Nicole VanderLinden

Nicole VanderLinden’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Shenandoah, Pithead Chapel, Jellyfish Review, and MoonPark Review. She’s an associate editor at Colorado Review as well as a reader for Ploughshares and the Masters Review. Her book reviews have appeared in Colorado Review, the Masters Review, and the Denver Post, and you can find her on Twitter at @vandanicole.

APEX PREDATORS by Nicole VanderLinden

Jessa hears a bear. Only it’s not a bear. It’s the wind nudging against the nylon of our tent, but my new wife has never camped on a grassy bald in the Smoky Mountains. So when she elbows me, whispers, is that a snout? where the fabric pushes in against her sleeping bag, I say, probably. I say, you didn’t bring in a candy bar, did you? She knows this story, that tent walls aren’t really walls and that a bear can slice right through them, drag you away for a bit of chocolate. Next to me, I feel her…

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