Category: Fiction

“Ghost Fingers,” a Haunted Passages short story by Justin Carter

Sometime in the 1940s, a school bus in Horton, Texas, was hit by a train after stalling on the tracks. One week later, a truck stalled in the same spot. As a train bared down on the truck, the driver braced for impact, but the truck slowly rolled down off the crossing, just seconds before…
The Future: “The Buddha Who Couldn’t Feel & The Fish on the Floor,” a flash by Emily Lu

You were the buddha who couldn’t feel. They carved you out of the grotto in Henan, dilated and full of stone. Sent you to look after a new mountain. On your journey here, they left your feet behind. They lost every one of your thousand arms and installed your seat too high up from the…
Short Fiction: “Adrift” by Max Wheeler

Like so much in Hassan’s long life, this transition was something done to him, not by him. My mom sounded resigned when she called me the night before my monthly visit. Her husband had been changing in small ways for a while already. “Look, honey. I have to tell you something.” I could tell she’d…
“White Girls with Cornrows,” a Side A short story by Brent Joseph Johnson

White Girls with Cornrows I first came across Amber and Ashley while I was working at Ego’s maybe six or seven years ago. Both as the doorguy and the barback. At the time I wasn’t at a good place in my life and I eventually had to quit because of how shitty it all got…
Haunted Passages: “The Gold-Eyed Plague,” a short story by Sophie Panzer

The girls arrived on a bad wind like blight and ate up our lives like locusts. Some of us believed they were a divine punishment for gay marriage and transgenders in bathrooms. Others blamed climate change (this happened in a swing state). Only a few of us realized they probably had something to do with…
Fiction from The Future: “The Prank Caller” by Will Musgrove

Door flopping like an unknotted robe, Mrs. Robinson’s refrigerator sprinted past my living room window. Two human-esque legs powered the appliance down the street. The screams on the other line faded, and a few seconds later Mrs. Robinson herself zoomed by, collecting her milk and eggs as she gave chase. I hung up the phone.…
Side A Fiction: “In Pictures” by J.T. Price

In Pictures When girls asked who her father was, sometimes Norma Jeane said she didn’t know, and sometimes said she’d only seen him once, in a photo, and sometimes that her father was Clark Gable, the man in the photo. She said she could tell by his moustache, the way he styled his hair, and…
“Car-X”: An Excerpt from Angela Woodward’s New Novel Ink

“We have extensive accounts, typed out neatly: ‘They took me into a dark room and started hitting me on the head and stomach and legs. I stayed in this room for 5 days, naked, with no clothes.’” Angela Woodward’s novel Ink tells the story of the two women who spend their days doing that neat typing. Sylvia…
“Call Me Kitty,” a new Haunted Passages short story by Kelly Gray

I’m on my way to a party down the highway at one of the houses in town and I am feeling pretty good with three boys in the back of my car and my best friend riding shotgun. I have kissed two of the boys, but it is third boy that I really want to…