Shane Cashman We argued over the obituary every day for the better part of a year. The State hired us to write the announcement, holed up in a conference room—dry-erase boards, legal pads, maps, pencils, encyclopedias, that sort of thing. “How’d we get here?” someone asked at the start of most meetings. Here had multiple […]
Category / Fiction
Kim Magowan and Michelle Ross Charley is the only kid my age living at the base, and I can’t decide if he’s interesting or creepy. The day he knocks on our door to introduce himself, he teaches me War—not the boring card game my little sister Gillian likes, but Charley’s design. Creatures are our soldiers. […]
Margaret Adams The risk analysis expert focused on the crack in the ceiling of their one-bedroom apartment as she talked. This was how she always started these conversations: arms folded behind her head, looking straight up. “It’s like the FEMA guidelines,” she said. “You don’t want to have to communicate all of your emergency response […]
Maureen Langloss I left my sunglasses in the dorm again. My memory was for shit this semester. The guys were huddled around a MacBook Air before practice. I made a visor of my hand and squinted hard. Zoe’s picture was up. Full-screen. Full-stop. The pixels of her eyes flickered in the sunlight like she was […]
Olivia Clare I drove to the cemetery with the woman who was exactly my mother’s age and who said, “Charlie and Ella. That’s who we’re looking for.” Her boots sat in the backseat of her station wagon as we drove up the short road among long-stemmed wildflowers, headstones, and pillars. Old graves. From the turn […]
Shelli Cornelison My cousin, Layla, said you had to write a letter asking your boyfriend to have sex with you. So he would have written proof he didn’t rape you or anything. Proof you wanted it. Because a lot of girls lied about getting raped, she said. If you cared about a guy, you’d never […]
Blake Kimzey First of all, they’re Polaroids Frank had to scan at his muffler shop so we could upload them to the realtor’s website. That’s why they look like ghost-hunter photos. But the realtor, Cammy, said if we wanna sell the place we gotta have photos to show. So here they are with short descriptions. […]
Emily Capettini It’s always a Prius that pulls up, license plate matching the one on her screen, a grinning selfie of a young man about her age when she first went hitchhiking. Mary tucks the phone away and slides into the back seat. “Hi,” the driver says. Tom, the phone said. “How are you tonight?” […]
Harry Leeds “I can’t stop listening to this heartbreaking voice mail message!” “10+ pics of the transformation chemotherapy does to a human body.” “Drop everything and drive to the hospital to look into your mother’s eyes for the last time RIGHT NOW.” “Here are 8 things Mom wanted to do before she died that aren’t […]
Elizabeth Bevilacqua We taught our baby to be a maître d’. She’s trained in hospitality. She was born on a golf course. Emerged from the womb in a vest and bow tie, stood right up, and began to toddle around taking people’s gin and tonic orders. Our friends and family say, but how can you […]
James Brubaker 1. An Afternoon at the Sauna January 13, 2017 A nice, long sit in the sauna gets the toxins out. This is important, especially after a day at the office. I’ve seen people do any number of things to stay clean inside—heavy exercise, fad diets, fasts, drinking gallons of water a day, […]
Matt McDonald Wednesdays the boys are released for Free Fighting. Five minutes, in the courtyard, guards in towers. No weapons, maiming, deforming, or finishing. The rules do not explicitly mention broken bones, and maybe a dozen of the three hundred know the word maim, and there is always at least one cracked nose, arm, leg, […]
Jennifer Kircher Carr It was the time of night when the drinks blurred together, and out on the makeshift dance floor of the backyard wedding, David’s daughter, the bride, danced past with the groom, and David’s ex-wife Annie twirled past him with her new husband. The way she smiled at the husband made David walk […]
Amorak Huey Inspired by Patrick Ryan Frank Weary traveler in hotel bar at the fade of a sweltering day. Call him Don. Tad. James. Robert, Rob for short. Doesn’t matter. Salesman or consultant or some shit. Doesn’t matter. He does what we all do: enough to stay alive. The woman in the green dress at […]
Gwen E. Kirby If you believe nothing else, believe that I never meant to run over our cat. There were other things I did, things I’m not proud of, but what marriage ever ended smoothly? I’ll say upfront, in the spirit of total honesty, I shouldn’t have written “bitch” in poison on the front lawn […]
Victoria Melekian “Bedroom closet, top shelf.” “Garage.” “His darkroom.” “Wedged in the car trunk. What? He likes travel.” “Most of him, sprinkled over the rose garden; the rest, in an hourglass I use in the kitchen for three-minute eggs. It’s very unreliable. But then so was he.” “Tenth hole at the golf course.” “Nightstand. Though […]
Shasta Grant Julie and I spent the summer of 1989 in her basement watching soap operas while her mother was upstairs dying. Friends and neighbors delivered casseroles and baked goods, ringing the doorbell and interrupting our shows. Julie would run up the stairs to the back door, taking the offered dish in her hands. If […]
Danielle LaVaque-Manty The garden was already there when Fern moved in, small but splendid, perhaps even too perfectly cultivated by the previous owner, who had departed rather abruptly, the neighbors said, for Canada. At her housewarming party, Fern admired the counterpoint the woman had orchestrated around the backyard—pink rhododendrons and blue hydrangeas, yellow roses and […]
Samantha Edmonds This is what she remembers: • pain • disbelief • that she’d read somewhere it only hurt because your muscles are tense from nerves • opening her legs farther, trying to relax • the sounds she made: gasps, groans, moans • his silence, except for asking if she wanted him to […]
W. Todd Kaneko When I return home from the war that summer, they’re looking for the Diamond. I know this because of that El Camino out front, that switchblade stuck in the coffee table, and you standing by the refrigerator in cut-off shorts and a tube top. My two uncles wonder why I’m not dead […]
