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.
Lace
by Jeanne-Marie Fleming
My father, in his leisure suit, rose from the couch and belted out the wedding march—don, don, da don, don, don, da don as I paraded my fancy dress around the living room finishing with a curtsy like I learned in ballet. He clapped. So pretty Bronagh. Just like Mommy, he said.
What We Can Do Without
by Jake Winn
Night came early that day, and not for the first time that week. Owen Smith woke from an inebriated sleep to discover his wallet missing. He checked underneath the bed, behind the dresser and around the toilet. He was wearing his pants still, and they smelt like cheap booze and bile. Out his window some kids were shoving each other into the street. Some cars passed by and sounded their horns at them. Breakfast sat heavy in his stomach and his head started to ache as he started to remember the things that had happened the night before. There were indistinguishable voices coming from the stairwell and, when they passed, the echo of a door closing. Owen laid back down. He turned on the TV, but there wasn’t anything on, so he turned off the TV and closed his eyes. His head was starting to feel better some, and the taste of coffee that lingered in his mouth made him feel awake again. The weed was stored in a tin underneath the table, and he rolled out a joint and smoked it. He went and got a beer from the kitchen. When he got a message back, he put the beer down on the table and got into the shower. The beer sweated a small puddle and was warm by the time he was dressed. He drank it anyway. Then he rolled himself a joint. At the train station he jumped over the turnstile just as the train was arriving and lurked in a corner and watched the young postman with his arm around a lady, and the construction worker nodding off. The doors opened and closed at two stops, and some people got on but not many, and Owen transferred at the next stop.
You Say Roti; I Say Ruti
by Sumaiya Aftab Ahmed
for Abdul Latif Joarder
Jessore, East Pakistan, 1971
The Pakistani soldiers joke among themselves, and Iftekar cannot trace the indefinite shapes of their words. He knows only scraps of Urdu, all from his wife Bipasha who sings Bollywood songs while rinsing rice, stringing jasmine, embroidering frocks for their daughters. Iftekar prefers Nazrul geeti. But Bangali poetry can’t unbind Iftekar’s hands. It’s a radiant day. Sunshine douses the courtyard. Iftekar’s nose itches from smoke. Without tilting his head from the wall that the soldiers demanded he face, Iftekar rolls his eyes as far up as they will go, straining his sockets. A dark plume is drifting from the direction of his home. A soldier approaches. The long, pointed shadow stretching across the wall belongs to his rifle. Iftekar smells something specific, wheat warming over a fire.
Purple Ink
by Coco Hull
When I was eight years old, my family went on Christmas vacation at Bolongo Bay Resort, a cluster of pastel-colored beachside buildings on the island of St. Thomas. It was gloriously outdated, still running on the fumes of its 1980s splendor. Each night on my rollaway cot, with my parents in one queen bed and my two older brothers in the other, I looked at the crumbling popcorn ceiling before falling asleep. Back then, I often found myself wishing to be one of my brothers, unabashedly sprawled out in boxers on the expanse of queen-sized sheets.
Spider House
by Crockett Doob
I woke up looking at a spider on my ceiling. My first thought was denial: This spider will stay on my ceiling forever. It is content up there. The idea of the spider descending into my bed while I was sleeping was… Like what if I rolled over and the spider bit me? Or what if it decided to lay eggs in my orifices? Impossible. That would never happen. The ceiling was a great place for a spider. Hell, I’d spend time up there if I could. Then I could have a couch. So with that, I got out of bed and made coffee.
Girls Night
by Lindsey Danis
Anka told me her wife did work during lockdown. She failed to mention their new kitchen is worthy of a spread in Upstater. White marble counters gleam with gold veins. Overhead, blown glass pendant light shimmer like giant bubbles.
Going Home
by Cameron L. Mitchell
Driving through the murky black night, I can’t help but wonder if I’m really here at all, awake at such an ungodly hour before dawn. It could be a dream. Suddenly, I’m sure none of this is real. I must still be asleep back in that cheap hotel room off the highway, missing the day’s one and only flight out of this place, the mountains I once called home. My hands grip the wheel tighter, my foot presses down harder on the gas, but I can’t quite connect to the movements my body seems to be making on its own. I feel untethered to the world just outside the window, flashing by. Like I might drift off and disappear if I’m not careful. Then again, I always felt that way here.