Category: Fiction

From Vol. 9: “80,” a short story by Stephen Dixon

He wakes up, gets his cellphone off the night table and opens it to look at the time. 3:02. He’s been asleep for less than an hour. An hour ago he checked the time after lying in bed awake for almost three hours. 2:05. So he’s gotten an hour’s sleep tonight. He’ll probably lie in…
From Vol. 9: “Invasion of the Dad,” fiction by Nicholas Grider

The dad arrived, as dads are known to do, in a large red SUV that was partly covered in mud and made a confident exit from the vehicle, stepping down from the driver’s seat onto the blacktop in dark brown shoes dwelling somewhere between “sensible” and “noticeably expensive,” and the dad was dressed as if…
From Vol. 9: “A Miniature Tale of Motherhood,” a short story by Oliver Zarandi

My children are cruel and look like goblins. Every day they take something away from me and I don’t ask for anything in return. I asked them this morning, “What do you want for lunch?” “Your breasts,” they said. So they had them. They suckled my teats, one apiece, and sucked them dry. No more…
Side A Short Story: “Fragments in Color” by Chella Courington

Fragments in Color 1 When a kid I kept running away from home to see if Mama still wanted me. Never far and always to the corrugated camp near Sunset. I drank chicory with Maggie and chalked pink flamingos on the concrete. Tall yellow legs, long feathers with curved necks turned right. Beaks dark as…
The Future: “Wellness in the Workplace: A Professional Development Series,” fiction by Dolan Morgan

Series Overview How can the organization best build capacity and develop tools to avoid burnout and respond with confidence to a variety of contemporary professional circumstances, especially repeated on-the-job stabbings? This four-part series of weekly 90-minute professional development sessions will answer this question and more. Together, we will introduce numerous instructive scenarios, explore and rehearse…
Flash Fiction: “Going In” by Kim Farleigh

“I was able,” James said, “to ignore it until yesterday; but last night, it was just impossible.” Sitting on his bed’s edge, he shook his head. I was lying on another bed, my head on a pillow, his head slowly shaking. A ceiling light turned our room’s window black. A vehicle’s drone outside rose then…
A Story from The Future: Leland Cheuk’s “Frontliners”

I shuddered after Rebecca said she’d ordered takeout and toilet paper again. I was getting nowhere with my intramarital campaign for self-sufficiency during the global pandemics. No android dependency! I get why the Feds and L—, Inc. teamed up to deploy legions of androids to do deliveries and frontline tasks so we could all stay…
Two Flash Fictions from The Future by Soramimi Hanarejima

Renewed Sensitivity Your distrust of people is verging on paranoia, and although I remain exempt from your unfounded scrutiny, talking you down from your suspicions has become ever the drain on my energy. So I spike your contact lens solution with meds that will sensitize your eyes to the good in others. Or more accurately,…
“Skullface” by Rick Claypool: A Novel Excerpt for The Future

1. A mutant wakes up screaming alone under harsh beams of laboratory light. The humanlike thing cries and clings to its too-small blanket. High up where the wall meets the ceiling, expressionless scientists observe through soundproof shatterproof glass. Its face is a skull face, and when it touches the bony surface of those knobs and…