TOOAFRAIDTOASK by Steve Gergley

Posted by u/samuraijake14 – 2 hours ago Does anyone else have this problem or is it just me? ok so i know this is going to sound super weird and stuff but please just try to bear with me becuase ive never asked strangers on reddit for advice like this but i swear this is a serious question and im not trolling because this is a real thing that happens to me all the time now and i dont know how to fix it and im too scared to ask my friends or parents about it because of what they…

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THE HEFT OF IT by Lisa Kenway

‘Any questions, Mrs Brown?’  Doctors were all so young these days. So full of talk. I shook my head. Malignant. How much more did I need to know? Dr Wong smiled quietly, as though sharing a secret, and slid a purple cardboard box across the desk. I half-expected her to offer me an assortment of macarons. Those powdery spaceships that melt on your tongue and stick to the roof of your mouth. And aren’t a patch on the chewy coconut biscuits Grandma used to make. Macaroons, they were called—what a difference a single o made.  I could picture a plate…

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EMPATHY! by Janice Kang

X MARKS THE SPOT. your larynx and syntax are open-winded, words flitting downwards like a map ever-expanding. here is the way to diamond treasure, to sparrow bones and mud. and thus these words are splintered halfway through: cherubic and chthonic — the diary of a child with a knife down their warm pulse. for, in an inventory of dreams, there is no spare air which you can hold in your palms. SHE REACHES THE X. she takes the other half. grey neutrality, she dons a grey turtleneck and sits among lone wolf sighs, wading in strange breaths. she cannot speak….

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FAREWELL PROTECTION by Jordan Clark

The still sweltering sun’s kitty-corner to the late afternoon moon—similar to yesterday, but we didn’t go inside then either. Gravel crunches under the weight of a wheeling propane tank behind the brittle fence; little shuffles treading alongside it. There’s chatter, glasses clinking through a screen door, and a white folding table aggressively flipping and clipping into place. We listen to its prongs scuttle and then a grill igniting shortly after.  Standing in our dying grass, setting my paper plate down as I offer to smear her white from top to bottom. But she tells me it was chunky—cottage cheese-y.  She…

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LINOLEUM FLOOR by Mark Tulin

It’s morning. Circa 1972. I turn over in bed and gaze down at my gray marble linoleum floor. It’s coming up around the edges, and there are all sorts of dirty stains, punctures, and dried bubblegum spots on it.  I remember when it was new. My father laid it down himself. He brushed on glue, applied the linoleum, trimmed the corners with a sharp razor so it could snugly fit against the walls, and hammered the baseboards in with long, skinny nails.   The window shade over my bed hangs crooked off to the right with one of its brackets dangling…

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A CARDINAL SEEKS THE ORIGIN OF ITS CAMOUFLAGE by Zach Powers

I posed for weeks as the jacket of a lawn jockey, clutching his back and draping my wings over his shoulders. That was the longest I ever stayed in one place. I felt understood by the jockey and vice versa. Living life as an unwilling decoration. This was long before the mooning gnome’s conical red hat, but after the red-striped lighthouse in the flower bed. I don’t know what drew me first to lawn ornaments. Perhaps the reason for their inexplicable existences would relate to my own. I flew up and away from the lawn jockey, tipping my wing in…

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WHAT I THOUGHT WHEN THE BEAR WENT OVER THE MOUNTAIN by Rekha Valliappan

The best way of being kind to bears is not to be very close to them. -Margaret Atwood What I thought when the bear went over the mountain: How green the earth looked on this side and on the other side too and if I could spot a wee brown movement through the canopy of green how much far less confusing it would be to not mistake the earth for a summer strolling bear; That the meaningfulness of my life had gotten bleaker when I was no longer the super-human I thought I was, most unwilling as it turns out…

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A BILLABLE HOUR by Katherine Heath

In the time that it takes him to park and unload the maintenance van into the freight elevator of the American Angus Journal, I’ve just rolled over to swipe right on the morning alarm.  The receptionist, Sharon, escorts him past the framed photographs of carved ribeye—gorgeous cuts of glistening and perfectly pink meat—to the malfunctioning Hoshizaki. Normally it produces two-hundred and eighty pounds of ice in twenty-four hours, but this week, in the middle of a Missouri July, Sharon and her coworkers can’t keep their sweet teas cool. By the time his hands are tinkering with the organs of the…

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BELL’S POND by Nathan Willis

Derby didn’t get out on his own. I took him. Yes, technically he was yours, but he liked me better and you didn’t take very good care of him. At least not as good as I did. Before you go waving this letter in front of the cops, I don’t think you really have a leg to stand on. I’m pretty sure crocodiles are illegal to have as pets. Anyways, Derby and I hit the road and I started to put on my magic act. The one you always made fun of me for practicing. I couldn’t exactly leave him…

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A THOUSAND WORDS OF BURNING ALIVE by Serrana Laure

The rough bark of the pole bit into the tender flesh of her bound wrists, skin fraying against the rope. Her bare feet dangled, numb from the frigid air that gnawed her bones. The wintry sky above glowed, surreal cerulean. She lowered her eyes from the sky and stared into the jostling crowd below. They muttered and seethed. Somewhere, someone laughed. A harsh, short laugh, more like a bark than a giggle. Cameras and phones pointed in her direction. A flash went off and her mind stuttered at the utter insanity. She was being made an example of, she understood…

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