FICTION ARCHIVE

SEPTEMBER 2026

We met in the eleventh grade of high school, after I had come back from more than half a year on the road. I was wild then, not wanted at home or at school, and I had surprised and disappointed everyone by coming home. 

AUGUST 2026

Jim wondered if he could be fully transparent about who he used to be and keep her believing in who he is now. His vices may embarrass him, but they do not judge him. 

AUGUST 2026

I know that you only offer me your gaze so that you can have mine. Your attention is a gift. Alms to the poor so the poor can pay taxes. A gesture of interest that masks the insistence – entitlement – ignorance – that a weird girl like me should be grateful for.

AUGUST 2026

We’re going to call her Marge because we don’t really know who the hell she is. Or what. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

AUGUST 2026

We had been watching whales together since we were kids. Typically, when one of us spotted a whale, we didn’t tell the other, “Hey, look.” We just knew that the other had seen it too. 

JULY 2026

It’s been like this all day. Smoky. Fire season snuck up like a dentist appointment. Already, memories of blue skies are fading like the grey horizon, which once featured mountains.

JUNE 2026

The blades cut the air in regular intervals like a heartbeat that never varies, never responds, never adapts. It is life-like without being alive, pulse without flesh, rhythm without the irregularities, neither close enough to see clearly nor far enough to ignore.

APRIL 2026

Your parents lay you gently on your thin mattress and closed the door. I crept out from below and perched over you as you settled into a restless sleep. You smelled of sweet powder and grunted and gurgled like a youngling of my own kind.

MARCH 2026

She’d be complaining and sighing and muttering under her breath. I was well rid of her, the day she ran off. I was grieved when I got the news, but not surprised. She’d been chaos from the start.

MARCH 2026

The sun glared down on the paddy field where she lay. She looked about his size and age, blonde hair and a dark green dress. Next to her floated a man in a muddied white shirt, blue jeans, cowboy boots, and a black hat.