Category: Fiction

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…
Original Side A Short Story: “The Hagiography of Agatka” by Zosia Koptiuch

The Hagiography of Agatka I really did think you were a saint. In the Polaroid I took of you, you stand in someone else’s room, holding someone else’s newborn. White dress dotted with tiny blue flowers. Nothing but boxes in the background. Reaching out, the baby’s hand lazily touches your cheek. You look down at…
Haunted Passages Flash Fiction: “Goatee” by Sarp Sozdinler

Your uncle is breastfeeding one of his goats in the yard, and you’re standing by his side, wondering what the right collective noun for baby goats would be. You remember goatee was the word your father used for that big hairy abomination on his face, his lips framed like a shelf placed on top of…
“RIPE”: An Excerpt from Ross McMeekin’s Short Story Collection Below the Falls

Two climbers in the North Cascades risk their friendship and lives ascending a frozen waterfall. The girlfriend of a famous comedian in Greenwich Village must decide whether she wants to raise a child in the spotlight of fame. A mysterious Bird of Paradise makes daily overtures to an elderly widow in the frigid Midwest. A…