Tag: Fiction

“Electrolysis,” a Bad Survivalist Short Short by Roger D’Agostin

The follicles didn’t know why they were slathered in foam, but 17 said, “Don’t complain, this is the longest we’ve been.” Follicle 1 goose bumped, then quickly regained her composure. “Let’s not discuss the past.” The others knew that Follicle 1, being the first, had suffered the most. Plucks. Wax. Bleaching. But this foam, it felt good. Still, Follicle 1 hoped…
Flash Fiction: “Going In” by Kim Farleigh

“I was able,” James said, “to ignore it until yesterday; but last night, it was just impossible.” Sitting on his bed’s edge, he shook his head. I was lying on another bed, my head on a pillow, his head slowly shaking. A ceiling light turned our room’s window black. A vehicle’s drone outside rose then…
A Story from The Future: Leland Cheuk’s “Frontliners”

I shuddered after Rebecca said she’d ordered takeout and toilet paper again. I was getting nowhere with my intramarital campaign for self-sufficiency during the global pandemics. No android dependency! I get why the Feds and L—, Inc. teamed up to deploy legions of androids to do deliveries and frontline tasks so we could all stay…
Saturday Morning Chapbook: Chase Burke’s Lecture (Paper Nautilus) reviewed by Nick Almeida

Chase Burke’s stunning chapbook Lecture (Paper Nautilus Press) is filled with tumbledown geniuses. Armor is a recurrent image, and penmanship hurts. These narrators are, as you perhaps guessed, vulnerable in the way a good teacher might be. Okay, good may be the wrong word. These are the swept-up sort of lecturers, their pockets filled with…
“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…