Category: Fiction

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…
Fiction for Haunted Passages: “Turnpike Dreams” by Dave Nash

Exit 18 – The George Washington Bridge connects the two ledges that rise from deep water in constant motion. On the New Jersey side, one hundred feet had to be blasted out to make it level with New York. Someone is always trying to cut us down, I tell Anna. She says I have a…
New for Haunted Passages: Four Microfictions by Salvatore Difalco

Say Cheese Let’s get this party started, Jack. Got no time to Mickey Mouse around the house tonight. Pirates and pickpockets are on their way. A fun bunch, as you’ll see. Try my special punch, I made it from an ancient Sumerian recipe, it’ll crack your teeth and give you wheels. Meantime I’ll spin some…
Original Short Fiction for Haunted Passages: “Saponified” by Taylor Hebert

So far, the honeymoon had been okay, but she couldn’t rid her mouth of the taste of soap. She had been brushing her teeth three times a day. Only breathing deeply could cleanse her palate—but with the next taste of anything, it was as if she had been gnawing on a golden bar of Dial.…
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,…
Side A Fiction: “personal electric vehicle” by Jenkin Benson

personal electric vehicle nearly september kent wheeled.kent wheeled.kent wheeled. i met him in intro to excel spreadsheets. we were assigned together. group project. three of us. i don’t really remember the other guy. i think he was from wisconsin cause he wore a graphic t-shirt emblazoned with the punchline “milwaukee: the weak are killed and…
“There Is News Along the Ohio River”: Four Hybrid Pieces from the Future by Beth Gilstrap

XVII. There is news along the Ohio river: a young man has tied his loosening jeans up with twine and huddles into his denim jacket, a bird peeking out of a nest, but the fabric may as well be a brittle photograph wet and dried a hundred times before he taped it over the crack in…
Sneak Preview: “Prologue: Eternal Weimar” from David Leo Rice’s New Novel The Berlin Wall

Europe, 2020. Some claim that the Berlin Wall, once a living entity, is coming back together, its scattered pieces seeking reunion on the far side of history. The European continent trembles on the edge of total war, either in reality or deep in its own feverish imagination. Part present-tense apocalyptic satire and part neo-medieval phantasmagoria,…
“Notes to the Girl Across the Street” by Zary Fekete: Fiction for Side A

Notes to the Girl Across the Street May 5, 1989 Hello … my name is Zoli. I am fourteen. I come from Hungary. I live in a small town called Nyárliget. It means “summer grove.” Your town is Sonnenalm. It means almost the same thing. I saw you in the window yesterday. You were fixing…