admin7EyZHDb8HNC8btr3, Author at X-R-A-Y

GO TO HELL by Katherine Plumhoff

July 22, 2024 · Fiction

I thought I knew what hot was. Humidity I could swallow. The wings of dead fish flies going translucent in the sun. Sprinkles melting off my ice cream cone the second I walk out of the shop. There is no ice cream here. There are plenty of dead things, but they are not stiff and quiet. They buzz. Shake. Scream. If I think about them for too long they’re all I can see. All I can hear. I like to imagine it’s a particularly exotic vacation. A desired hot — one I spent money on and rolled up all my…

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STUMP REMOVAL by Andrew Graham Martin

July 21, 2024 · Micros

I saw a sign for stump removal and found myself wishing I had a stump that needed removing. Or, more exactly, I wished that should I ever have a stump that needed removing I’d see a sign like that one. Or, put yet another way, I wished that in my life I could see the things I need to see right when I need to see them. Not before, and not after.

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DAD FIGHTS by Matt Rowan

July 20, 2024 · Micros

“Sometimes dads fight,” Dad says. “It’s just a thing we have to do sometimes.” That’s how Dad explained it to me the first time, and he hasn’t bothered explaining it in any greater depth since. Every spring my dad starts preparing to fight again. He spends long hours in the garage with his misshapen Everlast heavy bag he bought from DICK’S Sporting Goods many years ago. “It does the trick,” he says, bareknuckling it with even more gusto. He’s fighting the same fight he’s been fighting since I was born, something about some kind of disagreement that nobody really remembers…

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DEALBREAKERS by Rachel Dorn

July 17, 2024 · Creative Nonfiction

Would you date a dying girl I type in the message box. My thumb hovers over the send button. I hit delete. What are ur dealbreakers I type instead. **************** We don’t say terminal anymore, Janessa, my support group leader, says on one of our monthly Zoom calls. We say incurable. Because, you know, people can live a long time with this now. What doesn’t need to be said is that not all of us will. **************** In the months after I find out I have an incurable heart and lung disease, I spend a lot of time thinking about…

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“TORN BETWEEN THE PAST AND THE FUTURE […] UNSURE IF ANY TANGIBLE PRESENT EXISTS”: An Interview with David Leo Rice

July 16, 2024 · Fiction

The artistic ambition and imagination of David Leo Rice seem to know no bounds. His latest novel, The Berlin Wall (Whiskey Tit, 2024), carries forward investigations and ideas worked out in his earlier books while exploring new landscapes, deeper heresies, and alternate means of storytelling. I’d heard rumblings of this novel’s existence quite a while ago, and was excited to finally get my hands on a presale copy earlier this year: it did not disappoint. David was kind enough to sit down with me for a conversation about the book, its generation, genre, fanaticism, heroism, and various “hatchings” of selves…

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MISTER INTERNATIONAL INCIDENT by Kirsti MacKenzie

July 15, 2024 · Fiction

“Told you,” says Dirt. “I knew he’d lose his shit.” I’m not losing my shit. Annie doesn’t say anything. She keeps her eyes trained on the gym bag under the desk. “Pay up,” says Dirt. “Fuck off,” says Annie. Dirt’s desk chair squeals as he leans back, lacing his fingers behind his bald head. The chairs are old and broken, an afterthought. Like everything else here. I’ve got my jacket halfway off and a glass container with dinner in my hand. I put the container on the desk, then grab it again. “He can’t get it,” scoffs Dirt. “He’s a…

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2000s MOVIES ARE AS OLD NOW AS 80s MOVIES WERE IN THE 2000s by Tanner Armatis

July 14, 2024 · Micros

Dallas Jones tweeted. The fear washed my wrinkles in goosebumps. I Know What You Did Last Summer now as predictable as rain. I am my brother maxing out his credit card. American Psycho is being remade. I am my father wondering about the vote. Idiocracy now a prophetic tale. I am my mother cleaning dishes for different reasons. Lord of the Rings lives on forever. I am the door to other lives. I scrolled.

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WE DIDN’T EVEN NOTICE THE ASTRONAUT by daniel joseph

July 13, 2024 · Micros

we didn’t even know we were in a rickshaw-type town, but it was a good thing we were, being out of time & money & the rickshaw seeming quicker than walking & like a pay-what-you-can type operation. we were already confused on so many levels – in a real uncertain bind, our heads bouncing along the ground behind us. we didn’t even notice the astronaut when we climbed aboard & about sat on him – as little as he was. but he said he didn’t mind the company, that he was just riding around for the ride of it &…

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THE SEWING KIT by Chad Sullivan

July 12, 2024 · Fiction

Grandma spoke to ghosts and refused her dentures. She’d shit herself and call us thieves. She said her dying was taking forever and that Grandpa stopped loving her, and both those things were true, but only because Grandpa was dead. At sundown, she’d turn werewolf. She’d call me Donald and flash her gums. I’d go to the garage, disturb Grandpa’s tools, taste corrosion; thumb old magazines, and smell decay. I’d sit amongst rot (avoiding the rot in Grandma’s brain) and tie knots in Grandpa’s sewing kit just to feel closure. Grandma’s mouth puckered like an asshole. She’d eventually miss Mass,…

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PURGATORY by Amy DeBellis

July 11, 2024 · Fiction

Julia starts noticing David when he kills the fish in their bio classroom. The class finds it on the floor when they come in, stranded in a too-shallow puddle of water, tiny mouth open in a last desperate gasp. Like everyone else, David wears an expression of puzzled sorrow, his pale eyes wide with sympathy, but nobody besides Julia notices the spots of water on his sleeves. The thin trapdoor of his smile, flickering in and out of existence. So Julia starts noticing other things, too. She registers the curve of his lips, the cupid’s bow as pronounced as those…

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