Fiction

by Robin Wilder Adam Mathieu He wanted to be a paleontologist. Unearth fossils jutting from Montana sediment, all the femurs and mandibles of dragon lizards he learned were more like breeds of cockatrice than Jurassic Park attractions. Those dozens of dinosaur figurines migrating across his walls, the shelves housing ancient bedrock secrets, each one anatomically incorrect. He imagined them with feathers, the pillow-stuffed down of ducks and swans, thought maybe scaly monstro

by Glenn Orgias Piper Alpha during the 1988 disaster. Photo courtesy Cullen Inquiry. July 6, 1988. — Karen: This is all I know. Andre had taken to visiting the helideck of the Piper Alpha oil rig, looking from there out at the fog over the North Sea. He once told me that the sound of the foghorn on Piper Alpha was the sound loneliness would make if given a voice. 200 miles from Aberdeen it was. 170 feet below deck, the ocean smashed up against the pylons. A fall from the heli

by Nate Hirschtick Wesley Tingey Well one time we walked and walked and walked we must have walked a thousand miles it was nighttime all night we walked through the park up DeKalb and down Norstrand I took the G train home after I thought of you the whole way the way you had your books stacked on your dresser it was one on top of the other it was so impractical but you made it work so beautifully they were next to an antique lamp that your grandma gave you cool grandma I thou

by Brett Biebel Denis Shchigolev We’re still married, but my wife hasn’t forgiven me for Michigan City. I left her in an Airbnb. She was five months pregnant. My phone rang and rang, and I let it go, and she sat on the floor and cried, worried sick. The place we were staying didn’t have Wi-Fi. It was more like glamping than anything, just a two-room shack with a kitchenette and a TV with a DVD player and a digital antenna, plus a monster king-size bed. You could tell all the

by Maximilian Martini Savannah Bolton Barefoot and bloodshot, he kneels in the yard and faces the house. In the dirt, between every blade of grass, lie innumerable diamonds. They reflect the light of day a billion fold, coruscating beneath the house’s one window. The diamonds were the window. And then the pane broke into infinity. — - Each diamond is a caustic little rainbow. He works to grip them tight between his fingers and bank them in the trash bag at his side. But they

by Meg Pokrass Nada Gamal 1. Eleanor Rigby stands in the hallway wearing her mother’s wedding gown. Once a year, she puts it on to admire the flow. She is solitary dreamer who belongs here because she doesn’t belong anywhere else. A secret janitor perpetually sweeping up rice in a church where a wedding has been. 2. She is the most famous lonely person in Liverpool. Or maybe she never lived in Liverpool, and she is lonely while listening to the Beatles’ song. She is a late-mi

by Claire Guo Bank Phrom They say I came from a lineage of muckrakers, men and women who lived in the dirt of others. When I was born, I emerged from rot and magazine headlines, scornfully red and already screaming about extramarital affairs, about someone’s unpaid speeding ticket. My mother knew at once that I would be a successful journalist because I clamped my toothless mouth to her teat and didn’t let go, even when she smeared hot sauce over the reddened nipple. A fine s

by Rachel Weinhaus Casey Horner The first girl to kiss a boy was my best friend, Lauren. She was a full year younger than me, only in fourth grade when she kissed that floppy-haired teenager behind our cabin. She said his lips tasted like vanilla Chapstick. The first girl to lose her virginity was Sara, a girl I went to high school with. The tattooed man said he loved her. She wanted to believe him. Sara never loved the tattooed man, but I don’t think he meant his promise eit

by Matt Kendrick 은 하 the living-room carpet is a fever of wrapping paper scrunched into balls / it is Christmas day / Peter has bought a bicycle for his angelfish / Charlotte is staring at me as if I’m the last remaining Brussels sprout / her lips are loose from the ten o’clock sherry / the children’s are looser / they tell me I am old because I still use emojis / face with diagonal mouth emoji / face in clouds emoji / at dinner, Mother moans because we are an uneven number /

by Jon Steinhagen Photo by أخٌ‌في‌الله on Unsplash INTRODUCTION After what was done to Grady Seppellant (as of this writing he is still on display, and the birds have been at him), we have been tasked with the creation of this guidebook not only for the use of hapless strangers and curious tourists, but for ourselves, as many of us may want to venture out once again, for fresh air, for exercise, for liberation, and everyone needs to be as well-informed as possible before this

by Lauren D. Woods Ian Hutchinson I could be found on the bottom floor of a government building making spreadsheets. The important thing was to make the columns neither too wide nor too narrow, so that they filled the page and printed evenly. I learned to create clean squares with clean borders. No, not that kind. Those were being closed down everywhere. What I mean is that there was a sort of satisfaction in the quiet clicking into place of the spreadsheets and fitting and f

by Cuyler Meade Milad Fakurian I met a man last night. He had one of those faces you think you’ve seen before, but you just can’t place. We laughed and talked all evening. Oh, heavens, he was lovely. He asked many questions, not like other men who just want to blather on about themselves. He asked about my family, my children. I told him of my husband, George, and he didn’t seem threatened that I once had a man in my life. You don’t always get that. I let him put me to bed, b

by Diane D. Gillette Andras Kovacs The massacre wasn’t planned. Not exactly anyway. But it got lonely only coming out of our rooms to dance with future husbands whose hands couldn’t tell the difference between the smalls of our backs and the rounded curve of our rears. It got tiresome trying to make conversation only to be told to keep our opinions to ourselves. Perhaps if we’d been allowed to talk to someone other than each other, we might not have heard the call of the bria

by Jaime Gill Lolita Ruckert …you’d munch popcorn and settle in your seat while the opening titles play over the boy’s bus journey home through sullen Northern England, ominous overhead drone shots intercutting with images of the hero’s pale and anxious face (but this is not a horror film and the boy sits alone — earbuds in, eyes closed, forehead leaning against the clammy school bus window — listening to Lana Del Rey and imagining himself sprawled in a white convertible some

by Sarah Lynn Hurd Glitch Lab App Ten seconds is a lot longer than you think. Your whole life can change in ten seconds, or nine for that matter. If you’re anything like me, you might easily lose yourself on a brisk autumn walk, especially if you know the route without thinking about it. I like to walk to the beat of a song, and I like to walk fast. I’m talking 150 BPM. I’m talking elevated heart rate. I’m talking let’s break a sweat, little lady! Nine seconds, like I said, i

by Brooksie C. Fontaine Kristina Sammer That year, we became obsessed with Jackie Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe. To a lesser extent, we were interested in JFK, whom we perhaps unfairly treated like the optional Ken doll to our favorite Barbies. We went as them that Halloween — which, in hindsight, could be regarded as tasteless. Our costumes, and the stereotypes associated with them, ran counter to our personalities. I went as Marilyn, because I looked more like her. I was the b

by Andrew Graham Martin Haberdoedas Sometimes, when Mike lifts his arm to grab something, I see her. She’s there on his forearm, wreathed in a golden banner which reads “JASMINE” in a sans serif font. Her hair is a choppy sea and she has a mole on the right of her hip. One night as Mike sleeps I try whispering to her. “Is your name actually Jasmine?” There’s a long, harrowing pause before she answers. “…Are you actually a skeleton?” My body shivers like a tuning fork. I consi

by Joshua Vigil Julien Tromeur She thought maybe I’d contracted the disease on the plane. Planes were so stuffy, Margot said. The people so sick and leaky. I have a tailbone issue, she said, that I’m sure I got from some wild bacteria in the air. It’s like how cucumbers are sixteen inches nowadays. Bacteria sticks! We were at work — we scooped up the trash inside airplanes between flights — when the captain interrupted. I’ll show you sixteen inches, he said, pumping his pelvi

by Lio Abendan John Royle I have been dreaming on unstable legs, hooves dipped into stagnant water, algae stained up the tawny side of my ankles. When they buckle like still-green sprigs, I pitch forward into the pond and emerge with my lashes dripping, blinking my murky eyes clear. Elain and the others nose me back towards the shore. They chide me for dreaming, their ears flicking at flies, but when I hang my head in penitence I hear them whisper between themselves, susurran

by Spencer Nitkey Yilei (Jerry) Bao In 1991, the artist Damien Hirst took a tiger shark from the ocean — well, to be specific, a fisherman took the shark from the ocean — so Damien Hirst took a shark from a fisherman who, at his request, had taken it from the ocean and submerged it in a steel-framed glass tank filled with formaldehyde. He titled the piece “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.” The millionaire who had paid him 60,000 something dol