My father took me down to the stream and tore my denim dress. The sun tinkled on the water while I tasted it, all fish scales and mud. He stepped along the downy bank, between high scarlet grasses, broken from the wind. Eyes veined. His neck contorted with the strain of watching me float, tendons rigid. Continue reading “A Pulser Sunsetting by Rebecca Grandsen”
Grace, he said, flickering her name. Grace, a staticky word chopped into the bottom of the sea. Soft, beery slither ran down her face from where he spat. The water came in waves and washed gold summer through her bones. He was above her again, his hair deep silk on her face. His voice was in and out below the waves. His tongue loose, wet, electric with hurt. A burned hum shuttered from his lips. Continue reading “The Sky Became the Perfect Colour and Back Again by Laura Ellen Joyce”
I lost my words. I can not open the can. In the tin can, the golf balls are rolling and I lost my words. I can not open the can. In the tin can, the golf balls are rolling and murmuring. Each word takes apart inside the can and has no context already. Even though I can not pull them out, I am still here. Continue reading “I am still here by hiromi suzuki”
It’s the Wren’s Nest – part housing estate, part nature reserve – it’s the Wrenner to us.
Frogspawn slicks in silica sheets across Green Pool; carrion crow calls; the foxes den – too close to the road – vixens crushed against tarmac; limestone cliffs weathered by prehistoric waves; the underground caves – the fenced off caverns – the canal lines that vein through; rabbits, badgers, weasels; and rusted cans and cigarette buts and flytipped sacks and discarded clothes and the stained knickers of a fallen wench; limes, acorn, hawthorn, bluebell and stinky wild garlic; bell pits, old mine shafts and geological tools; dog walkers amble through slippery tributaries of homemade paths; rope-swinging kids up a height in the oaks; the silence; the almost silence; the rhizomes that pierce through earth’s hymen and tangle, conjugate, apomixis, epitoky. Continue reading “The Ley by R.M. Francis”
The uneasy feelings began when we crossed the line of wire, past the guards distracted by a white delivery van. No one stopped us as we turned onto a side road. Rydell was driving, Vanya and Tori were asleep in the back. I watched the lights receding, the faint green glow on the road ahead. Continue reading “The Crossing by Voima Oy”
She fell in love with her specimen: took note of his
legs; one, a millimeter shorter than the other, lacked the
purity of hemispheric symmetry. His tiny simple eyes dilated
when the artificial light rays would refract off of the perfect Continue reading “Reintroduction to Anatomy by Elytron Frass”
The Lifeguard
And now I have to tell you about a dream. Or rather, several dreams, or rather, one continuous dream over several nights. In the dream a guy I know, who is actually an electrician, was a lifeguard. Continue reading “The Lifeguard by Katie Quinnelly”
Xavier had raced across the city in an old car not designed for speed: its gears grinding, brake pads squealing. The car’s suspension was so shot that when he took a corner the undercarriage scraped the road. The car was not to be his only hitch. At the intersection leading down into the Square, a police cordon barred his way. Abandoning the car, Xavier took to the road on foot, pushing through all the protestors, until he found Malka in the middle of the crowd. Continue reading “Inhale to Rise by Victoria Briggs”
Theron stands, staring out the window. Through liquid eyes, to another world outside, from another world inside. A hooded figure standing across the street, staring back. Dressed in dark clothes with a cloak, it appears to have come from another time. The shadow man points at him and he feels fear creep in like a cold grip on his heart. Hollow ache in the gut, frozen mind. Theron screams at the shadow man. More of a roar than a scream. When the air runs out of his yell, he takes a deep breath and roars again, over and over. His younger brother comes into the room and puts a hand on his shoulder. Continue reading “Shadow Man by Rob True”
We drove toward the beach in your boyfriend’s car.
This was new, you behind the wheel, rather than our bygone late nights in the backseats of cabs and that equal distribution of power. Continue reading “Never Quite As It Seems by Mike Dressel”
Feature image by F.E. Clark, Daily Painting — 14th February, 2018
A girl is standing on the landing. I look up the stairs at her. I can’t see her face, no matter how I peer. The dusty afternoon light scatters in through the street-side window. The girl’s features blur and shift as if a veil’s been drawn over her head—a black veil. It shimmers in the air between us.
My earliest memory of Grandpa Melvin was when he fought Ronald McDonald out near the McDonald’s Playplace. It was my fifth birthday, and family and friends watched through the glass as the two men squared off.
Remember your first? I remember my almost. We met at an English Studies conference panel in Greensboro, NC, where she gave a presentation on “Trauma & Mental Illness in Young Adult Fiction.” After that, we met in Chicago where we chaired a panel on “Suicidal Closure in Modernist Fiction.” Even though we lived on opposite coasts, and she was five years older, we began to develop intimacy quickly. At the next conference we rented a room together, and even though it was unstated, I, who was still a virgin, assumed we’d “get together.” We skipped the conference festivities, instead snuggling on the room’s king bed, murmuring about our childhoods, our depressions, our sexual questioning. I began to think, after a long absence, of a word like love. This is the way things ended between Manesa Gilnum, Ph.D., and I at the Modern Language Association conference in Austin, TX, on January 10th 2016, the night David Bowie died.
Continue reading “People On The Edge Of The Night by James McAdams”
At the age of thirty, Daniel Lufto lived alone in a single bedroom apartment. In his first thirty years on Earth he had made very few lasting connections, and at this point, his existence had virtually no perceptible impact on anyone else. He was just another recurring face on the bus ride to work, a vaguely remembered customer in the local liquor store.
Continue reading “The Borderline Angel Of Death by Nick Johnson”
The first time you wake up with your chest straining, an aching sternum and something scraping your ribs, you’ve been to an ‘All You Can Eat’ Chinese buffet and cleaned them out of prawn toast. You wonder where you’ve left the antacids, open your eyes and there’s a high cheekboned, thin-lipped woman in armour sitting on your chest. You say loudly to the empty room: Khutulun. The best way to vanish phantoms is to name them. You resolve not to mix history books and salt and pepper squid again, and attempt to turn over.
A flash of light catches my eye, shimmering like an emerald amid the waves. Foam-tipped saltwater crests fall and rise, the tide tugging against earth below. I step into the shallow water and feel sand tickling between my toes, across the pads of my feet and caressing my heels.
Behind me, farther up the stretch of sunbathed sand, Dominic stretches his caramel skin beneath the rays. No one else on the beach for miles. I touch the bulge of my belly and smile. Continue reading “Seaglass by Tianna Grosch”
The one-eyed elephant trainer wept. The girl lay motionless, without will or strength. He offered her tear-stained slices of white bread from a plastic bag. They did not only look stale they were furry with mould, especially at the crust. She refused by jerking her head away. He had replaced the good quality clothes she had worn with a cheap nylon T-shirt and a sarong. He said that he bought these clothes for her from the Thieves’ Market in west Jakarta.
He was a monster. He had kidnapped her from the fairground. Monster.
Continue reading “The One-Eyed Elephant Trainer by Ivy Ngeow”
There’s no warmth in her smile, nothing friendly.
I’ve seen a smile like this before, but not on a human face. It’s the smile Mum’s sadistic bastard cat used to flash at trapped creatures.
‘Maggot,’ she decrees, her wine glass shaking with nervous rage. ‘Snivelling worm. Deluded, self-important asshole.’
If I were an office worker in Japan, I would take a holiday with my Japanese boyfriend to the Hachiman Shrine in Kamakura. We would ride the train together, holding hands. We would always be holding hands. I would know the feel of his grip better than anything. Continue reading “This Would Be The Perfect Day by Cathy Ulrich”
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 