SWIMMERS by Tobi Pledger

Doc Raeford lifted the tail and stepped back to avoid the torrent of steaming bull shit. After the last wink of the bull’s anus, he leaned forward and pushed the electroejaculator probe into the rectum, completing the docking maneuver. “Bull’s eye.” Mike would never have imagined that he’d enjoy helping a veterinarian anally penetrate a two-thousand-pound Angus bull, but he did. Raeford shrugged. “It’s a gift.” The bull resisted the intrusion, lunging forward, shoving his chest against the gate of the squeeze chute with a jolt. His nostrils flared, flecks of foamy mucus blowing out on the exhale. The Texas…

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MUTUAL by Caroline Porter

Amelia-Rose followed first. She even had the audacity to message Francis afterwards, as if following real life acquaintances on Tumblr was normal. Hi Francis! It’s nice to see someone else who is as online as me lol. xoxo—AR  Francis freaked, of course. She couldn’t picture Amelia-Rose as a fellow Columbiner, not even as one of the fangirls exclusively in it for horny reasons: the ones who posted crime scene photos of Eric’s body captioned idk hes kinda cute without his face, who posted drawings of a shirtless Dylan Klebold, passably rendered in ballpoint pen—not that Francis thought there was any…

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PARROT by László Darvasi, translated from Hungarian by Ági Bori

As was his habit, he lay down for an afternoon nap, although next door they were building a church. The sounds of drills, hammers, and other tools kept waking him up. He fumbled his way to the kitchen, drank two glasses of absinthe in quick little swigs, plopped back in the armchair, and stared at the ceiling. Up there, the light was moving back and forth, forming streaks and patches, devouring itself. They were puttering around next door, and he remembered that the foreman had once said to the workers that not all of them would live long enough to…

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POCKET UNIVERSE by D.T. Robbins

I find a pocket universe in my apartment building. A whole ass other universe two floors below me! On the 23rd floor to be exact. You’d never know it was a pocket universe by looking at it. From the outside, it just looks like another normal door to another normal apartment.  The pocket universe feels like it’s made for me. Like its dark energy and matter and various particles all exploded from the nethermost parts of my soul during its creation or my creation, or maybe they happened simultaneously and that’s how love works.  The first night that I’m in…

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JITTERBUG JOHNNY by Grey Traynor

Jitterbug Johnny made it to the back of a dozen trucks and sports utility vehicles in the form of a sticker: “Jitterbug Johnny 1965-2023 – ‘Drive faster than an eagle takes flight!’” Jitterbug said the phrase any chance he could: before and after taking a shot, getting out of cold above-ground pools, even while receiving the toothiest blow job. However, it was a phrase that bothered some folks, sticking in their ear like a stubborn wad of wax. Did eagles take to flight faster than most other birds, they would wonder, shouldn’t this pithy encouragement have more to do with…

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ANOTHER WORD FOR IT by David Hering

The woman who wrote Beowulf considered it juvenilia. She composed it during the years she roamed close to the old hall, hearing the revelry, watching the fighting and fucking from the slippery dark outside. Over the long seasons she recognised, in her observations of the hall, a will that sprung from its inhabitants; a mode of life that ran in tight, obsolete cycles. Drink spilled, offence taken, necks opened, blood added to mud, children made, killed. These dances played out, accumulated nothing.  Over time, she moved away from the hall and disavowed the tales she wrote about it. In their…

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PERSONAL LIFE #35 by Ulyses Razo

In 1983, when I was 32, I invited my Sorbonne classmate Renée Hartevelt to dinner at my apartment at 10 Rue Erlanger, under the pretext of translating poetry for a school assignment. I planned to kill and eat her, having selected her for her health and beauty, characteristics I felt I lacked. I have had a lifelong suspicion that people find me mentally and physically repulsive. However, many of those who meet me find me to possess obvious intelligence and a sense of humor. They also find me handsome, although of austere appearance. I am often regarded as “very self-analytic.”…

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ONE GIRL – ONE GIRL by Sacha Francis

She thumbs the tumor where it rubbed on the boning of her bra. Her work shirt is half undone, her chest exposed to the mirror. The hooks unclasp, and it’s there in full view: pill-sized, pill-hard and intradermal. She squeezes, this is no pimple – the skin that hides it turns a deeper pink and that’s the end of it. An intruder to the bathroom fails to enter, the door ruts the lock. She buttons her blouse and smooths out her hair to return to her work. The tumor snugged in its place over her breastbone, against the bra, beneath…

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MY NAME IS JIM PARCHEESI OWNER OF JIM PARCHEESI’S AND I’VE WORN THE SAME PAIR OF SOCKS FOR 45 YEARS SO SUE ME by Dan Weaver

You’re gonna come in here into my place and tell me to change my socks you’re gonna tell me that? Get out of here with that horseshit. This is my place and these are my socks and I’m not changing them just because you don’t like that I’ve worn them these same ones for 45 years. I’m not here to do what anybody says to do I’ve earned it you see the fucking pictures on the walls of this place? There’s pictures of me with like several different celebrities ok? They came to my place here and they gave me…

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WHALE WATCHING by Kelly Dasta

My dead friend isn’t supposed to be on the whale watching tour. It’s a pale summer morning, the harbor glazed with fog. I’m standing on the boat’s upper deck directing tourists aboard, gesturing to empty seats, passing out pamphlets. And there she is, lined up behind a family of five. She’s wearing a navy windbreaker, jean shorts, and muddy white sneakers.   Why are you here? I ask. You’re scared of the ocean.  Only the Pacific, she says. The Atlantic is fine.   I say, Okay, but don’t freak out the children.   We jet off, gliding over the glass panes of the…

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