Fiction

Terry Sanville 1. On Friday morning, Dad took Shasta, our shorthaired terrier with a white-tipped tail, to the vet. I didn’t even know the poor dog was sick. At seven, I didn’t understand illness and suffering. But my older sister, Betty, seemed to know. She waited with me in the living...

J. Ross Archer The blinking red, white, and blue lights I saw in my rear-view mirror startled me. Daydreaming, I must have not been paying attention to how fast I was driving. I pulled over and waited for the officer to approach my car. I knew to be aware of...

Anthony Ilacqua The soda burned my nose a little. I took half the bottle in one swallow anyway. “I want to see the glass blowers,” Jill said. I pulled the soda bottle away from the face. “The air feels good here,” I said. The clouds over the ocean were rolling in...

Debasis Tripathy He had lost interest in life. His life had turned into one like those countless chickens in poultry farms, just that unlike the chicken he had the capability as a human being to end his life by his own will. There were many a time when he had...

Jessica Bergquist I wonder how this looks, but I don’t wonder long enough to stop myself from walking in the door. I am faintly aware of the story that the tears in my black dress tells everyone around me, but I still open the door. It’s the first time I’ve...

STEPHEN MCQUIGGAN The voice from the intercom froze Tina in the act of adjusting her garter belt. It wasn’t the information the voice relayed, for in truth she had been checking the digital readout (half concealed by condom packets, jars of lube, whips and furry handcuffs) every few minutes and...

Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois An airless pink balloon rested in the Ash tree by the lake all Spring. Every day I walked by it and wondered when a gust of wind would unseat it, but it was tenacious. I once saw a short Mexican man peering at it, as if he...

Deepayan Bhattacharjee I hate the coffee they serve at Starbucks. But I like one of the baristas in our local shop. So I go to that terrible coffee shop almost every evening, stay there for two to three hours, read a little and study for a while and write some...

Malini Mukherjee Dear Maliwan, I was wondering if I should write ‘Dear’ against your name. It is, in our culture, customary to write Dear only to someone who is endeared to you. I don’t even know you. You don’t know me either. Yet I am writing this letter because we had...

Katacha Díaz Catching the last rays of sunshine on a lovely warm spring afternoon, Tim and I sat on our patio listening to the sounds of smooth Latin jazz floating through the air, and watched hummingbirds as they gracefully danced around bushes and wildflowers, sipping water from the fountain in...