by Norman Belanger
I go to meet her at the Greyhound station downtown. The New York bus is running 20 minutes late. Outside, it’s pouring rain, so I cool my heels, smoking cigarettes and slouching among the dim-eyed denizens of the old depot. I’m looking forward to seeing her again. It’s been a long time. Continue Reading
by Brett Petersen
A bright light streaked across the sky and disappeared into a thicket. Billy-Sally the billy goat glanced up from the grass he’d been munching on. Something on the other side of the fence was glowing. He padded cautiously to the edge of the pasture. The glow danced on the surface of his eyeballs like Chinese lanterns above a lake. The urge to jump the fence and investigate tugged at him, but Farmer Alan would be very cross if Billy-Sally were to try. Perhaps he could sneak through the front gate when the cows were let out to be milked. Continue Reading
by Jane Flett
When we last left our dear friend Cindy the manatee, she was having every one of her Christmas dreams come true in the deepest and bubbliest part of the ocean—in the corpse-addled wreck of a crashed cruise liner, where she’d finally found some peace and quiet to have a wank. Continue Reading
by Catherine Sinow
Delilah’s face was always covered with crust. Sleep crust on her eyes, snot crust under her nose, and tomato soup crust on the slope between her lower lip and chin. Each morning I saw her walking with her dad to their Audi; a vinyl Hello Kitty backpack always rested on her shoulders, and the back of her stringy blonde hair was always braided into a heart. Continue Reading
by Tara Roeder
With ragged lightning breath a long-forgotten god darts down from rolling clouds and kisses certain lawns, which bloom incessantly. Continue Reading
by Monique Quintana
Crystal and Seth were fighting over who got the last bit of tequila eggnog, and they knocked over their mother’s Christmas angel. Knocked it off the kitchen counter where it stood, its hands clasped, its lips pursed in prayer. Continue Reading
by Ever Dundas
2 April 1977
Goddamn. Those sonsofbitches have sure messed up my brain. I feel myself slipping away each time I go in. I forget. Hours and days and weeks are blank. It only feels like seconds. Write it down, I said to myself. Write it down, spit it out. That’ll do it, Frankie. That’ll sure do it. It’ll keep you on track. Keep you from drowning in the electric light. Remember who you are, Frankie. Remember where you came from. Remember your love, your passion. Continue Reading
by Calvin Gimpelevich
When the doctors told me that I would lose all sensation, that the procedure required unhooking my nerves and repasting the flesh, and I wouldn’t have breasts but a flat, what they call masculine, chest with a little red line to mark out my pecs, the subtraction, and I’d be able to walk on the beach with my shirt off, to go to the gym, to show my senseless dead nipples in public, I decided against the basic needle and thread, for them, the doctors, that is the surgeon and his assistant, to use velcro instead.
Continue Reading
by Tonisha Robinson
She sat cross-legged on the carpeted floor of The Tinted Tea Room, scribbling furiously in a tatty old notebook. He saw her there every Sunday, hunched over, tongue protruding slightly in concentration, barely ever looking up from her notes. Continue Reading
by Melissa Fitzgerald
If I had to decide, I’d say my biggest regret was the flimsy skirt I put on before going on this stupid trip to Stacy’s cottage. In doing so, I doomed myself to die in a flimsy mini skirt. When I fall down dead, the skirt will inevitably flop up and reveal my red lacy underwear. Then the first thing whatever man—and I’m sure it will be a man—who happens upon my body will see is my red lacy underwear. And that’s how I’ll be remembered. Continue Reading