Fiction
August Contributors
Aditya Bhatia,Cooper Clarence, and Kenton Sage Schmidt
good mom
by Zoey Knowlton
“Those same lights would be illuminated in green for the next nine months, just as soon as Danielle’s womb was transferred from her body to the freshly placed gestation unit.”
asphyxia
by Yuna Kang
“I blink, and Rella leaves my bathroom mirrors. I blink again; she finds a new home in my bedroom corner.”
tough guys
by Myna Chang
“She shoves my tie aside, taps a button mid-chest with the blade, tap tap tap. Who is this bitch? She’s grinning again, all teeth, and she smells like copper, like old pennies…”
waiting
by Walter Weinschenk
“The sea is a tumult, a terrifying process, and I’m too scared to venture out, too afraid to move, but too afraid to be alone…”
at the dollar store
by Erik Peters
“Inflatable rubber, whose electric colours betray their unnatural production and remind me that they will live on in landfills for millennia.”
katabasis
by Elodie Ashcroft
“the ugly traffic lights remain, the lights that stop and start us, that take our choice away.”
retrouvez le moustache
by Patrick Johnston
“The moustache is powerful. It is sinister. It is mysterious. It is a strongman, a magician and a bandit. It is a hero and a villain.”
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…”