As Good as Gone is the first-place winner in SNHU’s 2016 Fall Fiction Short Story Competition. by Joe Skonie It was said that Saturn ruled civility. When Saturn fell from the sky, it was as if the world came softly out of focus. The trees outside my window lost their…
Machine is the second-place winner in SNHU’s 2016 Fall Fiction Short Story Competition. by Taylor Lea Hicks In a cave in the mountains, there is a machine. A machine with no buttons, switches, slots, or screens. Only a lever. It’s said that this machine can give you a new life; a…
by Valter Van D Time is gone My life is spent Darkness sets in And your love fades My body turns numb I start to freeze My hands drop Death has come Why’d this happen Where have I gone Is this heaven Or am I in hell Life without you…
by Morgan Shaver A man sits stolidly gazing out through the room’s singular window. Behind him fading stains intersperse white walls adorned with two gaudy floral paintings. Disinfectant permeates the air attempting to mask the scent of gradual decay. His doctor, authoritative and formal, makes the first punctual visit of…
by Kathryn Brown Ramsperger 1946, Beirut. France grants Lebanon its independence. Today we are to go down to the water. Each trip is a special occasion. I can already feel the aquamarine surf as it breaks on the sand—not quite waves, more than placid ripples. It will hit my skinned…
by Michelle Huston I have no memory of the first time I got my period. I can barely remember getting it this past week, although the gnawing feeling inside my uterus reminds me that it did indeed arrive on Wednesday. I do, however, remember when I first learned that a…
by Elena Kaufman Iris Katz’s neighbor returned from six months in Florida to hear suspicious sounds coming through her adjoining wall—incessant scratching, barking, yelping—and the stench of something rotten. The women didn’t know each other except to say hello on the front walk. Mrs. Lowther told the men she was…
by Teresa Burns Murphy As Tom Langston drove up the street where he lived in the suburban neighborhood of Kennerly, Arkansas known as Hawk Hills, he saw his recliner sitting on the curb in front of his house. He pulled his car into the driveway, jerked the gearshift into park,…
by Diane Walters “What gives you your resilience, Diane?” my friend from Minnesota asks me quite frequently. I never know what answer he is searching for. I never know what will scratch that itch he has. “What do you mean, Gary?” “You have not had an easy life, yet you…
By Drew Nacht I can’t wait to get to work so I can put to use all of that after-hours stress anticipating the next work day I can’t wait to get to work so I can sit in a chair under fluorescent lights for eight hours I can’t wait to…