Flash fiction. by Dec 2, 202312:05 pm

Ice Houses by Zary Fekete

The pilot talked over the in-cabin speakers, and I mostly let it wash over me. Those of you sitting on the sun-side of the craft, please keep the windows darkened. In the event of a sub-orbital flight-failure, blue lights on the floor will illuminate the path to the eject capsules. Etc. Etc. The only time my ears perked up was when she mentioned the approach toward Saturn. This would be the longest flight I had taken so far, and I wanted to hear the recommended gravity settings.

I looked out the window as the craft took off, and, in the split second before the acceleration into the slip-space portal, I saw several white lakes dotted around Duluth come into view in the distance, their waters frozen in the dead of January, variously peppered with little black ice-fishing houses. I smiled. In my mind I saw a young boy, holding his father’s hand as they walked across the frozen surface toward their ice-house.

Flash fiction. by Dec 2, 202312:04 pm

The Train at Platform Seven is Calling at all Stations by Joyce Bingham

The repetition of my commuter journey lulled me and took my mind to distant shores, but muscle memory kept my feet on the right path. As every morning I wondered how I got here, remembering nothing of my way. A cold fog swirled, swiping at my ankles as I entered the wide station concourse.

I headed for the usual platform, the first train of the day, busy and teaming with stress, leaching out of the seats and into the air like the haze on a marsh. People streamed through the ticket barrier, carrying cups of coffee, hauling luggage and trailing their anxiety behind them. The herd moved to the next platform, the clomping heels and squeaking wheels diminished, only I walked to platform seven.

Fiction by Dec 2, 202312:03 pm

Burying the Dead by Abigail Seltzer

There was some confusion about where Carole should sit. She had ordered five low mourners’ chairs, but the rabbi (who had stayed far too long as it was) explained yet again that Jewish law did not permit ex-wives to sit on mourner’s chairs, even if they had been married to the deceased for nearly thirty years. She could, if she wanted, sit near her ex-brother-in-law and her daughters, but not next to them. She was only there as a comforter of mourners, not as a mourner. As he put on his high black hat to leave, he reminded her to cover her mirrors, as was required for a house of mourning.

‘All the mirrors,’ he added, with the air of a man who knew a rule-breaker when he saw one.

Fiction by Dec 2, 202312:00 pm

Head Above Clouds by J.T. Ruiter

“I saw polar bears tumbling into a cloud-filled crater,” I told him. “As if going into the clouds of heaven–but down, instead of up.

“I had this feeling in my dream that my friends were worried,” I went on. “But me? I don’t know what I felt. Elation, maybe. Excitement. Kinship. The clouds were so dense, white-tailed deer galloped on them. There were rabbits, too. All manner of animals–anything but human–making their pilgrimage to it: a wide, lonely crater.”

“Yea, uh-huh,” he said. “That’s a weird dream, Perry.”

Fiction by Dec 2, 202311:58 am

Foul Mountain by Olga Dauer

Paul Stanton disappeared on a hot Thursday afternoon in July, quietly and without trouble. His executive assistant assumed he was out to lunch, taking down messages from three clients and directing one partner to call back later. But later came, and all that remained of Paul was his striped blue suit jacket, dutifully hugging the back of his tufted leather chair.

The letter arrived three weeks later. When Paul’s wife Jane saw the address on the envelope, she told herself that in order to stay on her feet for as long as she needed to, she had to come up with a plan. First, Jane decided that she’d get in touch with Officer Kinsley at the police station. She thought about how she’d say it – does one request to cancel a missing person report? Rescind it? Or would the mere mention of the letter arriving from Foul Mountain be enough? After that, she’d call her sister. Formulating these next steps in her head helped Jane momentarily delay the gravity of the news she held in her shaking hands, giving her just enough time to walk from the mailbox to the porch, find her keys, and close the door behind her as she slid down to the floor.

Flash fiction. by Oct 7, 202310:46 am

Weeds are Just Plants in Places They’re Not Wanted by JP Relph

Trying to thrive in hostile places; unwanted, despised. Some are brazen, resolute in their right to be. Bursting from cracks and last year’s baskets, slithering through flowerbeds like venomous snakes. Others are timid, quietly seeding in shadowy hollows, in long grass. Hiding their delicate leaves, their pale flowers. Trying to live unseen, be unobtrusive. Trying to live.

Fiction by Oct 7, 202310:45 am

The Presage by Ken Foxe

I never tell anybody about my gift. Nobody really wants to know when they are going to die. I remember when I first happened upon it, not something I’m ever likely to forget. I was thirteen years old, a gawky schoolboy with all that entails, rebellious, playing at being a man, ready to fight with anybody, most especially my parents. I was at Heuston Station, about to catch a train to what seemed at the time like escape, three weeks of freedom in an Irish-language school in West Cork.

As I was about to board, my mother insisted on hugging me and in that moment, I could see it all vividly. The white rental car that my father was driving, the pilgrim coast road, the metal of the crash barrier giving way, a tumbling, and the wreck on the rocks below. Mammy watched my dad die, wondering if she might survive, but she didn’t.

Fiction by Oct 7, 202310:44 am

Father’s Acrylic Gunshot by Jazeen Hollings

My father’s finger nail bed, picked raw from worry, would’ve hugged the trigger of the gun. After hesitating, maybe not, the finger would’ve curled shut. The gun would’ve erupted, its bullet would’ve split his temple. No matter how long he had planned to end his life, even he couldn’t have escaped the surprise of death, which would have eventually trickled away, the deep crease of his brown unfurling, finally soft.

It had probably been a moan not a shot. A tired exhale.

This is what I thought of, in the middle of the quiet and dark hospital room, as I cradled my newborn son.

Creative non-fiction by Oct 7, 202310:43 am

Big, Big World by Michelle Li

It begins with you.

Our story starts in the year 2002. You had just turned 25 years old. You were young and so beautiful (you still are) that you were often mistaken as the actress Joey Wong by passersby. It’s late September, and the leaves are starting to fall. They crunch beneath your black boots and luggage bags as you walk toward the airport terminal. The wind tangles itself through your hair and blows past your jacket. The air is cold, filled with pollution and thick smoke. You cannot see the sun.