Tag: Fiction

Bad Survivalist Short Story: “Along the South Shoreline” by Josie Tolin

Lorna scanned her reflection in a full-length mirror, sucking in her stomach as she forced the button through the hole. The skirt hadn’t always fit this way. When she exhaled, her belly spilled over the waistband, and Lorna smacked her hands against her abdomen and watched the skin quiver like Jell-O. Her mom called it…
Haunted Passages: “Dear Becca,” a short story by Kate St. Germain

Dear Becca, I’ve wanted to write you for a long time. But on the last episode, GO FOR IT, you told us to go for what we want. So that’s what I’ll do. My grandma died almost 2 months ago. I had been taking care of her, actually I never moved out of our house.…
Meagan Masterman: “The River Runs Red in Spring,” a Haunted Passages short story

The red in the river wasn’t blood, at first. It was iron. Just sediment eroded from mountain rocks that oxidized in the river long before its waters washed down to us. We lived in a small town that existed because of the river. Our forebears had floated logs down it to be hacked into boards…
Haunted Passages: “Black Magic,” a short story by Karen Petersen

A runaway hippo, typhoid fever, and a charge of theft had not figured in my plans for a tranquil seed collecting expedition in East Africa. I had flown to Nairobi to do some work for a botanical garden and write up a story about it for a national publication. While there, I was going to…
“Emotional Resonances”: Jesi Buell Chats with Tariq Shah about His Debut Novel Whiteout Conditions (Two Dollar Radio)

Tariq Shah’s Whiteout Conditions is a slim book that, by centering on death, allows its protagonist to explore life. Ant, the main character, is back in town for a funeral in the middle of winter. As he wanders through his hometown and its memories, Shah leads us through a taut exploration of grief, masculinity, and revenge…
“Accidental and Inevitable”: Marcus Pactor Talks to Christian TeBordo about His Short Story Collection Ghost Engine

Christian TeBordo’s Ghost Engine has everything I always want from a short story collection. These pieces are darkly humorous, formally inventive, oddly angled, and full of hard, electric prose. It deservedly won the inaugural Bridge Eight Press Prize, and it probably deserved to win a few other prizes too. It is one of the best…
Haunted Passages: “Maxwell House’s Demon,” a short story by J. Thomas Murphy

She woke up to the rain and a vague sense of unease. The unease she attributed to the melancholy weather. The rain was nothing new. She started as usual: eating quickly, dressing slowly, letting the morning contain its own patterns and rhythms that she knew the rest of the day could not conform to. On…
Haunted Passages: “Derek, Ricky, Umar, Gael,” a short story by Jackie Sizemore

The first ghost law was supposed to get everybody on better terms with their resident ghosts, but whoever wrote that didn’t know my newest roommate, Amber. Amber is a four-and-a-half foot tall teenage ghost that blew into my apartment two months ago. The whole apocalypse thing was a while back, but everybody knows there are…
“When the Chicken Slowly Cooks You Back,” a short story for Flavor Town USA by Harrison Cook

When my grandpa was on the farm, she snapped around one thousand chicken necks and in one day killed, boiled, and dressed over one hundred chickens by herself. Word travels fast in small town Iowa; hops county to county and before long my grandma, or more so the image of the frenzied farm wife snapping…