Category: Fiction

Haunted Passages: “The Faces Inside of Everyday Objects,” a short story by Dan Stintzi

After college, Michelle had difficulty sleeping. The problem started when she was a freshman sharing a room with a girl from the coast named Miranda. One night, at a party, Michelle drank several cups of a fruity drink served out of a bucket placed in a bathtub. There were chunks of mushed, pulpy fruit floating…
Short Story: “the lies the silence tells” by Carolina Meurkens

These days your arms are covered in tiny red scratches. You can’t seem to get any work done without Jonah anchoring her claws into you. It hurts but you let her. Until it starts to feel good, that point right before she punctures your skin. You’re beginning to enjoy this pain of being needed. Which…
Bad Survivalist Short Story: “Common Tragedy” by Sylvan Lebrun

It wasn’t their fault, the fire. The last time the sheriff’s department spoke to the newspapers, they said the investigation was still ongoing, nothing conclusive. So it could have been anyone or anything—bad weather patterns or a rancher burning their trash. Even if it could be traced it back to Nora and Chloe, they still…
Haunted Passages: “Jolichanga’s Fury,” a short story by Miranda Forman

Father died s high that not even ravens could bury him. I don’t remember this. I wasn’t there. When, instead of Father, Uncle returned home at the end of the summer, Mother tightened her jaw and her lips and her soul. I was three years old when her smooth brown face weathered to leather. Her…
A Haunted Passages Short Story: “Moscow” by Mike Nees

1 You accept the charges, pull the latex cap over your scalp. You can already hear the ambient noise that will signal my arrival, like the startup sound your computer used to play. That soothing drone topped with a few stray piano chords. It doesn’t come out of a speaker, no—it’s just suddenly in your…
Haunted Passages: “The Dreamers of Revolution Never Left,” a short story by Mandira Pattnaik

It’s not that plenary meeting. Yet, little do you know, when you plod on through the rain, through the narrow, stony, cobbled steps towards the ugly backside of the mansion, where the worst possible history is engraved in, that the glossy sheen of natural fur will unnerve you. When you collect the keys of your…
“Accepting Your Planethood,” a guide by Carolyn Supinka for Bad Survivalist

1 You have just received your diagnosis. At this stage, we advise you try not to think about it too much. It is no small thing to become a planet. Take three deep breaths. If you are near a window, look outside. Do not look directly at the sun, but think about the sun. Feel…
“Plastic Light,” flash fiction from The Future by Jerrod Schwarz

The dam was a weird body at night. Big half of a hip. Bladderskin wrapped over a coccyx. Cut a stomach in half and tell the juices, stay mostly on this side. I tied a nylon cord around the boat’s bench seat and looped the other end around a leaking plastic bag of cow hearts.…
The Future: “Really Good Puppets,” a short story by Jill M. Talbot

Things can be people, when you get down to it, and this can be dangerous. It is most dangerous when a puppet becomes a person and fights back all it has been used for, or when a person becomes a thing and is so thing-like that it forgets that it ever was a person. These…