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?”
just an idea
by Michael Czyzniejewski
“So, my idea, for down in the station, in the background, is we have the shoeshine booth, yeah, but instead of shoeshines, guys polishing shoes, we have guys polishing teeth.”
honey, i’m home
by Valerie Levy
“Shaking, she reaches in her pocket, pulls out the book of matches, lights one, and flicks it toward the yellowing newspapers before turning gracefully on her heal and gliding out the now-closed front door for good.”
a ritual unknown
by Sophia Craig
“Shoeless and emptyhanded, the woman ran with nothing but the feeling that she couldn’t kill what never lived to begin with.”
t is for tino
by Eirene Gentle
“When Tino called in the sharks they were ready. They’d practiced so many times. The circle, the dip. Synchronized finning to the music of Bolero.”
jiggle
by Cheryl Snell
“The Peeping Tom says, it’s lucky the mother can’t see all those folds and puckery! This is not the body she assigned the daughter.”
woman in the coral
by Rebecca Karas
“Someday I would join her, intertwined on the ocean floor.”
fountain
by Elan Barnehama
“When we met, she was sitting barefoot on the rim of the fountain, hungry for everything.“
a significant deficit in coherence
by Dimitry Partsi
“Somewhere, deep in his alternatively gifted mind, Mr. Badgerson was certain of only one thing: he had not yet been misunderstood loudly enough.”
how to stop your mother from wandering
by Beth Sherman
“104) In the picture, she has a crooked smile. Her eyes shift to the left, away from you, toward something you can’t see.”
trigger happy
by Susan Flint
“On the way home from the restaurant Joselyn stops at the Asian market. She walks in between rows of rotating Peking ducks and she thinks about killing herself.”
stick him
by Tom Andes
“Channeling all his hatred and self-loathing, all his rage at the number of times the Heaney boys and their minions had whaled on him, Patrick had. He’d stabbed the poor dude because Declan Heaney had told him to.”
disintegration
by Peter Naughton
“She glanced over at her right hand and sure enough the finger was missing, though there had been no blood or pain to mark its departure.”
protection from the gods
by Emmi Khor
“The Menshen Gods guarding the house were not pleased with the arrival of three new deities.”
george gale’s name
by Thomas M. McDade
“You’re a good man, George Gale. You saved both her and me some trouble.”
three stories
by Mileva Anastasiadou
“…he’s water and I’m air, and the fire will devour us at the end, but in a plot twist we will someday devour the world, only we play innocent now…”
the gift of love
by GRSTALT Comms
“The bag lies next to me in my bed. I’ve never slept so well. I see its smile in my dreams.”
alley money
by Alexei Raymond
“He’d never touched money of that kind. He’d seen it being handled by his mother, or by Ivan on their adventures, but he’d only ever touched various coins.“
fire in the sky
Micro-fiction by James Rayvin
“This time I saw that the craft was levitating. As I approached, a bright beam split the air and trained on my head. The next world has to be better. I carve the moniker into my arm. Raise my hands to the beam. And forget about you.”
lik-m-aid
by Madison Ellingsworth
“If miracles were real, God would have cured our daddy, and that dog would have lifted the telephone pole off itself. But it was us who saved that dog, and it was God who let our daddy die.”
chinese whispers
by Rick Kennett
“The noises changed to murmurs of appreciation. Charlie and Douglas and one or two others thumped fists upon the table, chanting, “Ghost story! Ghost story!”