AN ACIDIC STREAM OF FEAR RUSHED THROUGH my virtual veins like an incendiary chemical. Lutessa and I curled deeper into that dreadful corner and listened to the bloodcurdling snarls of the feral creatures, lurking right outside the closet door we hid behind.
Every chip and microprocessor in my artificial being shuddered, and every instinct under my counterfeit skin screamed at me – coming here was a terrible mistake! I wasn’t an adventurer, or a warrior, or some superhero, and if I was one, then I would’ve had an ‘H’ on my chest. H for Horrified. For Hopeless, for Helpless. H as in I was seconds away from dying in a heinous hellhole, at the dodgiest edges of this dark net dimension.
Look, I don’t want to bore you with the frightening details of how totally and inescapably screwed I was at that moment, so let’s just say that if my digital physiology included a bladder, then it would’ve been as empty as a beer bottle during happy hour. For good reason.
I’ll tell you this, malware ghouls are the worst of the worst. They are violent and mindless monsters, the living manifestations of computer viruses. They are the zombies, the lowlifes and the homicidal mental patients of our virtual universe.
An entire horde of ruthless zombies snarled right on the other side of our pathetic excuse for a barrier. When they started to claw against our door, I realised that I had no business being here. No business at all! I was Harrison iHeart for crying out loud: the heartwarming avatar of the iHeart application. A five-feet-tall, blue-eyed book-lover, an eco-friendly pacifist, and a hopeless romantic. I was the animated personification of the world’s number one dating app for heaven’s sake. So what the hell was I doing here? I’d never stepped a foot outside my own website, yet here I was, on the outside of my own network in this grisly corner of a nocturnal website, with nothing but my witty attitude to defend myself. I didn’t have the assault rifles of a war-game’s avatar, or the mental sharpness of a chess game’s avatar. I had no real weapons, and even if I did, I wouldn’t know how to use them. The closest I’ve come to an actual fight, was when my internal grammar settings, who steadfastly believe that the word love should be spelled L-O-V-E, fights with my internal dictionary about whether or not to update the spelling of said word, due to the texting idiots who repeatedly spell it as L-U-V.
Read here:
Fluid: The Freedom to Be
THE BOOK
In these twenty short stories of inquiry, transgression, osmosis and transformation, we embrace the fluid nature of humanity.
THE CONTRIBUTORS
The anthology’s contributors are largely established South African authors who
have a track record in the publishing industry, as well as exciting emerging writers. The writers include Peter-Adrian Altini, Diane Awerbuck, K. L. Bohle, Anna Hug, Kingsley Khobotlo, Yuwinn Kraukamp, Alex Latimer, Keith Oliver Lewis, Lerato Mahlangu, Shari Maluleke, David Medalie, Mabel Mnensa, Lerato Moletsane, Nadine Moonsamy, Shanice Ndlovu, Vuyokazi Ngemntu, Robyn Perros, Bridget Pitt, Lorraine Sithole, Jarred Thompson and Andrew Robert Wilson.
THE EDITORS
JOANNE HICHENS has to date edited seven highly praised anthologies of South African short stories, including Bad Company, Bloody Satisfied, Adults Only and Die Laughing. She has published several crime novels, including Divine Justice and Sweet Paradise, and a memoir, Death and the After Parties.
KARINA M. SZCZUREK is the (co)editor of, among others, Touch: Stories of Contact, Encounters with André Brink, Disruption: New Short Fiction from Africa and Hair: Weaving and Unpicking Stories of Identity. She is also the author of Invisible Others and The Fifth Mrs Brink.
FOREWORD: Lorraine Sithole
ISBN/EAN: 978-0-9946805-7-0
PUBLICATION DATE: May 2023
PUBLISHER: Tattoo Press
TATTOO PRESS is an independent small publisher, specializing in contemporary South African short fiction.
Yuwinn A. Kraukamp is a bilingual writer from the coastal corner of Cape Agulhas, South-Africa. He’s a natural born creative, a former English— and Communications major at the university of the Western Cape, and a patron (saint) of everything that’s artistically unique and beautifully weird in this world. Yuwinn has worked as a freelance columnist for Network 24, and a freelance journalist for The Southern Post Newspaper since 2022. In 2024 he was the third-place winner of the Diana Ferrus poetry prize; and in April 2026 he was the first-place prize winner of the Njabulo S. Ndebele-themed ‘Rediscovering the Ordinary’ poetry competition. His poem Raw/Rou won the third-place prize at the Bridgette James international contest in May 2026. Both his English and Afrikaans poetry has appeared on various platforms such as Litnet, PEN Afrikaans and Versindaba; and has been published within poetry anthologies such as Ons Kom Van Hier and The Avbob Poetry Project.
He became a member of the Jakes Gerwel Foundation’s network of authors and artists, after participating in a writing fellowship in the Eastern Cape in October 2022. In that same year, he was shortlisted for the Nigerian short story contest—Toyin Falola—and became one of two South-Africans whose writing was honorably mentioned at The Future Feminist Awards in California. Yuwinn’s writing focuses on language identity, political transitions, moral complexity, loss, trauma and rebirth. A variety of his short stories have been published in magazines such as Huisgenoot and Kuier, and within collections such as the Short-Sharp-Stories anthology and FicSci. In 2024, Yuwinn was part of a science-meets-creativity workshop hosted by the University of Stellenbosch and the South-African Research Chair; where he produced climate-change fiction that was published in an oceanic-research anthology in June 2025. In September and October 2025, he participated in a writing residency alongside six African writers at the Johannesburg Institute of Advanced Study (J.I.A.S), where they explored the political roles and responsibilities of poetry and short stories.
You can contact Yuwinn at yuwinnkraukamp@gmail.com regarding potential writing opportunities or projects.
