by Phil Temples I was giddy with excitement the very first time I experienced the phenomena firsthand on that hot, humid summer morning on McKinney Road in Allison Park, Pennsylvania. Michael Slattery was my longest and dearest childhood friend. He claims he was the one to first discover it. Mikey,…
by Henry G. Miller I remember Lynn from college in Boston. We were both from Chicago and we both had big student loans. We became pals. She was fun but there was always something mysterious about her. Good-looking and always coming on. Maybe that’s why I liked being with her….
St. Louis is the third-place winner in SNHU’s 2015 Fall Fiction Short Story Competition. by Virginia Spotts Through the ghostly fluorescent lighting and piles of boxes, my father poked his head through the door, giving a slight smile. My returned smile was tight-lipped. He stepped inside slowly, stopping just a few…
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 Pamela Hammond A honey haze spreads over a hill where ravines invite dreams in blue shadows. Worries melt away in twilight like fire losing its flame to a curl of smoke. Tall trees link together— a grove. I find comfort watching the shift of light. And tonight, rustling bird…
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 Ruben Rucoba In 2004, at the age of 40, I underwent a stem cell transplant for something called myelodysplastic syndrome, a blood disorder that turns cancerous. The transplant saved my life, for which I am truly grateful. But the transplant also taught me something that many patients with life-threatening…