Tag: Fiction

Haunted Passages: “The Faces Inside of Everyday Objects,” a short story by Dan Stintzi

After college, Michelle had difficulty sleeping. The problem started when she was a freshman sharing a room with a girl from the coast named Miranda. One night, at a party, Michelle drank several cups of a fruity drink served out of a bucket placed in a bathtub. There were chunks of mushed, pulpy fruit floating…
Short Story: “the lies the silence tells” by Carolina Meurkens

These days your arms are covered in tiny red scratches. You can’t seem to get any work done without Jonah anchoring her claws into you. It hurts but you let her. Until it starts to feel good, that point right before she punctures your skin. You’re beginning to enjoy this pain of being needed. Which…
Haunted Passages: “Jolichanga’s Fury,” a short story by Miranda Forman

Father died s high that not even ravens could bury him. I don’t remember this. I wasn’t there. When, instead of Father, Uncle returned home at the end of the summer, Mother tightened her jaw and her lips and her soul. I was three years old when her smooth brown face weathered to leather. Her…
A Haunted Passages Short Story: “Moscow” by Mike Nees

1 You accept the charges, pull the latex cap over your scalp. You can already hear the ambient noise that will signal my arrival, like the startup sound your computer used to play. That soothing drone topped with a few stray piano chords. It doesn’t come out of a speaker, no—it’s just suddenly in your…
Haunted Passages: “The Dreamers of Revolution Never Left,” a short story by Mandira Pattnaik

It’s not that plenary meeting. Yet, little do you know, when you plod on through the rain, through the narrow, stony, cobbled steps towards the ugly backside of the mansion, where the worst possible history is engraved in, that the glossy sheen of natural fur will unnerve you. When you collect the keys of your…
Haunted Passages: Two Poems by Carolyn Supinka

Haunted House The haunted house does not require a history, but it needs a mouth: a previous, innocent tenant, someone to live to tell the tale. I can speak for its corners. Very lean and fine, alien landscapes of plateaus and dead red rivers spilling out behind, smoke of past lives burned and rising as…
“Accepting Your Planethood,” a guide by Carolyn Supinka for Bad Survivalist

1 You have just received your diagnosis. At this stage, we advise you try not to think about it too much. It is no small thing to become a planet. Take three deep breaths. If you are near a window, look outside. Do not look directly at the sun, but think about the sun. Feel…
The Future: “Really Good Puppets,” a short story by Jill M. Talbot

Things can be people, when you get down to it, and this can be dangerous. It is most dangerous when a puppet becomes a person and fights back all it has been used for, or when a person becomes a thing and is so thing-like that it forgets that it ever was a person. These…
“A Great Mentor Is the Kind That Teaches You How to Kill the Mentor”: John Kazanjian Interviews David Leo Rice

David Leo Rice’s novel ANGEL HOUSE is the story of an ensemble cast brought into existence by Professor Squimbop, who serves as the town’s creator, destroyer, and pedagogue. Squimbop’s role in his creation complicates the lives of the town’s people and compounds his growing existential ennui. The result is an examination of the creative process,…