Riley says it’s five o’clock somewhere and that’s all I need to hear because that means he’s off on a tooty-toot-toot and that can happen any day at whatever o’clock but does it have to be an hour before my parents get here and last night’s dishes still a crusty mountain in the sink and… Read More Same Old, Same Old ~ fiction by Francine Witte

The bandoneón grinds out a sultry Piazzolla tune, and Consuela chassés across the dance floor in leather evening gloves and smoky Chanel sunglasses, like she’s forbidden fruit. We swoon along the back wall, expanding and contracting in our Amish pencil skirts and Mary-jane slippers, studying her every move. Our parents willing us home before curfew.… Read More Forbidden Fruit ~ fiction by Karen Schauber

30th March 1997: Around a thousand days left until the end of a thousand years. More pressingly, just two hours and forty-seven minutes for Clayton to crack the code. On the face of it, the atmosphere in the conservatory of 30 Lowfield Gardens was more placid than a month of Easter Sundays; for the four… Read More Straight In ~ fiction by Aaron Becker

It’s midnight at the Double Bubble and I’ve finally made it to the spin cycle. Now that the eleven loads are clean, they are transformed from a monumental failure in hygiene to an accomplishment. In a corner the attendant is leaning against a counter reading a waterlogged copy of Dante’s Inferno while a fly bothers… Read More Centaurs in the Laundromat ~ fiction by Lynn Mundell

“It’s a gift,” my mother said, when I told her about how my feet were turning into crow’s feet. “And anyway, dear, not a crow. Blackbird feet.” “What’s the difference?” I asked, but my mother was onto other topics. She gets that way. Her whole life is a vanilla dream state these days. The doctors… Read More Migration Is a Survival Instinct ~ fiction by Epiphany Ferrell

You’re on Instagram again, late at night, scrolling past a sponsored post for an Atlantic article about thanking one’s partner. You’re split at the seams after cooking for your boyfriend and his friends yesterday during the soccer game. He didn’t even ask you beforehand, just assumed you’d whip something up. LA Galaxy won. You smiled… Read More How to Vanquish the Demon Raktabīja ~ fiction by Emily Hoover

In the middle of the night, the monster quietly slips out from between her thighs. In sleep she must have closed her heart to it, for when she reaches out to feel it, it’s gone. She wants to cry, but it is her fault for not loving things closely enough, the sadness unearned. What will… Read More The Monster’s Escape ~ fiction by Meg Pokrass

There are many things you love about your house. You love the stunted front-yard fence with its heart-shaped cutouts, one half-heart per picket. You love the vintage mailbox with its copper patina, the white lamp post, the twin flower pots on the front porch. It’s those little things that make a difference — things like… Read More Your House ~ fiction by Anne-Marie Yerks

The blanks feed in from the left side. Front ‘n center’s the drop forge. The rough stamped hammerheads, having been through some step of the process, ride off on the belt to the left side. Left to center to right left to center to right left to center to right all on then and on… Read More Poole Hammer Factory; Factory Floor ~ fiction by Jim Meirose

First the fish started showing up dead at the edge of the water and then the Zimmermans’ dog got sick. But most people who lived on the Landing still went into the lake daily if before the algae arrived they’d gone into the lake daily. Younger children were amused by the green fuzz. They had… Read More Allotropes ~ fiction by Rachel Federman

I draw my clothes and wear them for a day. Today a denim jacket, gardener’s pants, and a green beret. If this is my superhero power, I won’t be saving the world anytime soon, but I will be happily dressed. Spiderman was bitten by a spider and so his new life began. I came from… Read More Language of Lines ~ fiction by Guy Biederman

“He’s really not, you know.” Mother peers over her readers, puts down her knitting. That infernal clatter of clicking metal. She can’t seem to find the plastic needles I bought for her birthday years ago. She yawns, stretches her legs, adjusts the reading lamp. “Not what?” “What you think.” His tentacles are vying for position… Read More Monster ~ fiction by Mikki Aronoff

Welcome to my humble abode! It’s a one-story cottage clad in lumpy stucco, like oatmeal flung at the walls. A big fenced yard, maple tree in front, garden in back. Tuscan columns on the front porch help with the southern exposure. They add a touch of class, don’t you think? Have a seat in the… Read More To the Visitor ~ fiction by Robert Boucheron

“Russia attacks Ukraine.” “Mr. President, Russia can’t attack Ukraine. There is no Russia …” “Nyet! Russia attacks Ukraine.” The President motioned at the board where it clearly said Ural and where he had amassed a sizable force. “There is no Ural. There is only Russia and Ukraine will soon become a part of it.” He… Read More The Last Dance ~ fiction by Mark Paxson

Irene shuffles around the bed. Nan’s in the bed. Irene futzes with the tubes. Something’s not right, she says. I don’t know why anyone thought it was a good idea to play nurse to your own sister, but the place is always short-staffed, and here we are, and Irene is on duty. In this family,… Read More Now Look at Her ~ fiction by Melissa Benton Barker

The first flush, Frida. A small picture. The painter, fiery and brown, fierce-browed, flat on her sickbed back. He didn’t understand the jolt of it at first, and maybe not now, how his pulse quickened when he saw how sick she was. The tram wreck, the polio, the crutches. In this way, her accident was… Read More The Cretin ~ fiction by Lorette C. Luzajic

Two Ruminant Third Graders Discourse Upon the Falling Autumn Leaves  Translated from the Third Grader Ed. note: The dialogues of Percysius and Kevinocrates present unique challenges to the translator. This version does not pretend to be definitive—only approachable. We have trimmed the glue paste and erased the pencil smudges while trying to keep core intent… Read More Two Ruminant Third Graders Discourse Upon the Falling Autumn Leaves ~ fiction by B Myers

Kam slept as he drove through country lanes in his silver Prius, a clammy palm pressed against the wheel, cigarette dangling from the other hand, spraying ash like a sparkler at New Year’s Eve as he held it out of the half-opened window. He did this every year. Sleeping and driving. A dreamy pilgrimage if… Read More Driving at Night ~ fiction by Tim Frank

After Richard Thomas’s story “Twenty Reasons to Stay and One to Leave” Why I’m Angry Because at 5, my father leaves, becoming someone I see maybe once or twice a year Because at 6, my brother starts blaming my mom for this Because at 7, on a camping trip with my father and brother, I… Read More Why I’m Angry ~ fiction by Brooke Brannon

The Disappointed Housewife is delighted to announce the following nominations for the Best of the Net Anthology. This is our first set of nominations for Best of the Net, since the nominating process is a little arcane, but these writers deserve some extra attention for their stellar pieces and it was well worth jumping through… Read More Best of the Net Nominations

Author’s note: In each piece, the number of words matches the age of the protagonist at the time, i.e., the episode title.   Forty  In the beginning, there’d been many inklings of the end. Now, slumped upon the toilet seat, Alex is convinced his marriage is crap. Curses through the window. He stands, frowns at… Read More But Who’s Counting? ~ fiction by Michael Cocchiarale

I’m not sentimental, but I don’t want to be erased. That’s why I motion the salesperson over to the table of folded green and yellow T-shirts. This is where we cut the cake, I explain. She narrows her eyes, trying, I can tell, to decide if I’m a well-dressed homeless weirdo or a Vicodin-addled suburbanite,… Read More The Place We Held Our Wedding is Now a Surf Shop ~ fiction by Jen McConnell

The store’s closed for two hours. The show window glass’s being replaced, so an unusual, never happens, first time in God knows how long, forced idleness’s settled in on Sandy and the Rudimentary Substitute shoe salesman. After tiring of idly hanging around out front half-watching the workmen wrangle up great sheets of thick plate glass,… Read More Enforced Job Break ~ fiction by Jim Meirose

Dear reader of this fine publication, The following was rubbed from a sheet of 1960s-era carbon paper found in a shoebox hidden under a floorboard in Pennsylvania State Museum’s Delaware Room. Research indicates that Noah Brewster, chief historian of Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, during the 1960s, was about to discover the location of Amaritudinem, Pennsylvania, before… Read More The History of Amaritudinem, Pennsylvania ~ fiction by John Lane

So kind of Ron to come over, help you out to the porch for a chat. Such a nice man. He brought me flowers. They got me thinking. Lilies will be an obvious choice, but they have that awful funeral smell. Perhaps hardy daisies mixed with blue gladiolus? Flowers that don’t lean on each other,… Read More That Funeral Smell ~ fiction by Karen Walker

“Talk to yourself like you would to someone you love.” Anne had stumbled upon a cache of affirmations on Pop Sugar and was painstakingly writing them down on an unopened envelope from LADWP.  A late payment notice. She could tell by the red ink on the bill peeking through. Anne did not write them all… Read More Affirmations for a Virus ~ fiction by Laura Louden

Snacks, Cigarettes, Beer, Slots, Sloths Outside, the sun rose like an oncoming aneurysm. The gas pumps were explosive elephants, the parking lot, a potholed safari. It was the opposite of rush hour. A long row of sloths played the slots that lined the dirty window of the Circle K.  All three toes curled around the… Read More Two Micro Stories ~ fiction by Jennifer Battisti

It’s the one he took while we were standing outside The World Diner and I was caught off-guard and he was smiling and behind us, in the sky, Fourth of July, a chemtrail heart, hanging, before things changed, before the truth of our world changed. The photo was on the stand next to the bed.… Read More Grief Has Hidden My Picture ~ fiction by Ron Burch

No more with the game plan where I badmouth everything I do, think, and feel. For instance, I sexted Grace and she wrote back, “lmao maybe later in the week.” Ok, see, a line has two sides, and time, it’s been proven by scientists, seems to move faster as you age. This was not a… Read More Fervent Waiting ~ fiction by Sean Ennis

It was a phrase you hadn’t used often, but one that quickly dominated your life. It became your children’s favorite word. Morning and night they chanted it. In your local grocery store when something was found not agreeable, it was deemed fake. In a court of law, testimony not to someone’s liking was labeled fake.… Read More Sustainable ~ fiction by Xenia Taiga

We’d talked about starting a vegetable garden for years, but it took the pandemic to make us actually do it. I’d realised quite swiftly that the weekly Ocado delivery was a thing of the past and that if I wanted a reliable supply of lollo rosso and dill, I’d have to grow it myself. In… Read More Some Notes on Container Gardening During the Apocalypse ~ fiction by Tabitha Potts

I roll onto your side of the bed, still warm and a little damp from last night. Since our son was born, you always pull out and cum on your side. The smell of semen and sweat lingers between silk sheets. But another child at the moment would be foolish. Cruel. Running water from our… Read More For Them ~ fiction by Paul Attmere

Fever, chills, cough— I want my wife to go up to the clinic. “What for?” she says from bed. “I have no underlying condition—except mortality.” A single laugh sets off a spasm of hacking, and, one hand bothering chest, “Like-hit-by-a-train,” she gets out, thick and foggy, of how she feels, before fading beneath a framed… Read More The Door ~ fiction by Vincent Barry

Back City, crank your evoluminations. All gosh to the great God Yul. Tangling. The way head’s tangleteening for a taking. Some sort of sport seems to be playing out back over here. So, look on. Let’s a’ look at yer radio. Breaking news this unprecedented eighty-degree late Januinary daytime. So, you say this squareradio’s not… Read More Mid-Januinary Radio Jam ~ fiction by Jim Meirose

Going back to a time before time could be recorded, in what came to be the modern state of Tanzania, chimpanzees had religion. Naturally, it was not a religion in the sense of our current ones, with texts and liturgy and hierarchies, but it was organized around the idea of a creator who had put… Read More The Birth of Religion ~ fiction by Janet Barrows

Poco moto, woman, Therese thought to herself, as she pulled herself up from the bed and towards the door. She felt she heard something scuttle away in response to the creak of the wooden floorboards as she padded, naked and content, through the hall. “They flee from me that sometime did me seek!” she sang… Read More The Apparitions ~ fiction by Kirsty McGrory

My favorite thing, by far, is the opposite sex. But my next favorite is asking ridiculous questions, like ‘Why is the letter S always malingering?’ Or, ‘What is the smell of potatoes’ hatred?’ Optimism. What? Optimism. The answer to your questions. (He leans in and cups his ear.) Come again? Opti, opti opti. Mi-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-zum! (He… Read More The Hopscotch King ~ fiction by Jake Sheff

Down to breakfast, sit. And late again, to boot. Ah, you and you, Sonboy—all you do is sleep on, and sleep on. But; how you got named—did we ever tell you how you got named, Sonboy? Did we? All spinning down from atop our attic apartments, it came. Listen. I am going to tell it… Read More How It’s Named; Sonboy ~ fiction by Jim Meirose

Monday “A fine healthy baby,” someone says, slapping my buttocks. Two heads I’ll recognize tomorrow as my parents’ peer at a small flat shiny thing. “Phone” will be my first word. “Want phone” my first sentence. T-r-i-l-l! On Wednesday I’ll scroll back to Monday’s Twitter feed and find that @Ma&PaGrundy wrote: “Doc sez our baby… Read More The Diary of S. Grundy ~ fiction by Faye Brinsmead

I afforded my life the patience and room it required to diet into nothing. For weeks, I’d lug clods of my material self to a pawn shop behind the lunch spot my co-workers loved. The man behind the counter—a beefy goth with hairy knuckles demarking the plump stubs of his fingers—would look through my things,… Read More What Does God Need With a Starship? ~ fiction by J. Campbell