X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine | Fiction

EVENTUALLY NOTHING’S COMING BACK by Gabrielle Griffis

April 18, 2020 · Fiction

First they converted five-thousand year-round homes into summer rentals. The number of Airbnbs and zoning regulations filled the ponds with nitrogen and cyanobacteria, stuff that evolved 2.7 billion years ago. You stare at a sign that says keep kids away from scum. You think, something is desperately wrong, but folks just shrug, elated that the remaining ponds are six degrees hotter. A woman in a bathing suit reads the same sign. “I’m glad I won’t be around to see what happens!” she says, snapping swimming goggles over hair the color of spider silk. She details her upcoming trip to a coral…

x-r-a-y magazine

THE BIRD by Mary Widdicks

April 17, 2020 · Fiction

There’s mud between my toes. Slimy, sticky, and covering the chipped pink polish that now decorates only the tips of my big toenails. It’ll be gone the next time Mom cuts them. The ground is hot even though the sun is starting to duck behind the trees, and I can’t stand still for very long or it burns the bottoms of my feet. I hop from grass patch to molehill along the side of the road, avoiding gravel and broken glass like a game of hopscotch, and trying desperately not to spill the water from the bucket dangling from my…

x-r-a-y magazine

A VERY SHORT STORY ABOUT TWO (THREE) FORMER FRIENDS by Eli S. Evans

April 15, 2020 · Fiction

On my fortieth birthday, my old friend A– sent me the following message: “Happy birthday, bro. Mark Fisher summited Everest last week.” As Mark Fisher and I hadn’t been friends for at least twenty years, this news was not meaningful to me except in so far as it provided a measure relative to which all of my own accomplishments in life suddenly appeared quite meager. And on the day of my fortieth birthday, no less! In bitterness, I composed the following reply: “That’s cool, but not as cool as when I summited your mom last night,” and only after not…

x-r-a-y magazine

EGGS by Emma Howard

April 15, 2020 · Fiction

I’m just going to write stream of consciousness I don’t like women I admire I’m scared of them I’m scared I’ll never be like them and I’ll always laugh at every joke and be afraid of feeling angry and letting people know every time I was angry I ate a lot of something really salty or really sweet and kept the wrappers in my bag so roommates wouldn’t see them in the trash can I remove them at irregular intervals, when I’m in public by a trash can and I don’t know anybody there I move to a new one for…

x-r-a-y magazine

THE FULL LENGTH OF THE WALL by Darren Nuzzo and Toddy Smith

April 13, 2020 · Fiction

I watched him do it—down there in the alley beside our house. “Up to no good,” my wife said. “Can you handle it, Sam?” she asked of me. “I’ll handle it,” I told her. But I just watched. I watched this tall man from our bedroom window standing in the alley, near our things, near my wife’s car she’s almost paid off, near the flowers finally blooming from finger-painted pots, near my daughter’s purple tricycle we won in a raffle just last week, near all the things a husband is supposed to protect. I opened the window and leaned my…

x-r-a-y magazine

SHORT STORY AS MODERNIST WITH HUMAN BRAIN by John Milas

April 11, 2020 · Fiction

for Marianne My classmates and I were waiting in line to hold a human cadaver’s brain. I took it with both hands when it was my turn. It was gray and smelled like tequila because we’d pulled it from a bucket of brains soaking in alcohol. It was heavy as if a generation of memories had accumulated within its rubbery noodles like a pile of dust. I thought if I dropped the brain on the floor by accident it would probably bounce like a spare tire. My professor brought our class to the cadaver lab on campus because she told…

x-r-a-y magazine

CONSIDER RAVIOLI by Jane-Rebecca Cannarella

April 10, 2020 · Fiction

We’re three in a row and it’s warm like the way the bottom of a plate is hot and comforting after you microwave leftovers. Colleen and Sean both throw off heat to my right and my left, so much blue between both of them like the most blistering parts of a fire. And Colleen wants to know why no one will consider the plight of the ravioli. Pierogis and poptarts are pockets and appreciated. So she wants to know why I won’t give ravioli another chance. What’s to hate? We’re calling them raviolis even though the word is already pluralized…

x-r-a-y magazine

THE GATED COMMUNITY by Joseph Pfister

April 9, 2020 · Fiction

We received the brochure in the mail. It was printed on that thick paper, the fancy kind, with raised lettering. ESCAPE TO FLORIDA! it read. YOUR OWN PRIVATE PARADISE AWAITS! Everyone in our subdivision got one, but that didn’t matter. It was February, the ground brittle with snow. We were ready for a change. Overnight, developers transformed miles of Florida swamp into a mecca for the recently retired. Walk out your back door onto replicas of Sawgrass, Augusta, Pebble Beach! Work up a sweat on our racquetball courts! Cool off with water aerobics! Jazzercise! Sure, the amenities sounded nice. For…

x-r-a-y magazine

ALL WORKED UP by Linda McMullen

April 8, 2020 · Fiction

He often simply appears in my office, insouciant grin and silver hair: “I want to show you something.” In the age of #metoo, he is carefully respectful of a female subordinate. No hands ever touch in the exchange of— A binder with reference documents, paginated and neatly tabbed; a viciously indiscreet email from a colleague; a rare compliment on a memo from his own supervisor… Whatever it is. For my eyes. For me. Or: I’ve written his remarks for a major briefing the next day, and he invites me to pull up a chair, next to him, so we can…

x-r-a-y magazine

DEADBOLT by Kami Westhoff

March 31, 2020 · Fiction

In her dreams, she can walk. She unclips the cord that connects her to the Emergency switch, swings her bloated-log legs from the bed until her feet find her one-in-a-million prints in her purple slippers. Though it’s been over a year since she’s stood unassisted, her legs neither quake nor collapse. Her wheelchair sits next to her nightstand, a foam donut pillow the color of bile positioned just-right by her caregiver. She thrusts her foot forward. It meets the earth as though it’s the ice she and her first husband carved into arcs and spirals, tufts of ice fluffing the…

x-r-a-y magazine

« Previous 1…80 818283 84…128 Next »