Fiction
If you like what you discover here, pick up a copy of our print issue at Susquehanna University’s Writers Institute and read even more!
Octopus at the Country Club
By Madeleine Sherbondy
The lifeguard arrived at the country club one morning in July, too distracted to bother looking into the pool. She did not see the octopus until it was too late. The octopus did not mind. It had nothing but time.
A Summer with Ms. Joy
By Hannah Mackey
Mama sent me to buy a gallon of milk before it got dark. It only took four minutes to walk, half that on a bike, to get to Mr. Leeroy’s Corner Store on Glenspick Avenue. I took my younger sister, Belinda, with me, and we rode the bike I got on my birthday. Two minutes to the corner store, four minutes chatting and buying milk, three minutes riding back after stopping for water ice. Nine minutes. That’s all it took for our house to catch fire.
From Sea to Shore
By Amy Jarvis
The day that Carson slipped and hit his head on the Ann Elizabeth, Evelyn found out she was pregnant with a fetus she was told she’d never be able to have. It was Carson’s fault. Both things. Well, the baby was a miracle they both shared, Evelyn reasoned, but Carson working on a ship two centuries old and smacking his head on the rotted floorboards hard enough to knock himself out was his own damn fault.
How Adults Spend Saturday Nights
By Julie Heaney
I am a plucked chicken ready to go out. My skin is rubbed raw. All of the acne scabs once clawed onto my face with bits of spider leg skin are now swirled down the bathroom drain. The pink, sore arches of my eyebrows are void of coarse brown hairs. They have been brushed into the well of the sink by the toilet. I look hoity-toity. I look fresh.
Ophelia
By Taylor Ebersole
Ophelia rises with the sun every morning. It’s a habit she’s never been able to break, and now, with her stomach pain, she is fitful through each night and tired through each day. The pain wakes her just as light is climbing the horizon. As sunlight washes across the sky, the pain washes through her abdomen, down the backs of her thighs and through her legs, a storm ravaging her body. On the best of mornings, it is only a dull ache, but on the worst, it is a stabbing pain that leaves her curled into herself.
Stories From Sunshine Street
By Jordyn Taylor
1. The Bus Stop, 2018
Bus 43 never stopped directly in front of Sunshine Street, a cul-de-sac with a mustard-yellow “No Outlet” sign at the entrance. Miss Hannigan, the driver of the bus for the last half-decade, stopped just short of the street, so that only the nose of the bus peeked past an array of pine trees obstructing Sunshine Street from view. Everyone in the neighboring areas of Bradford, Massachusetts knew Sunshine Street was a dead end, so there was hardly any reason for them to enter the development. The final round-about was only ever used by children on their bicycles or when neighbors walked their dogs.