Category: Fiction

Side A Flash Fiction: “Side Jobs Wanted” by Mario Moussa

Side Jobs Wanted I’m looking for side jobs. If you need a pet sitter or a house sitter while you’re away. I’ll sit with your plants if they need company. I’ll talk to them if they like talking. Or a babysitter—you want to go away and have me sit and talk with your baby? Sounds…
Short Story for Side A: “Fragments of One or the Other” by Molly Andrea-Ryan

Fragments of One or the Other It’s Tuesday, which means it’s the day that I spend the afternoon with my niece. I watch her, that’s what her mother would say, although that sounds a little too punitive to me, makes her sound a little too puny, one or the other. Suggests a power imbalance which…
Short Story for Haunted Passages: “I Cut Her Out of Me” by D. Avern

The panel buildings, painted in all the colors of the rainbow, stood impassively amidst the oak forest. They soared several hundred meters high, as if trying to reach the clouds with their rooftops, equipped with helicopter landing pads—clouds shimmering with every hue of a watercolor palette, diluted in warm water and poured into the clear…
Side A Fiction by Jon Doughboy: “Your Mother Is on Her Way”

My mother’s lawyer called me this morning which came as a surprise because I didn’t know my mother had a lawyer or would have a need for a lawyer or even knew any lawyers. As a matter of fact it wasn’t the lawyer, a Mr. Defiore, Esq., who called but his secretary, introducing herself as…
Fiction for Bad Survivalist: “The Pit” by Sarp Sozdinler

People come to Cannon Hill for two reasons: to die quietly or to watch the gators. The gator pit is behind the Shell station. There’s a faded lawn chair wedged in the fence and a warped “NO TRESPASSING” sign that everyone ignores. It’s not an attraction in the official sense. The town doesn’t list it…
Side A Short Story: “The Foster” by Tom Busillo

We were having dinner, and she said, “I signed us up for a foster.” I thought she was kidding, but everything had already been arranged. His name was Lollie. The next morning, he was in the kitchen making toast. He wore a cardigan and kept his shoes on inside. He had dietary needs, emotional needs, and…
Haunted Passages Short Fiction by Tobias Carroll: “Crude Thing”

Matteo called it a crude thing. In the end that’s what stuck with me the most. A crude thing, a visitation, something unspeakable. The crude thing, and where it took us all. I was there and Erin was there when Matteo shared what had happened, the three of us sitting at an empty table in…
Fiction for Side A: “Pearl Ring” by Ivy Grimes

Pearl Ring He and his betrothed moved into a cream-colored apartment in the outer ring of the concentric circles that made up the apartment complex. At the center of the complex was a swimming pool. He first noticed her pearl ring on their first trip to the apartment’s swimming pool when she took off her…
Side A Short Story: “Light ’Em Up” by Elizabeth Rosen

I spotted the guy as he came around the corner where the protest was happening outside the library on the plaza. Kind of scummy-looking, and not in a hipster way. White guy, wearing a plain Hanes T-shirt frayed at the collar and scuffed aviator sunglasses pushed up into unwashed hair. He was carrying a homemade…