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Yoro Speak
by Matt Hall I. When the aliens arrived, they came with jobs. Offers for jobs, at least. Earth’s economy had really taken a nosedive those last few decades and because many people had all but given up, the aliens, who looked very human-like beneath those clunky helmets of theirs, were heralded as the Great New Hope…
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Periphery
by Ross Gormley The boy is walking along his usual path to school when he comes upon the small pond, a perfect circle of water, no more than five feet in diameter. Gravel lines its sides. Stones in the center look like tiny black icebergs. Hundreds of tadpoles swim between them. The boy’s shadow alarms…
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Such a Good Man
by Dustin M. Hoffman They told Eggy they’d be calling the cops soon if their missing kid didn’t appear in the next ten minutes. Eggy knew their type, fussy helicopter parents, the rich kind raised on fistfuls of pills and internet, who could afford to be chronically anxious about terrorism and plastic straws in the…
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Flight
by Laura Hartenberger Six hours after my sister’s plane departed from Tokyo and three hours from its scheduled arrival in Vancouver, oxygen masks dropped from overhead. It was just before sunrise and the cabin was quiet and dark. My sister was asleep, of course. She was proud of her ability to sleep on planes,…
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An Inch Too Tight
by Mary McMyne As I extract myself—muscle by muscle, inch by inch—from my husband’s embrace, my breath catches in my throat. I’m afraid each small sound will wake him. The scratch of the straw-mattress beneath my knee. The thud of my feet on the floor. His eyes stay closed, as I slip from our cot.…
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The Girl Who Only Sleeps on Planes: A Blog
by Kelly Lynn Thomas Insomnia Is My First, Middle, and Last Name March 21, 5:13 a.m. I have tried every sleep aid on the market. I have tried every brand of recliner commercially available within the past fifty years. I have tried leaving the vacuum cleaner on next to me. I have tried white noise…
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Dry Toast Brings the Cavalry
by Jill Winsby-Fein My father is coming to dinner. Tyler is there at the stove in his silk kimono, charring bread on the flame. It is morning, spring, and the house is disheveled and peaceful. The walls are white in the kitchen but glow yellow. The dust ambulates midair. He hands me a piece of toast, and…
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Once Bitten
by Katie Cortese Because I once wanted to be a veterinarian (until bio lab), because I flirted with Buddhism (until I spork-speared a tick at Big Bend and felt only relief), because I genuinely love animals, especially dogs, especially floppy-eared, velvet-snouted, clumsy-pawed snugglers like my boyfriend Amit’s beagle mix—I’m the last person I’d expect to…
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The Tigers
by Sean Bernard All this time, we’d been together, and then suddenly we were told to be apart. We were we, an us, a gathering. All spring long we were a swarm of bees, bouncing through the plum blossoms; we caravanned as camels across the Sahara, we lounged on the front porch, a kindle of kittens.…
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Replaceable Parts
by Kim Ravold You are nine years old when you begin your piano lessons. You are twelve when you hear of the first successful grafting of a cybernetic arm on a human body, the innovative crossing of nerve endings and wires that can let a man feel the terrain of the earth on the sole…
