Tag: Fiction

“Skullface” by Rick Claypool: A Novel Excerpt for The Future

1. A mutant wakes up screaming alone under harsh beams of laboratory light. The humanlike thing cries and clings to its too-small blanket. High up where the wall meets the ceiling, expressionless scientists observe through soundproof shatterproof glass. Its face is a skull face, and when it touches the bony surface of those knobs and…
The Future: “The Wormhole Nextdoor,” a short story by Tara Campbell

A story about potholes, black holes, wormholes, and cats, told in the form of a Nextdoor thread, in hope of a friendly interstellar future. Click on the animated GIF to begin! Or click here to read “The Wormhole Nextdoor.” Tara Campbell (taracampbell.com) is a writer, teacher, Kimbilio Fellow, and fiction editor at Barrelhouse. She received…
Side A Short Story: “Dolphin Adventure” by Robert Long Foreman

Stan arrived home late and flopped like an upright dolphin into his and Linda’s house. Dolphins are almost never upright. When they are it doesn’t last. They don’t have feet. They barely have skeletons. So when they try to go upright they hit the beach with a wet slap. They swim upward all the time.…
“Interview”: Ben Segal Talks to WORKS Author Grant Maierhofer

Grant Maierhofer’s Works collects four separate books into a sprawling volume that functions simultaneously as a compendium and a bildungsroman, showing a range of work and the development of a singular writer through various stages of literary production. I initially planned a to write a conventional review the book, but I prefer conversation to critical…
“Two Little Stories about Black Beans”: A Flavor Town USA Fiction by Eli S. Evans

1. I was in my twenties and living in the sort of apartment one lives in in one’s twenties, ramshackle and tumbledown on the wrong side of town. But it was very spacious, and I subsidized my income, which was both part-time and meager, by subleasing out various of the rooms I didn’t use as…
“The Ocean Is a Desert,” a Side A fiction by Keegan Swenson

The Ocean Is a Desert He sits there. He sits at his desk with an open notebook and three black rolling pens. The damn window is open and it’s bringing in a breeze. He will get to work as soon as he’s stood up and closed the window. He can’t bear the breeze. As soon…
“My Mother Has Many Tricks”: Flash Fiction by Sacha John Bissonnette

In one of Grandma’s stories, she found my mother in the backyard, middle of the night, a blood-soaked possum neatly wrapped around her arm, like she had killed one before. She refused to let it go, letting out a feral shriek as Grandma got closer. My mother only dropped the possum when Grandma could reach…
“Same Green”: A Short Story by Lucciana Costa

If you stay: if you stay, it will kill you. You will wither, shrink, shrivel up like a slug in salt. Your brain will leak out your ears if you hear Braden Jenkins call Owen Meany a faggot one more time, his desk just far enough away to be out of physical reach. Not that…
“Dyin’ Lion”: A Bad Survivalist Work Fiction by Jonathan Bluebird Montgomery

I know everyone thinks I’m just a cabdriver, but I also work at the zoo. They pay me to take care of the lion, a 550 lb predator-cat from sub-Saharan Africa trapped inside an artificial habitat. The lion is magnificent and a success of evolution. It is a beautiful, golden killing machine, and when his…