Category: General Fiction

All Stories, General Fiction

Step Right Up by David Lohrey

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My cousin Boxie returned from Afghanistan to say that people turn into pink mist when they are blown to smithereens. Boxie spends his days shelving toilet paper at Costco, making $37,000 a year. He bought a house for $109,000 and leases a Chevy SUV. He has a daughter but his wife can no longer bear children. They live near Pearl, Mississippi. They keep a Boxer chained to the tree in their back yard. Boxie won’t let his wife cook instant rice. She shaves her pussy. Their daughter, Esther, wants to be a fireman. She wears a helmet to bed. Boxie, Tricia, and Esther belong to the Church of Proximate Causes, a sect based on the worship of reality, an internet group of survivalists who live somewhere in North Dakota. People say, they keep tons of deodorant in their basement along with cans of ravioli and Mississippi tamales.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Why Junie Jumped by Townsend Walker

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I’ll tell you why she jumped. That bastard husband of hers couldn’t keep his pants zipped. She put up with it, for the kids. But then, he was the one who split. She and me were best friends in high school. I stayed here in Lynchburg, Central Virginia for college, now bookkeeper at the newspaper. Junie, she jumped at the chance to get out. That chance was a fast-talking UVA senior named John Miller, promised to take her to New York. He did, a dozen years and four kids later, she came back. Her family wasn’t a whole lot of help when she did. Junie told me, first words out of their mouths, Where are you going to live now? How are you going to support your children? I guess she shouldn’t have expected a cuddly reception, the way she ran off with John middle of senior year, her Ma still in the hospital. Irregardless, you’d think they’d care about their grand kids.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Rio by Kailyn Kausen

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Rio sits in an orange and yellow faded tent in the middle of an overgrown field. The sun is low in the sky and slants through the branches of trees that died long ago, grey and brittle instead of green and supple. There are buildings not too far from him—houses—but Rio doesn’t go to the houses. His parents told him not to go there.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Grittiness of Mango Chiffon by Mitchell Toews

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Oh, those squinty little eyes. I’ll never forget the look of them. Like the night she found tobacco crumbs in my baseball jacket pocket. She spread the brown flakes out on a white napkin under our dining room table’s one-hundred-watt bulb.

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All Stories, General Fiction

My Plea For Solitude by Harrison Kim

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Right out of high school after Dad died I inherited eighteen acres down the road from Mom’s house.   Raye,  who I now call “The Old Crow”  married me quick after that.  I started building for our great future.  I framed the house around and over top of the trailer, then took the inside trailer wall out.  We trucked in water from Mom’s place.  My friend Elton and I constructed the septic tank, a fifty gallon drum with pipe holes at both ends, pushed down in a rocky hole.  My brother Jackson helped lift the roof trusses. My life pinnacle topped there, Raye and I bouncing on the bed by the wood stove, sex and drink and rock and roll in the custom made residence,  and then came three kids, Raye and my mighty sperm created them two girls and a boy.

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General Fiction, Short Fiction

The Thankless Child by Edward Hall

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When I first saw Gordon, it was my second year at Moorebank Asylum. “Your daughter has a cancer of the mind, Mrs Davis,” the doctors had told my mother. “She’s very sick.” They stuck needles in me after tea on the first night, and for the next three months thereafter. Those doctors said it was some new-fangled, Eastern treatment for my conditions—psychosis, lunacy, neurosis . . . the list of ‘ailments’ goes on and on. After they’d stopped with the needles and Doc Taylor made note of my negligible improvements, Mother paid another thousand-or-so dollars so I could stay “just one more month.”

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All Stories, General Fiction

Sorry by Yash Seyedbagheri

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People fling sorry at me.

Sorry, a person cuts in line.

Sorry, a biker knocks me over.

Sorry, my debit card’s been declined. Next customer, please.

There’s no sorry in rejected credit card applications. They speak only of delinquent obligations. Income. Balances.

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