Fiction

FOREVER by Jennifer London

December 30, 2019

Clara sat on the edge of the tub, smoothing the hem of her dress compulsively. Forever was an awfully long time, she thought. Forever was endless, sprawling, impossible. It was unnatural and unlikely. But maybe. Perhaps. Forever could be parties and dinners and clinking wine glasses. It could be laughter and snuggles and warm touches in the dark. For a moment the murmur of voices outside the bathroom door didn’t sound quite so ominous. But a memory came to her, as sudden and sharp as a slap in the face: her mother and father shouting at each other, a spray

SOMEPLACE ELSE by Emma Stough

December 28, 2019

I am here now. Wide unexplained sky. How did I get here? Wait. Let’s stop. No, let’s start. We are here now. Again, I think. Purple wallpaper. My family huddled around the TV watching Seinfeld re-runs. I am squeezed between Aggressive Older Brother and Sensitive Younger Brother—I am boiling with discontent. My family huddles like this for decades. The living room stays the same: plush green sofa (embedded with chips and cat hairs, is the cat still alive?) and purple wallpaper. Purple like the dregs of the bitter plum tea. Purple like the dying breath of stormy sunset. Purple like

GIRLS OF THE ARBORETUM by Brianne M. Kohl

December 27, 2019

The girls of the arboretum are just girls. Nothing more, nothing less. They do not speak to one another. Why would they? The wind blows through their branches. Everything that must be said has already been said. The world is over four billion years old. When no one is watching, the girls pluck spider webs from each other’s hair and stretch the silk across the grass, blade to blade. They spend hours measuring the spiral burrs of a pine cone. In moonlight, they find constellations within the veins of Maple leaves. The girls of the arboretum have not yet discovered

THE SWADDLE by Janelle Bassett

December 26, 2019

I am at the sink, rinsing a food processor blade, when I hear the cry of a tiny baby. Carrot bits go down the drain, easy, but the insistent wailing isn’t going anywhere. I assume the sound is some sort of inner-ear repercussion from the electronic-tornado buzzing of the food processor, yet the sound continues even after I open my mouth wide to pop my ears. A baby is definitely crying and it’s an I’ve-been-left-alone-which-I-am-not-built-for cry. I look up and think back, “Didn’t my babies grow past the baby stage?” I consult the refrigerator where, sure enough, their recent school

FISH GHOST by Kevin Richard White

December 23, 2019

My sister spoke of a fish ghost that occupies a nearby river. She raised her voice as if her sentences had a weight. But in reality, she’s timid. “It has bones and fins,” she said, “but it is poor at cutting through the water.” “Amanda,” I said as she swayed, a wind tearing through my hoodie that she always wore. “Something like an urban monster.” Her eyes widened. “Legend, you mean.” “Whatever.” It’s possible she’s correct. There’s always been rumblings from neighbors and lifers that there’s a creature existing in our milieu. Cameras mysteriously break when one gets close to

LITTLE DISTRACTIONS by Sherry Morris

December 22, 2019

Maybe because I’m bored, I agree to see Barry’s fish tank. I’d just returned from three months in Europe where travelling with a circus through France or catching live octopus to grill for lunch while house-sitting on a Spanish island was just how some weeks played out. I was back in Waynesville now, broke, regretting I’d come back too late to start the autumn term at the state university. The main attraction in Waynesville was the Walmart Super Center, which had never been that super. My dad knew somebody who knew somebody who could get me on at the cake-mix

IN A SMALL TOWN (CALLED AMERICA) by Christian Fennell

December 21, 2019

It’s getting worse, and Jake finished his beer, and together they listened to the rain on the tin roof of the drive-shed; the receptiveness of its falling; the comfort within its echoing. Things are lookin up, said Jake. Damn straight, said Jared. I mean, now that things are great again, things are lookin up, and Jake stood and walked to the fridge and grabbed two more beers. He passed one to Jared and sat back down on the block of cracked white oak. He took a sip and looked at Jared. I went and saw the doc. Oh? Said I’m

PROBLEM CHILD by Ellen Huang

December 20, 2019

Ariel often got in trouble for trying to escape. That was how he saw it, anyway. He spent much of his time enigmatically testing the limits of his body, such as a current frustrating inability to become liquid. “If cats can do it, why can’t I?” he’d grumble. He’d try to vanish into the air but trip over balls of yarn left around the house. He was losing the skill of leaving his body. He was losing memory of transcendent experience fast. They considered him distracted. His eyes were often elsewhere, in a different time and place, some good old

“WHAT? NO.” by Scott Bryan

December 19, 2019

One time, at least, an elephant ate a bat. It wasn’t a mistake, either. Nothing is. It wasn’t like the bat was flying around, all willy-nilly, and the elephant was yawning, as pachyderms have a tendency to do, and the bat just, like, zigged when it should have zagged, and instead of a mouthful of cud or hay or greens, delivered by way of a droopy, rough, wet schnoz, the poor elephant unintentionally brought down their ill-equipped herbivore’s chompers (humiliated and hiding behind the impressive tusks of fortune which had been bestowed by whatever glue-sniffing god to whom elephants pray

WOODED LOTS by Amanda Baldeneaux

December 18, 2019

Bess’s grandmother leans a sharp elbow into the worn armrest of her recliner, her chin pointed away from the kitchen chair where Bess sits, signing the contract for Ray, the homecare aid. Her grandmother has lived in the cottage at the nursing home for five years. The cottage lets retirees live independently but connected to the lodge and the cafeteria and the dorms where the older, less-resourceful people live. She doesn’t want to go there. Outside the cottage, a small slab of patio is littered with sunflower seed shells. Petals of white azalea blossoms, knocked free by the recent rains,