by Gil Hoy Last night we squabbled again in my dream. We squabbled about whether we’d been in love With each other and never another. And when we both agreed we had We fought about who’d loved the other one more, and why. I won that argument too (as I usually did) or maybe …
by T.R. Healy A Man in Half “Easy now, easy,” Surtees cautioned himself after turning the corner so fast his tires squealed. As he applied his brakes, he noticed that the sharp turn caused the paper bag on the passenger seat to tip over. A few hundred-dollar bills fell on…
by Benjamin Drueke “Near the end of the twentieth century, humankind unlocked the human genome. At the end of the twenty-first, prenatal genetic manipulation was regulated, and all genetic disorders had been eliminated. In 2130, we had a stable colony on Mars. Twenty years later, global warming claimed Earth and…
by Robert Parry And suddenly he was awake. He looked at the clock on his bedside. It read three forty-seven AM. Nothing new about that. Must have been over twenty years since he didn’t have to get up at some point in the night to take a piss. But this…
by Gil Hoy On those windswept weekday mornings, asphalt driveway crusted with snow, my father would get up early, put on his secondhand boots and an old coat, and exit through our front door into the blue hour to get the motor running. That fifteen-year-old station wagon would stall if…
by Travis Michaelis Long had I heard tales of the abandoned church overlooking the town of Ashbrook. With its peeling wooden walls reminiscent of fingernails being pulled back to reveal putrid flesh below, and its slanted roof threatening to collapse in the final touches of the church’s death throes, it…
by Jesse Teller She was crying. I was in a cardboard-cutout restaurant, a place we have seen over and over again, trying to eat a soulless meal while I stole glances at my college Lit book. And this girl was weeping. It was the kind of crying you do when…
by Millie Sullivan That Which is Sweet Delia sat on the velvet settee, her back straight and her knees pressed together. The air was thick with the scent of citrus, undercut by cinnamon and a whisper of clove. Bowls of oranges—plump, dimpled—sat artfully arranged on the small coffee table before…
by Grant Segall A shadow glided across the urn. Still her mother’s daughter, Anna glanced at the sky. “In the maple now,” Jim whispered before she could find it for herself. “A goshawk, maybe?” “She taught you well.” Momma used to lead the family through bramble and mud in search…
by Matthew Wherttam Martin hopped on to the back of the camp’s garbage truck, expecting to be riding it all the way to the town dump. But the truck made a sharp turn and flung him against the trunk of an oak tree. He slid down the tree, flapped around…
by Tracy Lyall Songs of 70s rock stars are fading, with old albums—vinyl records in colorful covers stacked on top of each other, thirty, forty at a time—lying dormant in a thrift-store window display. The roller rink is closed down, wooden floors scratched by skate wheels, molding and mildewing. The…