Category: Fiction

Five Fictions by Matthew Beach

There She Is A woman in a pantsuit arrives first. She opens the lockbox and takes the key. She steps into the living room. The air washes over her, a wave of vinegar, astringent and thick. She draws back, brings her fingers to her nose, then crunches in heels over tattered carpet, calcified from encrusted…
Fiction from Our Colony Beyond the City of Ruins: “The Sea Captain’s Ghost” by Janalyn Guo

Entering the city of Boris from the sea, the Sea Captain’s Ghost notices a mollusk on the back of his neck and peels it off. The city is full of flower gardens. People from all over the world come to Boris for its flower gardens, he is told by a billboard. Flower trellis–covered towers jut…
Haunted Passages Flash Fiction: “The Cable Company” by Darkansas author Jarret Middleton

A barmaid closing up for the night stopped polishing a glass when a telegram dropped through the slot of the front door. She picked up the envelope marked “urgent” in red and unearthed a manila slip with a single typewritten line. “mechanism operational,” it read. “ascent at 0600. signed, the cable company.” The barmaid raised…
Fiction: “The Lawn Jockey” by Dez Miller

I’d been thinking about that swimming hole for nearly half a year, since the middle of winter. I first saw it in a photo on Hunter’s dorm room bulletin board. The 4 x 6 had lanky Hunter poised midair, his arms and legs flung about dramatically, his mouth open in what I imagined to be…
“Attend the Way,” short fiction by Theodore Wheeler

It’s because he has a train to catch that Rodney leaves his room after suppertime. He puts on dress shoes and his green suit, the one that looks good against his skin. Earlier that afternoon, the big woman next door trimmed his hair. He lives in the Kellogg Rooming House, an old brick building near…
Fiction: “Men with Potential: A Guide to Getting Sober and Staying Sober” by Kate St. Germain

Schedule a date with a tall someone with salt-and-pepper hair who finds you online. He will play drums. He will be part of an art collective. This will be interesting to you. Order beer, he will order tequila. Get drunk. You will be turned on by the fact that he is almost a decade older…
“Proof in the Blood,” a short story by Michael Allen Rose for Haunted Passages

They say there’s proof in the blood, that something can be in it that you didn’t put there and there’s nothing you can do to change it. It’s not only part of your whole entire being, but it flows through every tiny piece of you, touching everything you are and always have been. You can…
“Rock Creek: A Pastoral,” flash fiction by Jarrod Campbell

Living two miles from the epicenter of a useless and oppressive government but still well within what could potentially be ground zero can wear anybody down, but only if they let it happen. For fifteen years I’ve seen the power ebb and flow from weak blue tides to the present deadly red tide and miraculously…
Fiction: “Driving Range” by John Scaggs

Like most of the men in the Wetherall family, Virgil had lost a finger or three over the years. The middle finger of his right hand had been taken by the timing belt of a 1973 Chevy Chevelle—had ripped it out at the root like an onion from the soil. On his left hand, he’d…