Category: Fiction

The Future: “Women with Runes,” a short story by Michelle Dove

Independence It is here—the celebration of our country’s birth—and the heat is a trillion or two trillion degrees. To stay cool, we wear our chamber suits and sit far enough from each other so the sweat doesn’t spread, only localizes within our individual suits and runs between our thighs where nobody sees. The musicians take…
Fiction from The Future: “Dog Days” by Michael Chin

From back before all the dogs were gone, I remember Waffles. The first time Waffles stole a waffle from Dad’s plate (the reason we renamed him from Rover). Waffles barking from the far side of the front door when I keyed into the house. The way Waffles smelled when he was wet—moist and mildew-y in…
Bad Survivalist: “Hobby,” microfiction by Tyler Dempsey

I’m not even sure you’ll get this. They’ll convince you it’s from Earth, ancient. They (those in power). History’s changing. Eventually, no philosophy (maybe there already isn’t) suggesting we were a species of action. It was politics. Started in politics. Create emotion. Reactionary. Like a soccer game. Left, Right, hobbies. The home team. Candidate most-viral…
Bad Survivalist Microfiction: “Chess Problems” by Steve Chang

—after Diane Williams and James Robison Brian returned from the world and found Charlene was deceiving him again. He liked visiting her in her studio, a short distance from his mind. “That’s enough,” he said. “Charlene.” He was raspy and eager, but with a prickly thumb. It now prickled. She was beside the window, scribbling…
Spiritualist Erotica by Erin Lyndal Martin: “The Flower Medium” for Haunted Passages

I wrote down my findings about what happened that night, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell everything. Not even to you, Lieutenant. I hear you’re old and sick and you may die soon. I sure hate to lose you. You saw the force through some hard times, and no hard time ever met a…
Bad Survivalist: “A Neutralized Threat,” comic fiction by Analeah Loschiavo Rosen

It does not seem overly harsh to say the men and women who work on atomic weapons distance themselves from the moral implications of what they do. But me? I make sure they pass through clearance and are able to find parking spots. Not so much separates us when you think of the worst-case scenario.…
Nance Van Winckel: “Hole in the Fence,” a hybrid collage/graphic/poem-story excerpt for Bad Survivalist

*Ed.’s Note: click images to view larger sizes. Nance Van Winckel’s fifth book of fiction is Ever Yrs., a novel in the form of a scrapbook (Twisted Road Publications, 2014); her eighth book of poems is Our Foreigner (Beyond Baroque Press, 2017, winner of the Pacific Coast Poetry Series). A book of visual poetry entitled…
Haunted Passages Flash Fiction by Christopher Linforth: “Disconnected”

We came to the hotel to end it all. The building sat tucked in the mountains, part of an Edwardian-era resort. Gentlemen and women used to enjoy the crisp air for a few weeks, then exalt the health benefits back to their friends in the city. All those people, we realized, were long dead. We…
Lucy Zhang: “Raising Wings,” a flash fiction for Bad Survivalist

It happened slowly at first. Slits tracing shoulder blades down a pale canvas back, blood trickling like paint from an over-saturated watercolor brush. Feathers and bone and cartilage poking their way through the epidermis. At some point, my over-sized green eagle sweater could no longer hide the protrusions. I said my stomach hurt, I had…