Fiction

THE SECRET TO A LONG LIFE by Kevin Grauke

January 3, 2024

Scientists have theories about why this happens, but I’ve got one of my own: our brain wants us to remember our horrible moments most clearly.

JOHN JACOBS by Conor Truax

December 27, 2023

To the conscious Cartwrights, the deer warnings were novelties. The yellow on the signs was not invented. The deer recognized it as the sun.

THE STAGE NAME by James Tadd Adcox

December 20, 2023

Just as the first wife had found the stage name pretentious and comical, the second experienced the real name as uncanny, unnatural.

WORK by Andy Tran

December 13, 2023

The Algebra II teacher stood up with his hands full of frozen peas. “I don’t know what to say. But thank you,” he said. A pea dropped from his hand. Tess moaned.

THE LUCKY ONE by Pamela Painter

December 6, 2023

She walks with purpose over to a gangly tree and dumps our mother’s ashes at its base, then smears them around with the toe of her purple sneaker. Then she turns to face me as if to see if I’m going to object.

MY FRIEND LOUISE… by Susannah Felts

November 29, 2023

Amber beads, electric blue billowing, jasmine. Here comes Louise, here she comes, into the kitchen.

ELAINE by LJ Pemberton

November 22, 2023

The more of Elaine he had had, the less it felt like she belonged to him at all. Besides, he said, I have learned that even possession is a kind of disappointment.

DOCTOR’S VISIT by Paula Gil-Ordoñez Gomez

November 8, 2023

While we wait for the fruits of deliberation, my mother asks me to get personal. I tell her I’ve been nightmaring about getting kidnapped and beating the captor up.

POWER OUTAGE by Zsófia Czakó; translated by Marietta Morry and Walter Burgess

November 1, 2023

She looked at that tree as if it were a murderer, and with hate in her eyes told me that in her dreams every night she sneaks over with an axe and chops it down with two strokes.

SPILL by Christina D’Antoni

October 25, 2023

At night I dreamt of pelicans strung up in the oaks by their beaks, choked in Spanish moss, the storm’s winds blowing them down. Cars sliding through gasoline, smearing their bodies into the street.