Tag: Fiction

“We Sink Like Ships,” a story by Chelsea Laine Wells

This is what I learned: in the seconds after death, do nothing. Hold still and let it beat past into permanence because in the seconds after death everything is flayed open to the softest nerve-strung tissue and any move you make, any word you say, anything you touch will live forever on the end of…
“Everything Is Good Here, Too”: Fiction by Jen Michalski

Your sister calls. You rent a car and come as soon as you can. Grass peeks between sidewalk squares outside your mother’s house, squares no longer able to hold the chalk of your hopscotch, of your sunflowers and stick figure ribbon-haired girls. A water-rotted shingle, a twisted drainpipe, hint at chaos within. A collective wheeze,…
Fiction: Miles Klee’s “The Milkman’s Exhaustion”

Conventionally handsome, but why the fuss over that? He’s nothing special, nothing unique. There exist a million men who have his kind of beauty. Perhaps that’s why it is in such high demand. His truck runs perfectly, never stalls. Purrs at the curb like a big dumb cat. Milk bottles clink in his milk bottle…
Two Stories from Gary Oldman Is a Building You Must Walk Through, a novel by Forrest Roth

The Signature of a Gentle Man As Sid Vicious You and I stare at the signature of the Gary Oldman your famous sister met in Los Angeles. That is: the handwriting your famous sister procured with or without the real Gary Oldman, which, at first, appears to be independent of an ordinary human hand—if there…
Fiction: Andrew D. Hwang’s “Race to the Finish”

I should never have gotten stuck on the team with Jerry, Race, and Donnybrook. We didn’t know any of the same people, never saw eye to eye. Jerry was an oily creep. Race carried a photographer’s gray scale in his back pocket, pulled it out constantly to judge human worth. Donnybrook was expert at nothing…
“Mouth Light,” a story by Ben Segal

The shape of his teeth formed a border and strangers crowded gladly. It was nice but Eric’s jaw hurt. Then darkness, bowing, handshake lines. Eric’s smile was tight-lipped but real. He’d be off again before light. He traveled mostly to the boring parts, unloved towns and shacks in factory shadows, other exurban depression sinks. It…
Fiction: Timmy Reed’s “Minutes from Meeting of Afterdeath Board of Directors”

Minutes from Meeting of Afterdeath Board of Directors 12:00 PM January 1, 2012 Thin Gray Wrinkle In Between Spaces (Room #0) Attending: Skeletons, wights, high and low gods, sense of desperate loss (DESPAIR), TIME, decaying globs of flesh, beetles, worms. Death attended via conference call. Presenters included Lipsticked Fetus and Waxed Tentacle of the Soul…
Fiction: Three Thought Experiments by Ron Burch

Thought Experiment 1 You are a white person. You have never been in trouble with law enforcement. You are driving to work. A police car pulls you over. You remove your driver license and registration. Over their loudspeaker, a police officer demands that you put your hands in the air. Both officers have their guns…
Fiction: “Kirk and Anna Lee Just Disagree” by Vic Sizemore

After Anna Lee told her husband Ridvan she was leaving him, he got himself transferred back home to Meadow Green. To try and work things out. Suddenly he was no longer gone weeks at a time, but was always fucking home, always trying to get them to do things as a goddamned family. It was…