Tag: Fiction

From Vol. 9: “A Miniature Tale of Motherhood,” a short story by Oliver Zarandi

My children are cruel and look like goblins. Every day they take something away from me and I don’t ask for anything in return. I asked them this morning, “What do you want for lunch?” “Your breasts,” they said. So they had them. They suckled my teats, one apiece, and sucked them dry. No more…
Haunted Passages Fiction: “A Haunted House” by Mark Lamoureux

I.The Master Bedroom Not the heart of the House, but its crimson mouth. The undone belt droops like a skein of slobber over the bloodred cilia of the shag carpet, the cracked-open geode of a bad lung. Faerie lights gestate in the Negroni-colored teardrops of sick lamps. Spread across a dark wood dresser are pen knives &…
Side A Short Story: “Fragments in Color” by Chella Courington

Fragments in Color 1 When a kid I kept running away from home to see if Mama still wanted me. Never far and always to the corrugated camp near Sunset. I drank chicory with Maggie and chalked pink flamingos on the concrete. Tall yellow legs, long feathers with curved necks turned right. Beaks dark as…
Bad Survivalist Short Story: “Bear, Flower, Ferryman,” by Margaret Redmond Whitehead

For a long time that morning, the bear occupied herself with a cardboard box. Its walls were plushy and wet—soaked from the night’s rain—but rigid enough that it held its shape. It was on its side, with both ends open, creating a tunnel that was just barely too small for a bear to pass through.…
“Widower,” a Haunted Passages Short Story by X. Luma

One spring afternoon, while Widower was gathering lettuce from the garden, his daughter Lew called out from her siblings nearby. “Dad, I’m tired of playing in the grass.” “Well?” “Couldn’t I play in the woods?” Widower eyed the woods. “You may. But take this head of lettuce.” “Lettuce?” “Lay the leaves as you go to…
Steve Gergely: “VanLife,” a flash fiction for Bad Survivalist

For the past two weeks I’ve been living out of my van. It’s not a lifestyle for everyone, but at this juncture of my life, it was the best move for me. I mean, I’m twenty-two, soon to be twenty-three, so I can’t be living with my parents anymore. With one kid in preschool and…
Flash Fiction for Haunted Passages: “Preserved From Decay and Endued with Immortality” by Andy Spain

We buried Uncle Charles way out back, beyond the orchard, a good two acres from the property line. We picked his bones clean and criss-crossed them end over end in a log cabin of sorts, like building a campfire. The leftover scraps of flesh and sinewy bits we burned in the center, praying that his…
Robert Scotellaro: “A Sky Full of Crickets,” flash fiction triptych for Bad Survivalist

Hatching They are strapped in their upside-down car for hours before the firemen, slicing through metal, free them. The deer comes out of nowhere and when Clyde swerves the car flips. The airbags release, with a moments harsh embrace, then deflate. When Arleen says: “Fuck!” in a tone familiar to him he is finally able to…
The Future: “Wellness in the Workplace: A Professional Development Series,” fiction by Dolan Morgan

Series Overview How can the organization best build capacity and develop tools to avoid burnout and respond with confidence to a variety of contemporary professional circumstances, especially repeated on-the-job stabbings? This four-part series of weekly 90-minute professional development sessions will answer this question and more. Together, we will introduce numerous instructive scenarios, explore and rehearse…