Rob the Bank, Butter the Kitchen by Susann Cokal I’ve been wanting to leave. Get out of town, flee the country, abandon the planet. I’m not the only one; I hear people talking about it everywhere. They don’t like the president or the climate or the new interest rates....
Extremes of Human Endurance by Rebecca Chekouras Yellow sunlight crests the towering main gate and filters through the high branches of the acacia tree outside our night house. With little else to do, I laze in my nest bed, the only one awake; sole witness to the...
Lifespan of the Fathead Minnow by Caitlin Rae Taylor When she takes the folded brochure out of her canvas bag, I know I’m fucked. The brochure, though creased and veined with white age lines, is a fire of blues and magentas, its color pieced together by chromic...
Elfland by T.S. McAdams Men and dogs do foolish things. Bringing a stripper home to see the hole was a foolish thing. It was the girl from the billboard Donny liked, with soft-looking hair and bare shoulders cut off by the bottom of the sign. Donny used to drive by...
Dogs of War by Jason Arment The trucks, three Humvees and a Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP), trundled up the main access route and through the “gate”—guard posts on each side of the road. No one came out to signal us forward. When the lead Humvee approached the...
Feral by Christina Rivera Cogswell The surgeon finished his description of the triple heart bypass procedure, “So, do you have any questions?” “My family knows me for being tough,” my father said. “Don’t put any soft spots in my heart okay?” Not even six Valium could...
