Recent Stories
The residents of Morro greeted me with understandable hesitance. My clothes and accent marked me as a traveler from distant Tehachapi, and saying that I came from the university in search of horse stories made me even more suspect. City denizens rarely ventured this deep into the coastal wilderness, and if they did, it was to engage with bootleggers smuggling in liquor from the south. It took several days for people to accept me as an academic eccentric, not a government informant.
"Horses? I've heard of them," said a pox-scarred teenager, "but they were imaginary like dragons, right?"
Children are so frequently told they have wonderful imaginations that she never took the signs seriously. She'd always noticed the shadows at the corner of her eye, the glimmers of light that didn't belong. It was her favorite game to pretend she was the focus of some Otherness, but only a game.
Devotion to her studies left little room for make believe. The arrival of glasses gave her the excuse she needed to ignore the phenomenon entirely, a reflection, light off the frames. Nothing to bother with.
Jody climbed the rusty ladder to the apartment roof, Mick behind her making the metal vibrate with his heavy male steps. His face was close to her ass, which embarrassed and thrilled her. He was the hottest guy in the whole apartment complex. She was already imagining kissing him on the sun-warmed tarpaper. She turned, breathless, to help him over the lip, blushing, sure the climb had been half foreplay.
"Cool." Mick gazed past her over the rooftop. Then he walked away from her and sat down against an air conditioner housing. He got his phone out.
Atomic explosions are beautiful from outer space. There's a bright, searing flash then a bulbous growth of angry clouds that flatten out like Portobello mushrooms.
I watch from a tiny window in the deserted storage bay. Children aren't allowed on the observation deck, including teenagers like me. The psychiatrists say watching the destruction of our planet will warp our fragile minds.
by Beth Cato
Published on Feb 14, 2020
by Stephanie Burgis
"Just look what you've become since you left home!" Mara's cousin jabbed an accusatory finger at the colorful, cartoonish paintings of lions and tigers that lined the nursery walls. "All the magic you'd gathered, all your skills and your fortune--you were the strongest of our generation!--but you've let yourself sink into changing nappies and drawing twee little pictures for your children. Did you really think the rest of the family wouldn't notice? Did you not realize one of us would come and seize it all the very moment you stepped back and gave up your strength?"
Mara met her cousin's gaze over the heads of her sleeping children, just as she'd met it over a hundred family battles throughout their childhood as they'd been trained in the painful rules of their bloodline. "I didn't want it to be true anymore," she said quietly, "but, of course, you're right. Why do you think I created all those paintings?"
Published on Feb 13, 2020
by William Squirrell
Published on Feb 12, 2020
by Sarah Yost
Published on Feb 11, 2020
by Marie Vibbert
Published on Feb 10, 2020
by Lora Kilpatrick
Published on Feb 7, 2020
