Category: Fiction

SPLIT UNIT by Ryan Bender-Murphy

For so long, the first thing I’d see in the morning was Gabby, her head against the pillow, and it was enough to complete the day. I didn’t need to look at anyone else or go anywhere else; I could simply go back to sleep. But whenever I woke and saw her, I thought I…
ONCE, THERE WAS HOME, by Karla Hirsch

once, there was time, there were moments that made up your life, there were hours and minutes, a morning’s routine, the bitter coffee you brewed in the copper pot you had longer than you could remember, mixed the hot liquid with sugar and spices, let it fill you awake to prepare you to journey to…
THE GATEWAY by Laura Wolf Benziker

Mina, in the passenger seat, was lulled by the vibration of the car. Her skull knocked against the tempered glass in a not-unpleasant way. Her eyelids sank and darkened, then flicked open every few minutes. She saw exotic colors: swaths of glowing terra cotta, deep violet shadows, a sky so blue she only half recognized…
RUN by Katherine Vondy

There is a room at the end of my hallway. Its door is always shut. Shut, but not locked. Inside the room there is a girl. Fifteen, dirty-blond hair, thin. Most of the time she lies on the bed, headphones on, listening to something with lyrics, mouthing vaguely along. She holds a pen against the…
THE JUNIPER 3 by Trudy Lewis

No one even remembered our dad’s sad song until Tate brought it back on TikTok. The angst and the ecstasy. The emo vocals and the math rock chord progressions. The long and whining bridge between curt, accusatory verses. My mother killed me My father ate me My sister gathered up my bones I’d heard it…
FALL FOR IT by Claire Hopple

After they escort us out, we are told to wait here. The here being a square of sidewalk. If you could see the two of us on this sidewalk square. Trying to maintain appearances. It’s a delicate operation. A heavy quiet. Some convenience store employees switch off who gets to peer out the window at…
GIFTS by Samantha Neugebauer

Marie and Ms. Simpkin’s unexpected meeting on the park’s northwest corner got their lunch off to a bad start. Neither felt quite ready to commit themselves to conversation, yet what else could they do? They would need to proceed around the gated park and down Irving Place together as if the ten minutes of solitude…
NEVER ENOUGH by Dustin M. Hoffman

April worked Hector’s hair into pigtail braids. “I fucking love you,” she said and then hated herself for sounding cheesy as bullshit TV, like burnt sugar on her tongue. She’d unplug every TV, yank a million miles of cable wires, just so she could be the only one saying stupid things. She finished the second…
DOG by Jade Song

Taihu’s dense clouds roll along its shores like mini roiling hurricanes, their unfriendly eyes trained on Sengru, who hops nimbly from one flat stone to the next, his own eyes scrutinizing the ground, searching for gongshi. Visibility along the lake is poor today, but he is intimate with these paths, could even leap the rocky…
AXOLOTL BY ANTHONY GOMEZ III

When wildlife conservationists released a dozen axolotls into the waterways in an abandoned town not far from Guadalajara, they were surprised to see the pink salamanders swim within the water for less than a minute. The endangered creatures jumped out of the pool on their own. Eleven of them moved to the side and chose…
BLOODY AVENUE by Isabella Jetten

I’ve been followed around by a younger version of myself since I was sixteen. She wears a pink cotton dress, white, buckled sandals, and a Ghostface mask she cycles blood through using a piping mechanism in her left hand, making the white face drip red. As we trudge down Inkberry Avenue, I ignore the breath-like…
WET OR DRY by Naomi Silverman

It’s raining, and I’m in my car because there’s somewhere for me to go. The sound is nice for me, and nice for my car. She purrs, and I purr back to her. It’s funny that I describe us this way—we are going to get my cat. She’ll be my cat now, although she has…