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”
Her cousin Dean’s voice was so hushed that Katie could barely hear him over the buzz of insects and the scrunch their sneakered feet made on the haphazard gravel track. He lengthened his stride as he spoke, and Katie had to stretch her legs as far as they would go to keep up. She shot a glance at his thin face and wondered why he looked anxious under the splotched mask of freckles that stood out against his fair skin, his mouth moving as if he was biting the insides of his cheeks. The faint shadows that lurked under his pale blue eyes like the hint of an impending thunderstorm seemed even darker than usual.
Continue reading “The Follower by Odile Mori”
She was the craggy-faced, big-boned, broken-nose blonde on the ripe side of 50 working the night shift at the front desk at the small New Hampshire Hotel.
Continue reading “Checking In by Frederick K Foote”
Fear is gnawing at my insides when I snap my compact shut. Getting caught up in my looks is of no use now. I’m tired – beyond tired, actually, and no amount of powder or mascara will change that. When I meet him, I know I’ll feel naked and transparent. He’ll see right through my façade because I’m half him. My tricks come from him, so he’s bound to know them already.
Continue reading “The Arrival by Anna Elin Kristiansen”
The sun is gone. They have a new sun now: a giant in a suit and tie floating in the sky like a zeppelin, holding a gigantic glaring mirror. They don’t know what the light source is. Maybe still the old sun. Maybe it was captured and hidden by the giant. The new sun never sets. He gives them no break.
Continue reading “Their Greenness is a Kind of Grief by Jie Wang”
‘I must be the luckiest kid in the world,’ Chris thought.. Every other kid he knew had a bedtime. Not Chris. It didn’t matter if it was a school night or a Saturday night he could stay up as late as he wanted. After dinner he could play videogames until he could barely keep his eyes open or he would watch gameshows with his parents until they went to bed. Spending the night together with his parents around the tv was his favorite. Tonight was one of those nights. But like all good things it had to come to an end. Chris heard those words he dreaded to hear when they were all having fun. “Your father and I are tired. We’re going to bed. We love you.”
Continue reading “Watching It Move by Alex Reid”
When I was little, I was afraid aliens were going to eat me. Of course, it was just that Twilight Zone episode I’d seen, To Serve Man, the one where a message of peace turned out to be an alien cookbook and the world was its meal, people being fattened up on a spaceship for the slaughter. They had to convince me it was just a show, a parable about humanity and all that.
Continue reading “To Serve by Yash Seyedbagheri “
I think about amputation, a lot. Not the sort carried out by a scalpel but by the jagged blade of fate, leaving me immobilised, an inmate in my own home and haunted by a phantom limb I didn’t know I had. And so here I am, full of emptiness, tired by inactivity and blinded by a porthole to another self. A self that isn’t me.
Continue reading “Breathe by Leon Coleman”
I work in a sewer.
The woman just turned up at the house one morning. That was not unusual in itself. People turn up at other people’s houses without invitation or warning. All the time. It is even more usual in Dhulivadzimu, being so close to the border post. It was little wonder that the VhaVenda gods and ancestral spirits had chosen this dusty, barren gorge as their dwelling place. It is as if they had known that this is where all their benevolence and guidance would be most needed. Always.
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