FICTION ARCHIVE

OCTOBER 2026

Wendy frowned and looked toward the hallway. A floating skull hovered in the doorway, lit from within by a fog of purple and pink smoke, weathered yellow bone flaking from the inhuman shape and dull bronze orbs staring at her through the empty sockets.

OCTOBER 2026

Within a week of Jane beginning to officially “see” Arnold, she found herself thinking more and more about Tyrone. It didn’t happen, fortunately, when she was with Arnold, but when she was alone...

OCTOBER 2026

I had to call back. I had to call back because I heard the buzzer, or well, I guess maybe it’s just a beep. Definitely not a bell, but somehow it feels like the kind in sports. Like, hello, you’re out. I don’t watch them. Any. Which is funny, ‘cause...

SEPTEMBER 2026

They picked him up just past the intersection of Highway 10...coming home in a near blizzard from Avery’s doctor’s appointment in the city. He was trudging along the same side of the road as them, hauling an orange Jerry can the size of a bar fridge.

SEPTEMBER 2026

He’s a boy of unnatural beauty, perhaps seventeen, leading his mule by the bridle. You see the sweat glimmering beneath his dark hair, his shirt and trousers woven from coarse hemp and clinging to his chest, his stomach, his legs. As he passes...

SEPTEMBER 2026

But grief was not in objects – it was in the way the air refused to fill her lungs, in the silence that pressed against her ears until her own heartbeat sounded like a drum in a cathedral.

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.