Fiction Posts

by Richard Downing “Too creepy for me, Shipley . . . I’m gone.”  Once again, Shipley’s face had become a silent movie, a spliced choreography of twists, twitches, and tics, eyes, nose, and mouth unstuck actors blinking, pinching, and pursing from frame to frame. And his face would stay that way until he could summon that one exhaustive snort from an unpinched nose that offered release. His eyelids would then slow, modulate, his nose cease flaring and pinching, flaring and pinching, his grimace-lined lips smooth then part…

read more...

by Raymond Brunell Leah placed the plastic divider after the cereal boxes. The customer’s hand followed, setting down milk, bread, and chicken thighs in foam and cellophane. Tuesday afternoon, register three, the fluorescents making everyone look sick.  She scanned the cereal. The beep felt wrong in her wrist.  For a second she…

read more...

by Te’Mera Bell There are times when I still set the table for two. Perhaps it’s because of habit, or maybe it’s because of false hope. The mornings come with a heaviness that settles within me. It’s dark, and bleak. There is no sunshine, there is no true rest, there just is.  Grief is there, holding on to the vows we used to…

read more...

by Erin Harer On good days, we dance. We sing Grace’s favorite songs while I cook a real dinner, with no boxes or frozen things, making our tiny redwood cabin smell like a home. We laugh at stupid jokes and let time pass without me having to force a smile or…

read more...

by Betty Stanton Hands smelled of smoke long before the match was struck. We stacked the wood too high, and it swayed with the weight of grief. The fire took its time choosing which bones to touch. Ash gathered in our throats, and we swallowed without protest. Someone said the word sacrifice, but it tasted…

read more...

by Michael Theroux Cutter Bill had all his fingers and was proud of it. Most loggers, especially “cutters” who reached the ripe old age of 60 or so like Bill, had left various body parts scattered amongst the logging slash, accidents many loggers didn’t walk away from. Not Bill. Nope. He had plenty of close calls,…

read more...

by Emily Brochu The Siren’s Song  They say the sea remembers.  Every secret whispered into her waves, every cry lost to her depths, she keeps. And so she remembers Lyra.  Cast Overboard  It was Roger who dragged her from the shadows of the lower deck. His hand was a vise on her wrist,…

read more...

by Shaun O. Ceallaigh Albert Clark shuffled along the empty church’s central aisle, countering the weight of the oxygen tank on his back with his walking stick. He stopped beside a pew and placed another printout of the Miracle Prayer on the bench.  Once he had distributed all ten copies…

read more...

by Tony Moreira Time didn’t pass in the attic. It curled, coiled, and even lashed out. It also maintained a dark silence that remembered everything. Filled with timeless dust and shadows, the air carried the awful scent of dread from the years that passed. A single window in the room…

read more...

by Jeffrey Ronay Forty-year-old Tom Riley climbed into his spacesuit and dialed the helmet ring to the external setting.  Angie, the Suit’s reassuring voice, confirmed, “Suit pressure is nominal—internal temperature set to seventy-one degrees.”  A smile flashed on his weathered skin, tiny lines drawn from too much exposure to the…

read more...