Fiction

1978. BATH, OHIO by Sean Williamson

March 18, 2020

He was driving drunk, a cigarette ripping hot, filter crushed between his fingers. Around a faraway corner headlights, beams reflected faint through the windshield, through his Kmart but that’s ok glasses. Tiny embers spit, excited by wind from the open window. He put out the cigarette, stuffed it into the ashtray blossom, grabbed a pack of Camel Menthols off the passenger seat, popped the top, flicked and flicked until a filtered end rose, then pulled it out slow between tight teeth. He pushed in the lighter. Headlights down the way grew at him, flare swelling in his smudged up glasses,

SNOWBANK by Frances Badgett

March 17, 2020

The night comes on so quietly, a hush riding each flake to the ground. The snowman slumps against the brambles, overwhelmed, the new snow wet, heavy. The quiet is unsettling, and all Mara can hear is the hiss of tinnitus in her left ear. She pops in headphones and listens to a meditation, the brain’s static between the breaths. The pressure of trying to relax wakes her up, agitates her. Paul’s on the porch, muffled thumps and the creak of the front door. She opens her iPad and checks to see the constellation overhead. Hydra, a favorite of hers from

RAW HAND BURGER by EC Sorenson

March 16, 2020

They’re coming at me all the time now. I want this, I want that. Uppity bunch. In my day, students didn’t act like this. This lot spends the morning taking selfies. Spends the afternoon posting them places you never even heard of. All that staring into their own eyes—where’s it going to get them? So, anyway, one of them says I wasn’t using gloves. Okay, I say, talk to management. I say talk to management about why I am the only server here when there’s all of you and you all want your special ingredients and not what it says

DEMOLITION DEMOLITION by Brett Stuckel

March 15, 2020

Saturday night, nine to ten to eleven. None of us had asked the skyscraper if it wanted a last meal, but I picked up a cheesesteak and a tall boy of Steel Reserve. I placed the cheesesteak on the altar of the abandoned security desk, poured all sixteen ounces on the mahogany. A steelmaker had built the tower as its headquarters but the company collapsed soon after. Not the skyscraper. It stood defiant, asbestos in its guts. My watch clicked over to Sunday and the countdown sharpened. Our crew of eight buzzed with the energy of the impending blast. The

FERN by Abigail Stewart

March 9, 2020

He opened the box and immediately his face fell. The shoes were not only, clearly, the wrong size, but the wrong color. If Marcus were in fact a small child with a penchant for neon, they would be perfect, but he needed something staid and professional for work, a muted black, like the ones he’d ordered. He sighed, anticipating the personal inconvenience of someone else’s mistake. The website he’d ordered them from was a huge multi-billion dollar online outlet mall, part of the corporation, where everything was cheaper, delivery was quick, but you had to account for a quantity of

BONES by Wilson Koewing

March 3, 2020

I slide the glass racks to the side and peer into the dish pit where Bones struggles mightily to scrape the charred remnants of bread pudding from a hotel pan. “Bones, how are you holding up?” “Good, Chef Adam,” Bones says. “Let me know if you get overwhelmed.” “Ah, shit,” Bones laughs. Bones is pushing seventy. He’s worked the dish pit at the country club for seven years. When he can escape the pit, Bones sweeps by the dumpster or deep cleans the upstairs banquet kitchen—tasks that take him far from the watchful eye of Executive Chef, Craig. I discovered

RESCUE 60640 by Megan Carlson

March 1, 2020

Google Search History (retrieved 11/14/2019) How to get salt stain out of Uggs How to make friends How to make friends in your 30s 60640 coffee shop weather Chicago 60640 coffee shop NOT starbucks negative effects of caffeine alternatives to caffeine benefits of chamomile Making friends at coffee shop how to talk to strangers how to be less awkward how to be less intense with new people be less intense be less am I too much quiz liquor store 60640 husband distant my husband is distant what do I do emotional connection in relationship emotional connection in relationship importance Instacart

MY NONNA’S CURSE by Elizabeth Kattner

March 1, 2020

I have six impacted teeth. My mouth is overcrowded as the New York streets I wander. Too many people, not enough space. Life learns to grow upward. Skyscrapers. My teeth got the wrong message and push sideways. I take two tablets of ibuprofen to dull the pain. My coworker offers something stronger. Vicodin from when he tore his ACL last spring. I cut one of the oblong pills in half. It’s dangerous, but I was born in Columbus, the epicenter of the opioid crisis. I know to exercise caution. My coworker says I should get my wisdom teeth pulled. I

AFTER A MONTH, WE MEET FOR DINNER by Francine Witte

February 27, 2020

First thing I notice, new haircut, the grays dyed clean away. I’m careful with my words. Nice shirt, I finally say. I’m aware he never dressed this nice for me. I found it in my closet, he says. The waitress brings a basket of bread. You look good, he says. I can smell the scratches on his neck. They smell like blood and sex and another woman. Would you like some bread? I ask. Cutting down, he says, pointing to his stomach, flatter than I recall. The waitress returns, and we order small. Nothing that will take too long. The

THE HANDS REMEMBER by Andrea Rinard

February 26, 2020

I sit on the bench outside Publix. A little boy ran by me in light-up sneakers when I was almost, almost, almost to the door, and suddenly I could hear Caleb’s feet, encased like two meat loaves in the shoes I got him before he started K-3, drumming against the cart. He was so careful not to kick me after that one time–Don’t hurt Mommy! I’d had to let go of the cart and sit down because everything was narrowing down to a tunnel with Caleb at the other end. I tried to count my breaths, and I told Tom