Fictional Worlds

by Cornelia Fick Aunt Janet choked on her beer, and then wagged a finger at her husband, Ted. “I hope the worms eat you ragged, you swine. I hope they start on your soft parts.” “That was uncalled …

by Sebnem Sanders Ivy fascinated Ivan. English, with prominent white or yellow-green veins. Boston, with a reddish bronze colour in the spring, and bright, deep green during summer, turning to shad…

by Sandra Arnold Serafina slipping out the gate at playtime. Running home to show her mother the star. Her first star. Bright and shiny on the page at the bottom of her story. Right next to THE END…

by Nicholas Day Tom’s nipples had bled right through his shirt. Embarrassment is why he now insisted on running before dawn and why he placed Band-Aids over his areolas. Vanity brought him to the m…

by David Cook “Try some,” Dad says. “It’ll make you smart.” I shake my head and look disgusted. “My Dad,” he tells me, “ate his earwax, and his Dad before him, and they were very brainy men. Rememb…

by CR Smith Alfred leapt from the train and weaved his way through the cobbled streets until he reached the King’s Head. After purchasing a book of matches from the waif outside, he pushed his way …

by David Swann I found him fumbling along the corridor in the last café before the Scar. He was an Asian guy in baggy shorts and clomping boots. Boisterous. Middle-aged. What you might call a chara…

by Louise Mangos Amidst the acrid smell of chemical dyes and dusty elements of overheated hairdryers, I am looking forward to an hour of pampering. I lean back against the faux-leather headrest, an…

by Matthew Licht There are worse jobs than booze delivery. Many Beverly Hills Liquors’ customers who ordered in were movie stars reluctant to venture out into the human world. Once, I delivered ten…

by Michelle Ross Bea presented to her classmates a drawing of an ancient Egyptian priest inserting a long bronze hook through a corpse’s nose. The task of the hook was to smash and dislodge brain m…

by Charmaine Wilkerson His mistake, he thought, later. He’d sent a lengthy text message to the other homeowners, asking them not to flick cigarette ash off their balconies, where, down below, the b…

by Andrew Stancek The hospice in Lamac, a Bratislava suburb, has seen better times. The carnations on Vlasta’s side table drooped and the hall reeked of cheap institutional disinfectant which in sp…

by Paul Beckman I wear hearing aids even though my hearing is perfect. I wear them to keep from hearing all the sounds, voices, animal noises and whispers that fight each other for my attention. Fo…

by Tara Campbell It was another damn cottage, another damn grandmother, frail and helpless, waiting for a handout sent via grandchild. The wolf knocked, ate the grandmother, choking down her string…

by Charlie Bilton The opening bars to Band on the Run hiss from the van’s tinny little radio, breaking the dream I had last night. Roy keeps it tuned religiously to a reliable MOR station that actu…

by Kyle Hemmings Biff can’t shake off his imaginary lovers. Three to be exact. Nor can they all live harmoniously under the same roof. When he worships at the temple, the greedy redhead named Sasha…

by Kevin Tosca The boy waved the map and said he’d take me wherever I wanted to go. I didn’t want to go anywhere in particular. I never do. He stopped waving the map and asked me for money, held ou…

by Mark Westmoreland It was the middle of the night and someone was at the door. They were banging, hollering, and louder’n hell. I was floating at the bottom of a bottle of Woodford and not as dru…