Fiction

On Face Tattoos

I told him I’m not a fan of face tattoos. I usually avoid talking usually during tattoo sessions for this goddamn reason. Sometimes I talk too much when I am hi...

Lies

When my children were born I worked in the prison. Wasn’t I scared, people asked, being pregnant there? No, I’d tell them. It’s fine. The officers run a tight s...

THE WORLD BLEEDS

Jess Curtis stooped at the window and stared at the dark. Wind rustled. Foliage shook. Valerie Finn and Noah Thacker, eating pizza straight from the box, sat on...

Two-Party System

Coyote’s scat smells of stolen meat. With no thought to the impacts on the ecology, he’s taken to filling in prairie dog holes – my prairie dog holes – with dir...

Bad Spelling

When the bus stops in front of our house, I walk off slow because I am afraid that Bertie’s body won’t still be in the bathtub. Mother Julia made me go to schoo...

Ghost Girl

Sam hadn’t always been a ghost. Of course, she hadn’t. Like the rest of us, she’d once been fully real. But then, like Marty McFly’s sister in Back to the Futur...

Reddit on a Stick

There was a rumor that the old Hot Dog on a Stick was closing the weekend before Labor Day. Picture this, a young Vito  – that’s me, with older bro Nico, Mom an...

Pink Chewing Gum

My 25 milligram edible gummy is just starting to hit when Jamie tells me he doesn’t want a relationship. He says he’s going to Chicago soon, on account of his a...

Kiss from a Whale

Finally, some whalers found me. Bobbing on a lone plank, stranded at sea. The large one who hauled me up smelled of fish and vinegar and when my forehead slippe...

Escuchamos

THIS is last week in the square of a village, there is a pink town hall and a pink library but it is better to imagine than to know which, at a peppering of tab...

Box

I needed a place to stay. I’d been having problems with my girlfriend, and now I had to move out. Rachel, my best friend, told me she had a spot available in he...

The Tattooed Horror

So, you want to know the truth, eh? The truth behind my tattoo? No, not the one etched into my forearm. I know exactly the one you’re talking about, boychik. ...