HeartLines

ISSUE 6

“The Debrief”

by Katherine Dempsey 

“Before we start, I’m just going to have you read over this consent form and sign at the bottom,” the young woman who greeted the participant at the door said as she slid the pale sheet smoothly across the silver table. Her ID badge, fastened to the upper left corner of her white blouse, was decorated with a headshot and the words “Preconscious Cognition LLC,” leaving her name unknown.

Mechromancy

by Michael C. Denysenko 

Ethereal magical gears interlocked and circled around the dwarven mechanic’s hands as he cast a spell. Stone, wood, and metal components levitated and fit themselves into place. The project was a gigantic humanoid figure, whose head stood taller than the king’s castle.

Dancing in the Rain

by Kathryn Haig

“It looks like rain. We need a good rain,” my husband says, a chipped mug quivering in his arthritic hands as he pours hot coffee into the cold ceramic. I look down at my own fingers, twisted and warped like country roads, my joints swollen roundabouts over which my wedding ring no longer fits.

Colleen Moore

by Melissa Tagliarini

Watercolor