THE HUNDRED YEAR PERIOD by Leah Smolin
Today marks my one hundredth anniversary working at the waffle factory. They threw a little party for me in the breakroom—coffee in paper cups, a pink cake with ONE HUNDRED written on it in frosting. My friend Ellie mimed throwing up on the cake. I laughed and covered my mouth with my cup.
STAYING CLEAN by Megan Premo
The foamless rectangle was greenish-blue, an institutional color, not a tropical one, and it smelled like something meant to clean dishes or toilets or floors, not human hair, not fourteen-year-old girls’ bodies.
MIKE THORN on film with Rebecca Gransden
Horror is the genre I associate most immediately with transgression and secrecy, which is part of the reason I adore it so much.
DOGMAN IN X PARTS by Alice Maglio
Nightstand condom: faint red on latex. Dogman is peeing. I contemplate my residue. Nothing violent about it, just a swift move at an awkward angle. Only now I realize there must be a tear.
THE BEGINNING OF DUSK by Jon Berger
Back in high school Jared would come to our lunch table and say the craziest shit to get a laugh out of everyone. We would egg him on and tell him to go to other lunch tables and say the same vile shit.
THE DISASTER LOTTERY by David Williamson
A few years back when I’m twelve and old enough to be alone at home while my parents leave and stay out late, I find some cigarettes and smoke them in the house, then I take two sips each from all the liquor bottles we have in the house, and then I get hit over the head with a premonition that my mom and dad are never coming back home. I move to the front window, the one that I can see the farthest down the road, and I stare out the glass and watch for their car. I focus…
A BIG JOKE ON ME: JP Vallières interviewed by Rebecca Gransden
Growing up I was taught that sacrificing oneself for another was the highest form of love. Who wouldn’t want to prove their love for the person they love most?
FBI JESUS by Kevin Nolan
You remember not really understanding the true meaning of Christmas and not worrying for a moment about your ignorance. It didn’t matter. No one ever checked if you knew.
SISY WUZ HERE by John Waterfall
The baby never wakes up, no matter how high he throws it, how far he punts it into the strange lunar twilight of Hell. No, it never stirs, despite the whirls and twirls. Through the chops and knocks, baby sleeps on.