Embedded Files
Weeping Sores - Mastura Ibnat
When we were younger, my mother used to tell me and my older sister Naorin all the various ways she maintained her modesty. She told us that she never stripped naked in the bathroom, even while she was showering. She said that even if the bathroom was too impure for God to be present, it was not too impure for Satan...
The Gravedigger - Stella Jorgensen
In the cold light of dawn, the gravedigger of Innish Shoan slammed his shovel into the ground. His stooped back rippled under the sleet, and long, sinewy arms connected to hands so calloused it was the handle of the shovel that was whittled away over many, many years. There was rhythm to his work. The gravedigger cherished frozen earth...
The Deceiver - Lauren Folk
With her heart pounding, Mossy Pretta stared into the dark. Icy pinpoints of light from her charging phone pricked her eyes, blinding in the pitch of her bruise-black bedroom. She found herself clutching a fistful of bedsheet in her hand and forced herself to release it. The night was as silent as it could be, this time of year. It was very late, or very early...
The Switch - Charlie Skinner
I look around the room. I do not stand out in this group whatsoever. I’m sitting in a circle of blue plastic chairs, like the ones I’d sat in in high school, with the grated texture and the holes in the back for no apparent reason. Right across from me is a girl around my age, maybe thirty-two, dressed in all black...
Problem Child- Cayenne Bradley
Father has his ear to a glass, glass to the wall. Be quiet, he tells Daughter, I'm listening for something. For what, she asks. For something that isn't you. Daughter says I am I am I am and Mother, who has her head in the oven, says who the hell are you, anyway. Sister is still trapped in the attic, but no one remembers her...
The Mortician - Audrey Whan
People say that if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. I can’t say I agree with this; I’ve definitely worked some days. Yet I love my job, and I go home every day excited for the next morning. It’s always felt like something I was meant to do. Something that was written into my brain from the start...
Alma - Naomi Portillo
I’d scraped my knee as soon as we’d left the taxi, unfamiliar with the bumpy terrain surrounding my grandmother’s home. I’d wept a little and she’d called me a clumsy American before taking me inside and setting some chipped ice chunks on my cut. She had scolded my mother for coddling me moments after...
Four Stages of Pandora - Daria Masyukova
Freshly moved to New York, eyes widening at the sight of skyscrapers, lungs full of the smell of weed. Our hopes were higher than college girls doing cocaine in the club restroom while their much older dates discuss stocks and cars in the VIP lounge. We were naive. We were hoping to find peace in democracy, love in the triggers of guns, and taste for life in the aisles of Target filled with huge packs of chips and gallons of sodas...
Turning Heads - Cayenne Bradley
I am in a dark room full of disassembled heads. Every lost feature is his, and I think I'm the one who has taken them, but I forgot where they went. I forgot his name too, or maybe I ate it. I'm afraid I will only ever be known by my absences. Have I told you this already? I go outside, searching for something...
No Birds Only - Clare Hickey
“Emily…” He half sings my name, dragging out the last syllable just to annoy me. I don't think it’s working because I smile. I turn my head up to meet his eyes. His brows are in a pleading half-stitch and his mouth is in a slight downturn. It’s Daniel’s own sort of mind control, and it works scarily well on me...
The Trees Have Eyes - Kurdarius Keyes
Though, do not judge Chane for his obsession; he was just a humble logophile before his disappearance. In fact, those that knew him described him as being a walking thesaurus.
Those two people had been his parents—Carol and Maximus. Though after some time, they found exactly how he went missing and never spoke of Chane again...
Subject - Cayenne Bradley
I pose for him and he paints me. Sprawled on scarlet silk, a cat skull resting on my bare stomach. Bent over a crate of doves. Biting into a raw trout, its unseeing eye fixed on the viewer. Crouched with my hands over my face, his wife's jewels dripping down my throat. Tangled in a spiderweb of blue ribbon...
Works in Progress - Carley Doktorski
My neighbor Josephine keeps a pair of little boy’s shoes by the door. She has a sign, too, that reads “cats welcome, people tolerated,” and a big old fashioned umbrella, faded and fraying at the edges. She teaches at the local college down the street, either a Proust intensive or a fiction workshop, every semester...
Your Voice in My Head - Cayenne Bradley
She's back again tonight, in her silky black robes, her clockwork eyes ticking nonsense numbers. She's singing that song, that damn song with a crucial meaning that's forever just out of reach, but I hear your voice in my head: Not everything needs to be decoded, sometimes you must let things stay senseless and...
I am Not a Baker - Margot Schiller
When I turned five years old, my dad made me a strawberry shortcake. There’s a picture of me somewhere lining the strawberries on top of the cake so that not an inch of white poked through the red. I liked that time. I liked that cake. It wasn’t indulgent. I didn’t need double chocolate covered in...
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