Issue #13
Afterglow by Clio Velentza

Early in the morning, Sis took me to watch the volcano. I slept on her lap in the bus. We got to the heath just as the sun was rising, just as the pillar of smoke began to thin and gleam.

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ZOO by Jeff Landon

We’re a family, but the only thing that binds us now is blood.  We are western lowland gorillas, displaced in the Virginia Beach zoo, but no complaints. 

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Guilty by MJ McGinn

“You think he deserved it?” My kid brother shrugs at that and looks out the window which I figure is a yes.

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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.

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.

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.

Café Mozart Dreamin’ by Tracey Meloni

Judie bangs on my hotel door. “The dressmaker is here! Hurry! You have Christmas lunch with Noah at Café Mozart at 1PM!”