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.”
nevermore
by Megan Chunn
“I made the mistake of looking her up, I mean looking up at her. I saw her, some thoughts, and a glimpse of her life. I continuously hurt myself, which is my current insight.”
psycho mike
by Dee P. R. Kay
“He’d drink the bathwater Serena left, if he could, stubble and all, then scrub away her essence with Ajax. Boil notice or not.”
thorny triptych
by Andrew Rai Berzins
“Most of us do things of which we are not later proud. Ghosting a lame date. Prompting an avalanche. Sinking a continent. Or sitting back – beer in hand – dispassionately amused by the antics of idiots…”
uffington white horse personal ad
by Courtney Burton
“I was a tall buxom blonde with a Sagittarius tattoo on my hip and you were a lean, tan silver fox with a cigarette perched between your fingers.”
june gloom
by Richard Grayson
“Outside P.S. 15, half a dozen neighbors were gathering the way people do when there’s both danger and uncertainty – half hoping for news, half hoping there isn’t any.”
the sun moves
by K. Uwe Dunn
“He has a dream (pause.) his wife gives birth to a child whose bones show through its skin. (pause.) ..Soon he loses sight of the child through the chaos and comes to realize his wife has given it away. (pause.) He’s relieved.”
hopeful ash
by CR Widen
“There is a haze over our community- not just the smoke, mind you, but spiritual, a malaise, a sickness. We are missing something fundamental, or perhaps there is a wound we cannot see…”
incident on a windswept hill
by Joe Kilgore
“There are twelve rifles. Eleven contain a live round. A blank cartridge is in one. You have no way of knowing which resides in your weapon, initially or afterward.”
god’s watch
by Harry Del Monaco
“Legend has it, when the watch stops ticking, the world stops.”
come to daddy
by Dodge Zelko
“Not since Hellraiser had he seen so much flaying, whipping, and gouging, though to be perfectly honest, Hellraiser hadn’t made him half as queasy. Maybe it would’ve if he’d watched it with a twelve-year-old.”
dinner party
by Jacob Wrich
“Kong is, in fact, the Christ figure. We misunderstand his attempts to save Ann Darrow, the beautiful symbol of mankind’s lost innocence. And because we don’t understand him and his quest to save humanity, we must kill him.”
pestle and mortar
by James A. Knight
“Steven Porter was found dead in an alleyway, during the winter of 2012. He fell from a window of his fourth-floor town house in Kilburn. The fall shattered his skull, leaving a lake of blood. The red lake was covered in a light dusting of snow.”
general lew wallace confronts fake news, 1899
by Benjamin Goluboff and Mark Luebbers
“But on this overcast day in the last autumn of the century, among riots and the rumors of riots, the future of the Union lurked invisibly, a fish below the surface.”
charles ricard (c.r.) travels east
by Arjun Razdan
“There is only one Time, and this Montre is its Prophet.”
mary cunningham
by Roger D'Agostin
“The last two weeks of August were good. Her grasp on my bicep was gentle. But on the first night of autumn, Mary covered her ears and complained about the crickets. Her nails left marks in my arm. “
false waters
by Nana T. Baffour-Awuah
“That day, as I laid my best friend to rest, I buried his God too. And I found mine.”
out/in
by Jennifer Benningfield
“When I die, I just hope someone worth a damn gives a damn.”
dispatch
by Nolan Knight
“The detective flashes his penlight over a slick of blood. Eyes the busted back door, scans the yard. Body was moved. That’s three this week. Or was it last week?”
the easiest job i ever had
by Melvin Sterne
“I deduce from this that he was not popular in high school or especially good at sports – all traits that channel people into police work like here at the agency.”
the spider and i
by Steve Oehmen
“The hollowness begins in the middle of my rib cage. A pulsating vacuum where once my heart resided is now draining any resolve left in my body. I sorely accept my fate and await the end.”