Stories

by Steve Cushman The father and son walk silently through the grocery store buying what needs to be bought: mac n’ cheese, milk, cheerios, bread and beer and pretzels, two pounds of hamburger. The …

by Barbara Renel Edinburgh. A scorching day. The man is stripped to the waist, his decorated torso worn as a garment. “Olá,” he says. And she falls in love. In his studio, a skeleton wearing a suit…

by Kate Jones She’s caught the 3.15 train, as instructed by her father. As trees and fields give way to the concrete blocks of the city, the muscles of her stomach tighten. She pulls out a book fro…

by Stephanie Hutton My mother-who-never-mothered-me has died and I don’t know what feelings to have, so decide not to have any. Lily sits on my knee in this council flat as we rummage in tatty boxe…

by Mark Renney “Door-to-door sales is a dying art,” he says. I don’t want to answer, to be pulled into this again but the others around the table are looking at me, waiting. “It’s just a job,” I sa…

by Iris N. Schwartz Belle never should have married a man who didn’t know how to kiss. Benjy’s sloppy, aimless probing of her mouth felt as erotic as a session in a dentist’s chair. He was dyslexic…

by Nicholas Rixon They came, just like they always did, early in the morning. The collective sound of their hooves perfectly suited for that time of day. The shepherds, one at the back of the herd …

by Kathy Hoyle Fish looked at Man through an ancient, grey eye. Man was silhouetted, dark and looming, with the sun as a halo. Man proclaimed himself. “I am Man and you are Fish and you have no rig…

by Kate Jones She keeps her eyes lowered, as she’s been brought up to do. She remembers the strap her father used the time her older sister dared to meet his eye during a conversation on marriage. …

by Janelle Hardacre She doesn’t cry. She didn’t when she was attacked by a punter last week or when another woman stole the trainers off her feet. She didn’t cry when she was rattling and only had …

by Adam Lock The toilet seat was cold and wet beneath her; he’d been pissing on it for months — for as long as the lightbulb had blown. She sighed, imagined him standing over the toilet, his eyes c…

by Rebecca Williams The hockey stick cracks down on his head like a spoon bashing an egg, blood oozes out like yolk. The look on his face is one of extreme surprise, as if he’d found his passport a…

by Meg Tuite Words do everything but shut-up. Many times once over is never the same once. Ester loses a spelling bee twice to Thomas the earwig. Three times Ester hooks a backpack around her arms …

by Rebecca Field I cried in the bank that day. Fat tears slid down my cheeks, making dark spots on my corduroy skirt. Lord knows what they must have thought of me. Maybe that I was grieving; that I…

A Brief and Fearful Star A new short story from Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties. via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2MsVFSC

The sky is on fire. Bright oranges and deep reds collide with wisps of smoke that mark the location of our last camp. Every day they come for us. Every day we flee toward a prize marked with a flag…

The sun was just setting when a car with heavy tinted windows pulled up to the dilapidated plantation at the end of an overgrown private way. A beefy, dark skinned woman wearing a secondhand flower…

Welcome The snow whipped at his eyes, nearly blinding him. Frostbitten and exhausted, he could go no farther. He’d been walking for two days. That’s when the blizzard hit and…

MRS. UNDERWOOD By Daniel C. Roche Mrs. Underwood lifts a cup of coffee toward her lips. Black. No cream or sugar allowed. A woman of her advanced age can no longer af…

PLEASE STAND CLEAR I have mastered the art of being alone without succumbing to loneliness. Anyone on the outside looking in through the tinted train windows might think such a statem…

It was after the toilet scrubber was delivered that she saw them. It was dark, save for the security lights, and Paula rarely went out at night to collect her online shopping deliveries. But she&…

The road didn’t change, strangely enough, the further south that she drove. Same dash lights inside the car, and same songs on the radio, she’d switch stations and cities, but the songs stayed the …

Whit had been standing in the frozen meat aisle for a few minutes before he noticed her, reflected in the glass of the freezer door he was analyzing meats through. She was large, enormous even, her…

When I’m tired enough that I think I can lay down to sleep without having any thoughts, a woman enters my mind. She’s been waiting for me, I imagine, waiting her whole life behind her dark hair, al…

Six months. Maybe a year. I thought, make up your mind. When you’re teetering on the edge, the difference between six months and twelve months really matters. Did I have the extra six months or did…

The Tsar was alive. His wife and children were alive. The story about their deaths in Yekaterinburg was fabricated by those hoping to liberate – rather than liquidate – the imperial family. Rescued…

Summer was the worst for wearing galoshes. Sweat pooled in the bottoms making every step feel like Gonzo was sloshing through a swamp. They had become an unfortunate necessity with the muck on the …

He pries out one of her eyeballs with the tip of a screwdriver and rolls it between his fingers while her good eye stares out at him. He’d expected to see some blood. Maybe if he pushes the screwdr…

The woman was awakened by the sliver of light that peeked through the crack of the window, where the tattered sheet was unable to cover. Drawing her knees closer to her chest, she shivered in the m…

Paul was running. His goal within reach, he picked up his pace, as usual, dodging any obstacles in his path. Nothing could prevent him from getting there and seeing his shadow racing alongside hi…