Fiction
December Contributors
Richard Alured, Alfredo Salvatore Arcilesi, Arthur Aronstein, Jennifer Benningfield, Andrew Rai Berzins, Ace Boggess, Courtney Burten, Kayla Cain, Luanne Castle, Ronita Chattopadhyay, Tulip Chowdhury, Megan Chunn, Ben Connell, Kyle Cox, Jake Creps, Roger D’Agostin, Harry Del Monaco, K. Uwe Dunn, Zary Fekete, Ryan Frye, Steve Gerson, Benjamin Goluboff, Katie Goto-Švić, Richard Grayson, Dee P. R. Kay, Joe Kilgore, Hank Kirton, James A. Knight, Nolan Knight, Alejandro Gabriel Leopardi, Lior Locher, River Lucero, Mark Luebbers, Lindsey Maple, Shrutidhora P Mohor, Guinevere Ngozi Morgen, Faith Murri, Joseph Quilindrino Niduazu, Mika Nadolsky, Susan Brink O’Flaherty, Steve Oehmen, Seth Parker, Randall Perry, Timothy Petkovic, Rachel Racette, Arjun Razdan, L.G. Reed, Nicolas Rivera, Hil Schmidt, Gahl Shattan, Sumitra Singam, Melvin Sterne, Elizabeth Sundstrom, Amir Szuster, Jack Uppling, Derek Waulet, Walter Weinschenk, CR Widen, Jacob Wrich, Brandon Yu, Dodge Zelko, Kit Zimmerman
December Highlights
-
![]()
erotomania
Flash Fiction by Nicolas Rivera
“The trick is to do the opposite of convention. Lighting, video quality, the flattery of a flirtatious angle are important details, but the key to social media is delivery.”
-
![]()
all the kooks
Fiction by Ace Boggess
“The fight started right in front of her in the pasta aisle. Mary Ellen wasn’t close enough to hear if words had been exchanged…Everything was political, even the act of picking out linguini.”
-
![]()
the pain master
Fiction by Lior Locher
“Neutral face, clean-shaven. Eyebrows neat, hair lined up like a platoon. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t have to. You both know the deal.”
-
![]()
the day she swalloed glass
Fiction by Ronita Chattopadhyay
“She was done with being quiet and submissive. “I will become tough,” she said out loud. She gulped down the remaining water. And then she noticed it – a crack at the bottom of the glass.”
-
![]()
dispatch
Micro-fiction by Nolan Knight
“The detective flashes his penlight over a slick of blood. Eyes the busted back door, scans the yard. Body was moved. That’s three this week. Or was it last week?”
it’s okay
by Willow Nichols
“I hear a clock ticking but have no idea how much time is passing while I lay trapped in this human refrigerator.”
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.”
foreclosure
by Matthew O’Brien
“The layoff and divorce combined to form a fault line in his once rock-solid confidence.”
area man
by Michael Grant Smith
“Dagger and Crowbar swore their baby sister Klamiddea (named after the Ancient Greek goddess of horniness) was the sweetest of all Raceways.”
love & poison
by Cleve Lamison
“A final act of devotion. I fingered her trigger until she climaxed a third time…It was explosive.”
the modest widow
by hiromi suzuki
“The dead put on their respective shoes and return to the heavens riding on the lift.”
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…”
draconian error handling
by Cristiano Cardone
“The phalluses wrapped around me, and I was dragged under the block, dissolving. In the end, I was a big hypocrite, trying to escape from what I was breathing and living.”
the annunciation of appalachia mary
by Allister Nelson
“God comes hungry to your table. The crops have rotted. Tins of bean, ash in the cornbread. He asks you for food.”
in the addict colony
by Neil Randall
“We have a 0.0% success rate at present, and of that we are immensely proud.”
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.”
eliza’s house, or she knew the only reason (they visited)
by R.P. Singletary
“SLAPPED any hell or heaven, come piss and shit, life out of the man-boy whos-whispered-whose? Collapsed and somehow exploded (somehow??), his head hitting loud and fluids of every shade of b.i.o.l.o.g.i.c.a.l.s. across the shipyard-emptied stones.”
when the bell rings
by Natalie Hammonds
“What was the point of her being able to go inside of her skin but not able to change anything?”
coma white
by Daniel Sheen
“It feels like the end of the world. But whisper-quiet. Less like catastrophic thunder and more like a slow unravelling, like an old sweater comin’ apart at the seams.”
what looks like what is
by Basil Rosa
“He considers the Virgin Birth. Like many a Catholic, he was once so eager to believe.”
life is art is life
by Margaret Cahill
“Not everyone can paint,” he said, “but everyone has the potential to be a performance artist.”
three stories
by Joseph Linscott
“You settle into a hollow. In your brain, a vibration hums that matches the wiggling of worms under your body. A pale glow from the moon extinguishes your fire. Shivers shudder out and from your mouth a grey winged moth emerges.”
lord miserable
by Sean Ennis
“You think it would be easy to feel superior to a Satanist, but you would be wrong. I regularly sell my soul for discount codes, free shipping, and no-obligation, one-month trials.”
incest of ideation
by Cristiano Cardone
“I excused myself and headed to the van the studio had rented for me. Inside, I smashed the posca bottle against the bedside table—old blood, old life, old ways.”