Issue #26
Snow and Peaches by Gordon Mennenga

Everybody in the Wink-Mart was talking about snow, how the snow was poised on the edge of the state, how Nebraska had to close I-80 west of Kearney, how last year a woman in South Dakota froze to death in a blizzard when she tried to make it to the barn to find her husband.

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Lonelihood by Todd Clay Stuart

She had disco in her hips and wants to dance. Tells me her name is Sheila, but wishes it were Flannery. Naturally, I assume she’s a writer.

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An Octopus with a Narwhal Tusk by Tanya Cliff

Fridays, we rarely see patients. After transcribing therapists’ notes, learning all the details of our clients’ messed-up lives—details that I will later pretend not to know as I offer people coffee, schedule appointments, collect co-pays—I spend a few hours tending to the 1000-piece puzzle in the corner.

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The Tour by Marina Vaysberg

The ceilings are all over. Floors don’t seem to matter. As if we could walk in the air and band our heads under the arches from room to room.

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Malignant by Kate Gehan

They were early for the first tour of the cave and waited outside at a picnic table, where her son ate granola bars and her stomach roiled from weak hotel coffee.

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Fun House by Robert Scotellaro

She’d gotten the fun house mirrors at an auction and had them put up in the spare bedroom.

The Girl In Purple by Bobbie Ann Mason

Near dawn, Dennis Moore saw the iron gate to the courtyard inch open and the wisp of a girl squeeze through, clanging the gate behind her. Two minutes later, on the boardwalk, she halted as if for an invisible dog, then resumed her dog-walker gait. He followed her...

Little Red Riding Hood by Katerina Kishchynska

Grandma gets her episodes at least once a month. She’ll grow out her jaws and if it happens on a rainy day, claws will tear out of her fingers.

Lady Gaga Considers the Shrimp Scampi by Steve Almond

There were fifty thousand little monsters screaming for an encore, Spaniards, Germans, skinny little French boys, Italians making wet sounds with their tongues.

Conversation in Hotel Lounge by Lydia Davis

Two women sit together on the sofa in the hotel lounge, bent over and deep in conversation.  I am walking through, on my way to my room.