Seventeen. Borrowed loafers, tie too long. Shirt, hanging from his wiry frame, mustache trimmed, mouth wide. Counting, as he was taught. Pack up all my care and woe—. To the beat. It’s not one two three four, but one two-and-three four-and-one. Don’t think, listen, and become part of it. Transcend what you think, or know,… Read More Blackbird ~ fiction by Wayne Mok

Three grackles appear to me and as they stare it is impossible to look away, transfixed (transluced) (transpired) by this encounter as though they have something to prove, a message to pass on and I cannot begin to understand the five questions (who) (what) (when) (where) (why) even as I should have at least some… Read More When the Forecast Forgets the Wildfires ~ fiction by Audrey T. Carroll

The explosion of brass, a tsunami: paintbrush bristles staining skin, tickling eardrums; a titanium mass soaring skyward, blocking, encompassing all auditorial perception, absent peripherals, reverberating metallic and hollow; a traffic jam at all four corners of the bedroom, the precipice of a gasp, a ceiling’s pull at the sternum, unrelenting; dive bombers; controlled demolition; uncontrolled… Read More The Myopic Ideation of Frank Shishido ~ fiction by Henry Knollenberg

A man was found with a beating heart at the busy intersection of Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue on Tuesday. Authorities arrived on the scene at quite an ordinary time of day and found the man shouting, I’m alive! I’m alive! The man was taken to the hospital, where he was determined to be… Read More Reservoir ~ fiction by Suzanne Hicks

FIFTH So Avery plays the Serenelli, her shoulders bobbing, floating around the living room, hovering over the couch and the TV, up over the roofs of the terraced houses, through the schoolyard, soaring, fluttering, down the slide and between swing set chains. Through the tire in the backyard and then back in. Another tooth pops… Read More Avery and Jacob ~ fiction by Perry Genovesi

Take the loot from the Saturday night knockover and lock it in the box; wash the stash on Sundays at the track and glom a little for yourself and stuff it into the mattress; never leave the house without one of the fellas; fry up eggs in butter, not oleo, and make a lot more… Read More Moll (After Kincaid) ~ fiction by Richie Narvaez

Andromeda Among Asphodels, 2005 Cassiopeia Nix Oil on canvas In this work, the artist has painted a field of half-bloomed asphodels, flowers that crawl up their spear stems in the hyper-detail-rich style that has become her signature. The features of the flowers are sharp and minute. When viewed from a distance they become so myopic… Read More Andromeda Among Asphodels, 2005 ~ fiction by Spencer Nitkey

Siobhán picked me up from the apartment and drove us into Brooklyn. She sang along with Bowie’s “Golden Years” playing off her iPhone. She turned to face me as we barreled up Bedford Avenue near McCarren Park. “ANNNNGELLLLL.” “Oh, good fuckin’ Lord. Watch the street,” I said. She laughed. “I always keep one eye on… Read More Ourselves ~ fiction by Mike Lee

We come out at night to scurry from between the cracks in your foundation. We explore every crevice in search of crumbs, a warm place to rest, or to infest. We never go near the traps your husband placed in the corners, and though we would love to lick the peanut butter he positioned just… Read More We Are the Mice That Live in Your Basement ~ fiction by Sara Dobbie

Wednesday, May 11th, 11:30 I appreciate you seeing me on such short notice. You came highly recommended. It’s just … well, you won’t believe what’s happened. I almost didn’t believe it myself until she popped out. I call her Calvia—because she came from my calf muscle. And I’m not trying to look a gift horse, or… Read More Vestigial ~ fiction by Coleman Bigelow

I inspect floral enamel coating spoons and forks, hand-painted cherries across white porcelain, slices of slouching golden brioche like giant dominoes. I run my finger across the whetted blade. Yellow, uneven circles tumble on laminate. It’s a choice between reading Kafka or covering beech wood with glossy hortensias, poppies and bluebells. In eighteen minutes and… Read More The Not-So-Sudden Walk after Reading Kafka ~ fiction by Isabelle B.L

They descend in clattering droves, sag telephone lines, drip from the tulip tree like rotten fruit. You watch from the window, push your nose against the pane. Your mother tells you about a sudden spring snowstorm, about a speckled egg found on the doorstep. How she candled the shell and saw a sleeping girl tucked inside. Saw… Read More When the Cowbirds Come to Carry Your Sister Away ~ fiction by Audra Kerr Brown

Like a lot of people, I started experimenting with bugs in high school. My first time was at a party after homecoming sophomore year. A girl wearing her hair in a towering beehive do fluttered a baggie of monarchs the color of Halloween in front of me. Butterflies were no big deal, I figured. I cupped a… Read More Glow ~ fiction by Keith J. Powell

She calls from the top of the jungle gym. Look at me, look at me now. I’m feeding the baby mashed fruit from a tube and still only have two eyes. Sure, I say, as I try to squeeze just the right amount of yellow goop into his half-open mouth. Look at me now! She… Read More Look at me ~ fiction by Hege A. Jakobsen Lepri

Late one night, Becca gathered her supplies—flashlight, spackling knife, rubber spatula, shovel, and scalpel—and walked into the woods behind her house. The breeze rustled her black hair, and the tall trees waved back and forth as if to welcome her. Far in the woods, she found a spot she liked: desolate, and so dark it… Read More Scrape ~ fiction by Victoria Mack

The fourteen-year-old twins watched Doris in her push-up bra lipstick blot rouge pluck pencil thicken shape all the while listening to Mel Torme and talking nonstop to them about which of the boys she hoped would come to her table and ask permission from her date to dance and then she stood and danced and… Read More The Emerald Room Awaits ~ fiction by Paul Beckman

Edgar Rosenberg. Remember me? Joan Rivers, your wife, and partner for twenty-two years? The funny one? The one Carson loved? And Robert Mitchum. Yeah-yeah, cuckolding’s not nice. I’m not nice. You can’t get where I got with nice. Can you hear me? No, of course, you can’t hear me because you’re dead. Deader than my… Read More Can We Talk? ~ fiction by Lucinda Kempe

You will watch TV with Mrs. Beasley, sitting on her two-seat sofa, and it will not be dangerous. Your mother trusts her. You will play cards and checkers. You’ll draw dinosaurs. You’ll iron leaves in wax paper, and she’ll let you close your eyes and run your palm, warm and waxy over it, to feel… Read More Radio on the Fish Tank ~ fiction by Nancy Freund

You were eleven and I was twelve, Irish twins, and I was always telling you to come on, move faster, hurry up. I already felt so far behind the rest of the world. And there we were in summer exile at our grandmother’s house in Boring, Pennsylvania, a town with no mall, no movie theater,… Read More I’ll Be Your Mirror ~ fiction by Kathryn Kulpa

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