I always sensed beast in the house. From the time I could sense anything, I knew I could reach for and grip onto a shaggy coat, pull myself up to lean against a beastly wall of muscle. I knew the scent of tartar breath, the scalloped air of a swinging tail, the sponge of a rough tongue on my face. The sound of teeth tearing at meat, the crunch of powerful jaws on bone. The smell of shits the size of eggplants. No sense of a father (don’t ask, I learned not to), but the awareness of a dog, always, […]
Category: Fiction
Fiction that only appears on the website, not the journal
‘Animals’
by Uche Okonkwo
Nedu named the chicken Otuanya because it was missing an eye, a film of pink tissue sealing the space where the organ should have been. He summoned his father, older sister, and unsmiling mother to the backyard for a naming ceremony, where he served peanuts and Fanta and solemnly announced the chicken’s name to polite
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Phone call
by Cynthia Zarin
Caroline is standing by the north ball fields in Central Park in the snow. It is February. There is some kind of construction going on—or it was going on—the big yellow trucks have stalled, but still, she has had to circumvent them. She is walking southeast, toward Seventy-Ninth Street, through the park. It is freezing.
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‘Good News’
by Hannah Kingsley-Ma
Like a dog, I walked in through the back door and sniffed the air attentively. A rich, woody scent met me. Before I had a chance to call her name, Kira’s head poked out from behind the open refrigerator door. She stooped down again, her hands rooting around, rattling the various jars of mustard that lined the shelves. Julia, she said brightly. You’re early. Hi Kiki, I replied. What’s cooking? You’ll never guess, she said. She pushed herself up with her hands on her knees so she was standing tall. I have no idea, I told her. I’m trying. I […]
‘Any Orange Is Orange’
by Olivia Clare Friedman
Since Happy started saving lives, he’s gotten superstitious. You learn quick—don’t call him up on his shift and ask, How’s the day going? Any calls? because then for sure the radio will start, and they’ll be racing over, lights and sirens, to a one-bedroom in Pelican Bluff on Cooper Candy Drive, which is all gravel
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‘Moldova’
by Ruth Madievsky
Sasha and I landed in Kishinev as the sun was rising and took a bus from the tarmac to our terminal. I hadn’t slept on either of the flights and felt the edges of reality ungluing. The bus was stuffed to the windows with blue-eyed children waving American coloring books, women in sweatsuits carrying knockoff
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The Bus
by Nishanth Injam
The bus has a bathroom. Other buses that leave Bengaluru for my hometown don’t have bathrooms. They pull over on the highway when you have to pee, or they stop at a dhaba and the driver asks passengers to go so he won’t have to make extra stops along the way. The bus is a
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After Dark
by Rhoda Huffey
When the pigeon first appeared in my front yard, I noticed because he didn’t fly off immediately. He walked over to the jade plant by my front porch and contemplated the leaves of the succulent. My mind was full of other things at that moment: what to wear to that evening, did a man named
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Obverse
by Yuri Herrera
Translated by Lisa Dillman And that was why they decided to go off and explore the other side, on which, they hoped, there would be no watery cliffs or dragons awaiting them at the end. They traversed iotas and iotas. Deserts of iotas and dales of iotas and mountains of iotas. Millions of iotas. Until,
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Flat Map
by Yuri Herrera
Translated by Lisa Dillman Perhaps they could have saved the lives of all those who died chasing the truth to the ends of the earth if they’d thought more about, say, the thickness of trees. But these people, like all people, felt compelled to see things with their own eyes, which would later be eaten
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Interoffice Memorandum 10/18
by Christine Sneed
Date: October 18 To: All Quest Industries Employees From: Mid Level Management Subj: Returning Full-Time to the Office Please be advised that as of one week from today, we will resume full-time work in our offices at 1 E. Wacker Drive, i.e. we will no longer observe a 3-days-in-office/2-days-remote schedule. Please do not grouse about this policy within our earshot. We have no intention of changing our minds! Please also be advised that air fryers and heavy metal-extracting saunas are no longer permitted on these premises. The City of Chicago’s Public Works Department recently informed us that overuse […]
May 17th, 1974
by Dagoberto Gilb
“Slauson,” Sherry said. “Doesn’t that sound…maybe Watts, like that, to you?” “What?” Danny said making the word shorter than it already was. “It’s kind of a ghetto name, right?” Danny might have looked up and away irritated if he wasn’t driving her car. Slauson was the name of the street they were on, wide and
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