Fiction

CHEST by Oliver Land

March 19, 2026

At the work Christmas party I sat with the junior staff, who were all shy and awkward. I made small talk about indie music with the shyest one, then talked to another about video games. One of the senior waitresses, there with her ex-boyfriend, was flirty with me. She wanted me to stay all night, then go home with her. She laughed too hard at my jokes. Every now and then, as she spoke to me, her live-in ex glanced at us. She pretended not to notice. Back at her table, she messaged me, suggesting we leave the party and

GRAND NATIONAL by Mitch Russell

March 18, 2026

For training, they make you sit in this grey room with a bunch of computers on a grey table. Your boss tells you she’s thrilled to have you on board but she doesn’t exactly sound thrilled. She sounds a little high strung, which is understandable, what with all the security checkpoints and facial recognition scanners and armed guards stomping up and down the corridors, back and forth, back and forth. You’d be stressed too! “This is just a little orientation presentation,” Pam tells you. “This explains all the, um, great things we do here!” A dome camera blinks in the

THE HUMANE ZOO AND HOLIDAY HOME by Pia Koh

March 13, 2026

When the guests are sitting around the table Lucien’s mom asks Lucien “Do you ever think about your dad?” If the guests weren’t there Lucien would glare bitterly at his mom then turn back to peeling the egg. But when guests are over and Lucien’s mom asks him something like this, he’s obliged to make a thoughtful expression. He says “Sometimes,” as if he’s never considered how much he thinks about his dead dad and this consideration is in itself somehow valuable. Lucien’s mother when they’re in the presence of guests and eating boiled eggs as an appetizer, chopped celery

HIS FATHER’S FATHER by Joshua D. Graber

March 12, 2026

After Lydia Davis 1. Every time his father spoke, he had questions. Primarily, which parts of the stories were true and which were false? A narrative based on a true story is a wonderful promise for people who believe in Jesus or Tom Hanks, but he was less interested in this muddled middle ground. He wanted verifiable truth or delicious lies, and to know the difference. There is infinite combinatorial explosion when multiple people tell a story and infinite doubt when only one person does. Like, for instance, the story of his father’s father walking into a bar where

ELEPHANT EYES by Kristopher Monroe

February 25, 2026

When I was in fourth grade my mother disappeared and I never saw her again. At first my father wasn’t sure what to tell me but he realized that the truth was better than obfuscation so he told me she was admitted to a sanitarium which I didn’t understand so then he explained she was simply sick and resting which I definitely did understand. For as long as I could remember my mother was sick in a certain way. She’d be doing dishes or loading laundry or scrubbing the tub and suddenly become overwhelmed with sadness and break down weeping

TWO MICROS by t.r. san

February 23, 2026

Natural Born Killers I hope there are naïve and genuinely delusional sexpats out there who’d jump off of JLK Building or O-NES Tower or Q1 Sukhumvit if their favorite whore gets herself married to another john, especially now that they’ve made every kind of marriage legal here, and johns who like getting dicked down and johns who like dicking down can both indiscriminately start killing themselves over this sort of thing. It’s true I like making up many businessmen in my head but this is not without basis. I know that many young girls who were prostitutes also soliciting other

JAIL TIME by Duff Allen

February 20, 2026

As a little boy nothing made me happier than to visit Dad in jail. Daniel, Mom would say every time, you haven’t forgotten your father, have you? We both sat down on the same side across from him. Who I called Dad, Mom called Daniel. He didn’t call her anything. He didn’t speak to her. He only spoke to me. Tell me how your grades are, he said. You don’t wanna end up a loser, like all these guys. Dad would look around then at the other tables with other prisoners. They were talking to their families too. I knew

THE FACEPLANT by Jamey Gallagher

February 19, 2026

We got the plant at the plant show and we brought the plant home and we put it on the windowsill and we watched it—not constantly but a lot more than we watched our other plants. Its lanceolate leaves grew fast. It got these paper-thin blooms that grew and unfurled and became translucent and turned out to be faces. Lips, nostrils, cheeks, eyeholes: all the usual face parts. The faces, after they unfurled, made little motions all day. Moues, I guess you could say. Women’s faces, men’s faces, it was hard to tell which. Some of the faces were stunningly

FETISH by Courtney McEunn

February 16, 2026

He loved how pale lines looked on my skin. After we fuck, he’d trace his fingertips up and down the jagged, raised scars. One night, he admitted jealousy. He wanted—no—needed to be there when it happened. Who was I to deny? I came over when the sun set. Every three nights. After his confession, he led me to his at-home office, grabbed a dull pair of hot pink Fiskars from the desk drawer and made the cuts. Not deep, but enough for warm bubbles to spill. He spread my blood with his tongue. He couldn’t wait long enough to take

JULIA FISHWELL by Kai Broach

February 13, 2026

When I met Julia Fishwell, I was trying out a lot of different deodorants. A fungal infection had left my armpit skin itchy and brittle. The Old Spice I’d used since puberty was too harsh. All the new ones too. Every week I smelled like a different person. Julia stared straight at me from behind the drug store counter. “You don’t want this one.” She swept my hypoallergenic stick from the conveyor to clatter against other rejections in a basket at her feet. She rapped the counter like I was a distractable pet. “I’ll be right back.” She stepped from