Warm Within, by Cat Rambo, read by Cat Rambo, for Clark's World Magazine.

Worm Within The LED Bug kicks feebly, trying to push itself away from the wall.

Its wings are rounds of mica, and the hole in its carapace where someone has tacked it to the

graying boards reveals cogs and gears, almost microscopic in their dimension.

The light from its underside is the cobalt of distress.

It flutters there, sputtering out blue luminescence caught between earth and air between

creature life and robot existence. Does it believe itself insect or mechanism?

How can it be both at once? I glide past, skirting the edge at the light it casts, keeping

my hood up, washing fog tendrils curl and dissipate. A large street, then a larger one than smaller yet in a deserted quarter that few

if any occupy alleys curling into alleys cursive scrawls of crumbling bricks in

high wooden fences.

My head down, I practice walking methodically, mechanically,

until I find a tiny house in the center of the maze.

Mine.

Another LED bug is tacked beside the entrance, but this one is long dead, legs dangling.

Once inside, I linger in the foyer taking off my cloak, the clothes that draped my form as though I were some eccentric

an insistent clothesist or anxious to preserve my limbs from rust or tarnish.

Nude I rebel in my flesh, dancing in the hallway to feel the body sway and bend.

Curved shadows slide like knives over the cross-warded tiles on the floor, perfect black and white squares.

If there were a mirror mirror I could see myself. But after only a single

pirouette, my inner tenant stirs, he plucks pizzicato at my spine each painful twang reminding me of his presence somewhere inside.

He says, They'll find you soon enough tick.

...