POOL RULES by William P Adams

The below-ground swimming pool in our neighbor Robbie Garvin’s backyard was ready. Robbie’s father, the beneficiary of a large insurance settlement, wasted no time improving the Garvins’ status in the neighborhood. I heard my parents talking about it; they used terms like ‘not above board’ and ‘possible fraud,’ which I knew nothing about. The pool was heated and had a diving board – enough said. Robbie let on at school that he would throw a start-of-summer pool party on the first Saturday after school was out. He bragged that there would be unlimited food and drink and bikini-clad girls from…

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WOLF IT DOWN by Billie Chang

I push Ally’s note clean into the corners of my mouth, the motion wet and slow, the ink kissing molar. Finn is in the shower. The bathroom door splintered last week after Mr. Rutabaga ran into it, full force and head-on, in pursuit of a fast spider. We drove him to the on-call vet. He sits now in his doghouse with one less tooth and a tender snout. I can hear Finn’s motions through the wood-chipped cracks: the stumbling as he raises his leg to wash the bottom of his foot, the collapse of water after he pools the drops…

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KYLE SEIBEL’S ‘HEY, YOU ASSHOLES’ IS NOT NEAT, BUT IT’S PERFECT: A CONVERSATION by Naya Clark

Kyle Seibel is not a veteran writer or a magical realism writer, but he is a veteran and his writing has magical and realistic attributes. He is still breaking into the literary world even though he seems to have a hang of it. He’s witty on a website we used to call Twitter, and can write a hell of a short story. Rarely does he add quotes when his characters are speaking and he doesn’t capitalize his story titles. Seibel is based in Santa Monica and lives with his wife and dog named Snacks—who also has an established internet presence…

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HIDE-AND-SEEK by Nathaniel Lachenmeyer

It’s my favorite game I was so happy when you rang my doorbell and asked my mother if I could play because I wasn’t always asked sometimes I would see you all playing running through yards or peeking around bushes looking for the person who was it and once I heard two of you under my window whispering about where someone was hiding and of course I could hear the laughter and the shouting whenever they were found and I would tell myself it didn’t mean anything that I wasn’t asked even though everybody knew it was supposed to be…

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SWORDFISH STRIPS by Michael Brooks

Emily spots her strutting up to the hostess stand: a willowy curl of a woman, Asian and raven-haired, white blouse tucked into a black pencil skirt at her narrow waist. Her eyes are sharp as blades, bright as the silver chain about her neck. She grips a Prada handbag that fins from her side and points with a slender finger to a table at the wide bow window, in Emily’s section. Nothing in her face or posture wavers. A man strides in behind her—maybe fifteen years her senior—a graying swoop of hair roofing a scrunched face and thin-framed glasses. He…

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ROSE BOOKS READER VOL 1: GROUP INTERVIEW

The Rose Books Reader Vol 1, “Primal Scream,” publishes March 20th, full of “prose that explores characters or narrators somehow on the edge or on the brink, in chrysalis or transition, in various states of emergency or desire, struggling to cope with the realities of our contemporary world in real or surreal ways, with some success or no success at all…” that is “an engagement with emotional extremes or environmental collapse or feelings of bodily entrapment…that is desperate, unhinged, hallucinatory, hormonal. In keeping with Rose Books’ mission—“we believe in taking risks for the sake of beauty[.]’” I asked the contributors…

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ACREMONIUM by Shira Moolten

Gina didn’t believe Sam when he said he’d discovered mold inside the air duct.  “What do you mean, mold?” she said from the couch, not looking up from her phone. “It’s probably dust.” Sam got down from his perch on the bar stool.  “I’m going out,” he said, then went to Walmart and bought painting masks and rubber gloves and vinegar. Within 20 minutes he was back, reexamining the duct in their condo with a flashlight.  “It’s everywhere,” Sam said. “Come look.” “That’s okay,” Gina said. She was reading a really interesting New York Times article. Besides, Sam was always…

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TICK by J. Eagleson

You are a tick. You fly through the air on an arc of static electricity, in hopes of landing on something alive and real. Your travel is always a courtesy of others, or an unexpected spark of nature. Purgatory for you is a blade of grass or a dark sock that renders you a shadow in the night as you crawl towards your heaven of soft flesh. You latch onto the shadow of her ankle, monosyllabic in name and purpose. People around here tend to wear socks — she does not. A waft of odor floats up from her shoes,…

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“I’LL DO” by Sacha Francis

“I’m not doing a reading for you.” “You do have the cards, though,” Drew sneered. He was laying the deck out in four piles – the way he shuffled Magic. “Yeah,” I said, “but only ‘cause they’re dads.” “And you know how to do it.” He conjoined the sets, his thumbs bending around the feathered edges at first, joking like he wanted to riffle them. I shot him evils and he shot back worse, his nose and eyes scrunching up to mock me. He was like a girl. “Sort of,” I said. I’d never done it for anyone but myself….

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LAST NIGHT I DREAMT WE WERE LOBSTERS by Melanie Mulrooney

Last night I dreamt we were lobsters.  I was tucked behind a rock, hiding from the cod swimming overhead. The bright blue of your claw caught my attention; one in two million, deliciously unique. “You’re new here,” I rasped. “Lobsters can’t talk,” you replied. Your antenna twitched in my direction. I crouched in my shadowed crevice, waiting for the light to cease filtering to the ocean floor, for you to come and make me yours. But first, you had to prove yourself—fight your way to dominance. The reigning champion of our rocky oasis charged, his brown-green a stark contrast to…

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