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.”
the lure
by Margaret Cahill
“As the door swung open, the bell above the door tinkled as usual. Something pulled me inside, propelling me forward involuntarily.”
i forgot i wasn’t there
by GRSTALT Comms
“The building went up fast. It came over the top of the fence. Everyone tried to pretend it wasn’t there. It was a big black box with no windows, guarded by men with guns wearing red vests.”
the job interview
by Ben Arzate
“The interviewee goes to the nearby window. He jumps out. He falls twenty floors and dies on impact with the sidewalk…The company accepts him for the position two days later….”
rag doll symposium
by Alfredo Salvatore Arcilesi
“In the invigorating darkness between tired streetlamps, Andie's mouth ached, both from the numbing cold and the lengthy lack of practice those deprived muscles had in performing a smile.”
just another halloween
by Brett Pribble
“If only they hadn’t dressed in garments that only Satan would admire, like when they dress as him, or pimps and prostitutes, or in skimpy police uniforms…If only they weren’t just another excuse to do nothing.”
windowless
by Nolan Knight
“Now sleep stutters. Every night, a window. Its draft cold, blue.”
you are last seen tonight
by Miriam McEwen
“You live inside this mirror now. A hard bruise marking your cleavage. A friend, barefoot, cutting a path for your chair through the wood rot and wild mushrooms. You amaze him. As if nothing scares you.”
the screams of jellyfish
by Michael Czyzniejewski
“One by one, they fell into the trap, each jellyfish pierced on a different spike, their jelly seeping out, oozing down the wood. Worse, the jellyfish were screaming, a dreadful wailing from the illuminated pit.”
indigo
by Joseph Labriola
“it wasn't the book, so much as his relationship to it—if that makes sense…This one, of course, was blank.”
o’reilly’s coming home
by u.v.ray
“all o’reilly knows is every time he sinks that dart into his flesh it feels like being cast adrift in a sea a warm marmalade.”
the sandlot/event horizon
by Eric Angal
“I met the guru last year at Wildheart: The Mid-Life Retreat For Men. He led the program’s transcendental meditation seminars and worked individually with retreat attendees to prescribe unique mantras to us, and to help us understand the uses and benefits of TM.”
ringing the island belle
by William P. Adams
“Kirby and the Market were so closely linked that no one on Belle Island could remember when there was one without the other. “
death dream of poe’s ape II
by David Luntz
“…insane, sure, but don’t forget the moment you bumped into Poe’s ape in a gas-lit Parisian alleyway, wearing a negligée of weeping butterflies and a stovepipe hat…”
the field where we used to play
by Pam Avoledo
“Over here, Sarah calls, and we are running on the green grass in the small field.”
conversation with disapproving mimi every time she sneaks out to sniff
by Eirene Gentle
“I bear the fur of Finnian on my skinned knee. Would you like to know how I skinned it or just keeping looking at me in that crawly way?”
chill
by Cheryl Snell
“When he commas his body around hers, she wonders how much of his hug is medicinal and how much apology. Wonders why the bed won’t stop splintering.”
clam guts
by Susan Flint
“I LIVED IN A CITY WHERE THE MONEY FESTERS LIKE MOLD. I HUNG AROUND THAT CITY’S NECK. I ATE THE SCRAPS IT FED ME…I ENDURED THE SIGHT OF HOMELESS PEOPLE ON THE SUBWAY AND I THOUGHT IT MADE ME SPECIAL. I SWALLOWED CIGARETTES WHOLE.”
bodies
by Emily Buli
“It starts with a video of two women kissing, which intrigues me in a way I don’t fully understand. Megan watches on the bean bag beside me. Her eyes are like glass—red and distant as she takes swigs of hard lemonade with one hand and pets her dog with the other.”
pulse
by Tom Misuraca
“Everybody’s digital footprint was deleted, like it or not.”
the countess of shadow pointe
by Beth Sherman
“We heard she was a Russian countess married to an oligarch, with a fortune in rubies seized by the KGB.”