Category: Fiction

Here was the game plan: we were going to sneak into Mom’s house, stuff her cats into sacks, and drown them in the lake. A backyard bonfire for everything else—the towers of mildewed newspapers reaching almost to her living room ceiling; the army of painted figurines standing at attention all ... Read More

Back when Anna Gil could still walk, she avoided it. "God gives nuts to the toothless,” she said to the people who visited her, and there were still a few. The others reduced their visits until they slid over and out of the frame of her life . In the ... Read More

You must choose. Once the baby makes its way out—and he will make his way out in a splash of fluid after the kind of crowning you won’t soon forget—the moments that make up your life will cease to be ones you choose. It is August. The trees wilt in ... Read More

It has been years since it happened. She is a still mother. Meaning, she keeps her body very still and she still considers herself a mother. She is rigid about this.... Nicole Miyashiro writes fiction and poetry and is an editor for the Pennsylvania Center for the Book at Penn State ... Read More

His friends were also there to see what might go wrong, and Ned was fine with that.... Nicole Miyashiro writes fiction and poetry and is an editor for the Pennsylvania Center for the Book at Penn State University. She has published stories, poems, and reviews, including one Pushcart Prize nominee. She ... Read More

He's a man of his word. A man whose mouth shrinks against his teeth when he smiles, as if recently stripped of a mature mustache, and who wears socks with clogs in the summertime to account for Florida air-conditioning.... Nicole Miyashiro has recent or forthcoming work in Clever Girl Magazine, Life in ... Read More

Later the painter, the other cook (who was off that day) and the waitress who had the evening shift, all lamented over coffee somewhere. They were thankful that they had not been there. Someone mentioned the body count. "Eight so far. Owner wasn't there...." Vimi Bajaj is a writer living ... Read More

She was ninety-three and had nineteen nine-inch diameter chocolate birthday cakes from Bill Knapp's restaurant in her basement freezer. How could she say no? They were a free gift, no coupon necessary. Each cake came with a sixteen-year-old waitress smiling straight rows of braces; with a balding manager clapping chapped ... Read More

"Come with me, babe," she said, smoothing the greasy hair at the edge of my face. Her finger brushed a zit in the midst of my stubble and it hurt, man, like she'd stabbed a needle deep in my skin. People tell you a lot of shit about being a ... Read More

Gray, of Gray’s Agency, sat at his desk, the neon sign outside flashing, rain dripping against the window. It was dusk. He heard the door down the hallway open, and looked up to see a man in a mackinaw on his threshold. His face was sharp with shadows. “My name ... Read More

Stealing the piece of Evander Holyfield’s dismembered ear that was bitten off by Mike Tyson from a rich man’s safe was my best friend Aaron’s idea. He wanted Real Deal’s ear back. He’d lost it in a poker game.... Michael Nye is the author of the story collection Strategies Against Extinction (Queen’s ... Read More

Jesse shuts his eyes to the hotel room’s stark white décor. Imagines he is in a French bordello. Thick velvet drapes framing the window. A soft canopy above the bed. Brass table lamps with beaded shades. He leans back on his elbows, kicks off his sneakers. He likes a good ... Read More

The red velvet curtain rises. Music plays, a piece heavy with woodwinds, flittering flutes set off by the depth of oboes and clarinets. The lights above the aquarium shoot rays of violet and neon pink through the water. The smell of chlorine is strong, but it doesn’t bother the boy; ... Read More

When the dolphin appears in Ava Long's swimming pool, she thinks at first it is a shadow, the gray outline of a zeppelin circling above her house. Then, the gray sliver flicks its tail and dives to the bottom of the amoeba-shaped pool, and Ava thinks the neighborhood kids are ... Read More

The kickback at the Carmichaels' was not Riley's idea. It was Liz's, of course, part of her obsession with losing her virginity to Frank Marshall. A little over a year ago, Frank had been a skinny drama nerd in ill-fitting polo shirts with an unrequited crush on Liz. AIDS, Liz ... Read More

Before the locals knew Isaiah to be a man of good faith, he first became popular for being the man who collected the rainwater in large tin tubs which he placed all over his property. These tin basins were shiny silver, favoring summer solstice cauldrons. It would look like the ... Read More

Tonight, Sarah didn’t want to get drunk with her parents. There had been too many nights of the same thing, and instead of finding comfort in the routine, it only made her feel increasingly worse about what had happened. Her parents had started drinking early and were too lost in ... Read More

He’s written about this too. He’s almost sure of it. Or at least thought seriously of writing about it a number of times and jotted the incident down in his notebook as an idea for a story. That every time he sits down at his typewriter for the first time ... Read More

She could be sitting up in bed, studying her lines; she might, at any moment, fling off the covers and pass by the window in stunning silhouette. She doesn't. But thirty minutes later I'm still watching when the light goes out. I am close enough to see all of the ... Read More

He could stay in the car a few more minutes, or even make a few rounds in the neighborhood, perhaps stop by the grocery store or hardware store and get something; they always need something. Instead, he shuts the car door behind him, the slam echoing. Inside, the air smells of Parmesan ... Read More

If I were a suicide I wouldn't have become a punchline. Budd Dwyer kept his dignity. "Don't, don't, don't" were his last words. "This will hurt someone." The way he says "Don't, don't, don't" is careful and controlled. A man who knows exactly what he is doing. He's incanting, summoning up the ... Read More

Scribbling this down to tell you later… Renée is sitting and eating a lukewarm bowl of banana oatmeal. She’s hunched over, clenching her spoon in her whitened fist and refusing to make eye contact. She glides the spoon around her bowl, eating strategically, and only periodically does she actually lift ... Read More

Goose bumps are taboo; her skin must be smooth and even. Last summer, he cracked open the windows for a breeze and let two fans chase away the heat.... Claire Polders is a Dutch author of four novels with a debut in English on the way. Her short prose appeared ... Read More

Marty realized that he had never once purchased a box of Corn Flakes, not ever in his life. The thought was very frightening. He wondered how he could've stepped on a Corn Flake in his own apartment without ever having purchased a box of Corn Flakes before.... Michael J. Coene's ... Read More

It was not uncommon for babies to show up at the door of the church. Whenever a woman had a baby she did not want, it appeared here so the Sisters could take it in the orphanage. Most mothers of these children, unable to care for them, took them personally ... Read More

They wear devilish waders and fly-fish in the creek at its most dangerous flow. They mainline Art, sip rattlesnake venom in the nude. They balance tea cups on their bosom and dare you to notice. They borrow your boombox and never give it back. Father says I can track them, ... Read More

You can’t remember the name of the guy sitting to your left, but you’re pretty sure the girl in the back is Jenny. When you told them about the boat and that the rest of the trip consisted of someone else’s directions, they assumed that someone else would be here ... Read More

When she last slept, she dreamt of a great lizard taking shape from the side of a building, a dinosaur that started out as a mural but which roared to life from the brick facade. Or did dinosaurs hiss? The poor monster couldn’t sleep either, she supposed.... Cezarija Abartis' Nice Girls ... Read More

The following day, he hung himself in the guest bathroom of the Deardorf’s two-story, five-bedroom house. Because he was so tall, it was perplexing to the police how he managed to accomplish this in such a small space. The conclusion was that he must’ve bent his legs or touched his chest with his ... Read More

Pretend you’re on a dating show not because you want to be (unless you’ll get a book deal, that happens sometimes) but for ulterior motives, say as a government spy or as a budding sociologist with a thesis deadline. Argue with your not-too-gruff-to-cry spy boss or with your stern-but-hip professor ... Read More

He prepared well for the debate: waxed the skin of his face, his mustache and the bald spot on the top of his head, trimmed his beard, and rubbed frankincense essential oil on the bottom of his feet and on his neck to help alleviate nervous energy and for the pleasant smell ... Read More

Weird dreams are Angie’s favorites. Dreams about eggs jumping off frying pans and skating around kitchens. Dreams of waltzing with long-dead aunts on bright cruise ship decks. Randomness was easy. It can mean anything.... Nathan Tavares writes fiction, sometimes about benevolent frauds, young immortals, and the terrible and/or wonderful things ... Read More

Granny Clery blamed my lack of the family eyes on my Italian father and Hazel's on her wicked spirit. But neither of us, not a one, ever fit in since..... Kristie Smeltzer's writing has appeared in So to Speak, The Florida Review, Eclectica Magazine, and The Apeiron Review. Her story,  "Bridges,"  was a ... Read More