Fiction
February Contributors
David Agyei-Yeboah, Swetha Amit, Olivia Ardine, Brooklyn Armstrong, Khushi Bajaj, Sharon Bippus, Sacha Bissonnette, Danilla Botha, Camryn Brennan, Margaret Cahill, Cooper Clarence, Kalan Cordell, Enrique De Alba, Craig Demi, Tyler Efford, Andrew Eastwick, Kate Forbes-Riley, Christian Fuller, Jonathan Daniel Gardner, Delphine Gauthier-Georgakopoulos, Kris Green, David Hinson, Michael Holtzman, Caroline Huckeba, D. J. Huppatz, Jonathan Jackson, Joelle Killian, Tom Koperwas, Jesse Lifton, JP Lor, Lana Lowe, Gracie Lyle, Andrea Marcusa, D.C. Martin, Finnegan McBride, Kathryne McCann, Tom Newcomer, Seth Parker, Christopher Kostyn Passante, Tif Robinette, McKenna Robison, John Sara, Eylie Sasajima, Shawn Scott Smith, Té V. Smith, Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece, Rick Taliaferro, Hayden Taylor, Mary Thorson, Jack Timko, Max Wagner, Essi Ward, and Jon Wesick
February Highlights
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nothing and everything
Flash Fiction by Sharon Bippus
“We’re two guys past our prime looking for a thrill.”
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the creative process
Fiction by John Sara
“I keep a box of ideas stashed beneath my bed; misshapen balls of flesh I cut from my body and mail to my editor. (Um, thanks, but I didn’t actually ask you to do that).”
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camera obscura
Fiction by Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece
“…you know what it makes me think of, those engravings of camera obscura where the outside gets projected in but backwards and upside down, like Plato’s cave…”
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grapefruit
Fiction by Margaret Cahill
“My father’s brain tumour changed everything for me. He collapsed at home a week after my thirteenth birthday and sunk into a coma he never woke up from.”
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foreclosure season
Fiction by Christian Fuller
“When Paul set his shoes on fire, we told him to piss it out. That, like, he’d better hurry. He was only supposed to light up the insulation we’d pulled out from the eggshell walls…but we were sixteen and drunk enough to fist fight god and things just had a way of happening.”
imposter
by Essi Ward
“I had never felt so comfortable in my skin. I looked down at my sloughed, humanoid exterior and felt with astonishment and my brand new pebbled, green skin.”
a moment in limbo
by Brooklyn Armstrong
“Darla could no longer feel where she was. Still, she persevered, she ran, until there was nothing. Nothing at all.”
telemachy
by Cooper Clarence
“Telemachus froze. Here was an obstacle he had not foreseen—already this morning he was dangerously over-budget on exertions, and now he was expected to haul his own dry goods?”
thing impossible
by Kate Forbes-Riley
“He’d quizzed her on her favorite Otis song. Put her on the spot…”
meeting organically
by Lillian Giles
“Maybe I hadn’t summoned Mitt from the app—maybe I’d made him. Maybe I’d used Tim’s profile as a jumping off point, and then I’d stuffed jpegs with organs. Blown breath into text messages.”
next year’s holiday
by Hayden Taylor
“In the backyard, another hole paraded around, consuming plants and fallen acorns. It moved quickly toward the cat. Just as it was prancing around with vibrancy and intention, it was nothing in an instant.”
sundays are longer
by Lucian Cubric
“The dog follows, keeping distance, eyes fixed on the shape clinging to his master’s back. He waits for it to release its grip before he attacks.”
severed
by Chelsea Cutler
“We buried his hand under the willow tree in his back yard. It was an intimate ceremony; Link hadn’t bothered inviting his parents.”
two paintings
by Zia Musgrave
“And there we hang. I fall and I rise, but at least I never have to look away from her beautiful face.”
body interest
by Carolyn Bennett
“She'd add the stub in her scrapbook as a souvenir. She almost skipped as she entered the exhibition, excited yet repulsed to be seeing her mom.”
late night cinnamon rolls
by McKenna Hutchinson
“Late-night baking isn’t just my stress relief anymore, it’s our ritual, a bond forged in sugar, butter, and the soft hum of an oven at three in the morning.”
social medium
by Gerald Lynch
“Whatever, I am now paying the price in instant isolation and threatened anonymity. What can be done?…Upset over the absence of responses to my post, I turn to PornPlanet.”
becomes the dream
by Greg McKinney
“the leaf goes unnoticed. Its fading is out of step with the normal order and expectancy of things. It is trapped by the wind…That wind has been blowing since my earliest memories.”
abandoned swimming pools
by Daniel Lukes
“They dumped the corpses in the middle of the pool—a beautiful curvy pool with no flat bottom, but scooped out of the Earth like pistachio ice cream—and set them aflame like a bonfire.”
marine fish casserole
by Karen Walker
“The table became elbow to elbow to elbow, and, to make room, I was shoved to the back of the highest cupboard.”
i am a chocolate hero
by Swapan Samanta
“He was inside something cold. Metallic. Confined. A refrigerator. When he moved his neck, it creaked. Not bone against sinew—but something brittle. Cracked chocolate.”
charlotte’s mirror
by Holly Redell-Witte
“As soon as she turned away, the mirror laughed a little but without sound.”
little love story
by Joe Couture
“Milley, he is certain, is having an affair. There can be no other explanation for her newfound self-care and nymphomaniacal lusting …or for her recent attempt to mask the smell of French fries that has permanently permeated her skin.”
seven uses for parker lamb’s giant head
by Anna K. Young
“His eyes have the dull sheen of calico buttons whenever he accidentally makes eye contact. Unflattering freckles dot his pale skin—they’re so washed-out, they look like liver spots. The kid radiates nerd like Chernobyl radiates gamma rays.”
funnel
by Stuart Watson
“These babies ain’t been nowhere. And you know what? They ain’t never gonna. ‘Cuz their dad’s white trash. Sweepin’ and moppin’ sawdust all day.”