Category: General Fiction

All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Heirloom by Natalia Pericchi Paga

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There are pieces of the past I keep on her behalf. I tie my hair in a bun and start humming a song while I concentrate on lining my lips. The kids are asleep, the dishwasher is working, the counter is wiped, the door is locked. I am getting ready to talk to my grandmother over Zoom. Preparing to reconnect. I haven’t seen her in a while. When I think of her,  I remember the cigarette smell, the afternoons sitting on her lap while she watches T.V., the feeling of her long, red nails running gently through my back, up and down. I remember her evening routine.   

   

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All Stories, General Fiction

Guitar Lessons by Otto Alexander

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Sometimes I feel sick remembering how I talked to him. I want to go back and shake myself – No, Robert! No! Cut it out! But I did and I can’t undo it. Besides, he only ever mentions it in passing and when he does I sort myself out. I suppose he thinks I might shout again, but I don’t want to. I hated that I did.

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All Stories, General Fiction

What I Will Not Become by Harrison Kim

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I’m talking with Mrs. Everton, the anorexic faced one-lung Grandmother puffing cigs by the wood stove as snow falls outside. She tells me more blizzards fell in years past, we’re not snowed in yet. She coughs, continues again in that smoky voice; my best friend Keith’s over by the fridge laughing with Lori Baker. Lori’s Mrs. Everton’s niece, black haired, pale faced, arms thin as branches stuck from a frost covered sapling, and fifteen years old. 

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All Stories, General Fiction

One Hundred Percent Sure by Daniel Shiffman

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Every evening before her bath and bed, Caroline and I cover the half-mile loop of our street lined with towering Loblolly pines and small, neat single-story brick houses. Caroline rides her tiny bike a few yards ahead of me, alternating between steadying taps of her sneakers on the gummy pavement and wobbly pedaling as her sundress flutters over the mosquito bites on her shins and ankles. A few mosquitoes hover around Caroline’s brown curls.

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All Stories, Editor Picks, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Week 494: Mendacity; Come Home Rutherford B. Hayes; Cool Stories to Beat the Heat; Health Tonics

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Mendacity and RBH

Ostriches do not stick their heads in the sand to avoid the Awful Truth. That mendacity has been around since Roman times and should be purged from the metaphor store. Only people behave that way, and when an animal does the same, you can rest assured that she/he is only mocking you.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Old Guitarist by Dale W Barrigar

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I saw a little man riding a child’s bicycle in Berwyn, Illinois, outside Chicago, on the sidewalk, along Roosevelt Road. He was carrying a guitar; this was the first thing that caught my attention. The guitar was strapped over his back. But it was also slung down partly across the side of his body so he could cuddle it with one arm while he steered the bike with the other and pedaled the small pedals with his small legs.

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All Stories, Fantasy, General Fiction

Birds by Sarah Macallister

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We all worried. Ever since he came back from Glasgow, Uncle Neil seemed different, jauntier. And it wasn’t just the new hat. He strutted around the village, singing in an uneven baritone. Whistling. To be honest, we thought he’d bagged someone and felt sorry for Auntie Sandy. But it wasn’t that.

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All Stories, General Fiction

A Nice Day by Gene Bray

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Red Hook Brooklyn 10am. I wake up and look out my 11th floor window.

 Oh my God. The sky.  I’m blasted. I’m overwhelmed. By blue. But not just any blue. Royal Blue. Stunning Royal Blue from horizon to horizon. It’s usually a dirty, featureless gray  

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All Stories, General Fiction

What’s Left by Todd Dodson

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He settled the last of the old Amazon boxes in the bed of the pickup, an intractable, unstrung guitar neck poking out from the middle, with the faded moon looming eerie in the midday sky like the cover of some science fiction paperback. He threw a blue tarp over the mess, then took his time stitching a length of twine through the grommets, around the cleats, a clever hitch knot at the end, even opening the driver’s side door before finally, finally turning to me standing in the hot pea gravel, glass of ice tea melting in my hand, before saying, “Well, that’s it.”      

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