Category: Fiction

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…
“The Minister’s Black Mass,” a short story by Chase Dearinger for Haunted Passages

When the fireplace was so full that the air grew heavy and beads of sweat broke out across his forehead, Tom went to bed. But the hallway where he expected to find the doors to his family wasn’t the narrow, wood-paneled one he expected. What he found instead: floral wallpaper, rose-tinted golden sconces, thick red…
A Haunted Passages Excerpt from A Spectral Hue, a horror novel by Craig Laurance Gidney

For generations, the marsh-surrounded town of Shimmer, Maryland has played host to a loose movement of African-American artists, all working in different media, but all utilizing the same haunting color. Landscape paintings, trompe l’oeil quilts, decorated dolls, mixed-media assemblages, and more, all featuring the same peculiar hue, a shifting pigment somewhere between purple and pink,…
What Could Be Saved, bookmatched novellas and stories excerpt, by Gregory Spatz

Going where most readers have never been—past the workshop door, behind the curtain to the hidden rehearsal space, and into the back room of a pawn shop or dealer’s office, Gregory Spatz’s new book delves deeply into the world of those who build, play, and sell (or steal) violins. This is a realm of obsession,…
An Excerpt from the Novel The Color Inside a Melon by John Domini

A disastrous earthquake has Naples reeling. While the government scrambles to maintain appearances, poverty and anarchy rack the people on Italy’s margins—the illegal immigrants out of Africa, known as the clandestini. One of whom has just been horrifically murdered. Enter Risto, a rare success story: a refugee from Mogadishu, orphaned in his teens, he’s now married…
Hybrid Work for Haunted Passages: “Steppes of Null” by Mike Corrao

*Ed.’s Note: click on image to view larger size. Mike Corrao is the author of Man, Oh Man (Orson’s Publishing) and Gut Text (11:11 Press). His work has been featured in publications such as The Collagist, 3:AM, Always Crashing, and The Portland Review. He lives in Minneapolis. Learn more at mikecorrao.com.
“The Importance of Learning How to Match Your Foundation”: Fiction by Em Mingus

I. When I was in third grade I got my first job. I helped my neighbor roll all the coins in his ten-gallon jugs into the paper wrappers he got from the bank. He had about eight containers filled to the brim with dull metal hidden the back of his basement. We could only work…