Fiction by Dec 3, 202210:53 am

Kepler-186f by Reba Elliott

Kepler-186f was the first planet of a similar size to Earth to be found orbiting in the habitable zone of its star. It is a rocky planet, which probably has some liquid water, and it is in the constellation of Cygnus, the swan. A day on Kepler-186f could be weeks or months long. Its star is dim – the brightest it gets at noon is as bright as our sun an hour before sunset. The red star might mean that plants using photosynthesis are red instead of green.

No one followed me out here. I looked back every ten feet or so to make sure I wasn’t being followed, and then I doubled back through the long, rusty grass and into the swampy woods for a little while for good measure. Not that I was doing anything wrong, I just wanted to be alone. Ever since the earthquakes started, alone time was hard to come by, and to be quite honest it was driving me crazy. I know, I know, we are blessed to be able to serve those who have lost more than my family did, those who lost their homes and their family members and came rushing to the coast to escape the fires, the destruction and the unpredictable ground-shaking. But I needed a break. We all need a break sometimes.

Poetry by Dec 3, 202210:52 am

North was Zero by Amber Kennedy

Time ploughs through,
straight as a waterfall
gravity condemned.

Space splays out,
tumbles toys in tsunamis,
chokes where sun meets sand.

Flash fiction. by Dec 3, 202210:52 am

The Metrics of a Day by Alice Wilson

Today I walked six thousand and thirty-nine (6,039) steps which I appraised as ‘acceptable’.

I consumed five hundred and thirty-one (531) calories for breakfast in the eating of one bagel (254) with cream cheese (100) and smoked salmon (177).

I shed twelve (12) tears whilst crying on the phone to my dad about the fundamental question: “Am I willing to be hurt in the same way by this person again?”, which I resented but had to concede was #growth.

Fiction by Dec 3, 202210:51 am

Blue Earth: A Memory Merchant Story by Frank T. Sikora

Winter 1959

The Memory Merchant cursed his fate: A mixture of ice and snowpack covered the road. What should have been a 12-hour drive took almost 24 hours with tires that had seen better days. The old truck’s brakes weren’t better, screeching with every skidding stop. The pickup also needed new spark plugs and a timing belt. He suspected the ball joints were hanging by a thread or whatever ball joints hung by.

Essay by Dec 3, 202210:50 am

Eternal Wager by Josh Rank

“Why do you do that?”

I turned around, halfway up the stairs, and pretended I didn’t know what he was talking about.

“Do what?”

“Slap your leg?”

We were in his basement, which had a same-leg staircase.

“Wanna play horse?” I asked.

He paused for a second, and then said, “Sure,” before running past me up the stairs.

I don’t know how it started, these little games. But they still linger. The initial motivation might be gone, but they’re worn in place. Products of habit. Annoying tics that my wife can’t stand.

Fiction by Dec 3, 202210:50 am

Placebo by Andreas Smith

We didn’t expect her to be much fun and we were right – she wasn’t. Not that any of us blamed her: she had been through a lot and was destined to go through a lot more over the following year. All this while she herself was getting … well, getting less and less. It was right, though, that our hosts, Ann and Bradley, invited her to our annual Christmas get-together, along with the usual crew: me, of course, then Dana and Emory, and Ann’s oldest friend, going all the way back to secondary school, George, the homeopath, therefore the only one among us who did anything ‘interesting’, that is, out of the ordinary run of professional occupations that people like us normally follow: an accountant, an advertising art director, a doctor, and a sports and talent agent, that sort of thing.

Fiction by Dec 3, 202210:49 am

Full Stop at the End of the World by J.S. Watts

Mavis Tuddenham couldn’t remember when she first realised the world was shrinking – really realised that it was really, actually shrinking, to be precise. Mavis always liked to be accurate about things.

She couldn’t recall any indication whatsoever of a diminishment in its size during her childhood and early adulthood. The world just was, and the universe, well, that was even bigger, mind bogglingly bigger, so mind bogglingly bigger that your mind couldn’t grasp just how humungously big it actually was, however hard you tried.

Fiction by Dec 3, 202210:49 am

Changes by Vanessa Santos

The train ride had been long and tedious. Evelyn, muscles sore and on the brink of falling asleep right where she stood, dragged herself along the cobbled stones without paying her surroundings any notice. Claude had seemed high-spirited on the train, doing his utmost to draw her excitement out, but now he, too, was quiet. It was dusk and the day had been dull and grey, so that darkness was not so much falling as thickening, expanding to kill the last hints of light. The town was quiet, the sound of the suitcase wheels dragging on the pavement the only thing they could hear. There was no one in sight as they navigated the narrow streets, seemingly twisting themselves deeper into the heart of the small town.

Flash fiction. by Dec 3, 202210:48 am

Karl’s Hellmouth by Jonathan Gourlay

The backyard s’mores party for the neighborhood kids on the last day of school was the perfect time for Karl to show off his new fire pit. The pit was tubular, silver, and more than a little phallic. Smoke got sucked into the sides of the contraption and kept it from the women’s hair and clothes. (Which, Karl thought, they would appreciate and compliment him for.) Karl could see his convex reflection on its’ shiny, perfectly smooth surface. What a man he was.

It was one of those backyard parties where, in a movie, everyone would start sex-swinging or be secretly in a coven or perhaps be complex robots unaware of their own nature. It was the way of the suburbs to imagine that the exotic and chaotic lurked beneath the quotidian surface. The blandness was sinister. Like, clearly sinister, evil, horrible, a desecration of the earth itself to live like they did — destroying large swaths of prairie to install big box stores, extra wide parking spaces, and identikit houses that wanly gestured toward an imagined, vaguely feudal, European, past that was pure fantasy. Yet people fled here from the city because they felt it was safe for their children.