Issue #18
Hum by Tara Isabel Zambrano

The first time the tall girl brings a dwarf home, she’s unsure. But the purpose is to get away from exotic, immaculate men and ordinary routine of sex and breakups.

read more
Other People’s Mothers by Patricia Q. Bidar

Other people’s mothers’ hair is the shade of a new penny. When their husbands leave, they hire us to paint their bedrooms lavender. We take breaks to lift the lids of shoe boxes stacked in the closet.

read more
In the Fishbowl by Hun Ohm

In her fingers my sister held a spoon, and in its bowl the spoon held a goldfish, which in turn held its breath as it beheld the dry world in its shiny, unblinking eyes.

read more
Watch Us Go by Jessica Barksdale

My parents named all our cars: Wilfred, Arthur, Barnie. By the time my father bought the Volkswagen squareback, no one was in the mood to name anything but death.

read more
Game Theory by Merridawn Duckler

Becky is a bully. Her sister, Corey, should have been a boy. These are facts which Corey knows to be as certain as the word facts, fat middle letters fenced in by two taller guard letters.

read more
December by Fred Muratori

Death is rarely timed to match the logical end of something else. My father died in December, but my mother died in January.

read more
Coats by Gary Fincke

The morning of the company president’s Christmas party, my wife Christine read me a story from the newspaper about a woman found hiding in a neighbor’s bedroom closet.

read more

Hermit & Bleeding Faucet by Ana María Shua

With the population now well aware of the physical and mental benefits of asceticism (low cholesterol, bradycardia, a delicate sense of happiness, spiritual fulfillment), everyone wants to become a hermit.

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.

Fun House by Robert Scotellaro

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

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.