Category: Fiction

A Clarifying Moment, Alyssa Noel Hypnopompia The first thing I want in the morning is more time. Time for more sleep, time for all the things I want to do that day, time to write, time to eat more than one meal. Look now: see the shadows play and kiss on the ceiling. Listen to…

We Live, We Die, We Live Again, Ari Reyes It’s the sound of a basketball against pavement that stirs me from the kitchen table Saturday morning. By the time Alex, my brother, comes downstairs after a night of video gaming and goofing off, I’m on my second cup of coffee, elbow deep in college applications. He…

Skin Mask Replica, Hunter Louis “‘Sky’ is now synonymous with ‘bowling alley carpet,’,” says the Announcer, somehow crystal clear inside my mind.  Thanks, I think, and I can feel their acknowledgement.  I go back to what I was doing before being interrupted: organizing the books by the feeling they give me on page 95. I’d started…

This Ain’t Belle’s Rose, Adriana Barker   A young man named Rosko Ivanovich stomps his feet on the fifth stair leading up to a condemned Russian Orthodox church in order to increase the blood flow to his numb feet. The church is situated on a street corner in the stale coal town of Irwin, Pennsylvania. A…

Flutter, Savanah Tebeau-Sherry “The first time I saw the deceased, he was sitting on a greasy bench at the bus station.  I’d been aware of him from the moment I’d walked into that dingy little place. It was like a sixth sense had woken up within me; I suppose every woman must have that sense to…

Whispers, Emily Bryn Once upon a time, there was a great and beautiful giant named Pantagruel.  He was cloaked in silver and fish scales. His robes were made of the skin of the river, and weaved in his hair was the starlight itself.   Pantagruel was not a happy creature.  His heart moaned with a bitter ache…

Demonology, Jack Hoye Isabel always had trouble sleeping, ever since Theodore could remember. She never made it through the night without a nightmare plaguing her unconscious, resulting in her screaming for Mom or walking down to her parents’ room to squeeze in between their two bodies. Frankly, she was getting too old to be sleeping with…

We Live We Die We Live Again, Ari Reyes Mom always smelled like that sticky brown stuff that caked on the bottom of her pink purse. Sometimes, when she would lean in so close that her hair would brush across my cheeks, I could smell the stuff in the little bottle she sprayed on herself…

Dancer, Rose Horell The elephant pressed up against Sadie where she sat on the couch, its rough white skin scratching her thighs. It was too big to fit on the loveseat, so its knobby knees and gnarled feet were twisted underneath its massive barrel body. Its great head lolled atop broad shoulders, nodding to the quiet…

An Ode to Breakfast, Emma Lassiter We pass each other in our reshall and I ask, immediately, how you’re feeling. You stare, dazed, thinking 3:48 am is the wrong time for checking in. You’re wrong—it’s the perfect time. Because it’s never the wrong time for community building and I am your Resident Advisor, your guru of…

Rust Rorschach, Tim Embertson Melika, because she was older, taught us all the uses for newspaper: spread on the table before a fishbone dinner. Trim squares to use as toilet paper. Twist into a wick and shove up between your legs during your period. Cut the missing-children page into a triangle and tape to a cross…

This Ain’t Belle’s Rose, Adriana Barker      Granstan didn’t much like driving on the Trace. Says they’re too many young bucks looking for love on that stretch. After a drink Granstan and Daddy would chat away and cut up while I listened on… no talking, only listening. Granstan would crack something witty and maybe a little crude…

Skin Mask Replica, Hunter Louis       The Missouri heat was damp and strangling, and her mother’s A/C was broken, so Soph spent most of the spring semester of 1L lingering as long as she could in the campus Law library or the nicer houses and apartments of her friends, riding the bus back across…

 Behaviorism, Arjun Saatia Zara Envada wasn’t prone to panic or nervousness.  Or any kind of fear at all, actually.  She didn’t see much point to it.  But one who was more inclined towards fits of hysterical panic and terror might have to admit that in this case, she was maybe, just slightly, moderately fucked.   For…

Pink Creek, Louise Rossiter   [TW: Depictions of death and suicide]     Wren August 4, 1996   I know most people say life is too short, but I think mine was long enough. I did everything I wanted to do; graduated high school with my best friend Betsy, met a wonderful man in the…

Gas Station, Oscar Zenteno “Please choose your payment type,” said the voice from the self-checkout machine. The letters blinked at Fatima. The store, alive with noise a few moments before, now seemed to be silently staring at her. The thunderous downpour of the rain outside drowned out the blood rushing to her ears. Under the…

Catacombes de Paris, Elle Griffiths “It was the summer of 2016,” Alex said, stalwart against the bonfire light. “No one fucking listened to me. I told ’em it was all a ruse. He was back. He was back and remorseless. You know why?”  The scraggly nomads gathered around the fire with him stared bemused. Some…