X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine | Fiction

RHETORIC, GIRL! by Amie Norman Walker

December 16, 2018 · Fiction

Radio wire mutated with the Cicadas, every Midwest heart bled to this expectation. Knowing of no reason for time to come undone she perched herself on the couch as Carjone’s car snaked the driveway. Elevated humidity levels sweat the brows of every surface as evening rolled over, drooling for nightfall’s reprieve. Unstable minutes turned around the clocks face before he walked in with blood on his hands in a stride unfamiliar to her. She stared at him, her head cocked left and her lips pursed tight until they popped open with confusion. A need for her reflexed in his shadow….

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THE WEEPING NUDE by Jennifer Lewis

December 12, 2018 · Fiction

“Get up.” “No. It’s not even light out. I want to sleep.” “You heard me.” He lights a candle, then another. Then claps his hands. “Move!” She smells the turpentine. Hears the clinking of glass bottles. The room is freezing. Tiny sounds of the night drift through the walls. A horse kicks a stone, then neighs. “I’m not posing,” she says. “I’ve told you before. You never have to pose. You must be yourself.” The Weeping Nude, Edvard Munch 1913 This makes her smile. She likes being different than the others. Not another archetype, or myth or stupid symbol. How…

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CONTACT LESS by Adam Lock

December 11, 2018 · Fiction

Reaching with a blind hand, Rebecca pulls a loaf from the back row and reads its scarf. David buys the wrong sort; he buys bleached, ghost-bread, even though he knows she doesn’t like it. The price of bread is an economic barometer. There’s a trick to selling a house: bread in the oven. She sniffs the loaf. Bread is as old as farming, as old as the domesticated dog. She wants a dog. David doesn’t. In the UK, we throw six million loaves into our waterways each year. This disrupts the whole ecosystem and is bad news for amphibians, fish,…

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STILL, BIRDS by Nick Gregorio

December 10, 2018 · Fiction

Joe’s head bursts and fills the office with blue birds. Singing, chirping, flying figure eights around the ceiling fans. The red-faced, foamy-mouthed ranting Bill just popped Joe’s head with should’ve produced something more vicious. Snakes exploding in every direction like those gag cans sold at junk shops in malls. Or badgers, gnashing their teeth, snarling, sinking their teeth into people’s calf muscles. But blue birds flying, tweeting Jackson 5 tunes, swooping, diving, gliding, barrel rolling over the network of cubicles is…I guess that sort of thing just doesn’t add up for me. Standing in a mess of bird nest that…

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TO ANYONE WHO DOES NOT BELIEVE IN TIME MACHINES, I INVITE YOU TO MY PARENTS’ HOUSE by Georgia Bellas

December 9, 2018 · Fiction

I wash dishes. I am 12, 27, 14, 19, 31. I am two in a yellow shirt and checked shorts and a bowl cut standing on a chair at the sink, hands clasped above the soapy water, grinning open-mouthed at the camera while my mother is in the hospital recovering from another Cesarean section. I am nearly 43. The age my grandmother died. There are bubbles. Lots of bubbles only my mother can make, her knuckles raw and red. We use a dishcloth here, not a sponge. There are systems. Taxonomies unfathomable to the uninitiated. Flour is in the second…

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CVS by Sean Thor Conroe

December 7, 2018 · Fiction

April 2018— It’s been two months since I’ve purchased anything besides tobacco and rolling papers since I’m two months behind on rent and it’s been two months since I got my SNAP card approved and my check from my construction gig has yet to arrive and every bike delivery payout I get goes straight to keeping my almost maxed out credit card almost maxed out, but tonight I’m making a concession since my next credit card payment isn’t till the end of the week and I can’t, haven’t for the life of me been able, to find any of my…

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ANALOGUE by Sara Kachelman

December 5, 2018 · Fiction

I share a face with a famous killer. Before I was nobody. Now women ask to have their pictures made with me. When we stand together I slide my hand down their backs until they quiver. It thrills them. I am a dangerous man! The killer kills women. He says it is not sexual. I know him. We stood next to each other in a lineup. I admit he is attractive. We shook hands at the station. “You are good at what you do,” I said. “You are good at what you do,” he replied. Then he winked. I had…

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MORE MORE MORE by Neil Clark

December 4, 2018 · Fiction

First thing on your first day, you were instructed to go down the basement and have a picture taken for your security pass. Down there, they told you a joke and said, “Now hold that smile and look at the camera.” ‘Click’ They printed the photo and handed it to you. You were pleased with how it turned out. Your smile was genuine. The joke they’d told you was a good one. Then they passed you a piece of sticky tape and said, “Stick the photo to your forehead, please. And smile a little more.” ‘Click’ They printed the second…

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LOVE IS THE PLAYGROUND OF THE THING by Michael Mungiello

December 3, 2018 · Fiction

This love story has nothing to do with me. I’m not involved. Even the small parts—the earrings, the dog, the money—I only care a little bit about. What’s actually important is how it ends. It ends on a boat. I started following Lorenzo because he lived next door and he looked exactly like me. It was an added advantage that he was ignorant of almost everything. For example, he never noticed I was following him. I followed in my car and on foot, I took buses I didn’t have to and sat in the row behind him. Lorenzo always wore…

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THIS IS WHAT I WANT by Tina Wayland

December 2, 2018 · Fiction

This is what I want. I want to change the locks on our front door. My front door. I want to pry the deadbolts from the wall, break them with a hammer. Feel the echo of every strike travel up my arms and through my skin, settle in my bones. I want to throw away the key that hangs from your belt buckle, forget the way you’d bend your hips to the lock like a dance, swaying to catch the keyhole, then tumbling into the room as the door swung open, catching your balance on the picture of us that…

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