Issue #11
Orson Welles by Fred Muratori

Lesser evils gather and disperse, ephemeral as fine hairs on a barbershop floor. But the greater evils aren’t obvious until it’s too late. You think Looks like it might rain and then a SWAT team storms the house next door.

read more
Insurance by Elaine Chiew

You go diving with him in the Bahamas as a leap of faith, even though you’re not sure whether it’s a leap of faith in yourself or in him or in your togetherness.

read more
Tapped by Kim Magowan

A week before Ruth’s daughter heads to college, she crawls into Ruth’s bed in the middle of the night. Shivering, Hannah describes her nightmare.

read more
Homely by Raki Kopernik

Behind the picture window on Twelfth and Grand, the one you can see from the street if you walk on the south side of the sidewalk and look up to the second floor, lives a ten-pound longhaired calico that spends her days looking out at the passing cars.

read more
Beakless by Justin Herrmann

It’s my week with Madison. My first week, in fact, since things have been settled. She’s been gaining weight at her mother’s, and, I believe, has stopped speaking proper sentences.

read more
Dadjinsky by Hardy Griffin

I awoke in écarté. My left arm curved around the pillow and up to the headboard and my right foot arched toward tightly pointed toes.

read more
Good Day for the Clouds by James Hartman

The sky was so clear the blue looked prickly, like if you raised your palm it might cut your skin, but the sun was mild and there was no breeze as Jonathan sat in his old beach chair in his open garage and closed his eyes. 

read more

Their Closet by Pamela Painter

“What are you thinking?” her husband asked her. In their twenty years of marriage he had never asked her that.

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.

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...

Initiation by Stuart Dybek

The doors snap open on Addison, and the kid in dirty hightops and a sleeveless denim jacket that shows off a blue pitchfork tattooed on his bicep jogs forward beneath a backward baseball cap and grabs the purse off a babushka’s lap.

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.