Category: Fiction

Hugh Behm-Steinberg Flash Fiction: “Wallace Stevens”

Anecdote of the Jar I placed a jar in Tennessee,And round it was, upon a hill.It made the slovenly wildernessSurround that hill. The wilderness rose up to it,And sprawled around, no longer wild.The jar was round upon the ground.And tall and of a port in air. It took dominion everywhere.The jar was gray and bare.It…
New Fiction for Bad Survivalist: “Unrecorded Existence” by Sebastian Castillo

“It’s when you gallop that your parasites are most alive.”—Henri Michaux I used to be a poet of great fame and intellect, but now I’m a dairy farmer. The circumstances under which I came to this station are not particularly unusual. Like many poets, I grew tired of the attention and accolades. I couldn’t…
Leland Cheuk: “My SMS,” short fiction from The Future

I sent one of my SMSs (Social Media Selves) to my friend’s reading way out in Longway Meadow. I didn’t want to go personally (too far, not in the mood), and I figured enough of my friend’s friends (or their SMSs) would be in attendance that I wouldn’t be missed. The holographic selves are very…
Short Fiction from The Future: “No God Just Google” by Nicholas Rys

Part 1: Man vs Nature After the president was eaten alive by bears on national television the country fell into various states of dilapidation. In a rare moment of unity, both fans and critics agreed it was a riveting and appropriate end to what ultimately culminated in both a condescending and overextended stay. The survivalist-themed…
The Future: Two Fictions by Liza St. James

I Didn’t Get to My Rage Yet I saw the man with the kid having too much fun together to be related, or else to see each other often. The uncle or the estranged father was telling the kid about a band he knew that ate kids on stage. Do they really? For real? The…
New Fiction for Bad Survivalist: “The Woodcutter” by Mike Itaya

In the medieval woods of 1307, a gentle woodcutter and a spinsterly-type lived in a pristine cottage and shared a lonely life together, so lonely that in a moment of fraught miscalculation, the couple agreed to board Trina, a terrible person from Pascagoula, Mississippi. Trina had a chainsaw tattooed above her bottom, and used “blow…
“The Ghosts at the Carwash Are Always Looking for Company”: Flash Fiction by Cathy Ulrich

There is a universe where all the carwashes are haunted. Where there are creaks and groans and disembodied hands dripping with carwash water. Where our mothers sat us down since we were young, said never go to the carwash, said or you could end up a haunt there too, said when the first carwash was…
“Unclear Motives”: Short Fiction for Haunted Passages by Chase Dearinger

The very last thing: the roof rose up seamlessly from the house, sat perfectly still a hundred feet above the lights and chaos in the street. The ground quaked and calmed, and a murder of countless crows poured out from the house, their oily, rainbow flap like a deck of cards splashed across a room.…
“Unhaunted,” a short story for Haunted Passages by Madeleine Sardina

The ghosts had always been loud. Like rats or squirrels, they scampered in and out of our homes, tampering with the wiring and knocking on bedposts. We had our ways of softening their effects so we could keep our homes and schools and workplaces functional, but it was an art to keep them at bay…