Fiction from Josh Denslow
Photo: Rock’n Roll Monkey Gravy Boat When Melanie’s grandma died, we got every last bit of her crockery and cutlery and an entire village of creepy figurines made of porcelain. I assumed it would go to the storage space along with the remaining vestiges of my old life, but suddenly we were incorporating these garish […]
Fiction from Emma Rose Gowans
Photo: Mahkeo I Left the Desert I’m calling mi padre on the old blue landline. I read a conspiracy theory once that our private conversations are secretly recorded as soon as we begin a call. That’s how the FBI tracks landlines—how everything you say on a landline is fair game because that’s how landlines work […]
Fiction from Kaylie Saidin
Photo: Autumn Studio Cate Lucas Cate Lucas stopped coming to class in junior year of high school and everyone wondered what happened to her. We went to a small school, and of course, people talked. She sat next to me in math during the second semester of my sophomore year. I let her borrow my […]
Fiction from M. P. McCune
Photo: Pixel2013 Reminders Most of the living ignore the sheer volume of those who preceded them the way city dwellers never look up at the skyscrapers surrounding them, because it would make them feel small by comparison. But she feels the weight of the dead everywhere. She started haunting them by accident when she was […]
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 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 […]
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