Category: Fiction

Avital Gad-Cykman is the author of Light Reflection Over Blues (Ravenna Press) and Life In, Life Out (Matter Press). She is the winner of Margaret Atwood Studies Magazine Prize and The Hawthorne Citation Short Story Contest, twice a finalist for the Iowa Fiction Award and a six-time nominee for the ... Read More

She—some folks called her Jill—used to buy love at the shopping mall, but then all the malls died. She probably died, too, but she still went love-shopping ... Read More

"The fox stops, half turns, half stays. The way a fox will, being two things at once and daring both. Mottled coat, those delicate fairy tale feet, one poised as if to point the way, a way for me to follow...." ... Read More

"When I woke from surgery, I wondered where my arm went. / It was still attached, I was assured. I saw it there, hanging from my body...." ... Read More

"Odin’s spear struck Valhalla’s golden floor with a mighty thud, silvered veins of sorcerous power erupting from the point of contact, energy flying electric and jagged to the four corners of his vast throne room. This was One-Eye’s signal for quiet, and I went along. We all went along...." —Kurt ... Read More

Why don’t you bring Ashok over for lunch?” Nadine was an anthropologist and had to get to the bottom of things. All these days and months she’d gotten a second hand account and now she wanted to see the mystery man in person. I somehow knew she’d be disappointed, but ... Read More

On the second Tuesday of January the survivors gather for the annual survivor dance. They gather in the ballroom of the historic synagogue on Ocean Avenue. Like many things, the place is a shadow of its former self. Spanning half a city block, it now sits cavernous and crumbling, like ... Read More

"They were as light and fluffy as the small white clouds that floated across an otherwise spotless blue sky, of which Raffie and Kip had an unobstructed view from the balcony where they feasted on the fried scallops, clams, shrimp, calamari, and other seafood on the frittura platter. Raffie’s father ... Read More

Eckleburg is pleased to announce the Gertrude Stein Award in Fiction winners and finalists. Thank you to all who submitted. It is always a difficult task choosing among such talented voices and storytelling.  Gertrude Stein Award: First Place "Frittura" by Judith Goode Second Place "Little Sister" by Jarrett Kaufman Third ... Read More

Why does his family piss him off so badly? No clue. All he knows is that he wants to scream. He nestles each fly into his tackle box. In the kitchen, his wife makes tuna-and-tomato sandwiches, their fish smell pervading the living room. She fills Ziploc bags with carrot sticks, ... Read More

You cannot go back.  Leah had sketched the words on every scrap of paper, every grocery list, even the coupons she handed over at the store, the newspapers she bound with string and set out for recycling.  They, too, bore her new mantra beneath the bylines—four words from a soft-tipped ... Read More

You’ll stumble over the pronunciation of her name. When you ask your friend Aida, who is Puerto Rican, how to say it, she’ll tell you that she doesn’t know and that all Dominicans.... Kate Scarpetta grew up in Northeastern Pennsylvania and spent her youth playing sports and climbing trees. She ... Read More

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

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