Tag: Fiction

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…
Fiction: Robert Duncan Gray’s “Helen”

Helen is dead. We used to have sex. We had three types of sex. The type of sex we had most often was mediocre sex. The type of sex we had second most often was bad sex. The type of sex we had very rarely was good sex. When we had good sex, it was…
Fiction: Patrick Kelling’s “78 Facts About a Resident of Wabash Landing”

1. You change the side you’re sleeping on only when you feel the mattress folding around you. 2. In the fall you fish for spiders that may be living in your Sorels. 3. In the summer you bathe in the lake. 4. The first car you owned was a ’sixty-four Beatle that never started twice…
Fiction: Excerpt from Knotty, Knotty, Knotty by Joshua Kornreich

You could hear it buzzing throughout the house. It was a small house, our house. It had an upstairs and a downstairs, but it was a small house, regardless. You could hear any sound from any room inside the house if you listened hard enough. The nanny’s girl couldn’t hear jack no matter hard she…
Fiction: Matthew Dexter’s “The Ant Colony”

Charles climbs the hill above fat camp and watches the children running between orange cones on the manicured lawns, tiny as insects, limbs jiggling in slow-motion, coaches and counselors screaming obscenities through their megaphones. Fire ants climb Charles’ socks, sting the blond hairs above his ankles. He brushes them from the elastic, slaps them dead…
Fiction: Jamie Iredell’s “Killing the Sax”

The Fat Kid and the Fat Kid’s daddy and the Fat Kid’s buddies sat at the bar watching the football game when the saxophone came in. Nick said, Aw, fuck. Cooter grunted. They all shifted a barstool toward the Pabst clock, toward the television, hoping the saxophone wouldn’t start blowing. Their hopes dashed, for that’s…