GOING ONCE, GOING TWICE

 By Laci Mosier

They’ve stuffed everyone thigh to thigh into that windowless gymnasium. Dusty sunlight seeps in through the slits in the metal rafters, and the woman feels like she’s among a bunch of fish, salted and deboned and patiently waiting for someone to peel the lid back, please!

The woman’s child, gripping a wooden gavel, stands on an apple box at the podium. The child wears a tuxedo suit custom made by the child’s grandmother specifically for the occasion.

JOHNNY CASH ROSE FROM THE DEAD TO MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN  

By Melinda J. Combs

Because of his burning desire to sing at Folsom Prison again, Johnny Cash came back a zombie.  A vampire’s too risky in the Pen and a ghost can’t hold a guitar. Now, he’s walking the line of evil afterlife creatures. Something deep in his zombie-addled brain called to him, told him he needed to stop the prison riots, do an encore of Folsom Prison Blues.   

Prison fashion in 2017: solitary confinement for juveniles, waterboarding for anyone arrested, thanks to the current president.

THE DOLPHIN

By William Zimmerman

She pushed herself away, pulling him out of her and he realized that he was only halfway hard, though he was sober and found her attractive. She was short and seemed stout when she wore her tight tops and high-waisted jeans, but when she was naked, she did not look thick, only solid. She had large breasts and a butt that was firm when he grabbed it, and her belly was soft, and he wanted to nuzzle his nose deep into it.

PETE DAVIDSON

By Liam Lachance

Pete Davidson and Kim Kardashian are being driven somewhere to eat food they’ll be paid to eat if they take a picture of it, and I am stuck here, in this old section of the city that was restored to the time when the residents had slaves. Ah—the Port is nice enough and it is great to be at this house party with Aja, although our Problem feels close to slipping off the tip of our tongues when we drink. 

UP THE RABBIT HOLE

By Suri Parmar

On the evening that I turned twenty-nine, I found myself trapped inside a Fabergé egg.

Yep, you heard me – a Fabergé egg. A priceless treasure, the kind that Romanovs once collected like Pokémon cards or comic books and gave to their wives.

Naturally, my older brother, Kane (born Kamal), was to blame. If you knew him, you’d understand. But we’ll get into that later.

THE DELICIOUS ELECTRIC APOCALYPSE

By Doug Jacquier

My ancestors came from Mexico, where people did not fear us but loved us. They would wait a whole year to eat our fruit. They would smell us coming.

We did not stand on the shoulders of giants so much as piggy-backed on them, so that we could seem like giants too as we wound around trees and poles. Thus we became monstera deliciosa, the ‘delicious monsters’, journeying to many lands and bringing joy wherever we went.

MARTHA

By Sarah Johnson

The tinsel stayed tacked to the wall long after Mother had vacuumed up the balsam needles. It hung draped between sconces as I became a boy of twelve instead of eleven, and Sister bore her teeth to ten. Scraps of ribbons gone out with the garbage.

Our terrier once ingested a small metal camping spoon and the veterinarian had to open her belly like the seat flap on a onesie, but without the clean button closure. Martha recovered admirably as I became thirteen instead of twelve.

QUIET HOMES IN THE HILLS

By Matt Knutson

D’s old beater doesn’t have a passenger seat, so you’re sitting in the back. The car’s cutting through shreds of midnight fog when he really punches it. Your necks lurch, and he laughs. He laughs, and the tires squeal, and drops of whiskey spatter the leather.

“Could you kill someone?” D asks.

You say you probably could, if you knew they deserved it.

THE HOTEL BY THE TRAIN

By Pat Morris

This is a true story about ghosts. Maybe.  It takes place at the hotel where I worked after college.  No, I don’t mean motel.  Of course, a roadside motel with a flickering, light-up sign, loose railings strewn with cobwebs, room keys clipped to blocks of wood that require regular interaction with a one-armed front desk clerk would make a much better setting for a ghost story.  Remember, this is a true story.  I don’t get to pick the setting.  It takes place at a Marriott Residence Inn, one of seven in the greater Columbus metro area, with room keycards bearing advertisements for Buffalo Wild Wings.

IN THICKNESS AND IN HEALTH

By Bessie Taliaferro

If you’re dieting, you’re already dead. So, we celebrate our anniversary at Taco Bell. Cushioned by our love handles, dimmed by our shadows. The comfort of Quesadillas, the bliss of extra Queso. A flask of Tito’s to slip it into our Diet Cokes.

JOEY

By Sean Devlin

I fill my breaks walking. I hop off the loading ledge behind the liquor store and walk to McDonald’s on the corner for a coffee.

A cigarette on the way back and then stock beer until five.

Not yesterday. Yesterday I saw Joey Gavin loading his car with groceries across the street at the Pick ‘N Save. I stood at the edge of the loading ledge gawking. I was a child the last I saw him. His arms were just as thin but now his shoulders hunched. His head threatening to slip down the front of him and roll across the parking lot.

FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCES

By Kara Killinger

He picked her up in his white Mustang, the one he was in major debt for. She got in, made smaller by the huge clunky boots she was wearing and the button-down she’d stolen from her dad.

“It’s so good to see you,” they both said, and meant it, and hugged across the center console. The late August sun made everything blurry and gold.

They drove to Denny’s and slid into a booth, ordered coffee and nothing else. They talked about everything that had happened since they’d last seen each other, people they’d been with and times they’d called in to work just because they felt sad. She’d recently started a habit calendar, where she tracked the days she drank the correct amount of water. He’d recently experienced what his therapist called a “manic episode” -- driving to Galveston in the middle of the night, getting drunk on the beach, and falling asleep on the sand surrounded by empty bottles, the incoming tide licking his toes.

SILVERFISH FROM ABOVE

By  Connor Mahoney

Cuddie messaged me a meme earlier today. The pictures were from a scene of a sitcom that I hadn’t seen. I wonder, when fans of something see memes like this, is the humor they find in it doubly enjoyed due to their familiarity with the original content?

Anyway, some dude in the meme was talking aloud about a thing when in the next frame a person shows up next to him with the label of “internet ad about the thing you were just literally talking about” to which he screams in reply “where the fuck did you come from?”

I WANNA BE WEIRD AGAIN

By Tom Misuraca

I used to wear the craziest outfits. It didn’t matter if they matched my gender, the weather or what everybody else was wearing. Mismatched colors, sizes, styles and material were haphazardly thrown on my body with the greatest care. Who said I couldn’t have sleeves covered with zippers and button? Or a scarf made from police “Do Not Cross” tape? Or sneakers with poetry written on them?

FAMILY

By Emily Beck Cogburn

I knew I looked stupid riding a bike—a freakishly gangly twenty-something man in dress pants smoking a cigarette, head rendered encephaloid by the mandatory helmet. I pedaled out of the parking lot, past the liquor store/nail salon/payday loan strip malls, including the one containing my beloved workplace Mondo Mart. Sunday morning meant no middle fingers or honking drivers. Me and the rag-wrapped guy passed out on the bus bench. That was all.

I could have maybe afforded a shitbox car, but I was holding out for an El Camino. A coffee can in my freezer was supposed to be devoted to the cause. Once a week or so, though, it got raided for books or take out Chinese.

THE TRUTH

By Gaby Harnish

John drank his coffee and looked out at his perfectly manicured lawn. It was so well-tended, so green and uniform in its evenness, that it could have been astroturf. Maybe it was astroturf, he thought. Maybe that would explain things – how everything seemed wrong one day. It was like someone had moved the world off-kilter, but only by an inch and a half. He knew something was different, but he wasn’t sure what it was. Maybe it was a carbon monoxide leak – something undiscernible, that made him inexplicably tired and ill at ease.

LIZARDMAN

By Josh Sippie

The scales have spread across my cheeks, building outwards from my nose. I tell people I have eczema and have an old doctor’s note to prove it, but the scales are shimmering and green and tough as a leather hauberk. Day by day, I’m greener and greener. Shining in the sun. People avoid me. I wear hoodies in the summer. My doctor stopped seeing me, says I need to see a priest.

“You’re what?” the priest says through the screen at my first ever confessional.

“Reptilian. I think.”

“Say ten Hail Mary’s.”

BEAGLE NARC

By Patrick Cole

 M: Where’s the sausage?

N: They took it from me. In Customs.

M: Who took it from you?

N: The Customs people. It’s their custom. That’s why they call it that.

M: How did they know you had sausage on you?

N: Oh, they didn’t know, until a little dog told them. And get this – a Beagle dog.

M: A Beagle.

ZIT

By Max Firehammer

It looked like an ordinary whitehead. Bright, inflamed pink, with a plug of pus in the center. It was right in the crevice on the left side of my nose. I popped it in the second-floor bathroom before my fourth period history class. My fingers squeezed gently on either side, coaxing out the semi-hardened white grease. Had to be gentle, because I didn’t want to accidentally scratch or bruise myself. Early last week, I’d gone for one on my forehead and my index fingernail had pressed too hard and left a little bloody crescent moon right in the middle of my face.

TURN LEFT

By Scout Roux

I was on my lunch break when I saw this clown on the side of the road. He wasn’t on the sidewalk. He looked shabby, like he needed a hand, so I pulled over. I figured I had time:

Last week Friday I finally got the boss to approve an hour long lunch (provided I start my days a half hour earlier), so I was feeling particularly empowered come Monday, the day of the incident. As a little treat to myself, I drove to the strip mall a couple miles from the office when usually I’d eat with the rest of Loan Servicing at the taco truck across the street.

WHEN THE CITY HEAVES

By Calum Robertson

A mangy dog-head, matted fur dripping salvia and raw meat juice, devours the sun. Another head, lanky black hairs seen by silhouette, munches on the moon, bite by bite, slivers revealing crescents until a pink mottled tongue laps at flaking lips in satisfaction. A third head, ears tilting forward, alert, slurps up a black hole. The universe goes white. Three dog-voices whimper. A mechanical whine rises, overrides the dogs, and silences them. There is nothing but the silence of the constant whine.

RADIANT (OR THE EFFECTS OF THREE MILE ISLAND

By Emmy Ritchey

 The glow starts at my hips where the shapewear compresses the dips into something smooth. The fabric is tight around my diaphragm. The longer I hold in my gut, the more the light obscures my body.

My bridesmaids do not notice or at least pretend not to. They admire my squeezed form.
“You’re going to look radiant.”

SHIRLEY

By Lydia Mathews

We stumbled across a body in the woods. I think we had gone there to fuck. It’s been so many years. Instead of a back etched with lines by tree bark and grass staining the white linen of my dress, I received a corpse that night. I had stormed out of the diner because he had lied to me, telling me I was the first one he had said I love you to. He corrected himself, revising his statment to the first person he had said it to and meant it. I told him there was still a difference between first and second. Second wasn’t special. And I threw my basket of fries at him. They bounced off of his rounded shoulders. I hoped they’d leave some grease stains on his shirt.

THE WRONG CROSSROADS

By Kevin Grauke

When he was a younger man, Roy Buxtemper took his guitar down to where 208 crosses 84 at midnight one moonless night, and he played Robert Johnson’s “Cross Road Blues” in hopes of remaking himself with the same sort of swap: he’d give the devil his everlasting soul, and in exchange the devil would make him a better guitar player than Eldon Shamblin and more famous than Bob Wills. After his third time through the song without seeing so much as a shooting star or hearing a coyote, a black truck pulled up on the southbound side, and a man he’d never seen before asked him if he needed any help.

MILLIONS

By Nichelle Wyatt-Whyte

fifteen houses with little red doors sold this week for fifteen million dollars each. the market’s looking up for sellers, says baby, but low for us. us scoundrel lowly little things, who wish for a house, but only have fourteen million to pay. one million from that old aunt who lives in taiwan, and thirteen million from the BANKS. we’ll wait it out, says baby, who drinks her seventeenth millionth cup of milk and lays dreamily on the couch where we’ve amassed another twenty two million books.

PINK LEATHER CHURCH OF SUFFOCATION

 By Garth Miró

Celine was starting to panic. Just at the corners of her mind, the eating again crushed inward. Taking its time.

Pulling into the parking lot, she glanced in the rearview mirror and once more saw nothing. Was it possible? Actual nothing? No strip of suburban pavement. No pulpy red sun. Even the void-eyed man who eternally camped in the median, apocalypse or not, wasn’t there hawking oranges. Just a pulsing membrane of blank.

IT’S BETTER NOW

By L.C. Lupus

Yes! Hello, good barkeep! Does anyone say “barkeep” anymore?

Ah. Ah okay. Well Eamon then. Can you just get me a… let me see. What you got? What you got? Okay. Well moonshine then, I guess. Nothing left from the old world then? Should’ve known. Hard to find anything anymore, and I know because I’ve been looking. Do you know what I really want? I really just want to have some proper soda again. It’s been so long since I’ve had a drink with bubbles in it! You remember bubbles?

Yeah… yeah, I guess. But who cares about diabetes anymore? My boyfriend used to get all worried about that stuff. Hm? Oh, no, he’s dead.

A LONG AND WINDING LINE

By Nedjelko Spaich

On the shortest day of the longest year, as the light began to shrivel and disappear until spring, Zorka said hello to her neighbor. He half-smiled, moved on. He’d seen her last on Halloween. Be sure to turn off your porch lights, she’d said, so there’ll be no trick-or-treaters. Zorka, marooned next door, had apparently only two recent visitors: the gardener and a census worker. Please become my friend.

DO WE CALL IT LUCK OR WHAT?

By Norris Eppes

We arrive at Siesta Cove RV park to put the boat in, still tasting honey mustard sauce and onions from Subway, the sting of pink top Blenheim ginger ale. We hear gravel crunch, ricket slam; knuckles pop, spine crack; door slam door slam laughter. Dude good to see you; backslap hug-slap. Why did you bring a power saw? Big door slam. Halyard against metal. Is Franklin coming this year? No, he said he had to work. Well it is good to be back again. Look at Joe, calling his wife. Dude what are you married now or something? Get off your phone. Did you bring a tent this year? Risky move. You bring one Mr. Paul? Noah only brought the sandcrawler. And when it rains three nights straight, I am not letting you in my tent. No way it rains. Good vibes man. Thoughts become things. 

Let’s get the gear unloaded then park the cars. Can we get out there in two trips? Chris brought the dinghy and wants to sail all the way. 

ASPARAGUS

By Cliff Aliperti

There, Chester thought. That’ll show them!

Facebook had asked what was on his mind. The cursor blinked at the end of the sentence he had typed. Just three words: I hate asparagus.

He took a deep breath and nodded, figuring one couldn’t be any more succinct. He uploaded the photo he had taken earlier, a close-up of his knuckles wrapped around a tall can of Green Giant asparagus, and then Chester posted before he could think any more about it.

Two weeks he had already thought about it. Vengeance for the never-ending political season; for the continuous drama infecting his timeline from friends online and IRL, even relatives. Especially relatives.

303

By Stephan Antoine Viau

Kevin introduced her as Bermuda Triangle. She corrected him, saying it was just Bermuda. Andy called her Tri out of a worn out joke. Jeanette called her Berm with the Perm, despite she never having had one. Jean-François rolled the r excessively in a French way when he talked about her, and his girlfriend avoided using her name at all because she thought Jean-François might secretly be in love with her. I met her on one of Kevin’s Sunday picnics at the park, but it turned out the reason she looked so familiar to me then was because she had been my neighbor in the apartment for the past six months. We had never seen more than each other’s profiles as we disappeared into our apartments.

THE HUMMINGBIRD

By Bella Horn

“I fucking hate that hummingbird,” said Jason, freshly lit cigar in one hand.

We sat on the sunken, legless couch watching the rain through the open garage door. A tiny crushed skeleton with hints of bright green feathers lay scattered on the cement.

“The bird didn’t do shit,” I said, watching him stew in a cloud of smoke, “It was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

He looked at me as if I was an idiot.

“You’re an idiot. You never know what they’re injecting cameras into these days, it’s all political.”

SOMETHING TO LOSE

By Alex Tronson

This tall guy, Charlie something, was on his way to the park to abandon his pet rat. His girlfriend had left him. She was the one who had given him the rat, an albino, as a gift—I don’t know. He stopped by Darling’s house while I was sitting in her yard sketching a picture of some beer cans in the street. I wasn’t too stoked about Charlie being there. He was no friend of mine. He was a life-drawing model for the art department and the knowledge that Darling had seen this man naked three times already this semester made me a little jealous. I knew I didn’t have to be jealous, but I was.

SAGE BURNING ON AVON

By Will Marsh

“Listen to Elijah!” Maddie shrieked down the hall. I grabbed my vape and sat up in bed, my heart beating like a fish flung overboard. A half-moon over the mountains pierced my open window. I pulled on my sweatpants and paced the small square of my room, pushing a boner down and sucking my Juul. I remembered the dream I’d just had and clutched my stomach. I exhaled a nicotine ghost and went soft in contemplation.

OMEGA

By B. R. Lewis

Morgan anxiously waited for quitting time. While he struggled to break into Seattle’s alt-folk music scene, he paid his bills at Friend or Pho, a SoDo Vietnamese sandwich and bubble teashop. Linea had stopped in earlier, ordered her usual, then slipped him a note on the napkin as she paid; she’d be stopping by his place this evening. 

AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL

 By Mike Cecconi

We can’t say, with any modicum of certainty, that prominent talk show host Rachel Ray has ever dined upon a human being’s flesh.  That would be patently absurd to state, of course. Absolutely unprovable defamation. Libelous or slanderous, depending how you disseminated the claim. We have absolutely no actionable proof that television’s Rachel Ray has feasted upon long-pig.

What we can tell you, however, without one doubt in our minds, is that we’re certain she has at least received a serious offer.

ALL THE GLORY

By Kevin Del Principe

*The below is a draft of an Instagram post by Christian pop country star, Lane Bridges, as released inadvertently on his Instagram feed and then screen-grabbed by a superfan named Ashley Hughes before he deleted it. Ms. Hughes then disseminated this draft widely via her own numerous social media and website fan pages (There are too many to list here but her most prominent blog is entitled, “Lane Bridges: So Christian Hot… If I Could Marry Him I Would and the Sex on Our Wedding Day Would be so Super-Hot Because God Would Bless Us in This Hypothetical!!!”).

ROBBING JUNIOR’S

By Bob Moore

It was just after two in the a.m. and I had promised Bo and Lorelei I could pick the lock.  I put the tension wrench in place and was working the pick over the tumblers when we both heard a scrape and Bo aimed the flashlight at the noise.  A scrap of litter drifted on a slight breeze.  Irritated, I tapped the keyhole on the back door of Junior’s restaurant to get Bo’s attention. 

“Sorry,” he whispered, aimed the light back on the lock, and I worked the pick cautiously until I felt a click. “There,” I whispered triumphantly, though I knew I wasn’t finished.  I was still what I’d call an apprentice lock-picker.  I thought I felt another tumbler slip, but there were at least three.

“What’s taking so long?  I thought you knew how to do this?” he whispered.

THE SHADOW

By Sonal Sher

At the gate, a municipal sign declares seven infections. The phone beeps. A message. Con-gratulations 4980 1392 3614 - but I’m back on Outlook. There are fifty emails. I ignore them. Then I ignore Instagram. Twitter. Whatsapp. Telegram. Death. It is eight and everything on the cat-fish-church road is shut except for the chemist. I am out for a walk. No one follows me. No threat of rape. But I am afraid. A strong cream-colored cat is allowed a piece of roti by a watchman from his tiffin. I take these long walks dressed up as a masked man, most likely another out-of-work handyman, driver, waiter, sales executive.

JUST THE TIP

By Paige M. Ferro

Ways I would describe my nose:

•   A witchy appendage

•   A testimony to my Italian genes—too bad I’ve never been to Italy

•   Eye-poker-out-er-ly long

•   An ever-present flesh protrusion my brain has fought hard to learn to ignore

•   An overripe strawberry

•   A very librarian-esque feature: perfect for perching glasses on

BLEED

By Chris Cooper

Kevin has cut his hand, and it’s really bleeding, pooling into the sink as the water cascades onto his fingers from the kitchen faucet. He’s not panicked though, it’s just stinging as he holds it underneath the spout; the rapids rush, masking the sides of his fingers, and he can barely see the wound, just the streaks of red that ruddle the water. It’s rather mesmerizing though, watching the water pass, millions of harmonized droplets falling at once, synchronizing as it pours, and Kevin forgets he’s even wounded, for a moment.

FLYING WITH EGYPT

By  John Oliver Hodges

Egypt first thing when we sit in the jump seat shows me a photo of her being Tina Turner for Halloween. She expects me to compliment her, so I do, and then Egypt asks what I was for Halloween. “Jeffrey Dahmer,” I say, because several people have pointed out at different times that I resemble the guy, the cannibal let’s just say. Egypt for her part laughs too loud too long.

FIVE THINGS THAT WILL OUTLIVE ME

By SJ Townend 

1.     Bees. I fucking hope bees outlive me. I guess I’ve swung in there and put bees at the top spot without much thought, but perhaps it’s more of a hope than a given? Nonetheless, it’s always good to start lists on a positive tip, think you not? Plus, this list starts at one anyway (what can I say, I’m a rule breaker); this isn’t peak—number five is the headliner—it’s no countdown. What do you take me for? A rocket launcher? FFS. Youth of today.

ON A BEACH IN PUERTO RICO

By Pete Able

My beach chair sat in the shade of some kind of palm with broad green leaves. To me the tree looked alien, like a mutated fern from the Everglades that had grown abnormally large. My brother, Kevin, who’d been living in Puerto Rico for a year, could’ve told me the name of the tree in both English and Spanish.

CRUNCHY GRIEF

By Edward Michael Supranowicz

Sometimes traditions do change or bend with the times. Such was so with funeral practices and services. It had become common knowledge and accepted wisdom that one-third of everyone’s life was spent asleep, and a large remainder of the rest was spent watching television, so those in the funeral trade adjusted accordingly. Mattresses were provided for all, and if the eulogies got boring, one could take a quick nap.

SKATER BOY

By Moses Allan Hubbard

One afternoon in the early Spring, my friend Arne and I went to Hasenheide to play ping pong at the tables along Flughafenstrasse. It was cold and bright, and the ground was still damp from a rain shower earlier in the day. The tables were full when we arrived, so we decided to wait at the skate park, which is next to the ping pong area and has more places to sit down.

COWS ON A BEACH: THE ART OF GETTING LOST IN A POST-STAMP COUNTRY  

By Brigitte Pellerin

It was a simple plan. Fly to Ireland, compete in a karate tournament, stay an extra day to visit the graves of various ancestors in an around Belfast, fly back home. There was no need to get lost anywhere.

We arrived earlier than expected, because our flight was one time and nobody lost our luggage.[1] We were dazed, standing there looking at each other with our bags on the trolley and nothing to wait for. It felt like we’d won the lottery but were now living in a world where money had no value.

MACHINE THAT MAKES ICE

By Taylor Nam

The fence makes Sam feel better. Stupid Sam.

When the pug dog, bent on fulfilling its destiny as a retriever, slams into the links while trying to catch a tennis ball, the fence ripples like milk, just enough so that Sam realizes: 1) he is not alone 2) there is still the Beyond and 3) in the Beyond there is Brother, waiting with his big hands and all the rest of his big body like his legs that are faster than Sam’s legs and the big way that Brother could darken the whole sky with his face and Sam, no stupid, stupid Sam–but Sam is a child. He must be forgiven. Right?

BEELZEBUB OFFERS ME CANDY ON EL CAJON BLVD.

By Ramon Jimenez

For me, this is another night of failure in sunny San Diego The same place they filmed that crappy Anchorman movie. Everyone sees this place as a bright and illuminated paradise where the sun never seems to go on vacation. However, I beg to differ. I live near El Cajon blvd., the other side of San Diego where poverty, degradation and survival are the daily struggle. In the day, this neighborhood is like any other in Southern California, a multi cultural melting pot, where one can hear about 50 languages spoken while feasting on some of the finest tacos al poster and steaming bowls of beef pho. But at night, this place vastly changes.

PANZER

By Ali Bryan

On the day Tanya lost her job, she’d been watching a grainy documentary on the Nazis’ advance toward Stalingrad. She observed the dirt and the fire, and the ladies in folk style dresses. She watched the villagers, the prisoners with rotting mouths, and the boy soldiers with beautiful hair. She noted those idiot motorcycles the Germans drove, with the sidecars that seemed more suited to a circus than a war, hundreds of them, rolling through Russia like they were on their way to a drive-in in the country. Tanya leaned in toward her screen and the ghost soldiers marched and smoked and stared their what-the-fuck stares. And in the middle of the burning thatch and ignorant sky, a lone cow stood. Just one: small, brown, feeble.

DON’T BE A STRANGER

By Jay O'Neal

1. The first time I saw Leopold Otis Ward III was when I went to get a tea from Tim Hortons. I’d been avoiding the Tims closest to my house ever since Amy started working there. She wasn’t a bad person, but I preferred thinking my own thoughts than enduring her small talk while I waited for my tea to brew. Last time, while I was waiting, the manager caught her sneaking me a donut that I wasn’t even hungry for. The situation was awkward for all three of us.

INVITATION

By Lauren Weber

My housemate called me into the kitchen. I was sitting in bed, drinking coffee and swiping through a dating app. “I found something,” she said. “I’m not sure what it is.” My brain went to tumors, lumps in breasts and armpits. Nudes, once sent in drunken, lonely states, now posted to the social media platform my grandma was on. But my housemate just pointed to four mouse droppings on the stove.

PROTEST

By Nicole Butcher

Yoko stared out unblinking from the closet for two days. Eventually I coaxed her into the living room, then onto my lap. You were there like a shadow, grinding coffee beans, hurrying for the 8:13 train, writing social media posts about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

INSTRUCTIONS ON FALLING

By Marije Bouduin

As a child, I had a panic attack regarding the nature of colours. I pointed at the sky, called it blue. Someone agreed. I made a mental note, colours are taught by agreement. But is the blue I point at the same blue the other person sees? How would I know? When my parents put me in psychotherapy, for unrelated reasons, this was something she remarked on. What an interesting fear, my therapist said, as if it awarded any sort of merit. A real original fear.

TELEPORT

By Hannah Melin

To be teleported is to be entirely atomized. The quarks and sub-quarks and sub-sub-sub-quarks split again and again, halved near-infinitely. Once a person is broken down to less than static, they can travel at unfathomable speeds. An atom is mostly empty space, after all. Enough emptiness to fit an entire person through, if they’re disassembled appropriately. Once the pieces reach their target, they are reassembled by equally complex means.

It takes less than a breath.

THE UNCANNY GRAY

By Vera Heidmann

“Clementine? Can you come close my window? Those godforsaken frogs are being too damn loud.” There was a creek near the house I grew up in. “Aw, Mom. Can’t you get out of bed, and do it yourself?” The frogs wrote symphonies during the day, and performed them at night for the whole neighborhood to hear.“How dare you speak to me that way? Come here right now!”It was wonderful. I used to lie in bed for hours, and listen to their songs. I told Alice about the frogs one time when she was sad. “After this is all over, I’ll take you home with me. We’ll listen to the frogs, and everything will be okay.”

THIS NARRATOR DOESN’T WANT TO EAT IT

By Stephen Nothum

Every short story published in magazines is written in first-person. So I got a single-shot nerf gun, a two-toned piece in orange and yellow, the kind with a loop on the end of the lever. I slid my left pointer through the loop, yanked it back in a single strained motion, and aimed the plastic pistol right at the narrator’s groin. Click. A pfft of air.

HEIGHTS

By Elena Ender

“I’m afraid of heights,” I say to my friend Morgan as we cross the St. John’s bridge in northern Portland. I’m showing them around my favorite spots in my new city, the one I escaped to to start a new life, just like in the movies. 

“Oh, that’s normal,” they respond, looking at the view of the skyline on one side of the Willamette and Mt. Hood on the other.

I know it is normal, and that’s why I say it. That’s what I tell people when I turn down a hiking or climbing trip or when I breathe deeply and walk slowly across a beautiful bridge.

A “normal” fear of heights is a fear of falling unintentionally, unexpectedly. A car whizzes by too quickly, too loudly, and you lose your bearings. 

However, my fear is the intrusive thought telling me to jump. Not always when I’m sad, just a little cackling maniac in the back of my head egging me on. Not to gnash myself against rocks at the bottom, not to try my hand at flight, not necessarily with plans to end it all. Just to jump.

IT’S NOT ALWAYS IN THE EXACT SAME SPOT

By Nadia Prupis

Showing him my brain was an accident. I meant to hand him a coffee mug as requested, but then I pried my head apart like a bear trap and was tugging it out over the apple bowl and the wild magnolias he brought home from the farmers’ market.

It was soggy but firm and shaped like a helmet and I didn’t know why that surprised me, “didn’t know” being relative for someone in this circumstance. It’s not like I was expecting to find a synapse blocked by the word bunting or cul-de-sac and say “aha, here’s the problem!” and remove it. But I also wanted to check.

HOUSE OF LOVE / THE FUTURE OF LIFE COMMITTEE

By Alexander Weidman

Jersey says we should have gone to the House of Love. You look over at her and she’s standing in front of one of the House of Love’s posters. They’re everywhere now. They showed up one day and now they seem to be everywhere. The two of you are outside the bar smoking cigarettes waiting for your Uber. People don’t think that place is real you tell Jersey. It’s an art thing or something. Jersey keeps looking at it, her cigarette hanging off her lips. Some art student you say absently as you check your bank account on your phone. An art thing Jersey says. That’s fucking stupid. Her cigarette falls to the ground when she says that.

AMERICAN WHATEVER

By Dustin Heron

The gravity of something inside me, at the center of me, had gotten so heavy I was collapsing inward. I was being crushed from within. “Ack!” I said at a doctor and the doctor said “Hmm!” . . . I only saw them once. The second time I was supposed to go to the doctor I saw factory towers beside a train track and I couldn’t get them out of my head. I turned around and drove through the open barbed wire gates. As it turned out, they were hiring.

ANOTHER SATISFIED CUSTOMER

By J. Archer Avary

Reginald Atwater wasted the best years of his life as a sandwich artist at a Subway restaurant in a suburban strip mall on the outskirts of Omaha. If he would’ve known this at the time he would’ve quit making sandwiches and become a surf instructor in Costa Rica. Instead he kept his nose to the grindstone, confident that his work ethic would be noticed and rewarded with a promotion to management.

THE NINE-FINGERED MAN

By Sean Ennis

I guess Grace felt like telling me which celebrities she thought were hot. I fired back at her, though my list was hastily prepared. What was the point of that exercise? What was she getting at? But I had put my contact lenses in the wrong eye and went to correct it.

THAT’S THE SOUND MITOSIS MAKES

By Steven Christopher McKnight

Today I saw a bird crash into a window and die. I couldn’t help but agree. There’s nothing much else to do in situations like that, just nod along and accept that this is the world, and another dead bird is just a part of the new reality you must endure.

KINDHEART

By Michael Giddings

She was seven when she first knew she wanted to be a body horror artist. There was no singular epiphany moment because the idea of a career in body horror was not something anyone ever sold to a kid. It was a weird thing to be into.

WOOH WOOH RED

By Meridian Payseno

Wooh Wooh red, it’s the color nail polish she wears when she’s feeling fancy. It doesn’t matter that she’s 55 with nowhere to go, her fingers and toes glow in the soft light of the late-night show. She keeps odd hours:

DOG YEARS

By Andres Vaamonde

I am almost 63 dog years old and I won’t tell you my name because I don’t share that kind of thing with strangers. That is also why I gave you my age in dog years. If you want to know exactly how old I am, you will have to do the math. I would do the math. I am someone who makes effort. Anyone who wants to know me should also make effort. I am really good at giving attention. I say give attention, instead of pay attention, because if you think about attention as something that can be used up and spent, well, then, you are someone who does not deserve to know my name anyway.

ANOTHER PLACE, ANOTHER TIME

By G. R. Bilodeau

He put down Sombrero Fallout, confused. He was confused because he thought she was there, then realized she wasn’t. It was only a square of light on the laundromat floor produced by that pesky sun, a condensation of warmth and perfect geometry there to remind him he was sitting in the shadows, alone.He used to get angry when she fell asleep on his shoulder watching a movie, The Shining, maybe Psycho, Casablanca. He’d readjust, grunting just enough for her to wake up and look at him with half-closed lids so out of time and place they’d melt his heart.

FULFILLMENT CENTER

By Pete Tosiello

It was early spring of our senior year and nobody except the business school guys had jobs lined up, the ones who woke up every morning and put on ties and loafers just in case they ran into a PwC recruiter on the way to Kinesiology 201. The rest of us maintained composure by doubling down in affirmative ways. We partied more, partied less, went camping, got tattoos, wore Hawaiian shirts, and checked books out of the library. Afternoons we’d ride to the state park down the peninsula and sit out on a little spit of beach even though it was still too cold.

IN THE PRESENCE OF MY PARTS

By John Niebuhr

Last night I was summoned by a group of hair cells in my ear. They knelt in fear when I appeared to them and (after several tedious attempts to compliment me) asked me to hide my physical form as it was too much for them to bear. But I did not know how to do this. I didn’t even know I could be summoned in this way. Finding myself as confused as them I offered to hide myself behind the membranes rising above them. “What do you want?” I asked.

THE FATHER CONTEST

By J. T. Townley

They set me upright, and I lurch a couple dizzy steps before puking up beer foam. Twenty- somethings dance out of splatter range. A sweaty guy in a tank top yells, “Party foul!” His buddies’ laughter sounds like braying. The Father cries:

I GOT A JOB AT A DRUGSTORE

By Max Sheridan

I got a job at a drugstore. Times were tough. I was lucky to get this job, the senior pharmacist said. He had me mixing up medications the very first hour. I got them all wrong. Even the heart medications. What’s wrong with you? What did they teach you in school? the senior pharmacist said

REAL AMERICAN PROPHETS

By Brett Biebel

Back when they built that new hotel out by the interstate, I’d drive up there a couple, three times a month and get a fresh room and then put the Book of Mormon in the dresser drawer, put it right there next to the Bible.  I’d put my phone number in there too.  Along with a Buddy Holly postcard.  I’d write, “Surf Ballroom Bliss” or “Nine Digits From Heaven,” and I didn’t know what any of that meant, but I liked how it sounded.  I liked how it felt. 

PEONY

By Kevin Richard White

Out of all the ways to woo a gal, he gives me a peony in a box with a bow on it. For him – working in the shoe department at Sears – the box is either a grand gesture or a perfect way out of buying something. Now I know I'm no high fancy person either, working the register at Hallmark, but when you're surrounded at all angles by cards and bears and crap, you expect anything else in the world - not a flower in a Converse box, size eleven, BLK. Colleen, my coworker, thinks the dead flower in a cardboard grave was "precious.”

DREAM CHOICE TECH SUPPORT

By  Andrea Wahbe

Welcome to the Dream Choice app beta test hotline. Please listen carefully to all our tech support options. For feedback on how we can enhance your in-dream experience—or to suggest a new Dream Choice option that does not exist in our library—please press one, now.

IT’S A DOG

By Scott Seibel

"No, he's a dog," the woman said, gesturing needlessly. "Obviously," the desk clerk argued, "that's a hippo." "I've had him since he was a pup. He likes bones. He fetches." “He's a hippo. We don't allow hippos.

THE BARD OF FROGTOWN

By A Whittenberg

Like most writers I am full of shit. Sometimes I look at the piles and piles of half started prose and think, “Got a match?”And then, I think, I’ll write a poem. Poems save paper. So all of a sudden I am a poet.  Yet, I still have nothing to say. Write, writer, write!  Goddamn it, write you fucking idiot.  Asshole, hole in the ass. Craphead. Son of a bitch! Hey! What? Don’t get personal. By the way, my real father, yes, the one I have never seen in my life, is a goddamn poet.  My mother still gets an occasional sestina through the mail from his as yet to be published chapbook entitled, The Part of Me that No One Knows. Tell me about it.

THE MAN WHO PLAYED WITH FORKS

By Harlow Covington

Ostrich meat isn’t common, but it is delicious. Anyways, what I was saying. Oh yeah, forks. See, I play with my fork at the dinner table. I always have. I pick it up, twirl it in the air three times, tap the tines twice to the beat of “In the Air Tonight,” and set it back down. Random, I know. My mother hated it, even dedicated a portion of her after-death wishlist to requesting I stop. And my father...he almost didn’t invite me to dinner after the funeral. Didn’t want the relatives seeing, or maybe he just didn’t think it appropriate. In the end, he invited me. Sat me next to the children. That way the cousins and aunts and uncles thought I was just doing a bit, trying to entertain on that mournful morning. But that bit is a part of me. It is me. I can’t help it.

REGULAR DAN (& THE CONCEPT OF TRUTH)

By Kyle Seibel

I used to work at an office where there were too many Dans. For the most part, they were spread around different teams and went by different variants, so we’d only really notice when someone would call out lunch orders by name. “Dan C! Dan P!” They’d pause. There were two Dan Ps. “Regular Dan!” they’d shout. And Regular Dan would come get his lunch. This story is about Regular Dan and the concept of truth.

HOW LONG IS TOO LONG?

By Simon A. Smith

Four days later, Thomas is in the bathroom pressing his middle finger up to the mirror, squinting at the sliver of crimson along the damaged cuticle. On Sunday he’d trimmed the nail wrong, snipped the side off too sharp and ripped into the skin. The pain was immediate, more searing than he expected. There was a burning that seemed to start at the tip and trail all the way down to the knuckle. On Monday the sting was still fresh and consuming.

HELLO

By Edward Michael Supranowicz

The shrink and Buck’s family told him he was too shy and withdrawn, so he must start saying hello to people he sees everyday on his walk to work. Hello, and the girl in the miniskirt pulls her hem down two inches and walks faster. Hello, and the beat cop swings his baton at Buck and tells him to move along. Hello, and the city workers make disparaging remarks about Buck’s sexual orientation and his mother. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello.

POOLS: THREE FLASH FICTIONS

By Richard George

The Meeting of Pools: We kissed last night. I am not ashamed to say: It started awkwardly. One pair of lips paused, as one pair flew eagerly. Two keys clashed. (I thought of Claudia, of kissing her in a car I can no longer picture, in front of her colorless house, in front of her parents standing behind blind windows, in a context I can no longer recall.) And then suddenly, after parries...one became a lock. We danced with rhythm,

FOR A SWITCHBLADE

By Carl Boon

All the boys in the neighborhood wanted a switchblade. A switchblade meant you were dangerous, a shadow come from nowhere, the one in control. I thought the slim weight in the pocket of my jeans would be a good weight, a live weight, like a bluefish hooked but moving back to sea or the weight of a girl’s breasts on your chest when you kissed her. So after school let out for summer we dreamed of switchblades the way some boys dream of women in lingerie, roller coasters, or hitting homeruns.

HEADWALKING

By Derek Fisher

June was sick of hearing girls can't mosh, on message boards and in the halls and even from friends like Andrew and Chode, so she set out to prove it wasn't so, first with the mini knife on the wrist that no one noticed, then with the half sleeve, which Beth and Alexa said was a bit much for a former eighth grade gymnastics silver medallist and former Miss Junior Ionia County, then with a full sleeve by the end of the year, complete with blocky Xs on both fists, D.R.U.G on her right knuckles, and F.R.E.G on her left, the G a heinous mistake by Pokey Scholl

A TOMATO THAT USED TO BE A BOY

By Anna Genevieve Winham

No one quite knew how it happened, or when, but this tomato used to be a boy, they were sure of it. The mum, the dad, the two sisters, they were all positive one morning that one of the tomatoes in the fridge (a specific one, not any old one) was a member of their family somehow, or had been.

WHO’S YOUR MOMMY?

By Thomas J. Misuraca

 “Mom. We need to talk.” My son’s breaking up with me, Emma thought. But gauging his seriousness asked, “Everything OK, Danny?” “No.” He’s coming out. Or he got a girl pregnant! Oh, please let me him gay! “Sit down and tell me what's wrong.” As her son sat, she noticed his wasn’t shaking. This is a good sign. Right? “I’ve realized you're not my real mother.”

SWIG

By Patricia Poulton

There are few things I can say with certainty, one being I should not be here, and two well, that is without a doubt shit on my kitchen floor. I poured half a quart of rum into a tumbler and took a swig. It didn’t melt on my tongue like the commercial said it would.

BOB, BAB, BIB, BEB, AND BUB

By Dan Nielsen

Bob, 37, is obsessive, but not compulsive. He thinks A LOT and gets nothing done. Bab, 29, makes French toast with peanut butter, maple syrup, and sliced banana, but not milk, eggs, or bread. Bab teaches Finishing School at a nursing home.

COFFINS OF STYROFOAM: (a fairy tale)

By Jason M. Thornberry

In a shrinking studio apartment lived Hank. Hank’s room overflowed with trinkets and detritus and all the things he could never bring himself to get rid of. One day, a wealthy property developer purchased Hank’s apartment complex.

ALIENATED 

By Elizabeth Grace Williams

For the last weekend of July my parents wanted to stay in a hotel room to gain clarity of what life felt like when there weren’t shining lights and whiny, entitled human beings shoved down their throats. They would lay in bed at the end of the day

THE COMMENTS SECTION

By Aisha West
Nyrna Beckingham couldn't quite believe she was here, 30 miles from her home, sitting on a park bench. But that woman (at least Nyrna assumed it was a woman) gratebaker829 hadn't responded to her, not over the phone, not over email. Nyran disliked the anonymity of the Internet.

THE PUNISHMENT OF MR. ROUSSEAU

By Feng Gooi

First, Mr. Rousseau lost all feeling in the pinky of his left hand. Try as he might he could not bend it, twist it or shake it. It was a very peculiar feeling, not of numbness but of absence. Though he could still see his left pinky, for all intents and purposes it had turned into a ghost.

THREE FLASHES, TO BE READ LISTENING TO CRIMSON & CLOVER

By Kenneth Pobo

At four, Richie Krause ran around our neighborhood carrying a hatchet.  His sister Marcie was my friend until they moved to Davenport when I was almost seven.  We played dress-ups.  Boy clothes bored me. 

THE HOUSE NEAR AUSABLE RIVER

By Nick Fulton

Inside Grand Central Terminal people shuffled past one another until they could split from the pack and enter the causeway. In the food court, John found a croissant that looked like it had been left on a table for days.

TOOTHBRUSH

By Bruce Meyer

If a lie is different from a secret I will never tell where the rabbit went because now that  I am five and not four I have learned to brush my teeth and know when I am unhappy.

CROWN

By Mir-Yashar Seyedbagheri

When the virus starts, Nick crowns himself king. He dons an old plastic crown from Burger King, vestige of childhood. He chugs Coronas in the yard sans mask. He respects masks, but he doesn’t need one.

NEGOTIATING WITH A TIGER

By Chloe Horning

I was eight years old when I met a tiger in the woods. There was a terrible fight after dinner. I was in my bedroom, trying to read my library book. I remember that the book was called “Queenie Peavy,” and was the story of a tough girl who is misunderstood.

DRAGONS, KRAKENS, GOOD MOMS, AND OTHER MYTHICAL CREATURES

By Christina Rauh Fishburne

This is Take Five. A do-over. The DeStupidification of a thought I had when I woke up one morning with an epiphany.The first epiphany sucked. It was stupid. The revised epiphany is ok.Ready for it? Here it is.I’m a good mom.

PASTA

By Amy Carver & 210

God spoke to her through a boiling pot of water. He said, “JooOooOOaaOoannnOOooa!” She could hardly understand Him through all the burble of His boiling.

EMPTY VESSELS

By Nathaniel Eddy

The park is full of bodies. Grace leans back, takes in the scene, feels her elbows dig into the blanket and grass below. She watches couples slant into each other and the singles into no one else at all.

SKINNED

By Kate Nerone

When I watch the girl sitting across from me in the airport café sink her thumb through the belly of an orange, the first thing I think of is the apartment I shared with you during our sophomore year of college. We shared the bedroom on the right side of the hallway.

IT EATS YOU TOO

By Mary Moeller

Fresh meat is dark burgundy, almost purple. It lives inside a breathing animal, until death, when it is hit by oxygen, and turns bright cherry red. After a few hours the oxygen and the bright fluorescent lights of a deli display will turn it brown, then grey. 

UNCREASED SPITCLEANED

By Tanner Abernathy

The mist hung on the apartment complex parking lot like an oversized thrift store shirt. He glared at his mother’s back and swung the door closed,

20/20 VISIONS

By Cass Bartlett

We built glass houses when the loneliness was plaguing. The widower down the street turned on the tap in his glass daylight basement for two days.