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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 David Cook “Jack, as you all know, was a man with a curious hobby. Some would call it an obsession. “His thing with jack-in-the-boxes started when he was six and I was three and Dad got him a ru…

by Beau Johnson “It breaks my heart is what it does. Because of this, I think it’s fair I keep this little sermon short.” Under overhead lights, upon stainless steel tables, my words bring tears, c…

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…