Category: Bad Survivalist

Bad Survivalist Flash Fiction: “Pillow Talk” by Christopher Linforth

Jacqueline’s gone to sort out her bleeding. I stay in bed and text my last girlfriend that I’m over her. I don’t miss you, I say, I never missed you. Even when we used to get high and steal Little Debbie Cosmic Brownies from the bodega and taste the chocolate in each other’s mouths. That…
Fiction for Bad Survivalist: “Dancer’s Commute” by Genevieve Murdick

In the mornings, they hose the whole thing down, and the chemical smell of soap—the whirring growl of power hoses—this briefly supplants the pounding sounds of pop music, muffled across wet wood and brick. Some club jammer you remember from 2013; the same way you remember an old friend running into you at Rouses, but…
Thad DeVassie: Four Microfictions from The Factory of Sadness for Bad Survivalist

Bulletin Board Material The bulletin board mounted outside the conference room has dozens of thumbtacks on it. Sticky notes and a few pens are below on an empty desk. There is a prompt written in blue Sharpie along the bulletin board frame: add to the conversation! Wendy put it there about a year ago, without…
Original Fiction for Bad Survivalist: “Sugar” by Gogol

You don’t like cutting anymore. You don’t like stitching too. You are broke, mostly a failure, and the only place where they will allow you to cut and stitch is in the hospital located at the outskirts of the sugarcane field. You stay in a room at the periphery of the hospital. The women yell,…
New Poetry for Bad Survivalist: “when i say i still think of you in august” by Cate Latimer

i mean that when i saw that truck full of chickens on highway 5, feathers grazing yellow lines, i wished on their mangled bodies and white wings pinned like fallen gods to the road. you taught me to do that. you, who left streaks of lipstick on my dashboard and playing cards in my center…
Paul Ilechko: Three Poems for Bad Survivalist

Truck Stop The sky was a grid of varying colorsnone of which were visible to the naked eyebut the man vaping in the cab of an F-150knew instinctively that he was parkedbelow a quadrant of the darkest magentathe handle clicked as a door swung openand a body hauled itselfinto the passenger seattattoos glowing fluorescent under…
Poetry for Bad Survivalist: “What a World” by Joshua Stanek

The wind did devotions through the gorge when you arrived.The sun brighter and wet seasons more bountiful. Mountain lions track deer over the swift flow of interstateson bridges made for the deer, the lion, the blackberry bush, and the bobcat with a wild hare in its jaw. You were bornupon a communication boom, you see.…
Nonfiction for Bad Survivalist: “Unruly Roots” by Morgan Rose-Marie

I’ve tried to make this call four or five times this week. Now that my mother is finally on the other end, I find myself wishing I were once again hearing her voicemail greeting instead. Growing up, when I answered the house phone, the caller would inevitably launch into conversation. “I’m Morgan,” I would interrupt.…
Bad Survivalist Hybrid by Elissa Fertig: “Thank You for Contacting The Void. Your Scream Is Very Important to Us.”

Private jets emit fourteen times more pollution than commercial airline flights. With all of the flash floods that have been happening in Las Vegas, we are going to erode the topsoil until all that’s left is bedrock. Last night we went to Dorian’s and I had three glasses of white wine and your girlfriend barely…