HARD TO SWALLOW • Sydney Quinn
Aunt Maisy used to give Luna and I lemon-flavored cough drops and tell us they were real candy, and the summer I was four and Luna was six we took the bag of cough drops off Maisy’s shelf and ate… Continue Reading
FORTY-THREE • Nivara Lune
The sparrow in the filing cabinet had been dead three days, maybe four. Marianne could tell by the way its feet had curled, the dim gloss still caught in its eye. She set down her cleaning kit and crouched, her… Continue Reading
THE LAST SEED SHE SWALLOWED • Nilay Kumar Sarker
Mira took her medicine in the dark. The jar was smooth and cold, the label hand-written in faint ink: B17 — Immuno-Restorative. Below that, smaller: Apricot kernel extract. Natural therapy. Unregistered. The lid creaked open. One seed in the morning.… Continue Reading
LIVIE AND LEV • Peggie Gerber
You might think it’s weird to give your violin a name, but not me. I mean, when you get right down to it, how is it any different than naming a doll or a stuffed animal? The important thing is… Continue Reading
THE LAST DREAM OF DR. CARLOS DE OLIVIERA • João Miguel Alves Ferreira
Dr. Carlos de Oliveira had long abandoned the dream of returning to Earth. His life belonged to Callisto now—a drifting station above endless ice, where Jupiter’s magnetic storms set the sky ablaze with curtains of green and violet light. The… Continue Reading
SWEET ROT • Verity Mason
My son, Tommy, chomped down the toffee apple with the unthinking greed of a child who’d never learnt control. His cheeks puffed out sticky with sugar and caramel, the glaze catching the carnival lights like a fragile shell. Lopsided on… Continue Reading
THE FINAL ENDING • T. J. Perkins
The dark figure strode purposefully toward the softly glowing front gate of the Afterlife. Its eyes were black holes that could tug your soul away from you. Its face was hewn from the same black granite as the sarcophagi of… Continue Reading
MECHANICS OF DYING • by Allison Whittenberg
Paul hadn’t expected the end to feel like this; the absence of pain was unexpected. More than anything, a hollowing out. The edges of things had dulled, the distance gained softened, the body delicately seeping back from its source. Still… Continue Reading
SECOND SHELF • by Kristina Warlen
He still cooked like someone might show up. Gage plated the chili even though he was already full. He spooned it into one of his regular bowls, the ones with faint red stains from spaghetti and a chip near the… Continue Reading
CROCHET • by Rachel E Parks
When you pick your brother up from the rehab center, he will not look like he did when you saw him last at your cousin’s birthday party, when you didn’t know he had white powder in his zipped-up cargo short… Continue Reading