Fiction
OUR LADY OF THE TICKS
Hal Dittbrenner
I had been in line for three hours, the smell of olive oil and salt nauseatingly strong. All around us, people had given up waiting patiently. Those with food ate. The line itself stretched around the small expanse of countryside, and we stood restlessly like ants. There were elephant paths at our feet, and the sky above us was starless. At my side were two hitchhikers, Taliyah and Santiago…
A DOZEN BABY CHICKS
Lindsay Hirschman
On Sunday, the young woman and the young man went to the park for their first date. They walked down the gravel path lined with light posts which were littered with fliers for pet grooming services, baby bird delivery services, and used car purchasing services. When they made it to the top of the arching stone bridge, they tossed handfuls of peas into the narrow river below…
BREWED BITTER
Maggie Mauro
Peach tea, Elizabeth decides, tastes more bitter when one is estranged from her family. She tilts her chin up and tips the brew down her throat, stilling the breath in her chest. The window above her kitchen sink lets sunlight in, and Elizabeth takes a moment to remind herself that she is okay. Alone, but okay. Even though she’s oversteeped her drink...
MONUMENTAL SALESMAN
Jesse Manbeck
Farmer Nelson pulled his truck into Harton Memorials shortly after one, still in his overalls after harvesting soybeans that morning. Looking at himself in his rearview mirror, he let out a sigh before stepping into the parking lot. With leaden feet he walked through the leaning stacks of blank slate surrounding the entrance of the cement-block building…
RUMINATIONS ON TCHAIKOVSKY
Kathleen Bauer
The R train was running two minutes late, and in the space of those hundred-odd seconds, Alice Morello-Denton slid the two silver-and-diamond rings off and onto her finger fifty-one times. A nervous habit; she was going to have to fix that. As the train’s headlights appeared over the end of the subway tracks, she made a mental note to discuss this extra annoyance with the good man, Dr. Liu, at her appointment next Thursday…
WE ARE BLUE
Maggie Mauro
On the night our boat sinks, we are blue. The boat was my dad’s. An old aluminum work boat, weathered from twenty years on the sea and an additional ten sitting unused in his garage. You and I, we took it out too far in the ocean, and we knew it. The boat was frail. Small. But we would have contested anyone who claimed we weren’t invincible. Now, there is no one coming to save us. The boat’s systems failed before we could send out for help…
BRIEF MOMENTS OF LUCIDITY
Arabella McClendon
An angel fell to earth. They alighted gently beside me and shone steady and silver as they walked. We left the main street behind for the quieter neighborhood in the west. Fewer people on the sidewalk, more plants in the gardens. We walked together through the elm trees and into the dunes. The angel remarked they could feel the earth turn under us, and so it was…