BE MINE • by Angela Sylvaine
The child safety scissors are too small for me, have been for years, so I’m extra careful as I cut a heart from the red construction paper. Satisfied, I twist my waist length hair into a bun at the base… Continue Reading
Horror
THE LIBRARIAN • by Kat McNichol
Everyone has the potential for violence. You’d be amazed, really. There’s the girl stripping wings off tiny white moths behind the building where her dad beats her mom, or the nurse who screams obscenities at her roommate after a shift… Continue Reading
THE MAN • by Ryan Fitzpatrick
The man sat down at his desk. The office was grey. The man turned on his computer. The computer said: Hello, Man. The man wrote back: Hello. Is it today? The computer replied: No. Time passed. Another man, a man… Continue Reading
HEIRLOOM • by Richard Nunez
When I was a boy, my father showed me a hunting knife that once belonged to my grandfather. The knife was serrated, hefty, meant to saw through muscle and bones. My father told me my grandfather had killed himself with… Continue Reading
SHARK’S MILK • by Kevin Daniel Lonano
A new drink appeared in stores and quickly became popular. Despite its thickness and off-grey color with wispy globs of red, folks were enamored by the shape of the bottles and its provocative name written in jagged blue italics below… Continue Reading
MURMUR • by Joy Lanzendorfer
She came in with the rain, through an open window. It was the house of a young family. The ghost, whose name had been Amaya, gazed curiously at their cleanliness, their food-in-bar-form, and the bright newness of everything they owned.… Continue Reading
KEEPING THE NATURAL BALANCE • by Sarah Crysl Akhtar
I always go for the bad ones. Or so my mother said. Rayneer said this one was chivvying the tails of her littermates from the moment she opened her eyes. When a dog already knows how to hunt, you just… Continue Reading
THE MOLE • by Tim Brockett
It sat just above Norman’s navel and seemed to wink each time he sneezed. Round, brown, and an inch across, it protruded from his woolly abdomen like a leather button on a Harris tweed, and he hated it. As a… Continue Reading
EMBRACE • by Alexander Parker
Two years had passed since the world submitted to the welcoming embrace of Death. Humankind, as a whole, smiled into the end of it all, and now a lone man walked a desolate street counting the unbroken windows and taking… Continue Reading
THE HORSESHOE • by Jared Shaffer
They tied Bill again and again to the Horseshoe. The longer he was strapped in, the more he felt the black nylon rope grow teeth that dug into his forearms. The Horseshoe—U-shaped, wooden—sat on top of a counter, and he… Continue Reading