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.”
across the street
by Tulip Chowdhury
“I wondered what she was ordering; I could see a plate of wanton and a glass of water with ice resting in front of her. Apparently, she was not eating anything.”
effort
by Mika Nadolsky
“I love you!” Gem shouts, and she is running. “I want to be you, ingest you, consume your blood and piss! I want your mind and body, and I want to feel it on me like my own flesh!”
erotomania
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.”
running out of time
by Elizabeth Sundstrom
“I cannot imagine Rick alone without Petal or envision her aged parents burying their only child. How will I endure Saturday mornings without Petal’s voice, soft and clear, reaching out across the Atlantic?”
spectrum
by Amir Szuster
“It all began mango-yellow. The way he peeled me, chewed me, satisfied himself with me. All night together, an intense and vibrant flavor. We could spend hours without growing tired, like a child climbing a mango tree before lunch.”
the tube
by Richard Alured
“It all started about a week before when I’d stumbled from bed and down to the kitchen and discovered a scene of great negligence: five empty beer cans on the floor, crushed at their centre, dregs refracting on the linoleum, wildness.”
the field
by Faith Murri
“I am grateful for my doppelgänger, who sits in my chair and stares out of my eyes, because she keeps the secret of me so well.”
an obituary for the factualist
by Seth Parker
“His fingerprints, already stained in ink when his body was found, identified him as one Matthias Krüger, while dental records list him as Juma Mwinyi. His neighbors knew him as Tahonetsakon Deerfoot.”
plastic breath
by Alfredo Salvatore Arcilesi
“The nightstand leaned slightly forward, and Izzy glimpsed her legacy as the dead meat filling of a floor-and-nightstand sandwich. But the nightstand had other plans…”
chips
by Hil Schmidt
“She was an adorable child, though a sensitive one to be quite frank. She seemed to consider me to be a sophisticated creature, and I believe I filled that role with ease.”
poultice
by Christie Chapman
“Every morning you go to the potions…They work if you believe in them. And you do. You have to..”
lycanthropy
by Maria Pianelli Blair
“I think it’s modern Darwinism — how would we expect our girls to survive, otherwise? A girl needs a little firepower every now and again.”
comorbid
by Ika Bittern
“The body in the open casket is smoothed over, waxy – as if, if you cut it, it would be the same all the way through. As if it never had any secrets.”
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.”