Fiction

JEOPARDY by Ruth Aitken

January 27, 2021

As my ex-husband the Jeopardy champion won thirteen games, I racked up quite a résumé myself. I followed advice to shampoo with raw eggs. I dropped a knife and drove myself to the emergency room. I fell in love with a man on the Metro, because he made eye contact when my hand bumped his on the pole. I successfully overheard someone in the break room say about me: Yeah, her voice makes me wanna die. I wondered for the first time whether I wanted to have sex with a woman. I went too far on party drugs that were

I WANTED TO SAY by Michael Harris Cohen

January 26, 2021

The body farm looked like any other chunk of rural Tennessee, black and white oaks, cherry trees and clearings. Only this chunk had a 12-foot fence circling it, razor wire on top, and rotting bodies within. “Why the fence?” I asked. Landon, my brother’s best friend since kindergarten, shrugged. “It’s science. Can’t have people messing with science.” We followed Landon through the woods. Last I’d heard, Landon worked night security at the mall. Now he was day security at the body farm and (supposedly) enrolled in night school. He’d abandoned his signature mullet for a crew cut. We came upon

NEVER REALLY OVER by Kate Shapiro

January 22, 2021

1. My resort in Thailand is a beautiful picture ringed with spider eggs. I angle the phone so the fat cockroaches with long wandering antennae are not within the frame of my selfie, but the beach is. I know I look beautiful because beaches make you beautiful. They make you shimmer. I am shimmering now, like an iridescent fish. Two weeks before Thailand, Charles put my face between his two palms and told me he met someone named Suzanne at a live sitar show and he could not deny their attraction any longer. He said that he loved me and

BAD SEEDS by Tanya Zilinskas

January 21, 2021

You were supposed to turn them over to the Department of Agriculture if you received them. Packages without return addresses showed up in mailboxes all over the country, each one containing a single packet of seeds. The official line was inconsistent but grim: they were from China, they were from Russia, they would kill the crops, they would release pests, they were a Sino-Russian hybrid that would release pests that would kill the crops. When I received the seeds, I planted them. I planted them because I wanted to see what would happen. I planted them because I didn’t trust

NEW THING KISSES by Robin Zlotnick

January 18, 2021

They breathed each other in for ten years before they married, and then they were married for forty years, and the whole time, they needed to know every bit of each other, not just know but suck in and taste, so they had this thing, a sort of game: any time she noticed something new about him, a wrinkle on his forehead or a mole on his wrist, she would kiss it and vice versa, like when a pie-baking burn bubbled on her hand, he kissed each blistered bump, and when her chin grew a hair he kissed that too,

EILEEN GETS A LITTLE BIT DRUNK by Natalie Warther

January 13, 2021

My sons were watching a movie in the living room and I was upstairs, rummaging through their bathroom. I’m not really sure why, I almost never go in there, but there I was, and I’d had some wine, and we hadn’t left the house for twelve days, for Christ’s sake, so what else was I supposed to do? I looked in the drawers, looked in the shower, looked in the trash can, looked in the mirror and I looked old. I stuck my finger out like a cane, pointed it at the mirror, furrowed my eyebrows, and whispered at my

WHITEBOARD by James Kramer

January 11, 2021

Jon scowled at the wall. Chaotic and pastel Post-it notes fluttered like some mad lepidopterist’s daydream. Glue gave way and they fell slowly enough that it made him angry, in a vague and indefinable sort of way. The wall had become an armadillo. Bristled and cold. Jon came down the stairs in a flurry. He found Lu in the kitchen. His chest inexplicably hurt. He drank water. Held onto the sink. His wrists grew pale and cod-like. Lu studied her phone. Her toes played with the edges of the kitchen table. They explored crumbs and spidery calyces on a finished

THE SIDE DOOR by Michael Farfel

January 8, 2021

Wendy wore black. He loved that most about her. She made her way over, careful, slow steps, like a deer, like he was extending bits of food. “Your arms are smaller than mine. I just need to loosen that nut. But I can’t reach it,” Carl said over the exposed engine. “Smaller,” she repeated and made a show of flexing her arms. He laughed, “You’re just more compact, is all. Come on, sweetheart. Give it a throw?” She pulled her hair into a ponytail. Maybe it was her hair he loved most. She bent over the engine and maneuvered the

GIRL ON FIRE by Neal Suit

January 6, 2021

The first of the silvery sequins that grew and dangled from your skin appeared on your left shoulder, forming the shape of a crescent moon. I examined the sparkling protrusions rising near your collar bone, squinting as they glistened under the lamp. You booked an appointment with the dermatologist. They gave you a cream and told you to come back in a week if it hadn’t cleared up. They took pictures to show their colleagues and friends and the internet. They fawned over how you shined. Sequins sprouted on your arms, legs, neck, back, and forehead. Walking made you shimmer. The

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE! by Rich Giptar

January 4, 2021

The first time I ever heard about Matthew, Mom was filming us on her Nikon D5300 and trying to get us to play this stupid game for her YouTube channel. The previous day she had filmed our reaction to her telling us we were getting a new brother or sister. We had been in a good mood then, ready to whoop and jump in the air and cover our mouths with our hands and run out the room. The bit she was filming that day was meant to be sequential, but Dad, a moron, had put our clothes from yesterday