Category: Fiction

Tina May Hall: Two Fictions from The Extinction Museum

Exhibit #408 from The Extinction Museum—Bisected baseball with cork center, two layers of beige yarn, white horsehide cover stained with dirt and grass, black and red stitching, unraveling Grandmother said a baseball of her youth had a sturgeon eye at the center. Spiny fish, nearly prehistoric, giants they wrestled in the mud rivers that bracketed…
Short Story Prize 2017: “Monument” by Kristen Gleason

Joanna Ruocco on “Monument,” winner of the 2017 Heavy Feather Story Prize: “A room in my apartment has windows all around (a box of glass), and the weird shining black-green of magnolia leaves presses up to the glass (a box in black-green). I read ‘Monument’ in that room and traveled from my own black-green world…
Fiction by Marcus Pactor: “Cake”

—after Blake Butler The cake reminded me of the twins’ wet sludge food. I could never shovel it well enough for them. My wife often replaced me halfway through their meals, as a mercy. I did not slice, then, so much as scoop dessert into a bowl. It tasted of egg and hair. That last…
Two Surreal Fictions by Michael Trocchia

The Uninvited It was the scene outside that would be of great consequence, yet they crowded around the uninvited guest, who in the larger picture had little to do with much of anything. The larger picture, in fact, was more than a frame of reference, for it was, of course, larger than that, despite the…
Haunted Passages: An Excerpt from ANGEL HOUSE, a coming-of-age horror novel by David Leo Rice

After crossing a vast inland sea in an ark called ANGEL HOUSE, Professor Squimbop docks on a distant shore. As soon as his anchor makes purchase, a town sprouts up that may or may not encapsulate all of existence. At the behest of some distant master, he embarks into this town to teach the children…
Flash Fiction for Bad Survivalist: “Slow Burn” by Kristina Ten

The explorer wakes up on a strange planet with no memory of how she got there, clawing at the black ground beneath her, gulping against the smoke-filled air. It wouldn’t be the first time, this getting to and forgetting. She scans her surroundings: no ship, wrecked or otherwise; no rations or equipment to help with…
New Fiction for Bad Survivalist: “Warehouse” by Chase Burke

Amazon’s warehouses are warehouses of commerce. Every item an American might desire, shelved and organized from floor to ceiling over acres of glazed concrete. Likewise Walmart—containing multitudes, now minus the hyphen. Likewise every mall of America. Ditto the dumpster. If trash is a record of consumption then it is also a record of purchasing power.…
A Hawk in the Woods, a supernatural road novel by Carrie Laben (An Excerpt)

When newscaster Abby Waite is diagnosed with a potentially terminal illness, she decides to do the logical thing … break her twin sister Martha out of prison and hit the road. Their destination is the Waite family cabin in Minnesota where Abby plans a family reunion of sorts. But when you come from a family…
Bad Survivalist Fiction: “Abandonment Issue” by Jason Hardung

Up in the corner, above my bed, a spider floats in the air. I’ve been watching it for an hour now. It must be magic, the way it hovers like that. Like everything else it’s reminding me of Krista. The first day she arrived in the Amazon she emailed me a video of a huge…