ISSUE 15 Archives

LAND SPEED by Alex Evans

January 21, 2019 · Fiction

On October 24th, 2011, Oscar Valentine broke the land speed record riding his Schwinn through a suburb outside of Madison, Wisconsin. People said that this was impossible, that Oscar Valentine, being neither a professional high-speed driver nor a legal adult at the time of the achievement, could not have exceeded 760 miles per hour. Others cite the vehicle as their source of skepticism. Not only does a bicycle seem an unideal method by which to compete for speed, but a close friend of Valentine has publicly stated that the tires on the Schwinn were nearly flat that morning, and he…

x-r-a-y magazine

MAPLE & GOO by Anith Mukherjee

January 18, 2019 · Fiction

The Orb glowed, the room shook, pink slime dripped from the ceiling. The Orb shuddered. The Orb split open. Gestating ultraviolet flesh. Flesh appendages reached out and grabbed Maple by the neck, they pulled her into The Orb’s living centre. She felt blood circulating around her, absorbing her. She faded and dissolved. She did not scream. It felt like a kiss. * Town Nouvelle Vague is a paranoid city. Steeped in irony and sarcasm. Sincerity was outlawed. No one knew what anyone was really thinking. There was a constant underlying analysis of meaning. The paranoia fed into the general theme…

x-r-a-y magazine

GLASSMAKING by Jason Kane

January 17, 2019 · Fiction

In their twenties love was ineptitude—being there to fail together. Separately they delved the snowy miles between Erie and Rochester. A quest for meaning, those birthplaces their only landmarks, logical lapses in the dense contract language of northern hardwood. Their paths converged in a college poetry workshop, a group exercise where they fixed their willful corrections onto a hapless third’s verse. She had green hair and wore face jewels. He wore steel toes and a red bandanna, ebony plugs in stretched earlobes. She worked at the campus library circulation desk. He worked on cars and bused at a diner built…

x-r-a-y magazine

FOOTNOTES by Erin Cork

January 16, 2019 · Creative Nonfiction, Essays

Stopped at a red light, Malfunction Junction. A seventies model Chevy pickup ahead of me, bull balls dangle from the trailer hitch and a faded bumper sticker that was probably added when the truck was new, “Disco Sucks”. There’s a man-child anywhere between the ages of 18 and 30 in the driver’s seat. It could be a hand me down, his father’s rig. I’ll never share the memory of peeling the backside from that sentiment and slapping it on the tailgate in front of me. But I do have a scrapbook full of goose bump gospel moments in the fellowship…

x-r-a-y magazine

A SHADOW THE LENGTH OF A LIFETIME by Sheldon Lee Compton

January 15, 2019 · Fiction

The last address was easy to remember. But in a year living on the outskirts of downtown Portsville, Calup still confused First Street with Second Street about every other time. Maybe that’s what happened with his last letter. Confusion was now his general state of mind, even on good days, when it was only mild. At eighty-six years old, there were more days when he could remember what was in his lunch box the day the Number 2 tipple burned on Shelby Creek than he remember what street he lived on. The post office lady pulled to his mailbox. He…

x-r-a-y magazine

LIKE NEEDLE TO RECORD by Tomas Moniz

January 14, 2019 · Fiction

Terrance tells me choose a record and I struggle. He’s a new friend. A very sexy friend. I need friends. We have one in common, Metal Matt, who’s orchestrated this meetup, aka blind brunch date, slash hook-up. But with friends with records like these, you know. Plus I don’t want to offend. There’s Rihanna, understandable. Peaches, okay. But the predominance of ‘80s music stupefies. The closest thing to metal: Alice in Chains. I figure sure why not. I pull the album from the shelf. I say, How’s this, and hold the record high. He’s in the kitchen constructing our…

x-r-a-y magazine

BLUE BLOODED by Thomas Barnes

January 13, 2019 · Fiction

On the second date she brought up the lights in the water. “What do you mean you haven’t seen them,” she said. “You’re from here. It’s all up and down the shore, real late. The witching hour or past it.” “Just summers when I was a kid,” I said. “Now I don’t stay out late. Early shift.” The diner faced a parking lot, the parking lot of the black ocean. End of season loomed. Emptiness inherited the town. Waves lashed the thin shore and wind ripped at dune grass. Gulls hung in the air, motionless and screaming. “What about tonight,”…

x-r-a-y magazine

THE COAT by Robert John Miller

January 11, 2019 · Fiction

You don’t wear coats. You wear layers. You’re outside, what, five minutes, ten minutes at a time? Apartment to bus. Bus to work. Next door for lunch. Coats are such a bougie luxury. What are these people preparing for? Ice fishing? Everest? You’re never more than ten seconds from a clean well-heated place. But you tire of the questions. And there’s an online flash sale. Maybe a coat would be nice. Remember: You know nothing about buying coats. But that one on sale looks like the ones everyone has. Red patch. White thread. Maybe a goose is involved. Two days…

x-r-a-y magazine

THE WILHELM SCREAM by Gregg Williard

January 10, 2019 · Williard World

Before her senior year of high school she spent every day of the sweltering summer on the side porch of her parents’ house writing an essay on existentialism while her little brother, back to her and arms outstretched for balance, inched past the windows outside, wobbling on a ledge no deeper than his heels until he lost his balance and plunged, screaming, into a sea of lava five feet below, then climbed up the drain pipe and did it again, all morning, every morning: inch along the ledge to Kierkegaard, lose balance to Heidegger, wave arms to Hegel, scream piercing…

x-r-a-y magazine

MORE by Tyler Dempsey

January 9, 2019 · Fiction

Servants scatter. The psychoanalyst enters the room. He regards his surroundings: Apollo’s wife, Aphrodite, scrolls Facebook. Her Admirers lounge. Various articles—bedside tables, a rocking horse, bowling pins, Fruit Roll-Ups—lay adrift across the floor. Aphrodite refurbishes goods, like Fruit Roll-Ups, from thrift stores. Apollo enters, his humor betrays immense slaying. He approaches an Admirer, slays him. Tosses a bloody scimitar to the recliner. The Admirers scoot over. He sits. —How do you feel? —Tired. He cracks a Pabst Blue Ribbon, gallantly. Loosens his golden codpiece. Apollo props his heels on the dead Admirer. —I was whipping adversaries. The sun was angling,…

x-r-a-y magazine

12 Next »