by Dena Pruett The Adults are Talking She came to room 6303 first, ignoring the light, taking off her jacket then shirt followed by pants and socks. Each item snapped outward to remove even the hint of a wrinkle and folded flat in a neat pile on the only chair, a shabby affair with loose […]
Tag: Fiction
by Regina Olga Mullen Aftertaste The guests stood up from the table without saying goodbye, and I was left looking at the half-moon of onion still in the fruit bowl, sliced down the middle and purple as a bruise, its white insides exposed and sweating a little in the heat. It wasn’t even wrapped in plastic; […]
by Rebecca Gearhart The Retention Pond 1. Sixteen years ago, my brother Ethan was swallowed by a retention pond. After that, my mother had five of us kids left. The high school closed the same year. I was in ninth grade. Now my mother and I spend most of our time hiding in our trailer […]
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The Hope Chest
by Emily Harper Ellis The Hope Chest Gloria had never seen a dead man before and knew, as soon as her truck crested the hill, that she was experiencing one of her life’s defining moments and had better do it right. He was perfectly, doubtlessly dead: his hands and face were blue and every inch […]
by Jordan Nishkian Stay With Me for a While In the silence of Corinne’s home, I lie on her living room floor, gaze pinned to the vaulted ceiling. I take inventory of my body. The blood under my nails has hardened. My right shoulder is so dislocated it feels like my arm’s swimming in its […]
by Justine Busto Late Blooming Rita Nothing was useless to Aunt Rita. When a light bulb sputtered out, it went in a box, along with wool socks, key chains, balls of twine, insurance company calendars, seeds bundled in used envelopes, and hotel soap. Sometimes she’d tuck a ten inside. Scotch-tape the box shut, covering every […]
by Laurin Becker Macios Shards The floor is cold but spotless outside Annie’s open door. I spread myself over it, salted butter on toast, her childhood favorite. You’re losing it, Jim tells me, stepping over me to get to our room. By the time I manage to scrape myself up and through our threshold, Jim’s […]
by M.C. Schmidt Cave Dwelling At dinner parties, they would say it was the economy that drove them to live in an undersea cave. The parties were at the homes of others, above ground, the low altitude of their cave causing alcohol to sit strangely in the blood, a throb of pressure in the inner […]
by Bryce Taylor Floridian Beauty We were Orlando boys. Our seasons marked by the changing of sports. The autumnal colors of football fields with their pom-poms and helmet-berries, the shining ice-flat basketball courts of winter. Spring was a baseball in flower, hats and bats in bloom, and summer was everything, lakes and beaches, theme parks, […]
by Richard Moriarty Leaving Home It’s early August in eastern Kansas, bright and quiet on the morning Charlie leaves home. Told no one he’s heading for college. Right now, his father is mowing the rough around the seventh green at the town’s public golf course where he works maintenance. In twenty minutes, Charlie’s father will […]
by Scott Nadelson Forks There were two sets in the drawer. One had long tines, a curved back attached to a smooth neck, a subtle etched floral pattern at the handle’s end. This was her mother’s set, the one she’d grown up using. The second, her stepfather’s—which had occupied the drawer alone a year ago—was […]
by Toni Artuso Fire Escape A siren blares like a guilty conscience. It must be a false alarm. But the wailing continues. Above it, you hear lodgers, disturbed, chattering. Then slams assault your ears. Feet tramp down the hall. You decide to stay in the room until the all-clear. Then you hear banging on doors […]
by Mellissa Sojourner The Couple at the End of the World When they tell the story of their initial encounter to some newly acquired friends, they spend at least five minutes interrupting each other over the way it all began. Maya had been working as a bartender in a small outpost just off the highway, […]
by Jefferson Thomas Firstborn of Kepler-452B Tahlia gave birth in the pilot’s chair, with a blanket for a smock, and the botanist for a midwife. Her skin was marbled white-brown-red, with the blue of varicose veins throughout. All of us had skins which hung about us in big elastic wrinkles, as deep as if we […]
by Alec Kissoondyal Shadows On the Wall “I’m never drinking again,” Sara says, her head in the toilet. Her voice echoes off the inside of the bowl. “Never, ever again.” I believe she believes it. And she’ll still believe it when she wakes up with a hangover tomorrow, and she’ll keep believing until five in […]
by Sarah Elizabeth Schantz Geraniums for Autumn Sitting in the amber glow of the television screen, Elias Stray watches reruns of All in the Family. While the bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom were once the servants’ quarters, the living room was part of a grand ballroom that used to occupy most of the top floor of […]
by T.B. Grennan Revolving Door Once there was a fat man with a little mustache who got caught in a revolving door. He worked in Midtown, at the reception desk of one of those big, postwar office buildings. It was a Tuesday, around eleven, and he had four-and-a-quarter minutes left in his five-minute mid-morning break. […]
by Lauren Sharon Retreat My name is Sara Jane Felt. I am childless. Synonyms please – barren, incomplete, loser. Through a series of biological failures: miscarriages, fizzled fertility treatments, A stillbirth. Today, like every day, my husband, Danny tries to join me in my loss and grief. “I’m childless too,” he says. Maybe. He takes […]
by Gary Fincke After the Locks are Changed Home After the locks are changed, after he stops cursing and pounding on both doors, he hurls his key against the kitchen window while McCartney, her German Shepherd, yips and whines. Still, he calls several times each week, always after midnight with slurs of pleading punctuated by […]
by Matthew Williams Suburban Murmursa grandmother lifts her hands to catch the laughing child fields of orange poppies name our naked flanks running she plucks and eats the summer from bushes in the backyard tall as a robin my father stands at the roadside holding an unlit cigarette a woman hangs a white sheet in […]
by Tali Rose West Marlboros at Sunset I’ve started smoking again. Not a whole lot—I’m not a chain smoker or anything—but I like to have a reason to stand on my balcony overlooking the apartment pool and watch the sky. There’s this moment each day when the sun’s setting, just a second before the horrible […]
by A. Molotkov Transfusion 1. Sarah The smell of rot is so pervasive it adheres to the inside of my nose and mouth. I force myself to ignore it. Impossible. The horizon is interrupted by the red glow of forest fires. The other woman’s face, too, is tinted red. She’s walked with me for a […]
by Christa Rohrbach The Other Side of a Fourth-Place Medal You are 18 months old when your first hairs sprout. Your mother is ecstatic when she sees them: three tiny, fair, and thin little hairs that were somehow able to pierce through the smooth porcelain of your scalp. She thinks maybe you will stop being […]
by Kris Norbraten They dragged the doll into the hot shower to get it back to life. Some semblance of life. It wasn’t exactly a doll or wasn’t supposed to be. It was supposed to be something more. Randi’s bare feet squeaked on the acrylic shower bottom. She’d gotten herself wedged into the stall, no […]
by Tom Houseman                                                                                     The Donor The girl’s name was Della. She sat across from them in a soft gray chair in the room the agency had set up for them, her black ballet flats pressed firmly into the carpet. She wore dark blue jeans and a maroon, three-quarter sleeve shirt. Her eyes were light […]
by Molly Bashaw                                                                                     How to Make a Rainbow Begin to imagine that your life is fantastic, no matter what happens next. Light a candle and let it burn until it goes out by itself. Give away the clothes and the mobile. Take the changing table extension off the drawers. You are not replacing anything, […]
by Alan Ackmann Cartography “The science of mapmaking, in the end, is the science of separating what is known from what has yet to be discovered.” — Fromner’s Comprehensive Atlas, 1978 It’s eleven-thirty at night in mid-November. Arthur and his wife Deb are staring each other down in a rest stop lobby somewhere in […]
Gulf Stream Magazine 