Showing results for Fiction
The Far Side
Julie Goldberg
She was going up to Poughkeepsie to see a girl she had met on the internet who, promisingly, shared her passion for Gary Larson comics.
Same Difference
Clare Fisher
She opens her mouth to speak, then shuts it, starts to laugh. ‘I guess we're both freaks.’
The Red Bird
Michael McSweeney
My six-year-old son stretches his arms to their limit as he describes his latest nightmare.
from the archives: "Navigators" from Hobart 12
Mike Meginnis
with an introduction from Matt Bell
Smiley in the Bullrushes
James Lineberger
If we accept the conventional ATF line, bootleggers are scoundrels of the worst sort, caring only for the almighty dollar, men who will poison you with hootch run through junk radiators and contaminated with everything from antifreeze to dead rats.
Weak Tea Scam
Joy Guo
Find your mark. As American as they come. Like this couple, standing a few feet to your left. Around your age, but taller, sturdier, sun-fed and muscular. Their smiles remind you of neatly racked milk bottles.
Seven Million Minutes in Heaven
Rin Kelly
It was during the seventh experiment that I died, or I think I died—I mean, I must have died because if I hadn’t there surely would have been a lawsuit of some sort, and I’d know about it by now if I hadn’t died. Maybe I’d be filthy rich and wouldn’t have to keep signing up for these research studies and tests just to pay my bills. And to buy my pills.
Two Episodes in the Life of a Mental Health Professional
Harris Lahti
The man who used to be my husband wanted to hook up. “Right here,” he said after parking our Nissan Sable in the road we used to live on and killing the headlights
Horse Poor
Alexander Lumans
After last night, I’m no longer allowed at The Mint Bar. You could say it’s because I choked the owner’s daughter up against the wall next to the jukebox that only plays Cash songs—pushed her hard enough that a quarter fell from the coin slot—or you could say she deserved it.
Adjudicate
Michael Snyder
I’m in accounting. Sally in the lab. Among her other duties, Sally is an odor judge. Her nose is rather ordinary to look at, what my grandma might have called a button nose. But Sally’s nose is legend.
An Accessory to the Orchestra
Tommy Dean
Just another dead body in a city of dead bodies, right? This world is out to eat me, Chase. I feel the scratch of its teeth.
Absent Goras
Avee Chaudhuri
The Chetrams were from Trinidad and listened to Bollywood music on the weekends. They were good, hardworking people. Their kids were polite. They were not Muslims as far as their neighbors could tell, since Chetram liked Miller Lite and the daughter wore high-waisted shorts in the summer. It was not polite to inquire.
One More Inch of Shadow
Tara Stillions Whitehead
Joe’s uncle bought rain barrels and fertilizer. A.J.’s dad emptied the family checking account, $300 at a time, from the Circle K where he bought cartons of cigarettes, where my brother was robbed at
The Day The Billionaire Exploded
Joe Marczynski
When the first billionaire exploded I was at the drive-thru with my dad.
The Cursed Treasure of the McDaniels Kids
Tyler McAndrew
Mom couldn’t understand why we were so interested in him, the old man who shuffled through the park, waving his metal detector over the thick summer grass, digging up hub caps and toothbrushes and
Screen Test: Ahab and the Whale
Lauren Friedlander
The whale, halter top and pigtails, flops back onto the couch with a script.
A Brief Excerpt from Leigh Chadwick Is Your Favorite Poet: An Unauthorized Biography, Written and Edited by Leigh Chadwick
Leigh Chadwick
Leigh Chadwick goes into the bathroom, turns off all the lights and spins around three times while chanting, Leigh Chadwick, Leigh Chadwick, Leigh Chadwick
Daughter of Ants
Natasha Ayaz
His voice, crisp like apple vodka, poured into the September air.
The Reformer
Claudia Ross
I looked up at Rudy, his back hitting the air like a ruler. The mind is an act of balance, he said, looking at me. It is a lever for the body.
The Weather in Minnesota
James Sullivan
Who could need this much flesh? Four pounds of Louisiana crawfish, one pound of Alaskan king crab legs, six pounds swordfish steaks, a pound of oysters, three pounds lobster tails, five ribeye steaks, three New York strips, six T-bones, four packs of stew beef, two family packs of chicken drumsticks, and enough shrimp to fill five plastic shopping bags.
And Then He Got Squished
Ann Manov
In Geometry class, Vicky said that a man had broken into her bedroom in the night and that she’d talked to him until he left.
Recent Books
Exit, Carefully
Elizabeth Ellen
"I loved reading Exit, Carefully. It’s unusual, and in my opinion exciting, to publish a play without previously receiving a major production."
-Walker Caplan, Lithub
Worsted
Garielle Lutz
“Lutz’s work is a marvel of the possibilities of language. Each of her sentences is an intricately crafted thing, deeply complex yet crystalline in its clarity . . . her command of each and every word remains supreme.”
--Mira Braneck, The Paris Review Daily
Garielle Lutz is the author of The Complete Gary Lutz, among other books.
Her Lesser Work
Elizabeth Ellen
"[Her Lesser Work] is a collection of mordant and formally inventive stories circling themes of, let’s say, desire and escape within repressive structures."
-Walker Caplan, Literary Hub
"Her Lesser Work is full of power and it takes risks and it's alive and real and it fixes a very sharp eye on the shit humans do to each other and themselves."
-Lindsay Lerman, LitReactor