If nothing else, Chingis needed hope.
Fiction
Asylum
A loud rumble drew Marisol Flores to the window of the second floor apartment. Her chest tightened when she peeked between drawn curtains to see a steel gray armored truck stopped directly in front of the building in which she had lived for the past two years.
The Has Been, The Dancer, The Invader
Daphne’s left rib glistened with aquasoft, a thin layer over her fresh tattoo, an outline of a maple tree.
The Ballad of Natsumi-Lynn
It was hot the day my wife came back to me from the dead.
The Very Short Life of Andrew Norton
The child never stood a chance, born in a thunderstorm in the back seat of a mid-sized sedan.
Old Cadillac People
The first thing on Jane’s mother’s list was the UPS store. There was always something to send back. Not all items passed muster. “Too yellow,” Margaret had said, handing the opened box to Jane. “And I sincerely doubt there is one natural fiber in that blouse. Silk, indeed!” Jane printed out the return form, bundled… Read more »
Trials of Isaiah
The reality of his immediate circumstances was something he felt keenly aware of, and it came to him instantly. He was a middle-aged man, urgently summoned to a house he had not stepped into for six years.
In Sickness and in Health
Floyd’s memory was like a hornet caught in a Mason jar. He stood in the hallway after lunch, still in his pajamas, staring at the residue of his former self.
What Is Sara Up To?
She didn’t carry a gym bag, yoga mat or even reusable bags for groceries. He would follow her home.
Feral
I left, I was hunted.
I clung to comfort, I was hunted.
I returned and was eaten.
The Subtle Ghost
But the haunting continued to be steadfastly understated, the ghost unerringly subtle. A polite poltergeist. A polterguest.
Sweet Cheeks
“I’m lovely,” she says and pulls a jewelry box from under the coffee table. From the box she takes out a needle, a spoon, and a baggie filled with a dull white powder.
The Zombie (Lady) with the Dog
It was said that a new zombie had appeared on the sea-front: a lady with a little dog.
At Christmas Time with Zombies
… we counsel you take up the rifle against the undead which plague our town. Clawing up from the muddy ground in Spring, these ravaged men, women, and alas, children, have overrun the churchyard…
Biscotti and Wedding Bands
Soon we were dancing and then we were embracing and I was touching his body with all the pent up desire of our almost twenty-year affair of the heart.
Ten Days After Russell Edson Died
An ape walks down the street, dragging his intestines behind him. They leave wet streak marks on the sidewalk.
The Church of Universal Entropy
Our office has reviewed, with careful attention, your recent fifty-seven page e-mail regarding the adverse determination made by the IRS Office with respect to your Application for Recognition of Exemption on behalf of the Church of Universal Entropy, of which you are sole founder.
A Perfect Ass
You were staring at my ass, weren’t you?
Runnels County, TX
The gem seemed at first to be a kind of mirage. It stuck out of the ground, the size of a sleeping mule, and Nehemiah and his son stood over it, tilting their heads to see the infinite varieties of iridescence.
Daughters
You know what it is, said his friend, with all the gravitas of an EMS worker at an accident scene: It’s because she has a father. She loves her father too much.
About a Mean One
I was sitting on the sofa with a mean frown on my face and my lower lip stuck out. I was pouting, but not in that sad cry baby girl way. I was a tomboy, so I pouted mean.
What Happened to Brad
I was scrolling Facebook when I came across a friend’s post expressing their condolences for a friend who recently died. I wasn’t friends with the deceased, but a link to his Facebook page was in the post. His name was Brad.
An Old Song
It’s hard to come down without being seen from a flight through the clouds on the back of an albino dragon.
Pizza Western
As a marketing copywriter, my greatest talent is my ability to uncover my client’s story and communicate it in a compelling manner, no matter how boring.
smallpox
It was not unusual at that manifest turn of the century for a child to spend the entire wind-driven day alone in front of the mercantile. Odd thing was, the child was white as the vanishing snow, white and left to fend the spring wind alone with nothing but the clothes on his back and a dog at his feet.
This Wasn’t Supposed to Happen
We were the infantry, the sons of Odin, the winged gods of war fighting for freedom and the American way of life. Now we’re dying in the streets of America. We survived war; it was the peace that killed us.
Meeting with My Editor
I am meeting with my editor, right now, as you read this story, a meeting about this story that I first submitted to her rather prestigious literary journal, a literary journal that will remain nameless, but one that has published three of my stories before, two of which won Pushcarts.
Maggie and Milly and Molly and May
It begins with the false spring: warm fog and a thin film of rain always on the skin. A February thaw is sweetly cold like ice cream and doesn’t smell at all like the real thing.
Cycle Class
He was sitting next to me when he fell off his bike. We were out of our seats, pushing up a hill, and the music was so loud I didn’t hear anything.
Survivor
In the photograph, the woman holds a laughing baby over her head staring and smiling at her intensely.
Broke
The road rolled out flat and endlessly into the barren landscape. The parched ground coughed up sagebrush and broken rock, an unforgiving comfort you had to look for. Beauty, as they say out here, plays hard to get.
Convoy Operations
Vehicle is approaching from rear on the left, friendly forces. Passes, takes lead position in convoy. We fall in behind and set proper interval for this portion of the Main Supply Route – MSR Knight.
The Dog Tag
Jim now wore the dog tag he had given his mother after returning from his first deployment. He wore the standard metal-beaded chain around his neck, but the tag itself was atypical.
A Brief History of the Universe
She came with another female soldier on a sunny afternoon. It was Saturday and I was on the ladder, cleaning the leaves out of the second-story gutters.
A Final Goodbye
“Be vigilant, C.” Pulanski yelled over the sound of the gunfire. “I’ll see you on the other side.”
Submission
Jeannie wished Walker would share his thoughts more. He’d abandoned college teaching. He didn’t write, didn’t even read. Why? He said Socrates hadn’t read or written anything, Jesus either, and Homer was blind, though hardly illiterate. Since Walker wasn’t Socrates, Jesus, or Homer, Jeannie struggled to see the relevance.
Driving with Sara
You see me standing by the tree. You ask me the time. I show you my watch, from my pocket. It doesn’t have a band anymore, but it shows the time.
The Exhibits
There are four in the car: Bridget and Jack, who have been cuddling in the backseat the whole way; Anita, who is driving; and Shane, her all-but-fiancé, who is navigating. Anita and Shane have been together so long that they don’t hold hands in public much anymore, or cuddle in backseats. And for the whole drive, they’ve been watching the other two snuggling in the rearview with smiles that are indulgent, if a little strained.
Corben Dennis’s Dad’s Gone Mad
Eyes are elsewhere. So no-one sees the child at loose in the street, dodging bin and lamppost and striking the pavement with stinging feet. A phantom manifesting; thunder through open windows, as a flash of colour, sudden, in the doors of shops and houses. No stopping for traffic as he cuts across a car park,… Read more »
Tandy’s Tournament
After years of working in the dime store, Mother bought a honky-tonk tavern. She rented a room upstairs to one of her customers and then she married him. Alton Grainger, Mother’s fifth husband, was just Mother’s height and the age of my oldest sister. He was from North Carolina. He’d boxed in the army, said… Read more »
My Lost One
“Surprised to see me again?” Kim says. I hesitate at the door. Paper wasps had built a nest in the corner of the brick underpass leading to my ground floor apartment in Levittown. Anyone standing at the door stirs them up, so I part my threshold and invite her to follow. Kim slips into the… Read more »
Through the Woven Door
As she wakes Linka feels the hopeless weight of failure at the discovery of another month’s flow seeping from her body. The flush glazed her thighs and stained the snow-white linen of her nightgown a fierce geranium red. Linka has longed for a child since she was a child. Even her daydreams are filled with… Read more »
No Milk Would Come
The other night I stopped for orange juice at the Pico station on the north side of Boerne, and I picked up this men’s magazine just to browse it, and then I wound up buying it because of this article about sex dolls so realistic you could dress them up and no one would know… Read more »
After the Rainbow
Colors. Imogene heard colors, or rather, she saw them—little bursts of bright yellows, pea greens, and aquamarines. With every sound that filtered through her eardrum, Imogene saw a color to match. She first noticed her power as a little girl: With the back and forth, sway and repeat of the wooden swing in the backyard,… Read more »