Category: Bad Survivalist

Three Life Sentences for Bad Survival: Original Poetry by Susan Lewis

From Each her deadlift limitation, to each her accordion need. Wandering towards wonder at the old one-two as if physics could say if not save the day, steal if not seal the deal, stave if not stow the dole drilled from the spoils of this ever spill. Weep if you think worse of anyone than…
Short Story for Bad Survivalist: “Clashing Perspectives” by Kim Farleigh

Waiting on the top of a hill to catch a bus to Agra, we saw vehicles below fleeing from traffic lights. Then: deceleration, swerving, horns bleating, collisions narrowly avoided, vehicles creeping around something on the road fifty meters from the lights. Seconds later, another metal spine started accumulating behind the lights. Unsuspecting vertebrae, stretching on…
Bad Survivalist Short Story: “Hexed” by Chelsea Catherine

I sprinkle a hex over six dead mice and bury them under the oak behind my rental. “Sick, sick,” I say, sprinkling bay leaves over the mounds. “Remember what congestion tastes like.” Normally, I would never, but the townspeople here have done me dirty for too long—my coworkers, neighbors, even people at the supermarket. Markle…
Five Poems by Bad Survivalist Elizabeth Zuba

On Water and Habitats Oceans are flowers. I am made fertile in the land of my affliction. Any terrestrial salamander halfway through being an egg will swim away and be aquatic forever if you crack it open and drop it in water, or at least that’s how it was the last time I tried it!…
Poetry for Bad Survivalist: “Three Weeks Post-op with a Lightning Bug” by Gary McDowell

Friends and family keep checking in. Keep her safe, they say. Keep her comfortable, they say. Tell her we love her, they say. And you too. Early this morning, maybe 6:30, I stand in the kitchen making her breakfast, the dogs at my side—they herd me, sun-up to sun-down, are never more than a body-length…
Bad Survivalist Flash Fiction: “Pillow Talk” by Christopher Linforth

Jacqueline’s gone to sort out her bleeding. I stay in bed and text my last girlfriend that I’m over her. I don’t miss you, I say, I never missed you. Even when we used to get high and steal Little Debbie Cosmic Brownies from the bodega and taste the chocolate in each other’s mouths. That…
Fiction for Bad Survivalist: “Dancer’s Commute” by Genevieve Murdick

In the mornings, they hose the whole thing down, and the chemical smell of soap—the whirring growl of power hoses—this briefly supplants the pounding sounds of pop music, muffled across wet wood and brick. Some club jammer you remember from 2013; the same way you remember an old friend running into you at Rouses, but…
Thad DeVassie: Four Microfictions from The Factory of Sadness for Bad Survivalist

Bulletin Board Material The bulletin board mounted outside the conference room has dozens of thumbtacks on it. Sticky notes and a few pens are below on an empty desk. There is a prompt written in blue Sharpie along the bulletin board frame: add to the conversation! Wendy put it there about a year ago, without…
Original Fiction for Bad Survivalist: “Sugar” by Gogol

You don’t like cutting anymore. You don’t like stitching too. You are broke, mostly a failure, and the only place where they will allow you to cut and stitch is in the hospital located at the outskirts of the sugarcane field. You stay in a room at the periphery of the hospital. The women yell,…