Flare
by Madeline McFarland
Just after the New Year, I left early in the morning from Brooklyn for my next Botox appointment. It had snowed in the soft, heavy way the night before, and the sun had just risen, casting the street of brownstones in a light blue glow. The scene was still and mostly undisturbed—I traced only a few crunchy footsteps in the snow. The powder dusted the skeletal trees and the Christmas trees discarded on the uneven sidewalk between them.
Nikita, Dave and David
by Wilson Neate
I had undertaken employment in the menswear department at Fenwick’s in the Brent Cross Shopping Centre. My co-workers and I considered our positions there to be interim engagements. We, of course, didn’t need these jobs. They were beneath us. We were just biding our time until we moved on to the greater things we envisaged for ourselves. We were going places. Eventually.
False Spring
by Laura Freudig
The woman’s hair should have registered as a sort of warning. It was as red as a monarch butterfly, as red as berries. She stood in the doorway of the office, shaking an umbrella on the checkerboard tiles before propping it in an empty chair. She wore a belted black raincoat and high heels and carried a patent leather purse large enough to conceal an infant.
Aping The Ark
by Aug Stone
Just as the rumor persists that Noah’s actual name was Yoah and therefore an anagram of ‘Ahoy’, so do reports of other ark-itects attempting similar salvation at the time of The Great Flood. Including Noah’s childhood friend Antaeus who idolized him, imitating the righteous man in nearly all that he did. Truth be told, Noah was often annoyed by the misguided mimicry, as well as baffled by Antaeus’ bizarre choices for just about everything, such as the already urine-colored loincloth he gave Methuselah for his 500th birthday, but when the world’s ending and your buddy’s built a boat, well, you can rise above petty squabbles.
We Buy Houses
by Chloe N. Clark
My parents had been planning to move for as long as I could remember. They were always talking about picking everything up and speeding across the state, across the country, across oceans. But, they never did. Falling into the routines they’d built for themselves, the small comforts that make a life bearable. So, when they called me up that summer and said they’d sold the house, I laughed when they told me.
Don’t Save the Cat
by Elijah Sparkman
1.
I gagged. I held up a piece of grilled chicken, with tongs, at my workplace: MIRACLE SALAD. My manager Tanya whispered, C’mon. I couldn’t handle it. I was a vegetarian. I put the chicken down. Ran to the bathroom and hurled. Acrylic, beige toilet water in my face, swirling up a storm. It made me sick that MIRACLE SALAD now sold meat products.
Rats!
by Michelle Hulan
Danny and I are in the waiting room of a wild animal hospital. He’s playing it cool, considering. He’s sitting in his seat, swinging his legs, his toes barely grazing the terrazzo floor, and staring at the animals in rehabilitation near the front window. There’s a shallow water tank with a small family of turtles in the front, a hawk with a broken wing, and two pigeons in the cage against the wall. He turns to me and asks how much longer. I lean back in my chair. It’s hard to tell. There’s only one other person here—a grizzled woman in her seventies if I had to guess. “Excuse me,” I say to her. “Do you have the time?”
Kiss Off or Kill
by Sylvia Math
One of the mysteries of life is that you could live with a really smart guy for a year and learn nothing, but date a dimwit for a month or so and have several Revelations. This story is about a sexy dimwit.