Category: Fiction

Short Story Excerpt: “Mitzvah” from Pamela Ryder’s Paradise Field

Interconnected stories depicting the last years of a WWII bomber pilot, his relationship with his daughter as both child and adult, and his drift into infirmity and death. When life dwindles to its irrevocable conclusion, recollections are illuminated, even unto the grave. Such is the narrative of Paradise Field: A Novel in Stories, whose title is…
Fiction: Excerpt of Jorge Armenteros’ Novel The Roar of the River

Following the musical structure of the 17th century fugue, the narrative voices succeed each other until coming together in a polyphonic search for light among the darkness of their origins. Set in a perched village of the French Alps, between a roaring river and the moonlight, a man dressed in a striped tunic seeks encounters…
Fiction: “Kirk and Anna Lee Just Disagree” by Vic Sizemore

After Anna Lee told her husband Ridvan she was leaving him, he got himself transferred back home to Meadow Green. To try and work things out. Suddenly he was no longer gone weeks at a time, but was always fucking home, always trying to get them to do things as a goddamned family. It was…
Fiction: Deena ElGenaidi’s “Attached”

Alison had gotten attached and couldn’t move, her body sticky, like someone had super glued her to the bed, to the sheets that smelled of laundry detergent, smelled like him. She tried to sit up but felt like if she lifted her body, her skin might peel right off, sticking to the sheets, leaving her…
Fiction: Nick Kocz’s “How It Ends”

Under the radar was how Cole Wilkinson flew, publishing a second-tier alt-right news site that was all but unknown to those cucks who followed only mainstream media sources. However, in the year after he urged his readers to elect a narcissistic sociopath to the presidency, the website grew in popularity, almost overnight becoming fringe conservatives’…
Fiction: Katie M. Flynn’s “A Gift from Your Leader”

On the night of the election, I write a little satire piece about Trump involving Russian-speaking elves, hit send, and the next morning I’ve got an acceptance letter waiting in my inbox! Six weeks later, I have twelve more Twitter followers, and there’s a pair of shoes waiting for me outside my apartment door. The…
Fiction: “A Stranger Never Comes to Town” by Jessica Alexander

My first brother was a cockatoo on the shoulder of a much older woman, who called herself Madame La Cava, spoke bad French, and feigned clairvoyance. I said, “Know how to hurt what you love?” He held her hoop earring in his beak. She said, “Vous voulez me devorer avec baisers, mon canard.” I said,…
Fiction: “The Pregnant Milessa” by Nick Kocz

The Pregnant Milessa had been awaiting the birth of her first child for nine years. Sonograms foretold a boy but, though she had vague recollections of being clumsily diddled by some guy reeking of beer, date rape drugs were prevalent and she had no knowledge of the father or the act that led to her…
Excerpt: My Shadow Book by Maawaam (Edited by Jordan A. Rothacker)

Editor’s Preface: In the summer of 2011 I discovered Maawaam’s being in a box. The form his being took in that box was in journals, scraps of paper, scribbled on leaves, photographs, and drawings. The journals were the most significant abundance of being. For the last six years I have studied his being in the…