Fiction

LILY IN THE LIGHT by Megan Pillow

January 20, 2019

Lily isn’t sleeping, but I still try to get up from the bed without making a sound. The curtains are closed, and I open them a peep so that a thin shaft of light comes in, not enough so that anyone from the outside can see us. The shaft travels to the bed, to the body lying there, like someone has traced a line across her belly with a golden brush, and beneath that lick of gold, her skin, oh, Lily’s skin lights up like one of those paper lanterns that you set on fire and send into the sky.

MAPLE & GOO by Anith Mukherjee

January 18, 2019

The Orb glowed, the room shook, pink slime dripped from the ceiling. The Orb shuddered. The Orb split open. Gestating ultraviolet flesh. Flesh appendages reached out and grabbed Maple by the neck, they pulled her into The Orb’s living centre. She felt blood circulating around her, absorbing her. She faded and dissolved. She did not scream. It felt like a kiss. * Town Nouvelle Vague is a paranoid city. Steeped in irony and sarcasm. Sincerity was outlawed. No one knew what anyone was really thinking. There was a constant underlying analysis of meaning. The paranoia fed into the general theme

GLASSMAKING by Jason Kane

January 17, 2019

In their twenties love was ineptitude—being there to fail together. Separately they delved the snowy miles between Erie and Rochester. A quest for meaning, those birthplaces their only landmarks, logical lapses in the dense contract language of northern hardwood. Their paths converged in a college poetry workshop, a group exercise where they fixed their willful corrections onto a hapless third’s verse. She had green hair and wore face jewels. He wore steel toes and a red bandanna, ebony plugs in stretched earlobes. She worked at the campus library circulation desk. He worked on cars and bused at a diner built

A SHADOW THE LENGTH OF A LIFETIME by Sheldon Lee Compton

January 15, 2019

The last address was easy to remember. But in a year living on the outskirts of downtown Portsville, Calup still confused First Street with Second Street about every other time. Maybe that’s what happened with his last letter. Confusion was now his general state of mind, even on good days, when it was only mild. At eighty-six years old, there were more days when he could remember what was in his lunch box the day the Number 2 tipple burned on Shelby Creek than he remember what street he lived on. The post office lady pulled to his mailbox. He

LIKE NEEDLE TO RECORD by Tomas Moniz

January 14, 2019

Terrance tells me choose a record and I struggle. He’s a new friend. A very sexy friend. I need friends. We have one in common, Metal Matt, who’s orchestrated this meetup, aka blind brunch date, slash hook-up. But with friends with records like these, you know. Plus I don’t want to offend. There’s Rihanna, understandable. Peaches, okay. But the predominance of ‘80s music stupefies. The closest thing to metal: Alice in Chains. I figure sure why not. I pull the album from the shelf. I say, How’s this, and hold the record high. He’s in the kitchen constructing our

BLUE BLOODED by Thomas Barnes

January 13, 2019

On the second date she brought up the lights in the water. “What do you mean you haven’t seen them,” she said. “You’re from here. It’s all up and down the shore, real late. The witching hour or past it.” “Just summers when I was a kid,” I said. “Now I don’t stay out late. Early shift.” The diner faced a parking lot, the parking lot of the black ocean. End of season loomed. Emptiness inherited the town. Waves lashed the thin shore and wind ripped at dune grass. Gulls hung in the air, motionless and screaming. “What about tonight,”

THE COAT by Robert John Miller

January 11, 2019

You don’t wear coats. You wear layers. You’re outside, what, five minutes, ten minutes at a time? Apartment to bus. Bus to work. Next door for lunch. Coats are such a bougie luxury. What are these people preparing for? Ice fishing? Everest? You’re never more than ten seconds from a clean well-heated place. But you tire of the questions. And there’s an online flash sale. Maybe a coat would be nice. Remember: You know nothing about buying coats. But that one on sale looks like the ones everyone has. Red patch. White thread. Maybe a goose is involved. Two days

MORE by Tyler Dempsey

January 9, 2019

Servants scatter. The psychoanalyst enters the room. He regards his surroundings: Apollo’s wife, Aphrodite, scrolls Facebook. Her Admirers lounge. Various articles—bedside tables, a rocking horse, bowling pins, Fruit Roll-Ups—lay adrift across the floor. Aphrodite refurbishes goods, like Fruit Roll-Ups, from thrift stores. Apollo enters, his humor betrays immense slaying. He approaches an Admirer, slays him. Tosses a bloody scimitar to the recliner. The Admirers scoot over. He sits. —How do you feel? —Tired. He cracks a Pabst Blue Ribbon, gallantly. Loosens his golden codpiece. Apollo props his heels on the dead Admirer. —I was whipping adversaries. The sun was angling,

AUTOGRAPH PARTY by David Williamson

January 8, 2019

All the girls have their binders and they are all beaming, and she just has her arms all covered in her sleeves and wondering if her mother will come back before the party ends. It appears to her that the ends of Beth Beachie’s mother’s mouth almost touch her ears. Beth Beachie’s mother smiles crazy and starts it off by going to the record player and dropping the needle. A song plays that she thinks she’s heard before in a department store. Beth’s Beachie’s mother rings the bell. All the girls bounce around the floor and come together like atoms

JEANETTE by Steve Anwyll

January 7, 2019

I’ve never worn a wig before. But as she walks up to the van. I know for a fact that hers isn’t on right. The netting isn’t supposed to be down so far. It ruins the illusion. It makes her look insane. But who the hell am I to judge her motivations? Mark takes the large rolling luggage from her. He does his best to stuff it into the storage space behind me with all the other bags. A noble feat I’m sure he’ll fail. Until I hear the latch gently catch. And envision our belongings shooting out the back.