Fiction

SWELL by Lamb

June 30, 2024

We went 0-fer at the tournament, but La Jolla Sports Park has this insanely soft grass, these big ol triangle canopies with shade for days that make it hard to not feel like a winner. But, yeah, on the ride back it was getting dark, and since Jesús and the busdriver are chill, a few of us, just the boys, really, we went to the very back and kicked it, stretched ourselves across the aisle to just vibe for a while, each in his own row. By the way the busdriver smiled at us in his mirror, you could tell

THE TEST by Arpita Roy

June 29, 2024

A man is pelting stones at a dog. In this story, because it is an old story, the dog is going to become a secret test for his humanity. The man is going to think to himself, if only I had known that this was a secret test, I would’ve chosen to keep the stones hidden inside my shoes. But the man doesn’t know and cannot choose, so he chooses stones and well, the dog was already there. As a child, the man had been a boy, small, and as a small boy, the man had seen his big father

KEY FRAME by Graham Techler

June 26, 2024

Five years I’ve been in animation. The doctor at the walk-in clinic says I have the wrists of an eighty-year-old. I’m not an eighty-year-old. He says by the time I’m actually an eighty-year-old, you wouldn’t be able to sell my wrists on the black market. According to the doctor, a black market buyer would say “you call that a wrist? This is not what I come to the black market for.” The doctor doesn’t have a very good bedside manner but that’s what you get at the walk-in clinic. Suffice it to say that when you meet me at the

YOUR WIFE’S GYM FRIEND IS DRUNK by Kyle Seibel

June 24, 2024

Your wife’s gym friend is drunk. Not outrageously drunk, but too drunk to drive. According to her, he went to a work happy hour thing that morphed into a dinner thing which became a cocktails thing and now he is stranded somewhere in the city. There are no Ubers apparently or the wait is too long, so he calls your wife and asks for a ride, that is, of course, if it’s alright with you. “I don’t understand,” you say. “He’s getting kicked out of the bar?” She’s standing near the door with car keys in her hand. “No, just

BREAKING by Emily Rinkema

June 23, 2024

On the designated day for punishing mothers, those of us who got our applications in early enough show up, mothers in tow. Most look like they came willingly, walking ahead of their children, mostly daughters, but not mine. I had to sedate her to get her in the car. I paid for the deluxe package, which includes interrogation. The application allowed three questions. Two were easy: What really happened to the kitten I brought home in third grade? And, Why did you only let me shave my legs to my knees until I was sixteen? The third was harder to

LESS DEAD by Samir Sirk Morató

June 22, 2024

When asked, Dad says, Don’t worry about Ximena—she’s just a girl good at running away, but you find a shoebox of condoms, calling cards, Selena CDs, baby name lists, and blush palettes squashed between a bed leg and a wall, the last of Ximena in her whirlwind-emptied room, which reminds you of Diva Fridays: Come on, she’d say, I’ll teach you about eyeshadow, before putting her heavy handed brushstrokes on your lids, which made you miss Marco—who lived in her room before he too fled—all cropped shirts, eyeliner, and laughter mixed with hair oil and truancy. He had a box

THREE MICROS THAT TICK by Daniel Seifert

June 21, 2024

Yesterday came the decree And today it comes into force. We must all fight like Plains Indians, from here on. That means cool your arrows. Your axe must sleep in the ground while you win prestige by counting coup: Curl yourself like a puff of wind. Inch your body to the enemy. Closer to his neck, where the soft hair curls against his pulse. Touch his body with your coup stick—you have won. Steal his horse if you want; beat the darkening air with your cries. But the battle is over now, if you want it. *** Press

GENDER BENDERS AND GENRE BLENDERS: Victoria Brooks and Jack Skelley in Conversation

June 18, 2024

Two freaky fiction writers chat. Jack Skelley, author of The Complete Fear of Kathy Acker (Semiotext(e), 2023) joins Victoria Brooks, author of Silicone God (Moist, 2023). Fear of Kathy Acker is a cult hit embraced by young readers. Skelley’s new book of stories is Myth Lab (Far West Press, 2024). Silicone God is a strange strain of post-human, science fiction/body horror by “Queer Mistress Wife Human” (Brooks’ Instagram name). Topic A: How horny writing may reach beyond tired categories of sexual and textual orientation. Jack: I’ll kick it off! Victoria, I was first attracted to Silicone God for its boundary blurring. Your

The girls were odd. by Katie Antonsson

June 17, 2024

The girls were odd. They didn’t make friends, we realized too late, they collected people. A cab driver who barely spoke English, a barista with a middling art career and infected lip piercing, the neighborhood dog-walker-cum-psychedelics-dealer. We decorated their lives, and we wanted to. We were ravenous to. Every text message, every invitation to the graveyard or the beach, we simply couldn’t say no. Their magnetism was a thing to behold, a gift to feel. They ate little, like birds, claiming assorted food allergies none of us had heard of and none of us questioned. They went to a loosely

TRANSITIONAL WORDS by Reza Jabrani

June 16, 2024

I’m dating her for her looks but she’s ugly. And she’s ugly. Plus, she’s ugly. Ok, I’m not sure how these two relate, complement, contradict, combine. She has lice. The lice are nice. Alive. On me, on her, raucous nibbling on our heads, in my bed. The most action I’ve seen all century. Maybe. I’m only twelve. Or thirty. I don’t know what the last century was like. For me. For anyone. What my past lives were like. She asks me to comb her hair. Not for lice, or any sort of grooming, but because it gets her off. Despite