1926 Washington, D.C. Shaw District   “There’s a man on the front stoop.” The words spilled from her in a much more mundane way than Judy had expected, considering how her neck was fluttering with her excited pulse. Alvin looked up from the new Langston Hughes poetry collection he was reading under the lamp in […]

The thirty-third annual convention for the Lefthand Metro Worm Cosplayers Club was, not surprisingly, ruined by drama. Helk, the convention committee chair, was a micromanager, which meant that they weren’t allowing anyone else to do anything. And that meant nothing got done. Including arrangements with the venue they’d been working with for the past twenty […]

The country was at just over ten thousand deaths the morning that the door appeared. On Kosmo’s phone NPR was interviewing a doctor with a nasal voice about the need for social distancing, while Kosmo himself collected empty cans from around his home office. They were everywhere. Walls of recyclable cans dominated his room. Just […]

“Ambition!” Trevor emphasized, rapping knuckles hard on the wood table. “That is what makes the great men!” He took a satisfied swallow from his mug. Across from him, Barnaby put down the daily he’d been reading and sipped from his own beer. Pulling out a handkerchief to dab froth from his lips, he scratched thoughtfully […]

What does wanderlust mean when you’re a ghost? Find out by joining Darcie Little Badger’s wonderfully intrepid Corey and Jimena on the road. ~ Julian and Fran, April 2, 2023 Those Hitchhiking Kids By Darcie Little Badger They hadn’t died while hitchhiking, and ghosts couldn’t own a car, but Corey and Jimena shared the condition of wanderlust, so something had to be done. In high school, they’d ditch class to bus-hop through Houston, losing themselves in mazes of hot streets. Death hadn’t extinguished the urge to travel without aim, although it made the process trickier, more frustrating.

“Darling,” Hades says one evening as the two of them are curled up on the couch, “I love you, but we can’t live like this.” “Hmm?” Persephone glances up from her Macbook. At her feet, Perennial Gra…

Santa goes down the list, pushing the team relentlessly across the black. Little girl after little girl, little boy after little boy, absent, vanished into the emptiness of the old, dying, dead uni…

Today, the first of August, there was something more interesting to watch than the usual Superfortress parade. Word was out that General Le May wanted to take the 509th's mission away from it. Thei…

Much like Ishmael, I have experienced a fair number of damp, drizzly Novembers in my soul. And I, too, have required a strong moral principle to prevent me from stepping into the street and methodically knocking people’s hats off. But unlike Ishmael, I can’t quietly take to sea because my lunch break is only forty-five […]

People have no idea how much of themselves they can slough off. Every night, I clean oodles of ttae—exfoliated skin cells, rolled up into crescent doughs. They lap about in the Hot Springs; merge into foamy scums. I skim them with my net; run new water through the pools. When the baths brim again with […]

The planet of the worms is a cold, barren, sunless place. The worms do not think. They feel nothing but hunger, and so they eat. They eat through the planet’s surface. They eat through the planet’s molten core. Over time, the planet grows speckled and spongelike, riddled with tunnels and holes. But the worms don’t […]

If you were to drive to my sister Violet’s house today, you would find yourself at a very different place from the one I encountered on my first trip. The road up the mountain has been paved, for one thing, to make it more accessible to the tourists who now support it. Back then if […]

Aden had never once forgotten his gear for bulk trash day, but he found it touching that Nura still taped a monthly reminder note on the door from the kitchen to the garage. Sweet of her to remember, given how exhausted med school had her these days. He ducked out to the garage to toss […]

Content Note: All Possible Warnings Apply click here for full note Warnings: violence, incest, cannibalism, fratricide, attempted infanticide just as in the original…   Children don’t generally assume their father will abandon them to die in the snow. But under certain circumstances, they might get an inkling. If their mother had died the year before, […]

Ellie Mathieu can tell when the Big Easy arrives by the smell of its engine.

Andrew was convinced the writer had been trans. By this point his friends were tired of hearing about it, but he had no one else to tell besides the internet, and he was too smart for that. That wo…

Author’s Note: I’ve taken liberties here somewhat with both place and time so that the rise of Martha’s Vineyard as a safe place to travel for Black Americans intersects with the peak Deaf population of the island. Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language, which originated in the relatively isolated village of Chilmark, is distinct from American Sign […]

From: Nefnef_baby@lyons-edu.org To: Cara Hasani CaraMia1990@mailbuddy.gr September 18, 2015, 5:36 am Subject: I am drifting, but thank you for the photos My dear Cara, Thank you for sending me the photos, I never thought I’d feel this way again. But the pictures help. They really do. I can’t stop looking at them. Thank you for […]

As with all stupid things, it started with a dare.

The oddest sensation gripped me when I visited Blood Moon Market last night. It stole upon me as I paid the entrance fee—both pinkie fingernails and a lock of my thinning gray hair—and settled with cold inevitability into my stomach as I walked past the stall of Forgotten Music. I was a stranger inhabiting my […]

Content note: Child death   It was half past midnight when Olga heard the Devil cry.  They were supposed to be wild tonight, the three of them. Cassandra had led the way and Maria and Olga didn’t put up much of a fight. They would visit the Devil’s bridge—anything that claimed to be even remotely […]

So, hear nah. This is how it happen. Was years after Malcolm pass through and wash away a lot ah we little islands coasts, and mash up so much ah Florida and Texas and them places, and people say they ain’t waiting for no next storm like that one, and they pack up they things […]

In summer, the crack on the windowpane would align perfectly with the horizon, right around 2 p.m.

During one of the much smaller disasters that preceded the really big disaster, I met a lot of my neighbors online. I can’t remember if we set up the WhatsApp group because of the pandemic or the civil disorder or both. My Minneapolis block had always been reasonably friendly—people would take their kids around on […]