Genesis is the first-place winner in SNHU’s 2015 Fall Fiction Short Story Competition. by Syche Phillips In the beginning, it’s awkward, as so many things are. You don’t know where you’re allowed to sit, where you’re expected to sleep, what there is to eat. You don’t even know what to call…
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 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 J.P. Colby Looking ahead all I can see are dark shapes; suggestions as to what may lay in wait. But I am not scared; if ever I can’t sleep because of the dark monsters lurking ahead, I can look behind me, or directly down at myself as a reminder…
by Laura Schulkind I. My father could translate anything into Morse code. As a child, I never considered why. It is what fathers did. And I would demand translation of the ridiculous— Milk the fat cow. Cock-a-doodle-doo. Anything to make him laugh, easy in himself. That is what daughters did….
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 Alison Hicks From the glass door in my father’s room we watched the acorn woodpecker hopping up and down the trunk of the pine. Anne had brought birdseed, stored it behind the door. We admired him. I was nervous about the visit, afraid of Anne. I didn’t know…
by Michael C. Keith I thought a stick was a snake. Until it bit me, and then I knew. …
by Ashley O’Melia I squinted against the rain as I ran from the car to the old house. Thunder scraped across the clouds, hurrying me along. I fumbled with the key box on the front door, punching in the code my boss had given me. The code was easy to…
by G. K. Nickless Where do dreams go to die? From my place at the dining room table overlooking the back yard, I can see tips of multiple, wet, warped and abandoned stakes protruding from the snow, scattered at intervals four feet wide by eight, twelve, fourteen, or sixteen feet…