Castle Keeper
by Preston Lang
The apron I wore said Cupcake Queen, but it wasn’t mine. All my claims to royalty were long past.
“The rice crispy treats aren’t selling,” Lila’s mom said.
I suggested we drop the price, but everyone dismissed the idea. Lila’s mom chuckled.
Gravedigger
by X. Luma
Land slopes up from the bay into white cliffs upon which sits a cemetery, so high that silent are the waves beneath the mourning doves’ lamentations, perched at their posts before dawn. It was here that Gunther tended the overgrowth, cleared the flowers long wilted and windblown against forgotten gravestones, and wrenched soil from the stubborn ground to lay bodies to earth. It was here that, one winter morning, Gunther met a procession of boatmen, led by their captain, with one such body in tow.
It’s Giving Final Girl
by Mallory Smart
How to Survive a Weekend Getaway with Someone Who Might Be Trying to Kill You
Because you were bored. Or lonely. Or emotionally feral.
I Annotate a Letter from My Latest Aunt
by Z.H. Gill
My latest aunt—Uncle Jamie’s fifth wife and very freshest beard—left for me lengthy typed instructions in a stern manila envelope set atop the California king in what was to be my (otherwise spartan) guest-suite for the next ten days:
The Story of Kolorash
by Stas Holodnak
I met him in Coney Island at the ocean’s edge. I was riding that old, grand machine called the Wonder Wheel. The Wonder Wheel boasts pretty views, but this time I didn’t come for the vistas. My plan was to get up high above the ground, to imagine the enclosed metal carriage as an airplane moving through the air, diving and climbing.
Mid-Year
by Hope Kokot
You and I live above one of those places where you can get a great big plate of chicken and rice and beans and cheese for five dollars, and they recognize us; when I go alone it’s Where is your boyfriend? The apartment is a fourth-floor walkup, which I hate; it sometimes smells like pastellitos, which I love. I like to cook for you.
Steve in the Trees
by Joseph Linscott
Strolling in the evening, that’s what we called it. Strolling: casual, old timey, it made us feel like we were ready to smoke unfiltereds, before we saw what they did to our uncles and grandfathers—wore their teeth away to nothing but pitty little nubbins in the mouth. Evening: sophisticated, elegant, it made us feel like we hadn’t gone through what everyone else wanted us to call trauma, it was just a little fun that gave us a different flavor from everyone else.
An Imposition
by Claire Oleson
Shane was up to his thighs in the pond, moving pressure between his only two feet, thinking about his older brother, who had obliterated his femur to fine bone-snow just a month back. Skiing. Shane was lucky to have two working legs that were so pretty and so easy to use. He shifted his weight and basked in his luckiness. Weird to feel like this: to feel like what happens to your older brother is something that will happen to you eventually, that his whole body is a trailer for yours. This was not true, but Shane could not shake the gratefulness out of his legs. He wasn’t his brother. Shane was careful, borderline neurotic, thigh-deep in pond water, and not a skier. He was not whole because of luck; it was practical. Still: his legs looked good with his navy-blue running shorts hiked until they caught on his thighs and stayed there: bitch, lucky.