Abdi barges into my craft room, without his glass eye. Which he knows I hate.
“Hey, Mom?” he says.
“Did that Zoom call already finish?” I ask. This homeschool group is such a jerkoff. Why do we even pay for it? I mean, I could teach him nothing by myself for free.
“I found this snowglobe eyeball online. It’s so cool. I could flip my head upside down and then…”
Continue reading “A Body Without Organs by Miles Efron”
Our house was what dreams were made of—a hazy vision of lost grandeur, countless rooms, and long corridors leading to an airy parlour. A crumbling gilded ceiling glittered in the light seeping through tall windows. A polished table with a deep, glassy sheen, where I sat my laptop, stood on the elegant curve of Queen Anne’s legs. Georgian bookcases were crowded with dusty oil lamps, their glass chimneys catching the cold, sterile shine of fairy LED lights. A heavy marble fireplace, its mantle cluttered with birthday cards, roared into the night.
Continue reading “Timeless Sympathy by Hana Carolina”
“I am the Seven Wonders of the World … I am the Endless Ocean and the Garden of Eden … I am the Mountains and Valleys and a Great Desert.”
Gabriella has a complex system for organizing the loose pieces. What might look like a haphazard pile of small cardboard shapes is a clearly thought-out symmetrical pattern waiting to be employed in a system of elimination “far too sophisticated for even the Venezuelan postal service to figure out”, she used to tell her little boy when they sat together day after day working on a new puzzle, waiting for him to die. “It’s like DNA,” she’d say, “every piece unique onto itself.”
Continue reading “Woman With Jigsaw Puzzle by Tom Bentley-Fisher”
She holds up her hand to the bathroom window, feels cold air piercing. Early morning, still dark, the children asleep. She unspools a strip of foam, one-handed. At her feet, a diagram displayed on her mobile phone. Using a screwdriver, she pries off ragged remnants of the original weather-stripping. When she stretches to reach the top rail, her ribs ache.
Continue reading “Safe House by Alain Kerfs”
By the time my mother mentions falling, I let the drone of her voice fade to the unawake part of my mind. Her words are a steady hum, punctuated by rattling breaths and muffled snorts as she clears the tangy scent of antiseptic from her nostrils. If I let my gaze drift away from her paper-white figure on the hospital bed, I can pretend that I’m alone. In my peripherals, she blends into the monotony, clear and soft as water. The only thing that moves is her mouth, but her ramblings are like static – barely present, and even more unintelligible when I focus on them.
Continue reading “World Tilting at Bedtime by Katya Lee”
Kiin, kiin, kiin.
You wake up at 5:00am. There is a swarm of flies finding light outside the window. Your two toddlers are sound asleep, swaddled in patched up clothes. They yawn unexcitedly. The dog beneath the table drools. Before it is a plate of mashed kenkey.
Continue reading “Kiin Kiin Kiin by David Agyei-Yeboah.”
Enter. Order. Eat. Pay. Leave.
The whole operation is streamlined; a seamless experience for staff and customer. The rules are clear and seldom broken: there’s to be no trespassing. People are here to nibble at sandwiches and sip coffee, not to have a stranger in an apron pry into their personal lives. So you serve them and leave it at that. That’s just the way it’s done.
…until it isn’t.
Continue reading “It’s Not About Her by Jaydan Salzke”
It’s not difficult to understand how she did it – liver and lungs. They can only take so much abuse, then they quit. I knew for years she was trying to kill herself.
Continue reading “They’re Asleep by Thomas Elson”
The sheet snaps crisply in the wind, perfectly white, a blank canvas hanging on a line. A woman, neither young nor particularly old, bends over a large, wicker basket. Her hands are large and red, prematurely knotted from the harsh, unceasing wind. She is a good-sized woman. An old floral print dress clings to generous haunches as she efficiently plucks each item from the line and places it in the basket. She is one of an unbroken line of generations past, hardened and forged by life on the plains.
Continue reading “Dust to Dust by A. Elizabeth Herting”
One day, you look for money in your sister’s drawers and you discover something else completely. You started out the day Nick Botkin, sister of Nancy, son of Penelope. Now Penelope’s your grandmother and Nancy’s your mother.
Continue reading “Sister Mother by Yash Seyedbagheri”
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