Fiction
August Contributors
Aditya Bhatia,Cooper Clarence, and Kenton Sage Schmidt
that sort of thing
by Daniel Deisinger
“In July, her parents found her drowned in the creek. Her body floated in the weeping willow's shade.”
good soup
by Clare Martin
“I serve the soup and together we eat the pain, the wasted years, the anger, and the loss.”
I promise it gets better than this.
by Alexander Holcomb
“I crouched under the window, ready to reveal myself to the police. My brother sat beside me. Would they use handcuffs? I hoped not.”
belmont
by Kyle Cox
“He grips my chin and I open my mouth, slow to stop myself, but stop myself I do, just before a word slobbers out. Maybe my last one. This drug, whatever it’s called, makes my mind wander and it makes me slow.”
hello
by Michael Czyzniejewski
“Whisenhunt explained he’d just learned the word Hello hadn’t been invented until the early 1800s, and for decades, was considered vulgar slang, big-time commoner talk.”
do you ever stare at people’s arms while you ride the subway?
by Vivian Littlefield
“Can you separate her from herself and does it part for you like the sea for Moses? Is it exciting?”
two bikes
by Elijah Cansler
“The noon sun beats down mean on the school bus Two Bikes calls home. He lies sleeping in it, red and peeling all over except for where his skin is covered by the cargo shorts that he hasn’t taken off for some weeks now.”
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.”