Fiction

33 Fragments of Sick-Sad Living

Fiction by Brian Alan Ellis

Later you sat on your bed and, mesmerized by the intestinal goop she’d left for you, drank an entire bottle of wine, which is how much wine it took to even consider removing such remnants. Regardless, her mess had to go. So with moth-bitten Sisters of Mercy tour shirt in hand, you attacked, and were struck with the abrupt urge to taste the opaque puddle. (It didn’t smell; the alcohol had impaired your senses, either making you braver or stupider or both.) So you knelt down close—tongue outstretched—looking like some crazy. »

Neptune Frightens The Children

Fiction by Wythe Marschall

The order went: Rico said he saw it, then Jamie, then Jameel, Malika’s cousin who lived in Maspeth. Over the next month, they talked to each other about it—at Minny’s or the Hacienda or Jamie’s house—and confirmed the details, so they figured it must be true. For one, Rico never lied, not to them, not about paint, and for another, the yard was close to Queens, so it figured Jameel would’ve seen it—he was obsessed with geography, with the good walls and the spots no cops would drive by. They had all just found about this new yard, and Josie hadn’t gone yet. They all wanted to tell Josie about the problem right away, but it was just too hard, because Josie’s whole life revolved around paint. He was like the little ball-bearing inside the can that shakes up the paint, that lives forever in paint. He didn’t just write ZEUS—he was. »

Re: Margaret

by Maria DeLorenzo

The dream was scandalous. She is amazed at her own synapses, sprawling on that surface. It makes her blush. She deletes the dream. Empties the dumpster so no trace can be found of it. But of course there is a record kept somewhere in the master hard drive. Somebody is reading it. She imagines the mechanizations of the brain receiving; maybe her dream has an immediate effect on him. She imagines him, in some dark corner office, the daily toil, and then a flicker, his left eye glitches, he pauses the rapid filing and lingers a moment, imagining the exquisite brain responsible for the transmission. He shifts in his seat, his pants suddenly too tight. She. »

The Forest at Night

by Maria Romasco-Moore
That night the moon was so bright we didn’t need a flashlight. It fell in bars across the path, cut by the trees into thin ghosts. By these we saw our way. We saw the path in stages, segments, brief flashes amid the darkness.
The beach fizzled softly and the leaves fell with a. »

Racket

by Jason Cook
That Don Henley song is playing and all the guys at the bar in their navy pea coats with collars popped high up are cheering and ordering beer in bottles not on tap and the girls at their shoulders look like vampires showing their white teeth behind candy red lips. They chant over. »

Acquitted

by Jessica Bodford
The cell was cold.
It was always so, but as she stared out from behind her long bangs she wondered whether it was the darkness that seemed to bring with it yet another surge of icy misery. With a shudder, she buried her face farther beyond her crossed arms until she felt her knees. »

Camp Green Cove for Girls

Fiction by Julia Phillips

The old man’s dog kept barking. I called to Alex and we swam to each other and kissed, our mouths tasting like lake water. The dog swam over too and circled us… “Anya?” I called. She shouted, “This is the first really crazy thing I have ever done!”. »

Get Your Head Out of that Oven

Emma Komlos-Hrobsky

Zoe Banks wasn’t particularly surprised when her mother, Adelaide, casually mentioned at the end of August that Zoe had both applied and been accepted to. »