Brendan Egan The pharmaceutical cocktail necessary for lethal injection being unavailable, the State had determined, pursuant to sentencing matrices, XXXXXXXXXXX should be executed by a firing squad...
Isabella Welch It was Sunday night, which, since childhood, was a night of painful malaise for Jon. It started in the morning this time, that tugging. Here you are, old, unwelcome friend, Jon...
Debbie Bateman This is not the first time Pauline’s tried to escape. At seventeen, she ran from her father, taking only what fit in the beat-up Dodge she’d paid for with her own cash. Her clothes...
Olivia Treynor Fourteen years old and my sister decides she is going to starve herself into the shape of something beautiful. She has not yet told me this is her plan, but from the way she studies...
Sasha Tandlich She attacks the shirt with a dull pair of scissors. These are the same scissors she uses for everything: opening packages, cutting green onions, trimming her bangs, holding against her...
Alyssa Quinn In the doctor’s office, a woman describes the shape of her pain. “There is a hard pillar inside of me,” she says. “Cylindrical. Metallic. It stretches from the pit of my...
Erica Plouffe Lazure I am a known heretic in these parts because I mow the lawn on Sundays. I can feel my neighbor’s eyes on my back on the Lord’s Day as I maneuver through my special, signature...
From Issue 21.1 Justin Cronin The morning he was scheduled to appear in bankruptcy court, Frank O’Neil ate three eggs for breakfast, read the Times and Globe, drank two cups of coffee, helped his...
Robert Bausch “…Anything makes me laugh, I misbehaved once at a funeral.” –Charles Lamb He could hear the people in the church praying. So many voices carried a long way and he could...
Kevin Sterne Contest Winner My nephew takes pictures of dead animals with a disposable camera. My sister said this might be an issue when she asked me to watch him for the weekend. “It’s...
