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
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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.”
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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.”
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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.”
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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.”
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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?”
the lady
by Christopher Hallenbrook
“The Lady carried herself with an effortless old-world elegance that had exited this age a generation or more before she entered it.“
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…”
the last supper
by Jayson Carcione
“Soon the Manhattan skyline will be invisible behind a veil of white…His wife places her open palm against the glass of the window. She thinks everything is beautiful in the snow.”
close to me
by Alison L. Fraser
“The stench is emanating from inside Arlo’s locker as we pass it on our way to lunch. I glance towards it, and she notices me.”
going my way
by Kenneth M. Kapp
“Dead and gone. I’m getting colder. No pain though.”
scarecrow
by Robert L. Penick
“Soldiers found him on his back, eyes staring through the broken ceiling at blue sky, as white doves flitted, freely, from rafter to rafter.”
the juggler
by Jacob Wrich
“Over and over, he drops the balls, each time only able to juggle briefly before he drops them. The vultures encompass him in a broad circle, hopping and spreading their wings.”
three micros
by Swetha Amit
“It will take a while for Pa to clean up the mess. I wait for the storm to arrive.”
“go, bearcats!”
by Johnny Byutorie
“‘Holy shit! Did you see that kid kill Joey!? What the actual fuck fire head emoji’
‘It was an accident! They were trying to help; don’t blame the kids, blame whoever installed faulty junk into our school red angry face emoji’
‘Those poor kids must be traumatized angel baby emoji’”
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.”
conversations with god
by Mark Daniel Taylor
“The murderer is lost, directionless—he will be looking for guidance…He’s not asking God who to kill next, he’s asking for redemption.”
notes regarding a roundtable discussion
by Joshua David Bellin
“If our practices are guided by rationality and theirs (seemingly) by magic, who can say at what point the former might not have evolved from the latter? Who, indeed, can claim a monopoly on reason?”
minds chase, chances run
by Samantha Szumloz
“After three slaps, specks of blood eject out of his mouth, splattering onto my collarbone. His body goes limp. Alarms blare in every part of me.”
in the name of justice
by Kim Farleigh
“Describing unprovoked attacks as preventive actions constituted “justice,” enabling the powerful to override intra-suburb law…“The bastards do whatever they fucking well like and call it whatever they fucking well want!”
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..”
old road 9
by M. G. Mclaughlin
“Her fingers cramped from the frantic pushing of buttons and tapping of light pulses. She rubbed them. She looked down at her hands. Hands that mixed water and cold air like Mother Nature to kill.”
after i got stuck in the record
by Mattia Ravasi
“After I got stuck in the record I crash-landed in a dark, raging ocean. I had no idea where I was, nor how far the water stretched around me.”
what we don’t see
by Alejandro Gabriel Leopardi
“Someone who wants to be accepted as anything but what they are perceived to be, must open themselves up freely. That never happened. She didn’t want it to.”
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.”
time mutant
by Peter Harris
“It was never a range conspirators who were in control, he realized. The puppet master pulling the strings was always the vast, omniscient presence of time.”