Issue #3
Penultimate by D.R. Wagner

I’ve got this house in the desert. They won’t find us there. You can wear a rose in your hair. Tomorrow is close, still small, still inert.

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Primary Colors by Zac Locke

You stand before a platter of all the cheeses you could want. Swiss semi-soft and Parmigiano-Reggiano. Manchego from Spain and Basque Bleu.

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THE STORIES by Jenny Hayes

She tells them so often. I know them all by heart. If the Brady Bunch comes up in conversation, Celeste will always mention how she and Anna wanted to form a band called the Bloody Bradies, with everyone dressed like the Brady kids after a massacre.

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Questions by Cezarija Abartis

Keep your courage up, Paula once rather pompously advised her mother. Mother had been in the middle of a crying jag, which careened into a rant.

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Nocturne by Sarah Ann Winn

Our little one runs around the sky without thought of finding a friend. Typical of only children, she does not always play well with others.

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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.

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.

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.