The fog was descending, creeping in from the mountains and cloaking the lake in a heavy mist. Pulling the blanket tighter around her shoulders, Birgitte looked up to the darkening sky and smiled. “We should probably be heading in soon,” she said, though her voice held no hint of actually believing it. “It will be night before we know it, and there’s sure to be some talk or trouble if we’re too late.”
Continue reading “Flesh and Feathers by L.S. Engler”
Poisson Regression by JJ de Melo
Sweat sticks me to the couch. Like a bug in fly tape. The windows are open, but I only have one fan. It barely helps. I’m breathing hot soup in my apartment and I want out. To leave. Take a walk. But it’s not safe. Not yet.
Continue reading “Poisson regression by JJ de Melo”
I peel off the paint bottle’s seal, and a strong chemical smell wafts off the top. The scent reminds me of the hospital’s ICU corridors and the ache that filled my chest when my mother and I entered Room 520A to see Nana a few days before. I swirl around different colored paints and recreate the fiery orange sunset and the same brilliant blue sky from last year when Nana and I walked along the shore during our annual beach trip after Easter Sunday Mass. My little brother plunges without thought into his palette and haphazardly washes his brush against his egg’s shell. His designs turn out formless, and his colors mix into drab shades of brown and gray. He eyes my egg and then looks down at his, and his cheeks flush. His eyes flash in warning as his idea is hatched in seconds. Still, I don’t move fast enough and watch in horror as he smashes the Easter Egg I painted for Nana to the floor, sending pieces of memory flying through the air; these things are fragile.
Continue reading “Nana Won’t Rise Up from the Dead by Margo Griffin”
Patsy flipped his eggs in the small frying pan, sizzling on the coils of his portable electric burner. Thin bacon smoke hung in his room. Can’t let that old bat of a landlady catch me cooking. He walked five steps to the room’s sole window, pounded the frame to break the ice seal, and opened it. Rochester’s mid-winter night air hit him like an arctic blast.
Continue reading “Patsy’s Last Gig by JD Clapp”
It was, by all means, a wonderful and perfectly lovely Tuesday. The sun was shining, the flowers were in bloom, and Edmund was running out of time.
Continue reading “Carrot Season by Alex Maciockay”
Her name was Winona. Winona on damp, drizzly school days when she raised her hand fearless of appearing callous or insufferable. Winnie on wine-dark nights she downed canned gin cocktails and let her nose go runny under porch lights. Nona inside her honey-sulked home where windows overlooked fields of magnolias whose petals sunk under the weight of thunderstorms.
But she was always Winona to me.
Continue reading “Always, Winona by Hannah Richardson”
The world ends soundlessly and mid-confession.
First, there is only darkness. Because sight fails, scents strip my room into view. Charred electricity and ingrained grease. Then melting plastic and flammable plaster. Then Victoria’s Secret body mist and snot-kissed posters.
Continue reading “Solar Storm by Veera Laitinen”
When hunting season started, my brother Isaac and I brought out the Remington and shot down angels by the creek. We’d descend the hill at dawn and lug back the carcasses in the evening. We bottled the blood for chapels and sold the bones for change to research teams on the black market. Whatever was left, Isaac kept in jars under his bed.
Continue reading “Dissecting Angels by Mason Koa”
Sarah parked in the small lot beside Lava’s Bar on Lower Main not knowing what to expect. The ancient and industrial part of Wailuku looked the same as it had when she was a kid: non-descript dingy buildings, narrow alleys with the odd apartment sprinkled in, a snuffling dog on the corner. Despite the post-sunset, orangey sky, the area emanated an enticing melancholy, a feeling she remembered from the seat of her dad’s tow truck back in the early seventies en route to the junkyard, stereo shop, or TV repair. But now, there’s a bar! Maybe there was always a bar—or bars—here, but bars weren’t on her radar in those days, obviously. She’d always been curious about the dusty, mid-island pit of industrial Wailuku, compared to the tourist-dotted beaches in Kihei, where she had grown up a mere ten or so miles away.
Continue reading “Lava’s Bar by Marisa Mangani”
Näkki is a mythical creature from Finnish folklore, often described as a water sprite or demon. Näkki is said to dwell in murky waters and drown any human that crosses its path.
Continue reading “The Ghosts of Their Daughters by Veera Laitinen”
literally stories 