X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine | Fiction

ROTTEN TOOTH by Kim Magowan & Michelle Ross

January 27, 2019 · Fiction

Blinking in the darkness of the school auditorium, Rajiv spots his ex-wife Sangita. Her filmy green shawl is flung over the back of the empty seat beside her, reminding him of how their daughter, Alisha, puts a plate and cutlery out for her imaginary friend, Mr. Potato (not to be confused with the toy with the interchangeable facial features). The first time she did this, Rajiv thought Alisha was setting a place for her mother, and he’d wondered if the intention might actually conjure Sangita. “You saving that seat for Todd?” Rajiv asks Sangita. Her boyfriend, pink-faced with thick, blond…

x-r-a-y magazine

GRIP by Claire Hopple

January 25, 2019 · Fiction

Let us tell you about Louise. At the moment we started to really pay attention, she was stuck behind a vehicle that read “Criminal Transport Unit – Dept. of Corrections” on the highway. When traffic cleared and she finally made it to the park, she was handed a universal key to all the glass showcases by her father. “Add more furnishings to the blue-tongue skink cage,” he said, gesturing toward an open box on a picnic table. Louise pulled what looked to be a mini tiki hut and micro lounge chairs out of the box and headed toward the showcases….

x-r-a-y magazine

BIO by Nick Perilli

January 24, 2019 · Fiction

Ernest Scheetz is a writer and carpenter living in Hudson, North Carolina. He smells like sawdust. Other work of his can be found in The Coyotee Review, New Langdon Quarterly, Triage Journal, New Coke Magazine, Holden Press, Instrumental Annual, Endeavors Review, Found Horizon, Form Letter Journal, Synecdoche Zoo York, String Lights Theory Magazine, Dwayne J. Quarterly, The Exorcism of Emily Prose, the garbage, Muted Xylophone Literary, The Flea Market, the Scheetz family plot, the eyes of his first son, the eyes of his dead father, Dreamboat Lit, Tourniquet Journal, Tall Tales & Ice Cream Horror Review, his friend’s copy of…

x-r-a-y magazine

LAND SPEED by Alex Evans

January 21, 2019 · Fiction

On October 24th, 2011, Oscar Valentine broke the land speed record riding his Schwinn through a suburb outside of Madison, Wisconsin. People said that this was impossible, that Oscar Valentine, being neither a professional high-speed driver nor a legal adult at the time of the achievement, could not have exceeded 760 miles per hour. Others cite the vehicle as their source of skepticism. Not only does a bicycle seem an unideal method by which to compete for speed, but a close friend of Valentine has publicly stated that the tires on the Schwinn were nearly flat that morning, and he…

x-r-a-y magazine

LILY IN THE LIGHT by Megan Pillow

January 20, 2019 · Fiction

Lily isn’t sleeping, but I still try to get up from the bed without making a sound. The curtains are closed, and I open them a peep so that a thin shaft of light comes in, not enough so that anyone from the outside can see us. The shaft travels to the bed, to the body lying there, like someone has traced a line across her belly with a golden brush, and beneath that lick of gold, her skin, oh, Lily’s skin lights up like one of those paper lanterns that you set on fire and send into the sky….

x-r-a-y magazine

MAPLE & GOO by Anith Mukherjee

January 18, 2019 · Fiction

The Orb glowed, the room shook, pink slime dripped from the ceiling. The Orb shuddered. The Orb split open. Gestating ultraviolet flesh. Flesh appendages reached out and grabbed Maple by the neck, they pulled her into The Orb’s living centre. She felt blood circulating around her, absorbing her. She faded and dissolved. She did not scream. It felt like a kiss. * Town Nouvelle Vague is a paranoid city. Steeped in irony and sarcasm. Sincerity was outlawed. No one knew what anyone was really thinking. There was a constant underlying analysis of meaning. The paranoia fed into the general theme…

x-r-a-y magazine

GLASSMAKING by Jason Kane

January 17, 2019 · Fiction

In their twenties love was ineptitude—being there to fail together. Separately they delved the snowy miles between Erie and Rochester. A quest for meaning, those birthplaces their only landmarks, logical lapses in the dense contract language of northern hardwood. Their paths converged in a college poetry workshop, a group exercise where they fixed their willful corrections onto a hapless third’s verse. She had green hair and wore face jewels. He wore steel toes and a red bandanna, ebony plugs in stretched earlobes. She worked at the campus library circulation desk. He worked on cars and bused at a diner built…

x-r-a-y magazine

A SHADOW THE LENGTH OF A LIFETIME by Sheldon Lee Compton

January 15, 2019 · Fiction

The last address was easy to remember. But in a year living on the outskirts of downtown Portsville, Calup still confused First Street with Second Street about every other time. Maybe that’s what happened with his last letter. Confusion was now his general state of mind, even on good days, when it was only mild. At eighty-six years old, there were more days when he could remember what was in his lunch box the day the Number 2 tipple burned on Shelby Creek than he remember what street he lived on. The post office lady pulled to his mailbox. He…

x-r-a-y magazine

LIKE NEEDLE TO RECORD by Tomas Moniz

January 14, 2019 · Fiction

Terrance tells me choose a record and I struggle. He’s a new friend. A very sexy friend. I need friends. We have one in common, Metal Matt, who’s orchestrated this meetup, aka blind brunch date, slash hook-up. But with friends with records like these, you know. Plus I don’t want to offend. There’s Rihanna, understandable. Peaches, okay. But the predominance of ‘80s music stupefies. The closest thing to metal: Alice in Chains. I figure sure why not. I pull the album from the shelf. I say, How’s this, and hold the record high. He’s in the kitchen constructing our…

x-r-a-y magazine

BLUE BLOODED by Thomas Barnes

January 13, 2019 · Fiction

On the second date she brought up the lights in the water. “What do you mean you haven’t seen them,” she said. “You’re from here. It’s all up and down the shore, real late. The witching hour or past it.” “Just summers when I was a kid,” I said. “Now I don’t stay out late. Early shift.” The diner faced a parking lot, the parking lot of the black ocean. End of season loomed. Emptiness inherited the town. Waves lashed the thin shore and wind ripped at dune grass. Gulls hung in the air, motionless and screaming. “What about tonight,”…

x-r-a-y magazine

« Previous 1…101 102103104 105…123 Next »