Last Acts
By Alex Treuber When I finally gave up and pulled off the highway it was snowing so hard that my wipers had given up. The lines on the road had long since disappeared, so I used the blue glow from an overhead billboard to navigate the exit ramp. Big piles of snow had been plowed…
A Divinely Short Rant
By Marla Krauss Don’t raise short hands in short anger towards short gods who don’t give a flying short about short lives with short ambitions to stake claims on short worlds that grow shorter and shorter as days get longer and leaner. Go take a large number. Someone won’t be with you shortly. * *…
Shock to the system
By Sarai Mannolini-Winwood My fingers touched hers and felt a spark. What a cliché. It was liquid lightning through my veins. A bullet train to my heart. I looked up with a wry smile to meet her unsmiling eyes. She rubbed her fingers on her jeans. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to shock you.” * …
Bananas On a Bench
By Madison Hankins Marina has never liked change. It is the one thing in life that rips her soul from her very being, leaving her feeling bare in a room full of strangers as she is forced to face the unknown. Her routine is developed specifically to avoid the concept. Marina’s mornings involve feeding the…
The Winter Within
By Cal Asher The dark hit me first. Not suddenly. Not violently. Like something that had been waiting long enough to be certain. Before sound. Before breath. The room felt heavier than it should have, as if winter had learned the shape of walls and settled into them. I lay still, already aware that whatever…
In the Closet with Tammy
By Chip Houser When the cops showed up at Barrett’s party, Evan ran upstairs and hid in a closet. More a D&D guy than a party guy, he didn’t know what else to do. He slid behind a tangle of dresses and hangars, glad for once he was skinny. Blue and red lights strobed through…
When Death Came For Me
By R. Hugo McIntyre When Death came for me, I was looking through old pictures. Old pictures from when people actually printed their photos and pasted them into unwieldy books where they turned yellow from being under plastic and stuck to the paper when you tried to move them. Of course, I knew Him. It.…
The Coat Check Ticket
By Lisa Leinberger The coat check ticket slipped from the thrifted jacket’s lining as if it had been waiting for the right moment to reveal itself. Tessa watched it flutter to the ground and land at her feet, a small, faded square of paper that felt more significant than it should have, like an invitation.…
The Arithmetic of Crossing
By Atif Nawaz The truck stopped just before dawn. No one spoke at first. The engine died, and with it the thin illusion of movement that had carried them through the night. Beyond the headlights lay a narrow stretch of frozen earth, unmarked except for tire tracks that vanished into fog. Somewhere ahead was the…
Come Morning
By Freya Ye Speeding through the streets until your soles burned, you tightened a grip on the suitcase clattering behind you with your whole life on its rollers. One wheel hadn’t been quite right since knocking against a curb several blocks back, and your heart lurched at each ill-timed pop and scrape. It would make…
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