Category: Fiction

“Lurking,” a short story by Tam Nguyen

For P.A, C*, J, P, D, and friends The campus’ hallway remained silent since the university’s closure earlier this year. Education was halted after the coup took over. As soon as different parts of the country slowly turned into battlefields, faculties and students got together and constituted a union, partially to create a self-didactic community,…
Six Micros from The Future: Matt Leibel

Out of Office Jeff wrote an out-of-office email: “Off to the future, back Wednesday the 21st.” Of course, in the future, he didn’t have this job—no one had jobs. Everything was automated and people just sat around thinking, dreaming, playing videogames. He liked this, so he never returned, never invented the systems that made this…
“Nude Fridays in Whitelandia,” a Bad Survivalist Short Story by David Winner

The Zoom Wake Pretty soon after Louis’ passing, I had an idea. Zoom wakes were everywhere, but this one would have been different. On our six screens, you would see our bare chests. We range from our twenties to our fifties, but like Brooklyn Peter Pans, we are known as the “boys.” An old-fashioned characterization…
“Pennies on Train Tracks,” a Side A flash fiction by Catherine Chiarella Domonkos

Pennies on Train Tracks You taught me to lay pennies on tracks to get flattened. Smooth brown ovals we stowed in this Skippy jar we buried under the house like pirate treasure. You showed me the brightest places on the tracks are best to get really flat pennies because that’s where the wheels make the…
Side A Flash Fiction: “Causality” by Anita Goveas

Causality When my placid younger brother scalded himself on his sixth birthday, the first time he ever cried, my mother declared it was inevitable and cultivated a hobby of having accidents. She could no longer touch a newspaper or our dog-eared copy of 1001 Nights without a papercut that rendered her helpless and table legs…
“Ghost Town,” a Haunted Passages Short Story by Chris George

We stayed in the van while our mom gave the ghost tour. These nights scared my sisters. They didn’t believe in ghosts. One of them had told me once that they were staunch materialists. They were precocious, having an otherworldly knowledge of things they shouldn’t know. It was child’s play stoicism. But these nights they…
“I Couldn’t Stop Looking,” a flash fiction by Lisa Korzeniowski for Haunted Passages

I am standing in the backyard in front of the shed. My brother is at the kitchen window, moths circling his screened-in face. “What do you see?” Seth says. “Come see for yourself,” I say. “No way. He told us not to go in there.” “He left the door open,” I say, digging my toes…
Haunted Passages: “Raynaud’s Berries,” a new short story by Tony Burgess

—for Carrie On our way to the emergency room, we realize it is the twelfth day in a row of peppering rain. Solid grey foam fills the ditches lining the field beside our route. Beyond and up the escarpment, who knows? Now on this road though, tires engage with surface in a ceaseless shushing and…
“Father Calls,” a Haunted Passages short fiction by Andrew Bertaina

Two weeks after my father dies in a freak accident, a dramatic fall while trimming fruit trees in his yard, he calls me in a dream. When the phone rings, I’m outside, watching a cloud of mosquitoes do a balletic dance around my shin. I’m drinking bourbon on the rocks, and the glass is sweating…