Goldfish God is the second-place winner in SNHU’s 2015 Fall Fiction Short Story Competition. by Michele Meehan “The goldfish is dead.” “What? Are you kidding me?” I asked gripping the phone tightly. “I went to feed it today and it was belly up,” my mother replied. “What do you want me…
by Kit McCoy The rains started, and the yard filled with green stalks under tiny white flowers. Jasmine hung heavy on the breeze while we sat on the back porch watching puddles fill and glasses empty. The rain didn’t stop for fourteen years. The dull light of overcast days linked…
by Michael C. Keith And then we ease her out of the worn-out body with a kiss, and she’s gone like a whisper, the easiest breath. –– Mark Doty The two-room, third floor flat is ice cold. Its radiators no longer make their loud clanking noise…
By Emily Fox It was the summer of the jumpers. From every height they were falling: from rooftops, from bridges, from sharp cliffs onto vicious rock clusters that waited below with greedy crevices. Perhaps it was the heat that drove people to want to fly. The air was heavy with…
by Michael C. Keith I’ve never been crazy. I’m a very good girl, to be honest. I don’t do anything to hurt anybody. – Leighton Meester So I’m heading home after running a few errands and I come to a red light. In front of me is this shiny…
by Michael C. Keith When Nature Changes, Make Lemonade Throughout the autumn everyone waited for the leaves to change color, but they didn’t. The businesses in New England that depended on the revenue from visiting leaf peepers were in a virtual frenzy. This had never happened before. Even in the…
by Michael A. Clark It was a quiet night at the Morehead Tavern when the Nazi sat down next to me. Chad the bartender was languidly watching the Hornets losing to the Cavaliers on TV as a chunky, balding guy was trying to chat up a girl twenty years younger…
by Morgan Shaver Endless days float past, each one blurring into the other. I cannot remember the day when I was displayed on the high shelf above the produce. Nor can I say with any certainty how long I’ve been up here. Flanking me are similar creatures, though none of…
by Kim Sutton Allouche Three years after our divorce, my ex-wife Michelle phoned to ask me why I’d chosen that particular time to leave her. It was just an ordinary summer, she’d protested. It was. Once again, I turned the events over in my mind. She hadn’t even asked until…
by Washington Irving “Let’s just get to the cabin. I’ll show you my childhood haunts,” says Summer. We pass through the town with its small, grassed circle, flagpole planted in the center. Blink past a gas station, general store, and diner. Then a winding dirt road up a pine-shadowed…