Author: Maya Cheav Maya Cheav is a pile of stardust trying to be a person. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Across the Margin, ALOCASIA, Stone of Madness, and Scapegoat Review. She published her debut poetry chapbook, Lykaia, with Bottlecap Press in early 2023. “I cheated on my wife.”
The silence that followed was thick and buttery, like a dense fog seeping through the patterned grate that stood between them, oozing through the cracks in the stained wood of the confession box. The quiet was broken by a sob stifled in his sleeve, Hartford’s voice cracking like bones under deadweight. He made a half-baked attempt to regain his composure, clearing the cobwebs from his throat, though a spider remained, its feet itching back and forth at his tongue.
0 Comments
Author: Dennis Vannatta Dennis Vannatta is a Pushcart and Porter Prize winner, with essays and stories published in many magazines and anthologies, including River Styx, Chariton Review, Boulevard, and Antioch Review. His sixth collection of stories, The Only World You Get¸ was published by Et Alia Press. I come up out of the meadow and angle across Main Street toward “the homestead,” larger in reality than I would have thought it. In “reality”? Another dream, of course. Ah, this exhausting night of dreams in which I set myself the task of being a better man than I ever was, a generous man, bringing solace and comfort to the despairing—shouldn’t it have begun here? She was the first, I think, of whom it occurred to me to play delightfully with the notion: if only I could see her, if only I could tell her . . . little Emily.
A lovely May day, 1886, birds flitting here and there across the blue sky, the stench of . . . Author: Arlene Placer Arlene began writing in 2017 at the age of 77. Mainly fanfiction (Sherlock) and then delved into short stories. She belongs to two Zoom writing groups and one poetry group. It couldn't be! It just can't! No! After all this time, it's here and --- but wait!
Where did the time go? Why didn't the clock stop? Maybe the sun or moon should have known and ---. But no one cared. Author: Jenny Morelli Jenny Morelli is a high school English teacher from New Jersey, where she lives with her husband and cat. She’s inspired by everything she sees and loves the spin the most mundane things into fantastical tales. She is a prolific reader and writer who writes in many genres including poems, memoirs, short stories, and novels, but poetry has always been her first passion. Poetry, and her students. I fly into nothing, steered only by wind. Clouds veil my descent.
Author: Ben D'Alessio Ben D’Alessio is the author of four novels, several short stories, and a sundry assortment of musings. He’s also a legal services attorney in New Jersey and podcast co-host for The Reckless Musecast. You can find his work at www.bendalessio.com content warning: contains mentions of violence /sh We had done it. We created Paradise, Valhalla, Nirvana. Here on Earth, we fabricated Heaven. Ad Infinitum Inc., or ∞, as it was stylized, had reticulated the folds of human consciousness into an uploadable server we named the Macro-consciousness Enveloper, or ME.
Author: BT Dulin BT. Dulin is a Fiction Writer who lives in Kuwait and has always loved to travel, to see new places and people. His first short story was published in The Story Pub, and he has an ever-growing short story collection that is seeking a home. He is going to retire in Morocco. It was a beautiful day. Little white clouds drifted lazily across a perfect blue sky. Emily could smell the summer grass as the breeze blew through the open window. She sat in the back of her parent’s car and was bored already. Pouting with her arms folded across her chest, she let out a petulant sigh.
“Where are we going?” Author: Ben Davies Ben Davies is a writer based in San Anselmo, California. Originally from the UK, Ben has had articles published in magazines including Huck, Lost and The International Times. He is currently finishing his debut novel, A Question of England. An Eye for an Eye is part of an interlinked short story collection detailing murder, class feuds, parenthood, arson, forgiveness and love. They explore what happens when justice is taken into your own hands, and ultimately, what it means to be human. content warning: brief mention of SA In Mayan culture they believe in the ancient saying “an eye for eye” and after a blue-eyed tourist was raped at a place called “the lake” in Guatemala, they hung the guy who did it in the street for all to see.
I’d never heard of Mayan’s or Guatemala even, but that’s what Matty Lawrence told me as we stacked shelves at the Co-op one Saturday morning for £6.26 an hour. Author: Geoffrey Marshall Geoffrey Marshall is a writer in Aurora, Canada. His work can be found on Idle Ink, the Kaidankai podcast, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, as well as the MoonPark Review and a few other places. His novella Flyover Country (published by Alien Buddha Press) is available on Amazon and upcoming work will also appear in Schlock!, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Dark Horses/Black Sheep and the Kaidankai podcast. Find him on twitter @g_k_marshall. The baby didn’t cry. At first. A chill crept in, nestling itself around the basket on the doorstep. A short, sharp shock and the overhead light flickered and died. Folds of darkness slithered close on stealthy steps and caressed his florid cheeky face. A sparse, choking cry was at last drawn from his lips. No soothing mother appeared and more cries followed on the heels of the first.
The doorstep remained dark, the nearby alley, empty. Cars could be heard a block or two away, their beating metal hearts thrumming. Author: Doug Jacquier Doug Jacquier writes from the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. His poems and stories have been published in Australia, the US, the UK, Canada, New Zealand and India. He blogs at Six Crooked Highways Adam’s nights had become increasingly apocalyptic. His nightmares always began with the occasional tympanic drop on his ear drum but the pelting storm of pellet-sized raindrops soon progressed beyond the comfort of a drought breaking on a tin roof. It was more like the cacophony of being duct-taped to the amps at an AC-DC concert, punctuated by thunderclaps of Biblical proportions and the sound effects of a cyclone.
Author: A. R. Tivadar A. R. Tivadar is a hobby writer from Romania and a graduate of the University of Oradea. She has been published in underscore_magazine, the Aurum Journal and Disturb the Universe Magazine. She also has self-published stories on kobo.com. twitter: @artivadar instagram: @a.r.tivadar She was about to snap a photograph of the glittering lights the Sun created on the water surface, when a school of sardines passed in front of her, blocking the view. Mar snarled her lip and swam back inside her home.
She did manage to take some nice pictures that day. Of her friends, of the algae pushed about in the currents, of the many shades of red and orange cast by the Sun above the water’s surface. The water of the Mediterranean Sea was warm all year round. Pen pals from the Pacific Depths claimed it was unbearable, but Mar felt fine. Her parents warned her not to swim too close to the surface so as to not burn herself. The Sun was still scorching hot. |