Recent Stories
You can see now, Doctor, that I'm not insane. It's all a mistake. Right, I was naked and screaming and it took two cops to wrestle me down but that was a reaction to what happened. Anybody would've acted the same. You can understand that. Right? Once you know the whole story, you'll see.
Look, Saturday I turned thirty. Thirty years and I had nothing much, did nothing much, was nothing much. I'm even an orphan. I'm a cashier at a supermarket. Slide the item over the barcode reader, ding, ring it up, ding, swipe the card (debit or credit?), ding ding ding. Great life, right? I live alone in a one bedroom. No friends, no girl, nothing. I put all my money in a savings account that pays near zero percent interest.
"Come, come!" the attendants at the gate of Tourmaline call to you. "Come and bathe your feet."
The water is refreshing, ice cold, straight from the glaciers on top of the mountains far to the west. You wash away the dust of your long journey across the desert, and marvel at the streets lined with twenty-foot slate slabs, the centers slightly depressed from centuries of traffic. You squint at the bright blue murals depicting rearing elephants and leaping lions in smooth jade and lapis lazuli.
Almost exactly one week after the last day of seventh grade and one week before her thirteenth birthday, Sylvia stomped through the house, flung open the sliding door to the back porch and stood with hands on hips. The Sunday newspaper was not extremely captivating that day, nor were her parents in the practice of ignoring their daughter, but the lawnmower next door was loud enough to mask the impatient tapping of a foot and the flaring lament of teenage nostrils. Finally, Mr. Jera shut off the small motor to empty his grass clippings, and Sylvia said,
"Well?!"
by Erin M. Hartshorn
I sat on the green bench watching the kids at the playground. Not mine. Never mine. But my niece and my two nephews ran up slides and jumped down stairs and raced across bridges and climbed up the outside of equipment that had surely never been meant for that.
"I don't know how you manage," I said softly to Geena, my sister-in-law.
"I knew your family could hear the Call. Knew it when I married Ash. It didn't surprise me when he got up and walked out in the middle of dinner. I just hope he's all right, wherever he is."
Published on May 14, 2012
by Lou Antonelli
***There is swearing in this story. -Editor's Warning***
I was poking at my drink with a swizzle stick, killing time waiting for my connecting flight. The American Airlines Admiral's Club was nearly empty. I stared at the D/FW runways and watched the flights taking off and landing. I had lost interest in the television a long time ago.
Published on May 11, 2012
by Steve J Myers
Published on May 10, 2012
by Ken Liu
Published on May 9, 2012
by Lavie Tidhar
Sssshhh...
Listen.
Published on May 8, 2012
by Andrew S. Fuller
Published on May 7, 2012
