X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine | Fiction

POSSUM STORY by Kayla Jean

March 18, 2022 · Fiction

We were going to scrape that possum off the road because somebody had to do it. That’s what our Dads said, trucks rattling in neighboring driveways, complaining about the borough workers, asking nobody in particular where their taxes went, if not to cleaning up a dead possum right in the middle of the intersection. The Biology teacher had even joked about dissecting it for class, because it was the intersection right next to the high school and so every student and every teacher saw it, curled up and still in the mornings then somehow more freshly dead in the afternoons….

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PASSION by Melissa Ostrom

March 16, 2022 · Fiction

Passion turned thirteen in the middle of July, and when the first light of this day, this special day, woke her and sweetened the darkness like milk stirred into coffee, Passion divided like a cell, turned into two Passions, a watching Passion, a watched Passion. Passion sensed Passion, keenly and with great interest. Herself. Her self. Passion thought, Here curls Passion on her side, under a worn sheet, her gaze turned to the paling window. The curve of her hip is slight. The arm hugging the pillow is slim. And there rises the sun. Pay attention, Passion, Passion ordered. Smell…

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THEY CAN LIVE WITHOUT FLIES by Michael Seymour Blake

March 14, 2022 · Fiction

She lay huddled and naked in bed, her skin a grayish black. Her brittle hair broke off at the slightest touch. I rested my head on her rigid body, hearing nothing. I inhaled—a dull, mossy smell. I called Dad. He came over right away. He tapped Mom a few times, then knocked on her like he was knocking on a door. He placed his ear against her open lips. “Get me a flashlight.” I brought him one. He shined light into her mouth. “What do you see?” He grabbed a cigarette from the pack in his back pocket. He…

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POTATO NECK by Genevieve Jagger

March 11, 2022 · Fiction

She isn’t the most beautiful woman I have ever seen but I haven’t seen a woman in eight months or more and am turning, quickly, to dust. By haven’t seen a woman I mean haven’t seen Leanne, though either way it’s hot sand, glass and friction. It’s a wonder my cabin doesn’t go up in flames, everything made of wood as it is, working on myself at night as I do. It would only take one spark. She is sitting out on a small mound of grass that I think of as the stoop, her back turned to me. It…

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BIRTHDAY PRESENTS by Gary Fincke

March 7, 2022 · Fiction

Sixth: Her Reborn Baby Doll Her promised sister, it wasn’t, but her mother had selected the model featuring the optional beating heart and carried the gift-wrapped baby home bundled in a blanket as if sleet had begun to slant from a terrible sky. “What will you name her?” her mother said. “Bernadine,” the girl whispered, knowing not to say Darla, as she felt the doll’s heart pulse against her body. As soon as she kissed its face, she packed away her other dolls like winter clothes. But one morning, only four months later, when she pressed her ear on Bernadine’s…

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OUTING by Serkan Görkemli

March 4, 2022 · Fiction

By the time I show up for our weekly outing on Thursday evening, my friend Yaprak has already ordered the first bottle of red wine. We’re meeting on the patio of Büyük Truva Oteli, one of the oldest and most expensive hotels on the shore of the Dardanelles in downtown Çanakkale in northwestern Turkey. She beckons me with her left hand to our quiet corner. Her right hand puts out one of the many cigarettes she has already smoked. The night is young, and I’ve brought two packs of Camels just in case. I’m a little late, and I already…

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AFTER NOT LEAVING THE HOUSE FOR THREE DAYS by Quinn Forlini

March 2, 2022 · Fiction

Anna’s mother convinces her to go for a walk. The weather’s getting warmer. Anna feels like she’s been living inside a tunnel, or an artery. She’s thirteen. Last week she dyed her hair purple from a box at the drugstore and it’s ugly. She pulls her hair into a ponytail, feeling the roughness as it passes through her fingers from the cheap dye. Her mother tried to warn her, and that made her want it more. Her mother reminds her for the seventh time that it’s a bit chilly out, so at the last second, Anna grabs her dad’s black…

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FIGHT VIDEOS 1-3 by Julian Castronovo

February 28, 2022 · Fiction

I. The babysitter Bunny put me in the basement and locked the door. It was an old basement, a cellar. There was a torn up floral sofa and a boiler and a window that looked out at the bottom of a hole. The hole was maybe four feet deep and was lined with pieces of wood that kept it from collapsing into itself. I walked over and looked up through it. The sky was dark yellow. I went and sat on the sofa and watched videos of fat people slapping each other hard in the face. Then I heard…

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CAN’T DIE IN PORTLAND, MAINE by Scott Laudati

February 25, 2022 · Fiction

It was summer everywhere but Portland, Maine. From Brooklyn to Portsmouth road crews sat along I-95 and stared longingly into the finality of their existence. This was it. The winters too cold and the summers too hot. Fall was spoken about with the nostalgia of an old folk song, and spring, of course, ran shorter than a rainy weekend. The crews spent the entirety of these uncomfortable months working on the sides of roads while everyone sped by on their way to somewhere better, or worse. The only time the two groups interacted was when a motorist fell asleep and…

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BUNNY: A TRIPTYCH by Yasmina Din Madden

February 23, 2022 · Fiction

1. The rabbits come in dozens it seems. Nothing one minute, invasion the next. They crouch in the grass like tiny statues, gray fur flecked with white. Cottontails. Leaf-ears at attention. Waiting. Kits, short for kittens, now called bunnies, as if kitten is not cute enough for the tiniest of these rabbits. Bunny, diminutive of the Scottish bun, a nickname for a pet rabbit. Also, slang for a young, attractive woman. She’s a real bunny. A male rabbit is a buck, a female a doe. Before mating, the buck chases the doe until she turns and boxes at him with…

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