Mays Kuhail “Dodi, Dodi!” Giza nudges me awake. “The wall is coming down.” I open my eyes, slowly adjusting them to dawn. The sun is making its way out of the valley’s horizon,...
Tariq Karibian It’s 11:53 AM. Your phone is at 57%. Since the Internet went down, you’ve been keeping it on Low Power mode and using it mostly as a clock. There is a lull in the chaos outside....
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...
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...
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....
Carly Alaimo Morning Baby boosts herself up to stand using couch. Can now steal Big Girl’s puzzle. Big Girl brings down board over Baby’s head. To keep from screaming, Mommy recites the script...
Amy DeBellis At fourteen, your first kiss is quivering, soap-bubble fragile, broken open by your grandfather’s rough voice: “The hell is this?” Even at seventy he’s powerful, six foot three...
