Fiction

LOST HAM OF VIRGINIA by Joseph Young

November 29, 2024

That’s a dog, he said, thumbing a pink eyebrow. No, she answered, that’s a bear. Muzzle’s too long. That’s how they come around here. The creature climbed the far hill, cleaving the dew grass in two halves. It got to the door and pushed in, a clattering of end tables. Bears don’t act that way, he said. Dogs who act that way get taken off. He grabbed her by a hip, turned her around. Her nose was burnt so he kissed it. Like aloe jelly, she said. She pressed his dimple. Bzzt, she said. The bear or dog came out

ZOO DRINKING IN AMERICA by Avee Chaudhuri

November 25, 2024

Dutta placed a map of the zoo on the wall and reviewed the group’s itinerary. First they would shotgun beers in the parking lot, then visit the reptile house. There, they would shoot rum (hip flask left pocket) and handle the sloughed snake skin on display very delicately so everyone else would think they were respectable patrons of the Lincoln Children’s Zoo. Next they would watch the giant apes and pull bourbon (right pocket). It was rumored that the lowland gorillas were in a lustful and shameless mood of late. At this point they would purchase concessions to reduce the

DEAR PHONE MAN by Karris Rae

November 22, 2024

Hello. I am Roy Whitaker. I have mailed you before, or maybe not you but someone else at your office, because my phone has been disconnected. I think this is because you think I am dead, but I am not dead, so I would like you to please reconnect my phone. I am waiting on a call from my daughter and if I have no phone I will never get it. And I would shimmy up that pole and see if I could reattach it myself only I am pretty old anymore and I do not have a little neighbor

THREE WORKS by Myles Zavelo

November 20, 2024

My First Cousin Once Removed: Regarding Your Inquiry 1. Sure. 2. She’s still young, I guess. 3. She paints and wishes and likes fancy things. 4. Never believes me. 5. Teases me mercilessly. 6. Canned foods repulse her. 7. Pretends she can’t stand me. 8. Can’t orgasm to save her life. 9. Makes everything about herself. 10. Suffers from excessive jealousy. 11. Doesn’t have a family anymore. 12. Acts like she has no choice. 13. Knows how to seem extremely polite. 14. Has consistently failed to make a dent. 15. Always mad and sad and never the same. 16. Loves

MY HEART BELONGS IN AN EMPTY BIG MAC CONTAINER BURIED BENEATH THE OCEAN FLOOR: AN INTERVIEW WITH HOMELESS by Rebecca Gransden

November 19, 2024

Have you ever found yourself adrift, without a clue on how you got there? The blue whale is the largest mammal to have existed on our planet. A small person can fit inside a blue whale heart. In My Heart Belongs in an Empty Big Mac Container Buried Beneath the Ocean Floor (Clash Books, 2024) Homeless contemplates the messiness of a heart ready to overspill with sadness, a sadness drawn from fathomless wells, deep and lightless as the bottom of the sea. How many fast food containers have already made it to that desolate ocean floor? I spoke with Homeless

WHAT WE REMEMBER by Jorden Makelle

November 18, 2024

What you remember is riding scooters around the cul-de-sac on sun-soaked summer mornings. Me pushing you on our swing set in the backyard. A scruffy white dog lapping up water, its tail wagging. Her blessing the food, pork chops and green beans and cornbread. Running under sprinklers barefoot, tufts of grass tickling our toes. Red and blue and white popsicles staining our tongues. Him lowering the basketball goal in the driveway so you could play. Saturday morning cartoons and chocolate sprinkle donuts. Sunday morning church and lunch at Luby’s. What I remember is always sitting quietly, so very quietly.

BEAUTY QUEEN by Sam Pink

November 13, 2024

We’re eating chocolate cake for Ronni’s bday after work. At a table in the hay barn that serves as my boss’s office. It’s me, Ronni the team lead, my boss, and her two teenage daughters who barback/take out garbage. I’m covered in mud from the waist down because my boss’s youngest daughter took an ill-advised shortcut with the golf cart during a garbage run. So I went out and helped, lifting the back and pushing forward while she gassed it. ‘You’re buying him a new pair of pants,’ my boss says, eyebrows up. ‘Okayeeee, jeez,’ says her daughter. She’s been

STATIONS OF THE CROSS AS PERFORMED BY A 6TH GRADE CATHOLIC EDUCATION GROUP FOR A SMALL CONGREGATION ON THE THURSDAY BEFORE EASTER by Michael Harper

November 8, 2024

Jesus is condemned to death Mark is desperate to be crucified. He’s been acting especially pious this week. Smacking his cheeks to make them look ruddy and hallow. Doing push-ups before rehearsal. Crafting his body into a canvas for suffering. The other boys and Julie volunteered to be Roman soldiers. Cardboard swords clash dully. I should have tried out for Pilate. One scene then done. But my reputation isn’t good enough to condemn Jesus to death. I miss months of masses in a row. Crucify Him! rings out from the class. The trial seems rigged. I feel for Jesus even

FRACTURED by Lana Frankle

November 7, 2024

The existence of a Neural Correlate of Consciousness that persists after the administration of anesthesia is such anathema to the established position taken by physicians of the modern age that publication of any supporting data has been effectively relegated to the annals of pseudoscience. This is despite the clear and alarming implications of not one but several studies attempting to chronicle the experience of the Fugue. As a man of science I at first balked, predictably: if overwhelming and conclusive evidence is rejected by the likes of Nature and Science than I as an individual bear no responsibility for its

THE VARIANT by Lana Frankle

November 6, 2024

In the months since The Visitation there have been ceaseless efforts by the Department of Defense, including within my own division at DARPA, to develop strategies to either obliterate and neutralize the foreign Entities, or (in my own research lab) to counteract or mitigate the seemingly inevitable effects they have on human observers. Thus far, efforts to kill or immobilize these foreign agents have been largely unsuccessful, and this is due mostly to the lack of techniques for localizing and targeting them in ways that circumvent the need for soldiers or others to perceive them. The use of infrared goggles