Fiction

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Lilith

by Madeleine Sherbondy

1

The Seventh Day

In the beginning, there was nothing.

And then there was light.

God created the light and the dark, the land and the sea. He created the sky-scraping ferns and the crawling vines. He sowed the ground with all trees pleasant to the eye and all those bearing edible fruits, and He did this within the space He called Eden…

irwin, pennsylvania

by Jacob Dimpsey

A young man named Rosko Ivanovich stomps his feet on the fifth stair leading up to a condemned Russian Orthodox church in order to increase the blood flow to his numb feet. The church is situated on a street corner in the stale coal town of Irwin, Pennsylvania…

THE MOON AND THE SKY

by Tabitha Gonia

“‘Sky’ is now synonymous with ‘bowling alley carpet,’” says the Announcer, somehow crystal clear inside my mind. 

Thanks, I think, and I can feel their acknowledgement. 

I go back to what I was doing before being interrupted: organizing the books by the feeling they give me on page 95…

FISHING, AT NIGHT

by Megan Shaffer

There are only certain things that my father will whisper when we’re out fishing, and they’re always about the moon or the stars or the water.

Mo is sitting next to our dad on the boat, his lips so dry they’re always cracking with blood, and when he smiles sometimes it drips down his chin…

Potential Uses for That Severed Head of a Goat in Your Freezer that Staunchly Refuses to Decompose

by Steven Christopher McKnight

One of its eyes was frozen shut, and its patchy fur matted in the single layer of plastic that I had wrapped around it. The other eye was open, rolled back as though its dad had just cracked a joke in public. (“You have goat to be kidding me.”) Its horns strained at the plastic wrap, but politely did not break through…

I’m a rotten peach, mom

by Cara Roets

I’m washing my plate in the sink when I hear Dad come up behind me and I can feel it too; he’s too tall and too warm and too everything. When he grabs my shoulder too tight like he does sometimes I imagine grabbing a wooden handle sticking out of the knife-box next to the sink and thrusting the sharp end into Dad’s stomach to stop his fist, because my left eye is already a gross, swollen, red and yellow blob like an overripe peach, and I swear if he hits it again it’ll finally just smush and the juice will seep into my head and I’ll be half blind…

Insaniam

by Grady Curtis

The thing about being a window washer is people think you don’t exist. It’s like you’re there, and they know you’re there because they see you, but they act like you’re not a person. They see you on the other side of the window, standing on that shaky metal platform, eight stories up outside some fancy hotel you could never afford, and sometimes they smile but usually they just look away…

before you crash

by Anastasia Farley

“Please choose your payment type,” said the voice from the self-checkout machine. The letters blinked at Fatima. The store, alive with noise a few moments before, now seemed to be silently staring at her. The thunderous downpour of the rain outside drowned out the blood rushing to her ears. Under the glare of the fluorescent lights, beads of sweat slid down her back. Fatima felt ill, lightheaded, her stomach icy and oily all in one…

The Fisherman’s wife

by Brianna Simmons

The wind battered the stone cottage resting between two large hills that overlooked the foaming coast of the eastern Atlantic. Rain pelted the already streaked glass of the dining room window…

elegy

by Grace Shelton

Milo kept his head low as he crossed the bridge, careful not to look at the faces of the passing strangers. He’d heard somewhere that memories with nonconsenting persons sold for much less…