Tag: Fiction

Fiction: Andrea Kneeland’s “Side Effects”

Scene 73: Check-in When no one is looking, I pry nails from the wall with my bare hands and I tuck these in my pockets. When they ask if I have any sharp objects with me, I hand them the nails. I got them here I say. They were in your wall I say, which…
Fiction: “Roll for Damage” by Hannah Thurman

We cared deeply that people thought we didn’t care what people thought about us. We all wore black T-shirts during Spirit Week’s “white T-shirt day.” Of course we all had black T-shirts. As members of Carmichael High School’s Sci-fi Club (pronounced “skiffee”), we printed our own black T-shirts each fall with the year on them…
Fiction: “Almost Like Children” by Erika T. Wurth

Cary was a small town Indian girl. Her eyes were wide, black and slanted. Her hair long and orangey brown. Years ago, her mother had come to Idaho Springs to be with her father, but she was gone. Cary’s mother was Chickasaw and nobody knew anything about her, not even Cary’s father. Sam, however, lived…
Fiction: “Correcting President Barnes” by Kelly Ann Jacobson

We called him The Editor. He arrived from the sky—black briefcase in hand, suit cinched tightly at the neck with a black tie—and after a flawless landing on the roof, entered the building in a few short, purposeful strides. He looked like a man, and if you touched his skin, he would feel like a…
Four Fictions from Fun Camp: Gabe Durham

One Camper per Deck Chair One deck chair per camper. No running around the pool except during barefoot poolside relays. Don’t rub your eyes when you get chlorine burn. All swimmers must first pass the Deep-End Test, which is ten questions, true or false, regarding the history of the deep end. During Sharks n’ Minnows,…
Two Fictions by Luke Geddes

At the Book Reading Petals of light from the disco ball lick the author’s forehead. The venue double-booked, a velvet rope is all that separates the reading from a junior high school dance. The men and women of the audience sit in folding chairs, the men on one side, the women on the other. No…
Fiction: Alex Myers’ “In the Dark”

The pots simmered on the stove, and NPR babbled through their steam, cadenced voices delivering the day’s news in careful clips. James felt good, better than he had for months, better than he’d felt since Dennis had gone to his ashram or whatever. He peeled carrots, swept the spirals of skin into the trash bin,…
Fiction: Faith Gardner’s “Moonburn”

I’d never heard of moonburn either before I got one. My skin’s pale as dinnerware. I’ve been mistaken for a ghost on foggy nights, sent passersby sprinting and screaming in opposing directions. My paleness is serious. Hair and brows, too. Even my eyes are water-blue, which means hardly blue at all. The suggestion of blue. The night I got moonburned,…
Fiction: David Tomaloff’s “The Brother Pact”

On this day we find a brother. This brother is a brother in a bathtub quietly bathing. An unlocked door on the second story & a window open to the smell of a father pressing cheap cuts into a charred black grill. We find also on this day this brother’s brother. A one-boy militia, this…