Issue #12
Forgotten by Jo Davies

He’d been under the stairs for years, forgotten and neglected. This wasn’t what his family had envisaged when they’d sold him.

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Bone Deep by Anita Goveas

No-one’s sure what going to happen next. Today, its ‘acids and bases’. They’ve dipped litmus paper into milk and ketchup and written down the results.

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Los Muertos by Tommy Dean

The car—a black shadow—not there a second before, weaved drunkenly toward the mailbox, before eclipsing the end of their driveway, veering toward the other side of the road.

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The Easy Way by Michelle Ross

All their life together, his wife has denounced the gadgets he’s acquired. The pole that extends to sweep ceiling cobwebs: they own a ladder.

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Playing Pretend by Jacalyn Eis

You see him watching her – the dapper little boy dressed like a pre-school banker, in his navy blazer, a blue bow tie, and his blond hair combed smoothly to the side. 

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On Her Finger by Jason Jackson

You’d been watching him sleep, his head resting on his arms at the table, but now he was unfolding himself like some sun-woken, hibernating creature.

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Bog Iron by Shane Larkin

We make stops on the way to our bog plot to look at the little skeletons. Dad tells me about them. Curlews and skylarks in dancing poses. Tiny skulls.

I’ll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours by Eliot Li

I tell you I’ve only ever shown it to a girl who I met on a tour bus in Moscow, where I was traveling with my parents. She had bad acne, and she really liked Duran Duran.

Fulfilling by Fiona McKay

Kate is not ‘imagining it’. There are small tufts of pale fluff on her neck, and no, it’s not ‘just a tissue in the washing machine’ as John suggests. There’s nothing drifting off his shirts, nothing clinging to Ella’s favourite black top, Josh’s Minecraft t-shirts. It’s more solid than tissue, just on her clothes. And only she can see it.

Amelia Earhart Knew Seven Latin Words for Fire by Joe Kapitan

Ignis, the flaming wreckage, bubbling rubber, liquified cloth, her skin charred and blistering, acrid smoke, the tiny thunders of survival’s kicks

Get Your Authentic Stardust Here by JP Relph

The night the sky cracked, I was sprawled on the hood of my car beside that good-for-nothing boy, naming constellations, ignoring his fingers on my neck.