It was a Las Vegas beginning for pen-pals! Strangers, taking a gamble, deciding to go for it, waking up. “Wait, did we just make some kind of a commitment? Now, back up, there’s no reason for alarm—it’s only a letter. You can tell that I’m not used to this.” Stephen Tilden is retired in Brooklyn […]
Seashells. I love collecting them. I love running my fingers across their ridges. I want to hear the ocean in them. The one in my hand is small and delicate. Holding it to my face, I whisper. “Hello.” It screams, “PUT ME DOWN!” I drop it as I run away. Cithara currently lives in North […]
S.Q. stored it away last fall and now that he needs it, can’t find it. He’s racked his brain, looking everywhere, digging into places he thought it might be, but nothing. That’s Mr. Earl for you! He may eventually find it; if not, at least a new tree might sprout. Deborah LeFalle began her creative […]
e turned the puddle inside out. Threw it over his shoulders like a coat. Giggled. Clapped for himself. Bowed. Walked down the street. Then ran. Then flew. Then stopped. Threw the puddle back onto the pavement—black as ash. Looked at it and sighed. Walked away and never came back. Tatiana lives in the beautiful suburb […]
A.I. reported a 98% probability at birth of shoplifting, assault, gang affiliation. Immediate incarceration could save taxpayer dollars. Alternatively, adequate housing and education found a 100% chance of the same individual becoming a law-abiding periodontist who gardened on weekends. What it boiled down to was cost. It ran the numbers. Michelle Wilson graduated from Bennington […]
Stanley lay dead on the floor. “I’m a mantis,” she said, “You knew that from the start. What did you expect?” Somehow, she always thought her lovers would be sweeter than they were. Stanley, especially, had been unsatisfying. She checked her breath and hoped the babies would look like her. Brenda is a retired university […]
In the age of time travel, tourism exploded for the rich.Meet an ancestor, kill a relative, spare a dictator, all now possible.No-one thought about the pathogens hitching a lift backwards. Time to fester, to develop resistance—to rule.In the age of time travel, pandemics slaughtered the poor. Paul lives in Scotland. Sometimes he writes stories. Sometimes […]
Hulda is jealous of her master’s possession of Alma, or rather a lifelike replica of Alma made of swan skin and sofa stuffing. Image generated with OpenAI I never meant for Kokoschka to kill Alma; only for him to relinquish her to me for ever. In the end, they came to the same thing. It […]
The sea delivers soft-edged bits of glass and storm-tossed shells. On a high tide, it brought my sister, soft-edged and storm-tossed with hair like fire. We railed against the waves when they stole her back. Even now, my eyes comb the greedy sea for the gleam of her iridescent tail. Jenny Mattern is a poet, […]
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