FICTION

The Care of Monsters

Blaize M. Kaye

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.

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Glinting Like Silver

Sophia Krich-Brinton

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.

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A Yellow Speck

Nikita Costiuc

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.

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Janus

Maxine Espinosa

MARCH 2026

Everything he could have said sounded like something too late. And yet the same conversation seemed to play out every day between them in strange rehearsals of temptation in which only she spoke.

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The Travel Diary of Mr. Peter Davis Clark

Lisa Trudel

FEBRUARY 2026

Arrived at Manor Vail Lodge Hotel around 4:30pm. Front desk noticed it was our fifth time here. Nice that they noticed us as VIP guests! Room is luxurious. The bathroom has a new gold shag carpet, gold wallpaper and a sunken bathtub. This is the life!

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CanLit Book Club

Jeff Cottrill

FEBRUARY 2026

i think this sad excuse for a short story has melted my brain, or at least my creative faculties. i need to lie down. take a good long nap. maybe for the rest of the day. maybe for the rest of my life.

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The Twelfth Night

L.A. Nolan

FEBRUARY 2026

I have not slept. Not for the previous ten nights. And now, on the eleventh, I lie atop this bed as though already a cadaver, limbs arranged, stiff and angular. The mattress beneath me may as well be a slab of marble.

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Broken Clouds

John Barrett Lee

JANUARY 2026

It’s been over two months since your last visit—even though you drive within a hundred yards every day on the way to work. You tell yourself it’s because you’d rather remember her as she was. But deep down, you know it isn’t about what you want.

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Breath Ratio

H. L. Delaney

JANUARY 2026

Predawn, the pier was all angles and salt. The air smelled of metal and warning. Luc entered the lab, heart still beating to the rhythm of the storm, the echo of the sea’s breath heavy in his chest, metal giving way to the clean brightness he trusted...

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The Last Lover

CK Love

DECEMBER 2025

Finding warmth in a warm place is not hard, finding intimacy in the cool night is just as easy. Finding love in a temporary town such as this is only possible if real-life rules don’t apply.

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Anywhere but Earth

Owen Townend

DECEMBER 2025

Two weary travellers docked at 0π0, seeking respite at Galactic Central Point. The taller of the two was an indigo-skinned Pybite with a prominent thorax and a forked tail featuring cybernetic enhancements common for pilots. The smaller was...

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The Madness East of St. George

Jeff Cottrill

2025 Short Fiction Contest Winner

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Parallel

Fynn Moran

2025 Short Fiction Contest Runner-Up

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The Biomechanics of a Kiss

Jay McKenzie

2025 Short Fiction Contest Runner-Up

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A New Woman

Heidi Marjamäki

DECEMBER 2025

Inside, the bathhouse smelled different from what Irene had imagined. Not fresh, not sweet, nothing so gauche as that, but heavy, wooden, almost bitter. She felt distinguished just sniffing the air, and then profoundly stupid for thinking that.

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Soul Fruit

James Callan

NOVEMBER 2025

A single fruit among the orchard’s bounty is enough to preserve your life.

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Street Atlas

Zofia Warwick

OCTOBER 2025

The watch ticked backward the way it usually did when the world was suspended upside down. Hard going for a sphere with a gravity well, but sometimes physics flowed strangely around Dot.

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The Life You Save

Tyler Whetstone

OCTOBER 2025

The dry air seared the inside of his lungs a little, but as he trembled on the ground, the feeling in his arms and legs slowly coming back to him, Charlie realized that the problem wasn’t that the air was hot; it was that everything in him was cold.

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Don’t Call Me Madeline

L.A. Nolan

SEPTEMEBER 2025

Noor closed her eyes for a moment, willing herself to remember the warmth of her father’s study, the scent of ink and jasmine drifting through the open window. But the memory was a fragile refuge, offering no shield against the cold of Dachau.

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The Mortician and the Peacock

Kelly Louro

SEPTEMBER 2025

Behind her, watching the lace of her skirt sashay, was that brain dead boxer, hog-tied and gagged, the uptown amateur all washed up before he’d even hit his prime.

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Slowed Down

Michael Paul Kozlowsky

AUGUST 2025

The feel of her hands in his hair was a kind of warm magic. A spell he never wanted to end.

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Where Dark and Light Coalesce

Sreelekha Chatterjee

AUGUST 2025

He espies a centipede tunneling inside the dirt, making way for the water and nutrients to reach a dormant seed in the earth’s womb, which puffs up, quieting those who prophesy its stale, living world will never burgeon.

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Resisting the Current

Patrick Siniscalchi

JULY 2025

Clayton had told him where he could shove his wrath of God nonsense during the reverend’s hour-long attempt to steer him onto the straight and narrow after his clandestine joyride in the neighbor’s truck.

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Workings of a Teenage Heart

Joemario Umana

JULY 2025

The sun hung low in the sky, a yolk bleeding gold and orange onto the corrugated roofs of our compound. The air smelled of ripe mangoes and distant charcoal smoke, heavy with the languor of a typical afternoon.

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The Little Shop of Proverbs

Chris Cottom

JULY 2025

The bay window has half a dozen panes with glass circles, like something out of Dickens. A bell jingle-jangles as I step inside. The walls are thick with tiny cards in a copperplate hand, while embroidered pennants hang from the bumpy-head beams of the ceiling, advising that...

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But First, Today, We Cover

Elysia Rourke

JUNE 2025

I sit on the bed and observe my husband, bent over his work, eyelashes fluttering in the dim light. His demeanor is boyish, a reflection of the childhood friend I once raced along the quays of Dublin Bay.

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Pointless Field

Dustin Moon

JUNE 2025

The purpose of the field is still a mystery. A single structure stands nearer my side, pitched roof and boarded doors and dilapidation encroaching, and I still don’t know what it ever was.

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Subversion Laid Bare

Matt McGee

JUNE 2025

Is this ‘harvest moon’ one of those things where rebels meet behind a barn and plan an act of subversion or something?

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Silent Whimpers

Barlow Crassmont

MAY 2025

The drifter’s hands smelled of alcohol and cheap cigarettes, and for a long while, the mutt would associate this aroma with the ragged man’s essence. Together they would face the hardships of the contemporary world as an inseparable duo.

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The Legend of First Lady Eardley

Zachary Ryan

MAY 2025

I don’t watch pornography. I don’t read it either. That doesn’t make me a prude. Sex is simply low on my list of interests.

I wonder how much of that can be blamed on my husband?

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The Thawing

Christy Hartman

MAY 2025

The night before the joyous event, Isabelle lay in the dark, mouthing the vows Hilda had written for her. Worse. Poorer. Sickness. Obey. Isabelle’s grandmothers, aunts and cousins had all made these pledges, and now it was her turn.

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Moorings

Salena Casha and Leigh Loveday

APRIL 2025

I’ll tell you the things I remember, then you can show me the things I don’t. How does that sound?

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Whatever Became Of

Raymond Beauchemin

APRIL 2025

Never made it beyond captain. Spent all those years in the Marines and that’s as far as he got. Kinda tells you something.

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FICTION

The Care of Monsters

Glinting Like Silver

A Yellow Speck

Janus

The Travel Diary of Mr. Peter Davis Clark

CanLit Book Club

The Twelfth Night

Broken Clouds

Breath Ratio

The Last Lover

Anywhere but Earth

The Madness East of St. George

Parallel

The Biomechanics of a Kiss

A New Woman

Soul Fruit

Street Atlas

The Life You Save

Don’t Call Me Madeline

The Mortician and the Peacock

Slowed Down

Where Dark and Light Coalesce

Resisting the Current

Workings of a Teenage Heart

The Little Shop of Proverbs

But First, Today, We Cover

Pointless Field

Subversion Laid Bare

Silent Whimpers

The Legend of First Lady Eardley

The Thawing

Moorings

Whatever Became Of

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