Rebecca Bernard They agree to meet on instant messenger at midnight. He’s usually on AIM at that hour, gifted with a computer in his bedroom, but she must sneak to the family computer, mute the...
Dawn Miller Jack arrives home from university even though it’s not yet spring break. He’s thinner than before he left, his elbows pointed like the sharp angles of the engineering caliper he...
Kath Richards 2024 Fiction Spring Contest Winner I’ve heard about dissociation, the way our minds can protect us from pain and trauma by removing us, at least mentally and momentarily, from a...
Amita Basu It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that every human soul must be in want of another. Growing up, Vishrammi had this axiom drummed into her skull and never thought of challenging it....
Nolan Capps 2024 Fiction Spring Contest Runner Up March 2010, Camp Lejeune, NC— When I was a new infantryman in First Battalion, Eighth Regiment, I lived in a barracks with about a hundred other...
Aaron Sandberg Typical American to never shut up, they think. Doesn’t he know they come in peace? They wonder why they picked this part of the planet to survey. His rusty spurs clink against the...
Brian Russell Roberts Some songs feel exactly like drowning. Especially when they’re sung by a plain-looking miner whose every breath feels like it’s his last, sung as if he was locked in the...
Helena Olufsen We arrive in mojito-scented fogs and splay the contents of our suitcases across every bed, dresser, and chaise lounge. Our new home is a white sandstone palace with tall arch doorways,...
Lacy Arnett Mayberry Once a year, a bus appeared at school in the middle of the day—alien and out of place, larger than we remembered from even just that morning—for a safety training exercise....
