Category: Fiction

Side A Fiction: “The joint is mine, the wine is yours” by Tomasz Lesniara

The joint is mine, the wine is yours London was lonely. Cold. Empty. As soon as the sun went down and all the pint glasses were sprayed with boiling water inside silver, industrial dishwashers—it was time for laptops and noodles. One of the most celebrated cities on the planet turned into an abandoned ship, drifting…
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…
The Future Has Fiction: “Entering Heaven Alive” by Elijah Sparkman

I was telling my students about the drought that was coming. The floods. Climate change and refugees. Storms. Famines. The droughts and the deaths. We were at Northern Michigan University. It was a Good Books Class. We were reading Octavia Butler and my students were from the suburbs of Minneapolis, the rural farmlands of Wisconsin,…
New Side A Fiction: “Vesuvio” by Patricia Quintana Bidar

Vesuvio Salvador has suggested they meet at Vesuvio. For him, the bar is a place of nostalgia. Whereas, Luisa has never left San Francisco. Lives in that same rent-controlled studio on upper Grant, where she paints, teaches, and sleeps. She stops first for coffee and a sandwich at Trieste. “One clarifying gin,” she tells Jacques,…
Fiction for Side A: “Lazarus Goat” by Jacob Austin

Lazarus Goat The goats dawdle in the field. They show no remorse for yesterday’s incident. I had been all set to go home. Nothing to do but call the goats in, count them, and lock the gate. Mopface and Lamby, the pair of massive komondors, were lying on either side of the entrance, their lion…
New Side A Short Fiction: “Clownskin” by Brent Joseph Johnson

Clownskin One afternoon the sky above us and the sky to the side of us gathered together into a strange and terrifying pattern. So we stopped what we were doing and pointed at it. Even our power-walkers and mail-carriers, even our demons and sasquatches, even our own actual clowns pointed in perplexity. “Holy shit,” we…
Fiction for the Friggatriskaidekaphobic: “Immortal” by Stefan Kiesbye

On evenings she couldn’t sleep, she walked up the carpeted stairs and knocked on my door. Under the down comforter, my bony hips squeezed between her thighs, we listened to her husband’s snoring. Emily was richly layered and comfortable and her neck smelled of dark spices. When she was in a hurry, she knelt in…
“Hot Dog Exclusivity”: New Short Fiction for Flavor Town USA by Avery Gregurich

The people of Icon are celebrating their independence just as they have for centuries: with a contest of eaters. It’s hot throughout Icon. The national flags wave upside down on poles outside the pods of some of the people tuning in on their HomeScreens to watch the eaters. Most of those people actually hunger to…
Original Short Story for Haunted Passages: “Everything Got Worse” by Kelli Dianne Rule

November 1, 1991. Myakka City, Florida. The earth-moving machines had long sputtered out and all the workers were eating or sleeping so I got bored and decided to run off to explore the woods behind our construction site. Tall pines and old oak trees covered the floor in dry needles and acorns and when the…