We like it weird. Submit here. hex started in 2022 and is based at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, MA. We are on...

Dr. Huidobro says I need to try rejection therapy to help me move beyond Raúl. Each day, I must collect three rejections rooted in whatever scares me most, thereby loosening knots of neuroses...

Grandmother insisted the rashes, what WebMD said was dermatitis, was her body making scales. Armor. They remove elders from their homes here, she said. (The woman had been here a week). I told her I...

We should've been looking when the clouds turned floofy, furry and then patchy--black, brown, stripy, orange. "Look Mama, Look Daddy, look at the clouds," the remaining kids said, but who looks...

He mailed the paperwork when I was still an orca. The hungry days. Unyielding seasons of screaming water. Mother obsessed over deciphering their sound, preoccupied when kinfolk sank to the rocks. I...

(Scarecrow jurors made from twigs and grass; homunculi witnesses molded out of forest loam. Red Riding Hood, dwarfed like a shrub among pines, defendant without attorney. Behind the bench, stomach...

We decide to kill Aunt Miriam. We have already done everything else. We have played Monopoly. We have read hospital magazines. We have made tribal masks from old crosswords and glue. We have plucked...

The local hawk froze in midair to make sense of such a sound—the sound of Canoe realizing the patter of rain against tin. Tin and tin and tap and tin—in its peculiar music, Canoe angled his neck to...

Hex-O-Ween

I used to think I was the only one who had swallowed a glass piano. That was why I had to keep my secret, why I had to be so careful. I avoided the rough games that the other kids played when no one...

Billy Janson likes to tell a story about the night he found a monster in a pothole outside of Cactus Flats, Texas. The first thing Billy’ll tell you is that he used to be known as “Wild Bill,” back...

We decided to extend the trip by a few more days. Truth is, I wasn’t sure I wanted to, but it was where the path of least resistance led. We pulled up outside the pebbledash frontage of the village...

from Hex Literary

Art by Hannah Sanders <3 My Boyfriend by Nancy Huang <3 <3 The Seeds That They Bury, the Fields That They Reap by Mike McClelland <3 <3 Carmen and I by Melissa Boberg <3 <3 The Strangler's Hotel by...

I’ve known you since you were born, which was when I was born. I’m your evil twin. Everyone has one. I was a part of you until I wasn’t. Then I watched you from the shadows—alleyways, unfurnished...

It was just another walk in the park as I tried logging my necessary steps and subsequent hydration. I recently began eating sunflower seeds, popping them like energy pills on these walks, which made...

Old Thus all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty-nine years. The man was tired. There aren’t enough syllables in words for how tired he was. His eyes were stones. If he saw, then stones...

They’d told us it would be peaceful; natural. Well, natural for us—peaceful for them. Peaceful to sit in the shadow of our green growth, lost in their memories of who we used to be. Feeling vindica...

There is a woman made of yarn and all day she sits and knits. She has already knitted herself and her home and her daughter so now she knits sweaters. It is a good thing the yarn woman runs cold...

When the cloud cover breaks, I am going to jump in the creek. When it stops raining, I’m jumping in. I don’t want to already be wet before getting wet, is the thing. Once that cloud cover breaks, as...

Knotweed grew through the asphalt. Duck weed choked the fish tank. The snails in the aquarium glided through the filter hole. They worshiped the woman that cared for them. They watched her from...

It’s not about honey. That’s the first thing you learn—it’s about what drove you to honey to begin with. As a cub, I detected in my parents some fundamental quality I seemed to lack. Oneness....

They were already among us. Unheard-of numbers swimming into bays and inlets, and some found their way into freshwater lakes and rivers. Tagged ones disappeared from tracking. For a species that...

Joy Ode From the center of a small town a well sings of all the children that have fallen in. It is a sad song—there are many children—but a beautiful song, and in the constant din of stars it sounds...

For the past three nights my cat and I have dreamed the same dream. I know that we share the dream because of the thoughtful way she holds her face near mine in the morning and looks, carefully, into...

We live inside the tornado where our daughter was born. We were driving to the hospital when the tornado howled and my eyes tilted my head skyward. Surely some gigantic spaceship spawned that...

Our son tells us something weird is in the potty. It’s early; we wonder if the fog of sleep still shrouds his mind. When I flush, the mass orbits around the opening to the outlet and trap before it’s...

Tiny faces. Shy smiles on tiny faces. Sharp claws protrude from tiny hands on bodies that emerge at twilight. You’ll know it’s time when the letter arrives. Look out for a messenger who travels...

Catchphrase I heard this woman say, “I’m coming. Why are you calling?” and I thought something was wrong with that. I don’t know why she said it. I was standing in line, basket in my hand, staring at...

The way "Candlelight" plays with and subverts the tragic lovers story made it such an enjoyable read for me. Is there a version of that story (or maybe another inversion!) that you especially enjoy...

The first time he poisoned me was at a kitchen table just like yours. I tried not to disappoint him with my reaction. I waited several seconds before requesting a suitable amount of ipecac. He nodded...

The girl’s mother had forbidden her to go into the forest, but the eyes of a maned vixen guttered brighter than any windowed candle, the chwirk of a hawk enticed more ineluctable than maternal...