Fiction

ONLY THE SCAMMERS LOVE SAM by Jon Steinhagen

October 13, 2025

“That’s wonderful, Sam,” the voice says, cooing. “May I call you Sam?” The voice is low, mellow, musical. The English it speaks is careful, cultured, unhurried, seductive (or so Sam thinks; he’s become a connoisseur over the years). Its tone is polite and comforting with just an edge of anticipation. Normally, this voice has rarely been given the freedom to speak so much, to reel off so many carefully-edited chunks of information. It senses an ultimate victory. “Sam, or Sammy,” Sam says. “That’s wonderful, Sam,” the voice repeats. “Now, all you have to do—” “My mother used to call me

FOLLOWING THE HEARSE by Carleton Whaley

October 10, 2025

Driving through the Detroit suburbs, cutting through traffic, honking and cursing at other drivers, the brothers make their way to the crematorium. It is difficult to keep up with the long hearse. Traffic seems to move automatically for it just as it blocks the brothers’ car. “I know,” the older says to the younger. “Yeah?” the younger asks. They are still navigating the void which now defines their relationship—the change from middle-and-youngest to older-and-younger. “I was just agreeing that I probably shouldn’t have told Nana to shut the fuck up.” “Coulda been handled better,” the younger says. They pass a

TWO SHORT PIECES by Ellie Powell

October 9, 2025

In which Kazuo Ishiguro runs a dating hotline on the radio like in Sleepless in Seattle ME Hello? KAZUO ISHIGURO Hello, you’ve reached the Kazuo Ishiguro Dating Hotline. My name is Kazuo Ishiguro. How can I help you tonight? ME Oh, wow. I didn’t think you’d actually pick up. I’m Ellie. I loved The Buried Giant. KAZUO ISHIGURO Everyone loves The Buried Giant. We’ll see what Guillermo does with it. Are you dating, Ellie? ME No, but it’s all a bit more complicated than that, don’t you think? KAZUO ISHIGURO No, not really.

HEIR APPARENT by Jack Lennon

October 7, 2025

1 Your wife was overjoyed when your uncle drowned in three inches of water at the bottom of a cave. It meant your family would inherit his house. Although you both wished it wasn’t in such tragic circumstances. That’s what you kept saying to people. Not that you had any strong feelings about him or his death. You barely knew him. Was spelunking in Chile a normal pastime of his? Nobody knew him well enough to tell you. Not at the funeral, not during the will reading, nor when you took his place in his very respectable neighbourhood. They would

PORTRAIT OF YOU IN FIVE PSYCHICS by Kirsti MacKenzie

October 6, 2025

First guy says: you’re gonna see a UFO. Like, BOOM. He lays this on me. Right now you’re probably thinking well, if that doesn’t torpedo the whole thing for you. But it didn’t. Okay? It didn’t. I sat there and let him tell me I was gonna see a UFO because sometimes you’re in the middle of a divorce and sometimes staring down the barrel of your life and sometimes you’d pay someone, anyone, to tell you that you’re not completely fucked. “Where do I go with this,” he says. “Do you believe?” “In UFOs?” I ask. “Sure, what the

PILE DRIVE ME INTO THE EARTH by Thora Dahlke

September 19, 2025

Althea Downs spends all summer break in her bedroom. Through the pivot roof window, the sun deep fries her no matter where she sits. She drinks berry-kale smoothies and listens to macabre podcasts that give her strange dreams about swimming pools full of blood. She showers at midnight and sweats through the entire night, wakes up cocooned in sheets so soaked you’d think the scale would finally plunge below 100. It does not. She thinks about killing herself, but only casually. This is her tenderest hobby, lazy and indulgent, she spoils it like a rescue. It’s not really death she

COAGULOID by Hank O’Neill

September 17, 2025

It tastes so god I can’t hav another bite I say — and the hole of evrybody jus shuts up like oh is she about to stop? Loud one second and then gasping like is this reel? I hear somone literallay go holy fuk is that the end of Mis Plasteek? They’re holding out ther phone recording as they say, Guys I can’t beleev I’m catching this on video, plees like and subscribe. Meenwile I see the Produser behind the curtain mouthing to me: okay nice, now milk it. Which is jus wat we rehursed. The guy with the phone

YOU TEACH ME HOW TO BE by Emma Burger

September 15, 2025

You’re all so thin and beautiful. I only wanted to be like you. To want for nothing. To live in a gorgeous Tribeca loft. To wear Brunello Cucinelli and Loro Piana like it was nothing. To show up to morning drop-off at P.S. 234 with an expensive blowout and a full Alo set, en route to pilates. You lived the life I thought I deserved. One day. For now, I was supposed to be your yoga teacher. Your guide. I wanted my body to look like all of yours, but I was the reason yours looked the way they did.

TWO DAYS AFTER THEIR MOTHER DIES by Kim Magowan

September 10, 2025

Josie uses her key to let herself and her sister Amy into Cora’s apartment. She walks in first, then turns to see Amy standing in the doorway, hand braced against the doorframe. Josie says, impatiently, “Come on.” Finally, Amy enters this apartment their mother lived in for three years, moving here after she injured her knee and at last accepted that it made no sense for an older woman to be living in a house with two sets of stairs. But Amy has never seen it, because she’s so stubborn and unforgiving. Watching her older sister walk slowly into the

AVALON by Saoirse Bertram

September 9, 2025

On the Fourth of July the grandmother took Vase to the top of the warehouse where a rickety carriage of iron stairs led to the roof. The sky was as orange as a snake’s belly and smelled of powder and dust and oil. They sat without speaking watching the brilliant detonations which Vase had never seen before just as she had never seen the full horizon of sky over Los Angeles and when the grandmother felt tired Vase was sorry to have to leave the sight so soon. Vase had only been with the grandmother for a couple months at