Fiction from Xenia Taiga
Photo: Schanin The Trampoline Sissies The Trampoline Sissies like to go braless and wear short skirts. They live in a neighborhood where all the houses’ exteriors look alike. Just before dusk they go outside to their backyards and jump on their trampolines. One forearm is squashed-flat over their boobies and their left hand is tightly […]
Fiction from Sarah Priscus
Photo: Annie Spratt How to Remember What It’s Like to Be a 9-Year-Old Girl 1: After dinner is over and you’ve eaten all the chicken fingers and green beans that your stomach can handle, clear your plate. Retreat to your bedroom and shut the door behind you. Don’t listen to hear if Mom and Dad […]
Fiction from Giancarlo Riccobon
Photo: Ankush Minda Congratulations “Congratulations,” she says. If you say, “Congrats, yourself,” and jiggle the tassel on your cap, she’ll say, “Not your diploma. I mean congrats on the—you know.” If you pretend you don’t know, she’ll stroke the bulge under your black gown (Maternity-Size). If you recoil and say, “Careful!” she’ll say, “I just […]
Fiction from Sarah “Sam” Saltiel
Photo: Vuitton Lim A Line by Line Translation of Last Night (1) I’d been feeling antsy, been stuck at home too long and all that. I wanted to get my body into motion before I became some sedentary organic matter crumbling into my couch. . . . . . (2) I took myself out […]
Fiction from Eric Andrew Newman
Photo by Krista Mangulsone Shit House Here you are on your hands and knees again, cleaning shit off the bathroom floor. It’s a messy business, so you strip down until you’re only wearing your boxer shorts and a pair of canary yellow rubber gloves. You pick up the woven blue bath mat, splattered with Jackson […]
Fiction from Madeline Anthes
Photo by Milada Vigerova I May Never Be Clean Again Oh, Mother, forgive me, I may never be clean again. I know the words. I heard them whispered over paper napkins and squeezed hands. I heard them as my knees bruised and I pressed my hands into steeples in front of my chest. I heard […]
Fiction from Tess Walsh
Photo by Daniil Kuželev Dandelions We came to Vermont to heal; that’s what the website had promised our parents. Written word therapy sounded just academic enough for us to hold onto our good girl titles. It wasn’t rehab; it was gentler than that. Our problems were gentler than that. The driveway was gravel and the […]
Fiction from Melissa Goode
Photo by Tim Mossholder Pretenders The water rushes to our feet, creeping up our ankles, and disappears again. Gravity shifts, the ground flying away from beneath us. I lean on your arm. It is the first time I have touched you in ninety-six days and the blood surges below your skin. It does. What I […]
Fiction from Lee Hamblin
Photo by rawpixel In-Locked-Out Asleep Soft fingers brush across my forehead like whispers of love. A voice. A man’s voice, yes, tranquil, yes, but only on the surface. I know you can hear me, he says. Footsteps approach. The hand pulls away sharply. The same voice, though now turned elsewhere and unmasked. They ran a […]
Fiction from Amy Lee Lillard
Photo by Federico Beccari Pretty Girls Make Graves . HER “Rosie.” In a message of static, the name was clear. “Rosie.” Forty nine seconds, the message ran. From an unknown number with a distant area code. When I first played it, on the way to the small cabin off Route 84, I was only half-listening. […]
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