You owe her ・excitement over her new job, ・enthusiasm about the hiking trip she’s been planning, and ・delight that your karaoke duets are consistently hitting level 8. But you’re in severe emotional debt and should feel for others first—for colleagues and loved ones who have been waiting longer for more substantial emotions: ・Werna: sympathy as… Read More Stopgap ~ fiction by Soramimi Hanarejima

“It is real,” he said, “but you can only do it on the Sega Genesis version. It’s down-forward-A-B-down, or something.” The south Jersey sun was hot, and the community pool was closed for repainting. “My cousin showed me.” “You lie so bad.” “He did,” Josh insisted, shrugging. “We can call him right now.” Chris mopped… Read More Secret Fatalities ~ fiction by Ben Spies

I was at the bus station.  I wasn’t going anywhere, I was just there.  A guy was standing next to me.  He had an old trumpet in his hand.  I looked at it, and when I looked up he was looking at me. “You’ve got a trumpet,” I said, for lack of a better thing… Read More Dialysis ~ fiction by Steve Sibra

A shadow shifts in the green pepper bin. Then another. “When does the music start?” “I don’t know, they’ve usually gotten it together by now.” As if on cue, a solid tock comes from the coconut box. Then another, and another. “Finally! How are we supposed to have any fun without a beat?” The sound… Read More Shelf Life ~ fiction by Ralph Benton

“Will you people please stop urinating on my set? I’m trying to do Shakespeare here.” Annie slumped in the director’s chair, and buried her face in her hands. The tinkle of water on water descended to silence. Flush. Zip. “Your set is the only public restroom within three blocks. Should have thought of that before… Read More Twelfth Stall, or What You Flush ~ fiction by Caleb Echterling

You knew you were hot. I knew you knew you were hot, and it was pretty clear that you knew I knew you were hot, and that’s why we were together. Now, all this time later, I think you picked me because you knew I’d know you knew you were hot, unlike some of the… Read More Hot Girl ~ fiction by Brooks Mormino

A thicket of rangy weeds flourishes beside the riverbank. I put on gloves and goggles. I wear my jaunty boots. Upon my return, outside the Tropical Delights Day Spa and Massage, I leave the entrance sign turned to “closed” and congratulate myself. No one’s around. Perfect. I utter sweet curses, weaving swears together like lyrical… Read More Perfect ~ fiction by Katrina Johnston

I was surprised to find Carly sitting at the Rathskeller bar. Her high cheekbones were blushed and her ash-blond hair was shorter than I remembered. She wore a white ruffled blouse and a light maroon sweater. She made a career of two rum Cokes then switched to ginger ale that lasted until closing time.  Our… Read More The Heartland and I ~ fiction by Thomas M. McDade

Julie walked into the 5th floor office and delivered a package to the man sitting closest to the door and he signed his name but she couldn’t read it so she said, “It started hailing on my way here,” and he nodded importantly. Julie walked into the 5th floor office and delivered the man a… Read More Waiting a Lifetime ~ fiction by Marisa Crane

We’d found god. It was a little strange running across it like that. It was right there. But I think just suddenly having its presence thrust in front of you like that … y’know … it’s kind of staggering and I don’t know that any of us really felt like we were there at that… Read More It Showed Up ~ fiction by Russ Bickerstaff

Carina Estellovich is a twenty-four-year-old poet living in Seattle, Washington. She doesn’t break necks, but she also isn’t mistakenly sat on in malls. All around, Carina is average. One might even unmaliciously and objectively call her shallow. Indeed, the aphorism “what you see is what you get” very nearly describes Carina in full. It is… Read More Carina Estellovich’s Baggage ~ fiction by Natalie Plotkin

HARRY O’GROWLY Greetings, friends, from the 2018 National Human Show. My name is Harry O’Growly, back again as your host on this fine Thanksgiving afternoon. I’m joined in the Purina Dog House on the floor of the Philadelphia Expo Center by my wing hound, if you will, Bones Ruffing. Bones, what breed are you looking… Read More The National Human Show ~ fiction by David Jans

Suppose that you are a woman born into a well-to-do family and that you are slated to marry a man from another well-to-do family so that the two families might become even more well-to-do and thus doubly powerful in the Indian city of Nagpur in the year A.D. 1784. Suppose you do not wish to… Read More Maya ~ fiction by Janet Barrows

Tip: Pause the slide show to read at your own pace. Lori Cramer’s short prose has appeared in Fictive Dream, L’Ephemere Review, Riggwelter, Unbroken Journal, and Whale Road Review, among others. Links to her work can be found at loricramerfiction.wordpress.com. Twtter: @LCramer29. Show Lori some love via PayPal at bulldog29(at)msn(dot)com.

 “What do you think he’s going to do with it?” Danny asked Jonathan.  “He said he’s taking it up to Aurora.”  Danny adjusted his black-rimmed glasses and glanced at the flat-screen mounted on the wall. The Leafs were losing to the Bruins.  “Why Aurora?” Danny asked.  “That’s where his girlfriend Natalia lives. He bought her… Read More Playoffs ~ fiction by Salvatore Difalco

If I were an office lady in Japan, I’d be in charge of making copies. They wouldn’t trust me with anything else. You couldn’t even figure out the office toilet, they’d say. The office toilet would be the kind that says konnichiwa when you sit on it, and has four different buttons for flushing. On… Read More All the Office Ladies ~ fiction by Cathy Ulrich

Margot and I don’t go out much and we haven’t gone out in a while, given what we’ve got going at home, which may be partly why the sky, with its sunken treasure of a horizon, looked so different tonight. How the transition from light to dark seemed to happen like that. But there we… Read More Layers ~ fiction by Pat Foran

We’re different things to different people. Someone I know, though now dead, is a saint in one woman’s mind. That’s because that woman inherited the dead person’s house, worth probably two million dollars. That woman was the dead person’s step-daughter. She came into the person’s life as a hitchhiker, basically, hitching on her father’s coattails.… Read More We’re Different Things to Different People ~ fiction by Kevin Brennan

Of The Artist Septober 53rd For the first morning since I arrived, the mist has withdrawn. It’s clear enough for me to Caesarean my way out of my tent and see to the edge of this rocky outcrop I’ve ended up perched upon. The stone’s been blasted bare since before I was born, rigor mortis… Read More Of the Artist ~ fiction by Avouleance

Violet molds her palms around the glass and watches the ice settle into the green liquid. She’s sweating despite the chill. Across the patio, through the black bars of the railing, the shrubbery shivers, making a blur the same color as the substance in the glass. She glances at her watch. He’s five minutes later… Read More Foreign Bodies ~ fiction by Audrey Kalman

At the end of the world, with civilization in ruin, Mad Marx’s cell phone rang again. The words “unknown caller” flashed across a screen that was cracked and scratched from an Armageddon that even an Otterbox couldn’t fully defend against. Despite the mystery, Mad Marx knew who it was–he only got one kind of call… Read More Mad Marx’s Post-Modern Post-Apocalypse ~ fiction by Barlow Adams

Donnie was going through yet another standard tutorial area in yet another free-to-play MMO when he heard his roommate come home. The door swung open, a key scraped against its lock, and Eli said something. A woman responded. Donnie quit typing, let the automated battle play out, and then he smirked instead of smiled. “Where’s… Read More Bakery Girl ~ fiction by Lee Blevins

Wanda Strickland was seventy years old when she moved to Florida from Canada. Nice home with a grassy lawn overlooking the bay. There was a pool where she could swim daily to loosen her joints. Pretty gardens lined the pathway down to the water’s edge. Sunshiny days kept her outside. Wanda loved her gardens and… Read More Rain, Reign, Go Away ~ fiction by S. K. Nicholls

I. A FEW PRELIMINARY WORDS The term “eternal baby” originated from a story* of that title by Marion Cohen. (The story, in the author’s words, is “a Kafkaesque deal about a child who refuses to be toilet trained.) The actual medical phenomenon is most isolated. One out of every some huge number of babies is… Read More The A.M.E.B. Newsletter ~ fiction by Marion Deutsche Cohen

Nice day isn’t it, I asked my husband. Yes, it reminds me of that día cuando viajamos a la playa. What did you say? Le jour last summer, pour l’anniversaire de ma sœur.  No te recuerdes? Wait, slow down. I can’t understand you. I said I agree. It’s a beautiful day. Maybe we should go inside. It’s too… Read More What We Have Here … ~ fiction by Lori Bonati

We were worried. It was late evening. The sun was about to set. The sky hung over the Wednesday night crowd like a mat of red hot flames. It was as if the heavens were against us too. We wanted to do our jobs. They wanted us gone. It was them against us. Our group… Read More Blessed Are They ~ fiction by Katrina Byrd

1 The first time he was aware that his brother was somehow installed inside him, like a piece of covert software or a pacemaker, the two of them were in a crib. It was nighttime, and the moon was shining through the window of the room they lived in. He was anxious for some reason,… Read More 6 stillborn novels ~ fiction by Kevin Brennan

Once upon a time, a child was born with long, silky blond hair. In fact, she came out of the womb, not head first, but hair first. The doctors and nurses and her parents were both fascinated and repulsed by the sight of the bloody blond hair that lay pooled on the hospital bed. A… Read More Rapunzel, A Different Kind of Fairy Tale ~ fiction by Marie A Bailey

November 7th, 1985 Grigory kept the window rolled down because he was fighting the Sandman. A cold Siberian gale whipped through thin strands of brown hair which stretched from the top of his forehead to just below his bald crown, like long clumps of seaweed reaching out over an empty seabed. A contraband copy of… Read More Andreiana ~ fiction by Phillip McCollum

The target was coming into view. This operation had been rushed but the pieces had fallen into place and there was no reason not to expect success. Less than a week ago we had learned of a plan to sell the product from a small shop near the outskirts of Seattle. This was our chance… Read More Lucky Strike ~ fiction by Stevan Fisher

No one asked me to do this, but I think it’s a public service that needs to be performed so I’ve taken it on. I’m a cell phone Luddite – there, I said it – and see no reason to be connected to the internet at all times, or tracked by governmental entities through the… Read More The Pay Phone Project ~ fiction by Giles McDonald

The idea got into his head that nothing is for certain. What is for certain is that not much can be concluded from so-called reality, but since nothing is for certain even that is uncertain. So, better not to jump to conclusions. Then while Googling randomly one day he came upon the name of Pyrrho,… Read More The Wisdom of Pyrrho ~ fiction by Sung Lalata

… a squalid little squid of a bar possessing all the moist charm of a toxic fart laid at the root of the nose. The Three Jolly Maggots, the sign said, and offered to the discerning pubic eye three creatures eerily glowing, and these I unquestionably supposed to be the maggots in question. One of… Read More The Dreamer’s Dream ~ fiction by Boaz MacNutt