Flash Fiction
The Wise Internal Voice
B e watchful of voices that shout shouldn’t, mustn’t, don’t. They said she shouldn’t climb up the fire escape and whisper conversations with the night sky. It was one thing to perch on the roof’s edge, feet dangling, and look down on the city below, taking in the glow of neon lights. But who was
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Lost and Found
I cy wind rattled the coffee shop windows. The string of fairy lights outside the storefront shook, striking the glass in a repeating tink, tink, tink, like the drumming of skeletal fingers. Darkness came early this time of year, but the shop was lit with the soft glow of many stained-glass lamps. It felt safe.
Ghosts of Circus Past
T here was no room for fear at the circus. As infants, my sister Jenny and I learned to walk by balancing our child-soft legs on the gravity-defying materials of tightwires and bouncing ropes. We were birds, a fear of tumbling
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Goats in the Boiler Room
I wake to the sound of bleating. What the fuck? While still half asleep, I crawl out of bed at–what–2:36 am? I grab my phone and the Swiss Army knife I keep on the bedside table and lumber down the stairs. I make as much noise as possible to scare any
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Táltos
A woodsman gave me a ride for the last few miles. He was surprised to find a young woman on the mountain path. “You’re a student?” he said. “From Piarista gymnazium,” I said. “Where the witch burning happened last week,” he said. “Awful stuff.” We passed through small settlements; the path wound up through the
Popstar Mermaid in a Trash Storm Along the Mississippi
W hen P-XIE refused to justify her surgery, the reporter asked if it was so she could marry a fish. Her publicist cut the interview off. But that became the story. Pop Icon Gone Fishing: Are Real Men Not Good Enough for P-XIE? Three months later, on a sun-soaked Saturday afternoon outside Saint Louis,
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For the Love of Fries
D avid loved untaxed Bauhaus steel. Especially when it was at a Vancouver 6.7 percent discount. If he included the security envelope with fifty one-dollar bills, the total cost of two coffee tables, a new kitchen table, and matching bedside lamps was $9,650. Sure, his five-year-old daughter, Elise–who he’d coached not to say a word
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Bubble Gum Romance
A tough call—Strawberry Lemonade or Wild Cherry? I had heard rumors last semester but until now didn’t believe them. Rachel Roth, who was three inches taller than any boy in the 6th grade, supposedly ordered Norm Chance and Randy Gibson to “go shopping.” There was only one
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Light As a Feather
I used to be a bird. My mother never hid this fact from me. She told me as soon as I was old enough to understand. At the time, this made complete sense. Children are much more accepting of the impossible. I nodded as she prepared my breakfast, sunlight streaming through the window blinds and
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