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.”
pig
by Davor Mondom
“a Vessel’s tenure varied. Great effort was made in the selection of the pool of potential Vessels to ensure that a Vessel could serve as long as possible…Of course, you could plan only so well against the Illness.”
elaine keeps driving
by Maisy Phelps
“At 4am I keep on driving and the radio speaks to me. To me? I meant to hit my motel around 4 hours ago but I got that lonesome sunk-cost kind of lost that no map can rectify. Unless a body might be willing to break a law or two.”
sorcière
by Megan Chunn
“…the plump, fig-like lower lip, partially bitten by her incisors, then parts. Ready to be plucked and consumed.”
stickler
by Eric Angal
“The kid stands there, shadowboxing in the felt earth. He can hear the creek chuckling to his right. The sky is the color of a ripe persimmon.”
disturbance of dirt
by Brooks Egerton
“Once the interment is complete, she presses her forehead to the wet ground, inhales the sweet dark churning work of earthworms, squeezes her eyes shut, pictures her mother’s gap-toothed boyfriend and the drawer where the spoon belongs and the butcher knife that also lives there.”
mom’s special
by Erin Dawkins
“I looked down at the newly bloomed flowers that grew fully without attention or care. Without water or seed. Plucked before they’re primed, soon to brown at the edges and wilt.“
a blue baby in a red house
by Shrutidhora P Mohor
“…inside that demolished heap, is a pair of tiny, helpless hands, fingers curled up, nails light blue, the skin as thin as muslin, a premature blue baby whose survival was questionable right from the moment of its coming.”
a shadow in the dark
by P.X. Vayalumkal
“That day, Molly and I entered a long, almost never-ending darkness. It felt like searching for a light switch in a room where none exists, then realizing there’s a string hanging from a light bulb that you have to pull and when you finally pull it and hear a click, nothing happens.”
oracle
by Nolan Knight
“And you emerged? Someplace else. Not L.A.? No. Where? Dunno—magnolias sprouting gumdrops, a sherbet sky—pterodactyls overhead.”
the fable of the storyteller and his witch
by Sumitra Singam
“It was never clear who hurled the first stone. The flinty piece of rock hit her on the head, leaving a dark bloom of blood.”
the ventriloquist
by Seth David Parker
“it’s the most potent form of psychology. I pull levers. Put ideas in people’s minds. Put words in their mouths.”
our darkness
by Reagan Davenport
“For a moment, I saw nothing, heard nothing, but I felt her moving again inside me. For a moment, we were both alive.”
the ghost president decides to write a novel
by Mary Grimm
“The ghost president has some spare time and decides to write a bestselling novel. It will, he tells the aide who brings him his Sausage McMuffin accompanied by two Hash Browns, each in their paper envelope, be based on a dream he had last week.”
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.”