X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine | Fiction

GLAD YOU’RE HERE by Dan Shiffman

March 27, 2020 · Fiction

You are the one who goes back for the remaining Christmas presents while the rest of the family hugs in puffy coats by the doorway. The straps on the duffel bags pulled from the trunk of the car are rough and chilled. When you come inside, everyone is already seated around the fireplace or in the kitchen. They ask a smiling question or two, then the conversation floats to the other side of the room. The dog—it’s a golden retriever; it used to be a Schnauzer—stretches and walks over looking for attention and reassurance. You pour a glass of Coke,…

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GLASS by Ross McMeekin

March 26, 2020 · Fiction

My neighbor wants to know about the fish tank, whether it still holds water. I want to know the same about the river running along the highway. There’s a lot of agriculture upstream, a lot of fields to irrigate. It’s midsummer, the sun is merciless, and the snowpack is gone. He rubs his finger on the glass, looks at it, and wipes his jeans. I need more money than I can make from this yard sale, and I think he knows it. “So what did you keep in the tank?” he asks. “A better place than this.” I kept tropical…

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WHEN I WAS A PAPER GIRL by Sam Payne

March 26, 2020 · Fiction

Nana was always keen on telling me how working hard was important, so when I was thirteen, I took it upon myself to sign up with Turners Newsagents. It wasn’t long before a round came up. This pleased Nana. She was enthusiastic about bringing me up in the right way. “Manners and hard work, that’s all you need, my girl. Don’t let the past become an excuse.” By which she meant the death of my parents when I was nine, but we didn’t talk about them directly. I delivered the morning papers to all the posh houses on the other…

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A FAIR FIGHT by Alle C. Hall

March 23, 2020 · Fiction

The boat didn’t launch until 10PM. Allia and the three Swedish men she found herself with settled into the hold of the 25-foot cargo vessel ferrying supplies between Indonesian islands. They must have hit rough seas, because Allia woke in the dark to find the boat tipping right then left, as if God were running big fingers up and down the keys of a piano. There was rain and there were rats. When the boat tipped right, the travelers and the rats rolled to the right; when the boat tipped left, they rolled left. Without an ounce of condescension, the…

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MIDGE by Tara Campbell

March 21, 2020 · Fiction

“I remember sailing in a ship.” Skipper’s voice fills the musty darkness of the drawer. “I mean, it was a small ship, more like a boat, I guess, and we were just floating, really, which maybe some people wouldn’t call sailing, but anyhow, I liked it.” Her tone brightens with the details. “It was a warm day but cool down by the water. The girl had taken us down there—” “What was the girl’s name?” I ask. I hear Skipper’s intake of breath, the way the memory catches in her throat, even though she technically doesn’t have one anymore, meaning a throat,…

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IF WE MISS THIS ONE by Abbie Barker

March 20, 2020 · Fiction

The morning sun highlights imperfections—the cigarette burn at the edge of my seat, the dust on the dash, the dried blood hugging the edges of Grant’s thumbnail. He’s disheveled, unshaven, his black hair kinked from a restless sleep. I want to slide my hand over his cowlick and smooth it down. I want to talk about last night. “Is there a later meeting if we miss this one?” I say. “We can still make it.” Multi-family homes flash by in tones of gray, in varying states of disrepair. We pass a park with an overgrown baseball diamond and a playground…

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RIGHT BEFORE WE FALL APART by Elizabeth Crowder

March 19, 2020 · Fiction

We sit in cooling sand. You reach out a gritty palm. I don’t move closer. Eight years ago, on this same stretch of beach, with our swelling son arching your back like a comma, we vowed to love each other forever. “Let’s play a game.” You twist kinky hair around a dark brown finger. The last game we played was at your parents’ Christmas party. There, in your three-bedroom, one-bathroom childhood home with the red door, you unclenched. Your voice became salty and slippery, an oyster shucked from its shell. You loosened, darkened, said the n-word with a soft “er.”…

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1978. BATH, OHIO by Sean Williamson

March 18, 2020 · Fiction

He was driving drunk, a cigarette ripping hot, filter crushed between his fingers. Around a faraway corner headlights, beams reflected faint through the windshield, through his Kmart but that’s ok glasses. Tiny embers spit, excited by wind from the open window. He put out the cigarette, stuffed it into the ashtray blossom, grabbed a pack of Camel Menthols off the passenger seat, popped the top, flicked and flicked until a filtered end rose, then pulled it out slow between tight teeth. He pushed in the lighter. Headlights down the way grew at him, flare swelling in his smudged up glasses,…

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SNOWBANK by Frances Badgett

March 17, 2020 · Fiction

The night comes on so quietly, a hush riding each flake to the ground. The snowman slumps against the brambles, overwhelmed, the new snow wet, heavy. The quiet is unsettling, and all Mara can hear is the hiss of tinnitus in her left ear. She pops in headphones and listens to a meditation, the brain’s static between the breaths. The pressure of trying to relax wakes her up, agitates her. Paul’s on the porch, muffled thumps and the creak of the front door. She opens her iPad and checks to see the constellation overhead. Hydra, a favorite of hers from…

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RAW HAND BURGER by EC Sorenson

March 16, 2020 · Fiction

They’re coming at me all the time now. I want this, I want that. Uppity bunch. In my day, students didn’t act like this. This lot spends the morning taking selfies. Spends the afternoon posting them places you never even heard of. All that staring into their own eyes—where’s it going to get them? So, anyway, one of them says I wasn’t using gloves. Okay, I say, talk to management. I say talk to management about why I am the only server here when there’s all of you and you all want your special ingredients and not what it says…

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