Established (Claire Hopple)
We’d received some information. Dr. Berardinelli had stopped believing in the practice of medicine, and as a result, she had run away from home. She is walking amok along the edge of our city somewhere, just like she pretended to do as a child (but without the bandana tied to the end of a stick). …
Candy Bleeding (Caleb Bethea)
My uncle told me my greatness would be wound up in my ability to take a hit. The one who hopped a fence at tee-ball to break the ump’s arm with an aluminum bat. A cracking sound louder than any home run. Legally, he couldn’t attend a single game of mine after that, but his…
You’re Not Even The Dirtbag (Adam Shaw)
I never planned on buying Wheatus tickets, but Coolio had just died and I’d missed his last show like I’d missed my dad’s last breath, been there and walked away because I thought I could or maybe because my legs were sore, and for some reason not doing that to Wheatus even though Wheatus showed…
James, Jim, Jimmy (Brittany Ackerman)
My boyfriend John had a friend named James. In the recovery scene, everyone seemed to have biblical names. I’d met so many Lukes and Marks and Matthews and Josephs and Daniels, even a handful of Isaiahs and Jeremiahs. And everyone knew everyone’s business because they all shared about their lives in meetings. That was kind of the point,…
We Blame The Aliens (J. M. Lyons)
We can’t afford a funeral. We can’t even afford to rent a hearse or however one is supposed to retrieve a body from the morgue so we borrow Glenn’s pickup and back the bed up to the door to make the process as painless as possible. Carrying my cousin is harder than I imagine. They…
Heel, Knee, Hip (Lisa Muschinski)
My ex’s dad was a professional speed walker. Me and my ex, we’d go watch his races, sit at the track’s edge in camping chairs, watch alongside stoned high schoolers and some confused seniors from the nearby old folks’ home. We’d watch the balding fellas waddle on by, their hips rolling in tight figure eights…
The Moon is Real (Tim Frank)
You were a strange boy who claimed ants are mammals and can speak African dialects. You told me that grass oozes blood when cut by a lawnmower. You said rice can be explosive when dipped in mud, but only at dawn. You said you learned these facts from leaked government documents and archaic religious tomes.…
Thou Shall Not Kill (Kennedy Coyne)
My sister’s friend took my son to an art museum because my sister said that her friend thought her kid and my kid would get along. So he went and when he came home I asked him what he saw and he told me pictures. I asked him, Like photographs? He said, I guess. But…
This Parking Ticket Is A Death Certificate (Michael Aurelio)
It’s 6am and I’m waiting in the Costco parking lot of Industry City for my Jeep to be towed here. 5 calls. The first to my wife asking if she’d moved it, the second to the fire department it had auspiciously been parked next to before it vanished, the third to the police department who…
Green Light (Maria Burns)
Daddy Vick started screaming for the aliens to take him away when the green lights showed up in the sky. It was a bug-bite summer drenched in river water. Everyone was sunburned, drunk, or sugar-high around the fire, toasting marshmallows and melting beer bottles. Then light drenched us like a sci-fi movie where no one…
Kid gets hit with a basketball (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9Xmg62n8t8) (Emily Costa)
He’s sitting on the porch drinking a Mountain Dew Slurpee and messing with the camera while he waits for Kenny. Kenny’s going to throw a basketball at his head as hard as he can over and over until they get a good shot. Slurpees are a dollar now, the small ones. When he was little…
I am Ripped to Shreds by Wild Dogs (Mitch Russell)
I am looking for something to watch on Netflix one evening when all of the sudden, out of nowhere, an entire pack of wild dogs bursts through my living room window and rips me to shreds. If you have never been ripped to shreds by wild dogs before, let me tell you what it’s like:…
Matthew Danger (Dylan Smith)
My new manager at the restaurant, this big paranoid man named Preston, he told me the damage is at the edges of my eyes. “All blurry and always so bloodshot,” Preston said. Always so watery and desolate and fucked up and red. But it being only noon on my birthday, and later my only night…
Some Cuts (R.W. Hartshorn)
Deep Cut The ripping of chainsaws through tree bark has clued the entire neighborhood in to the murder I’m committing. I’m on my porch, watching a crew of arborists destroy the white pines threatening to topple onto my roof. “It’s a healthy tree,” the boss told me when he showed up to do an assessment…
Future Shock (Peterson Berg)
Another Tuesday night filling time and the weird name catches my attention. The Parallax View, a 70’s thriller. A politician gets killed and Warren Beatty struts around with a wily grin and mussed hair. It’s fine. But eighteen minutes in there’s this cut. A woman shows up at Warren Beatty’s place to tell him that…
Waterdogs (Taryn Hendrix)
I see my father at a party in the house he built. He is too young, with a full head of wavy dark hair, just like in his wedding photos, but his face is covered in half-healed wounds, still the color of raw tuna. His nose is flat and pink, and he’s wearing his carpenter’s…
Mauler (Robert Long Foreman)
I’m waiting in line outside the school, in a line of three Subarus. Ahead is an Ascent. That’s the Subaru SUV. Behind me is a Forester. My Subaru is a Forester. They’re good cars! It’s been 3:30 and 3:31. Now it’s 3:32. It’s the passage of time, baby. I don’t make the rules. My Subaru…
Bad to the Bone (Swati Sudarsan)
Bad bones, my boyfriend says and slaps my house like an ass. This baby’s gotta go down. A litany of tears down my cheeks in protest, but he’s busy fingering my walls to the corner, fingers wedged in their dovetail, checking them for a pulse. Yep, he confirms. Rotting from within. I’m at work when…
Willow (Ryan Jeffrey Shea)
I am joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe. They’ve cast me as a tree. They will insert me into previously released films using green screens and global distribution magic. The tree will have a backstory that touches levers of power and influence in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Jacked celebrities will stop and talk to me on…
The Book of adornments (Miriam Gershow)
The woman whose name Viola has already forgotten slides a fat three-ring binder across the table and asks if Vi would like an adornment. The room is dressed in landscape paintings and lightly patterned carpeting, aspiring to the nowhereness of a hotel room or an office park. “An adornment,” Vi repeats back to the woman…
Loading…
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
Rejection Letters 