Emily’s in bed one night, brooding about her manager’s warning that Emily’s too aggressive, and thinking if she was a man, she’d be called ambitious, when there’s a puff of smoke, and an elf appears.
Continue reading “Emily Follows the Elf by Ed Kratz”
The bones spoke to Angelina the way other women heard gossip over garden fences. Snake vertebrae whispered of rain coming from the east. Coyote teeth predicted claim jumpers and cattle thieves. But it was the human bones that spoke loudest, and those she kept hidden beneath her floorboards, wrapped in red silk stolen from a dead Chinese merchant’s shop. Each bundle reminded her of her own lost child, the daughter whose bones she’d never found to read.
Continue reading “The Bone Reader of Tucson by Dana Wall”
Aachen’s charred ruins lay shrouded in mist. Skeletal remains of churches and chapels jutted out like jagged teeth against the winter skies. Light snow swirled, mingling with ash from distant smouldering fires.
That year, swan-operators were in short supply.
The work of a swan-operator is hard and unrewarding, apart from the admiration and praise, like other professions I shall refrain from mentioning. There’d been a falling off in applicants in the year before the great day. Recruitment was difficult. Working conditions are somewhat cramped and the hours are long. There are risks. It’s understandable.
Swans are designed, as isn’t obvious from their behaviour, primarily for flight. Air is, in fact, their best medium. Well, you’ve seen them in the air, right? Magnificent.
Continue reading “Three Swans by Alex Faulkner”
In the days after the accident, William was haunted by fragments of that morning: the screech of tires, the screams and sirens, Robby’s crumpled bike on the pavement.
Continue reading “The Haunting of William T. Jacobs by David Henson”
On Sunday! See you on Sunday! I await you all. He called out, his voice brimming with unrestrained cheer.
What’s happening on Sunday? Someone would ask him with a mocking smile.
Continue reading “The Man with The Frozen Clock by Georgia Xanthopoulou “
What happened was, I died.
Daddy ripped out my heart, despite Mama telling him not to. They even sent me away, buried me somewhere else.
Then Papa Nos found me.
Continue reading “Papa Nos by Debbie Paterson”
You’ve probably heard about this already, but one day some kids dug up an enormous pacifier, and in doing so pretty much brought chaos into the world. Apparently the kids were playing in the strip of woods by Route 42, just poking sticks in the embankment there, no thoughts of upsetting nesting bees, preventing future mudslides, or their moms having to pretreat their laundry stains afterward. Because where the dirt fell away, they uncovered something that shouldn’t have been there. A large, old, manmade hoop.
Continue reading “The Enormous Pacifier by Alice Kinerk”
Jimmy the Wizard and I stand in front of a large apartment complex. Jimmy says that somewhere behind this wood and stucco facade my guardian angel shimmers. It waits to be released. Jimmy takes two steps back.
“Examine the walls,” he says.
My wife was born invisible, but she told me that it’s only at my high school reunion that she feels invisible.
A small percentage of Americans are born invisible each year. Naturally, this number is very hard to track.
Continue reading “Low Visibility by Matt Harrison”
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