Fiction

The heat oozed through the windows and pooled behind Scott’s blackout curtains. If he sat still, hunched over his desk, he could stay cool enough to think. Scott’s home office was dim, every lamp left off in favor of the roaring air conditioner that hissed tepid air through its bared teeth. Half-filled applications glowed primly… Continue reading Thrives in the Waste

Caw! Caw! Tom tilted his head and eyes towards the sky. Even in the darkness, he could see the silhouette of a murder circling overhead. Waiting for the inevitable, he thought. He turned back to the road. The moonlight made a futile attempt to fight its way through the overarching trees on either side. He squinted… Continue reading The Shadow

The day Marcie left rehab, her mother handed her a gift. “Honey, I got you a new phone with an important app.” “Great, Mom.” Marcie looked out the window as the car pulled onto the highway. The last six weeks had been hell, and she was eager to get back to her apartment for a… Continue reading Life Clock

I’d never been able to eat bacon, not since I burned down the flat where my brother Eddy and I lived with the Bogeyman. It’s the smell. That unmistakable reek of fat and flesh crackling. Even years later, sitting in the food court of a motorway services off the M1, as I attentively cut the… Continue reading Incendiary

Ben was six years old when he heard his mother weeping, snarling, and, to his amazement, she seemed to be gnashing her teeth. He sneaked downstairs and heard the screams. All his brothers were either in their rooms or out of the house. Why hadn’t they heard this or done anything? The door from which… Continue reading Benjamin and the Family Gathering

Part I Marco sat behind the wheel of his Audi A4 convertible, a gift from his parents earlier that year. The road from Smederevo to Belgrade lay drowned in a stagnant fog, the kind that descended without warning and might linger for an hour, a day, or forever—it was never clear which. Mid-May, yet they… Continue reading The Groom

It began in 1917. Our father, Jeremy, had been gone two years, serving in the Great War. We received messages from him via military mail throughout his first eighteen months. The excitement of receiving those letters was beyond any I have felt before or since. To know he was alive and well. And then the letters stopped.… Continue reading The Ghost in the Field

If I told you I enjoy torturing my husband, Earl, would you think I was a monster? If you answered already, shame on you. Life is not black and white, and you should hear my story before rushing to judgment—especially the part about Earl’s secret. First off, Earl thinks he’s brilliant. To be fair, he… Continue reading Watch Out for Deer

If she squinted and imagined nightmares, the house would have looked haunted. With eyes wide open and her darker dreams tucked away, it was just a big gray building adrift in a sea of trees. Charity Barnes opened the rental car door in a cloud of dust she’d trailed in from the gravel road and… Continue reading It’s Not Just the Dark

The parking lot was empty. Steve ignored the sharp headache that had suddenly come over him and the peculiar feeling that he had done this before. As hard as he tried to keep his eyes on the video store’s entrance and not on the multiple yellow signs in the windows, he found himself reading the… Continue reading Just Another Day

Tragedy struck early in Stella’s childhood. Her mother, Clara, was a brilliant professor of quantum physics at the local university. She was renowned for her sharp mind and tireless dedication to her work. Her father was snuffed out in an instant on a rain-slicked road. Clara’s shock and grief pushed Stella from her mother’s womb… Continue reading Schrödinger’s a Quack

Shared coffee in the quiet mornings, holding hands on a walk. Not to mention the tiny, unglamorous sacrifices no one posts about on social media.

It was an accident when I saw Mom cry for the first time. I was cutting class and snuck home during lunch—freshman year, each day a unique disaster; I had been slighted by some former best friend and needed to get away—but when I tiptoed into the apartment, Mom’s racking sobs were coming from the… Continue reading Constance