X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine | Fiction

PHARM BOY by Chris Milam

June 30, 2019 · Fiction

At the grocery, I was debating which would pair better with a chicken sandwich when I saw a ponytailed head wedged inside the refrigerated glass doors inspecting a carton of eggs. “Hello there, do you have a preference in pickles?” “Excuse me?” “Pickles.” I held both jars in front of me. “Bread and butter or dill?” “I don’t eat them. Sorry.” The smack of flip flips on linoleum trailed her into the next aisle. I accidentally bumped into her again minutes later. I didn’t need her to be anyone specific, not Rachel, not my mother, or the bored college girl…

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RAW MEAT by Jo Varnish

June 27, 2019 · Fiction

She was eighty when being eighty meant being eighty. It meant grey hair and dark colored calf length skirts, tights and rounded toed court shoes. It meant a green felted coat and patent leather black purse shaped like the queen’s, with a shiny silver clasp that snapped shut. It meant that purse held, at a minimum: a checkbook, a hairbrush, rouge, a lipstick, tissues (a pack, unused, and at least one folded, used), a pair of spectacles and a variety of pens. It meant she walked slowly, tutted at ill mannered children and grew African violets in mismatched pots along…

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PIERCED by Charles Duffie

June 26, 2019 · Fiction

Each evening, I remove the band-aid, pinch the tweezers’ silver teeth, and draw the splinter from my thumb. I faithfully clean the small wound. By morning my private stigmata will be partially healed. The body is a determined machine. The sliver of pine is only half an inch long and thin as a needle, but against my brown palm it glows like a cosmic shard. I dip a cotton ball in peroxide, touch the splinter, disinfectant cold as river water, then place the baptized thorn in the hollow of a contact lens case and click the lid. The click always…

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AT NIGHT by Craig Rodgers

June 25, 2019 · Fiction

The clock reads 2:04. The bedroom door is closed. He stares. He closes his eyes. He opens his eyes. The clock reads 2:09. The bedroom door is open. He closes his eyes. He opens them. He stands and reaches out and he closes the door. He gets back into bed. The clock reads 2:11. He closes his eyes. He opens his eyes. The clock reads 2:36. The bedroom door is open. He stands and pads his slow way through blue dark to a bathroom at hall’s end. He urinates with eyes closed. He returns to the bedroom, one hand…

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THE BALLAD OF BOBBLEHEAD LERN by Anthony Sabourin

June 24, 2019 · Fiction

I Lern Dobronski woke up to find that his head had grown gigantic overnight. He could feel the weight of it. As he touched it with his hands, surprised fingers prodding the growth, he panicked. He had to almost fully extend his arms in order to feel the hair on top of his head. It was like one of those cheap rubber toys that soaked in water and doubled or tripled in size, except it wasn’t a toy, it was Lern’s head. He scrambled towards his bathroom to get to a mirror, hyperventilating with big-headed panic. He used to look…

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THE PITS by Christopher X. Ryan

June 23, 2019 · Fiction

It was all over the news. Skull fragments got discovered on Jimmy Wallace’s land during a septic dig. Just a few chips turned up, no bigger than the tokens Jimmy dishes out at the carousel he runs, but rumors cantered across town faster than you could say ex-wife. The cops quashed the rumors though, saying it was probably a native skull, an archaeological or anthropological thing. They cordoned off Jimmy’s property with yellow tape and erected floodlights and stood with their thumbs hooked in their belts and their feet splayed like sentries at the portal to some savage place in…

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THE CALL WAS COMING FROM INSIDE THE COCKROACH by Maggie Dove

June 21, 2019 · Fiction

“It’s just a Palmetto Bug. I’ll put it outside.” This could be a more daunting task than relocating, say, a daddy long legs or a lost lizard that found its way into the house. When the humidity is just right in Florida, somewhere around the 90% mark, the Palmetto Bug doesn’t just run away from you. The Palmetto Bug defiantly takes flight, rocketing directly into your face, making even the least squeamish of native Floridians scream in horror as the fwip-fwip-fwip of their wings flutter at all five of your senses. The Palmetto Bug is a shiny, brown, beastly creature…

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BONE RATE by Kristen M. Ploetz

June 20, 2019 · Fiction

The marble lobby smells like old paper and spiders have taken residence in the dark corners of the tooth dentil trim. From behind a framed pane of cheap glass, ten wanted men stare at Naenie. Eight of them are smiling. She glances long enough to know some are dangerous, but all of them are broken. Of the three windows, the middle is open for business. As Naenie waits her turn, she watches the woman in a red coat. With a gloved hand, the woman slides a small white box toward the clerk and drops three coins into his palm. Naenie…

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ROADRUNNER by Dave Housley

June 19, 2019 · Fiction

Roadrunner can see the arches in the distance. Behind them, the mountains. He is running, moving as always, minding the blur of the desert on either side, the potential for danger in the road ahead. Is that a rock mound or an anvil, the shimmer sun a hundred wicks of dynamite simmering. He moves up a hill and smells the creature, a whiff and then a beak full of rot, a flash of mottled fur and the coyote is lumbering behind. The beast clutches something in his paw. A detonator or a hand crossbow or the complete Acme Mail Order…

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TRASH DAY by Savannah Slone

June 18, 2019 · Fiction

Driving home from work, Evelyn wonders what would happen if her airbag released, should she be in an accident. Would it vacuum itself back into place like a video playing in reverse? Would she have to put it back in herself? What if she didn’t put it back in right? Wouldn’t putting it back sound the horn? Should she drive into the country, with the steering wheel’s guts resting on her girth, as not to disturb the neighbors with her honking as she put the airbag back where it belongs? Or would she take it into a mechanic? But what…

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