Fiction
January Contributors
Alfredo Salvatore Arcilesi, Mikki Aronoff, Kevin B, Daniel Bailey, Rob Bailey, Vincent Barry, Carolyn Bennett, Vic Brooks, Chris Bunton, Hank Byutorie, B.W. Carter, Olivia Cantadori, Cristiano Cardone, Esme Chen, Abigial Cooper, Joe Couture, Lucian Cubric, Chelsea Cutler, Alex Dako, E.S.P., Marco Etheridge, Gilberte Farah, Kris Green, KJ Hannah Greenberg, Keith Hinrichs, McKenna Hutchinson, Patrick Johnston, Jeffrey-Michael Kane, Henrick Karoliszyn, Jeanne Burns Kett, Joelle Killian, Loren Kim, Hank Kirton, Mae S. Ladle, Louella Lester, Katherine Liljestrand, Daniel Lukes, Gerald Lynch, Rachel McConnell, Thomas M. McDade, Adam McOmber, Michael Minassian, Shrutidhora P Mohor, Zia Musgrave, Ivy Nabangi, Britni Newton, Loren Niemi, Emyr Payne, Holly Redell-White, Mike Richard, Swapan Samanta, Frederick Schardt, Sumitra Singam, Chuck Strange, Amir Szuster, Billy Thrasher, J.L. Tyrell, Justine Visceglia, Karen Walker, Stuart Watson, and Anna K. Young
January Highlights
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the girl who faded away
Fiction by Katherine Liljestrand
“When the curtain closes for the last time, instead of the eleven dancers there should be on stage, Camille can only count ten.”
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the magician's assistant
Flash Fiction by Rachel McConnell
“Mine is the silent, potent magic of the vanished woman, the one who leaves no trace but the phantom scent of crushed violets. An encore of flowers strewn across the stage.”
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humbert, by dolores
Fiction by Vic Brooks
“The only thing she imagined she was good at was being nubile in the eyes of men at least twice her age. She was passable, too, at heart-shaped glasses and bubble-gum pops.”
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rattle
Fiction by Alex Dako
“The sidewalks sparkled like diamonds in the sultry heat of summer.”
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the echoes
Fiction by Gilberte Farah
“Anxiety rose within Valentina like a sandstorm. Un-peopling a room exposed echoes. Echoes were wandering spirits, summoning souls to a land of limbo.. “
hanky panky
by Tom Misuraca
“I should’ve left a long time ago. But here I stay, mesmerized.”
how we survive a coronal mass ejection
by Casey Jo Graham Welmers
“We’ll look at the stars every night…We’ll wish on them, because what else can we depend on when all the lights have gone out?”
no, you don’t; or minerva’s gaze
by J. Agombar
“A voice whispers in your ear as you close your eyes in defeat. ‘No…you…don’t.’”
when my ex-wife dies
by Benjamin Drevlow
“When my ex-wife dies, and I promise it won’t be by my hand, I’ll bring her back home and have her stuffed and it won’t be for any sexy stuff…”
three micros
by Swetha Amit
“It will take a while for Pa to clean up the mess. I wait for the storm to arrive.”
pickled herring
by Marcus Silcock
“I do not like to expose my neck to the barber. My head is full of migratory birds, thinks Kato, walking the dust park remembering the lush fish.”
two stories
by J.B. Kalf
“I can still smell the cockroaches, hear the crickets on the wall, taste the headlights on the cars. I am part of the hotel ecosystem, along with cleaning ladies and the teenage clerk and this ecosystem known as the hotel..”
ma’s elmo phone
by JD Clapp
“I just don’t have it in me to go back. But hell, at least she has Elmo now.”
shepherd
by Robert L. Penick
“Dad is passed out in the yard again, couldn’t stagger in from where his buddies dropped him at the curb.”
two micros
by Jack B. Bedell
“She’s there to get some film on the black-and-gold team’s coach. He’s a defense attorney who’s supposed to have severe disk damage at C3-5 after a fender bender, but you’d never know it from the way he’s laying into his wife behind the dug out…”
jean cocteau’s apples
by Grove Koger
““To see within, turn your eyes to the horizon.” Even if, it seems, you have no eyes with which to see …”
recess
by David Henson
“We shuffle through our morning routines. Driving to work, we wonder at the kites tangled in the trees.”