Category: Fiction

Tiffany Promise Death appears at my door with a fistful of roses. Plastic bags tug at her wrists, but she won’t let me see what’s inside. I imagine a heart-shaped box full of tiny bones, a ribbon of molted snakeskin, chocolate-covered somethings.      “Cherry,” she growls, pushing me inside the house, hard against the hallway wall. My…

by Rebecca Bernard       In my dreams, the boys love me. Our hands furious against one another’s sides. Often, there’s little fruition, only build up. Usually, I’m still married, but I’ve discovered a loophole that allows for each fleeting tryst to be guilt-free. A sundae with whipped cream and two cherries.      I call them boys, but they’re…

by Tobenna Nwosu       Pitchforked mermaids and seahorses ripple in Ezinne’s blouse as she ambles to the grove. I trail her, my legs thinning and bending at improbable angles. Her pillar skirt throws off the sinking light strand by strand. Ivory disks tug her earlobes into corkscrews. Pines unfurl from us, the forest bed a skull…

by Drew Nelles OUT OF THE BOTTLE      “You know I’ve never been catcalled?” Asuka said. “Walking down the street or whatever, past a construction site—never.”      “I saw the strangest thing today,” I said. “I walked by a man holding an entire peeled banana in his hand. He was talking on the phone and holding a peeled banana.…

by Maggie Slater       Dylan Brooks was a shower connoisseur. After thirteen years in the medical field, Dylan realized he hated his job, hated the system, and wanted more than anything to do something he enjoyed. Dylan loved taking showers. So he quit, moved to a smaller apartment in a cheaper part of town, and set…

by Chantelle Chiwetalu They both watch the bead of blood crawl down her left leg. This is the fourth month, the wife says. This is the fourth month, the husband says. If I don’t find the solution to our problems, call me bastard, the wife says. I will never call you bastard, the husband says…

by Ryan Pollard       It was midevening when the two friends ordered food at the bar. Charlie, the smaller one, glanced around the place. “Pretty dead todight, huh?”      The bigger one, Jeremy, grasped his mug of Bud Light like a barbell, his thick fingers wedged under the handle as though locked in place. He sipped through the…

by Dana Blatte       Lina first tasted moonlight when she was small enough to fit in her mother’s palm like a present. She had been born the size of a pinky nail, and as rounded and peach-pink as one too. To her family, this was no surprise; Lina’s aunt had emerged folded like an origami swan,…

by Tina Silver In 1982, Markham, Ontario, was a populous but irrelevant Toronto satellite, straddling the line between rural and suburban. At my high school, every student was white, depressed to some degree, and trying to act older. If you were sixteen—and I was—you were more often asked, “Where do you work?” than, “Are you…

by Spencer Wise Mark Bergman was standing to the right of the bema, which faced Zack Stein’s good side according to his mother. Mark didn’t have the heart to break it to Susan that at thirteen every side was awful—but particularly here, beneath the windows of Temple Emmanuel, where the backlight washed him out. The…