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“You’re allergic,” Paulie tells me, running his finger around the braised red skin up my neck. “This happened before, and it’s worse this time.”
I turn back to the mirror, pulling my collar down further, straining to follow the inflamed trail that encircles my throat.
“Allergic to what?” I ask. “The ink?”
“Probably. It happens. More common with red than black, but still.”
Continue reading “Lanternalia by Will Pinhey”
Seo-woo lay flat on the floor of the shrine. He didn’t know what the g(x) was for equations f(x)=7-4x and f(g(x))=-1. He didn’t really want to because it was only fifteen minutes away from twelve. The four of them were supposed to arrive by noon. Pillowing his head on the book, he went to check their group chat for the fifth time in five minutes. It was quiet, which was good—no one was flaking. He was about to ask where they were staying again when he stopped himself. He’d already asked twice. They had chosen a cheap motel in the fishing village a few kilometers away from his place. They could have stayed at his temple, and he’d said as much, but they were determined not to bother his mom or the visitors.
Continue reading “Scholars of the Rocks by Yoon Chung”
You can believe in hauntings and not in ghosts. You shrink a bit when you enter your parents’ house for Christmas dinner and feel your powerless teenage self slip her tired arms around you and whisper a reminder that you’re not enough and somehow also too much. The rage that boils in your chest while you watch your father criticize your mom only finds a way to possess you at this table, in this room. The icy indifference that serves as your answers to all your mom’s questions is a ghost of the child you killed so you could survive long enough to become an adult.
Continue reading “Christmas Spirits by Anna Sahli”
“You got old early.”
Hannah didn’t need to finish the thought. She’d already said it so many times, and then, when she got tired of saying it, she left. But even when she came back to pick up this or that, she sometimes would say it again, maybe for old time’s sake. “You got old early when you lost your job and started spending your days getting way too wrapped up in the neighbors’ business.” I never had a good response, even though clearly I had plenty of time to come up with one.
Continue reading “Your Grief Doesn’t Interest Me by Simon Nadel”
He rolled out from under the boat and lay on his back. The sun soaked into him. But the fly that had awoken him kept buzzing near his ear. It landed on his face and he brushed it away.
Continue reading “The Young Man by Danny Antonelli”
The seatbelt light clicked on and Tess checked her latch, her eyes flicking to Jake’s lap—unbuckled, of course. He got the aisle seat. She was in the middle. A stranger sat by the window.
The captain crackled on the intercom. “We’re experiencing a bit of turbulence, folks. Please remain seated as we begin our descent.”
Continue reading “Assumed Position by T.L. Tomljanovic”
The summer of our wedding my bride Claudia VanderMeer and I leased a split-level duplex on a dead-end street in a close-in gentrifying area of south central Austin, a quiet, in-transition neighborhood of young families and senior citizens and dogs. The opposite side of the duplex was occupied by the owner/landlord, a white-haired University of Texas professor who we figured was gay. We were fine with him being gay (perhaps we even wanted him to be gay), both for philosophical reasons and as a counterpoint to our conspicuously heterosexual, pre-children, pre-jaded bliss.
Continue reading “Quality Photos by Steven McBrearty”
He says I look bad on me.
He says it’s not my fault that no one does us any kindnesses since I’ve never done a kindness for someone else, so how should I know how to receive one.
On a computer at the library, he shows me YouTubes of homeless people getting their hair cut.
“It’s not that hard,” he says.
Neither of us needs a haircut, but he says that’s not the point. The point is that it takes commitment.
Continue reading “Looker by JJ Graham”
Richard Stanley opened his mouth at the back of the school bus and told Len “You look like a rat.”
Amy Cooper giggled “Yes, you sure think you’re something Len but you’re ugly did anyone ever tell you that.”
“I know I’m ugly,” said Len, thinking “stay cool,” and noticing Amy’s acne puffed face blotchy against the sunlight that pierced bright through the windows on all the student riders. “I’m the lowest of the low, that’s for sure.”
“Going forward into a new day of learning,” he thought, “They’re telling me their truth, it’s what they do and really it’s what everyone does,” as he squinted his eyes at the the passing cars and stroked his nose “yes, kind of resembling a rodent.”
Continue reading “Miss Teen Chemainus by Harrison Kim”
My mom died yesterday. No bull, well maybe a tiny bull, by the time you read this it may have been last week, last month, or last year, but I’m pretty sure she will still be dead. I am not astonished. I am not mollified. I am not even a tad bit sad. By contrast, my German Shepherd died four months ago, and I had to be medicated. Our relationship was not a good one, the one with my mom, not the dog. I loved my dog.
Continue reading “My Mom Died Yesterday by Zora Foote”
