The Fiction Editor is Frances Badgett.
There is a jasmine vine on the corner of 9th Ave. and 5th St. It weaves across a fence around a 1938 house that holds the vault of a former bank robber. You will find its combination scratched into the garage wall. The bathroom vault was locked, but empty. This is not that story. The [...]
I am sitting in the attic closet with the cobwebs and mothballs, holding my baby, her hiccups ceaseless as the paint can smashes through the window below and the diaper rash is getting worse and cradling the freshly coated doorframe, they climb the pull-down ladder. They are dressed as clowns but they are my ex-wife’s [...]
They sent me to London for a summit on Global Water Leakage. I lasted no time at all because feeling like a lame duck I soon began to sweat. We were in a convention centre, some stuffy four star hotel near Marble Arch. Waiters deposited jugs of water. Buzzards fiddled with microphones, wearing expressions that [...]
Ringing phones start too many stories. Take this one for example. When it rings right at the mouth, we are forced to consider others that open this way – those crime novels, that translation, some classic, a romance, the paperback. And we wonder how to react to it happening again, here. Ring, ring. Are [...]
It was me screaming in the reflection of Dr. Maxwell’s sunglasses saying “the kids! the knot! the rope!” and pulling on his sleeve trying to explain what he already knew- that there was an extra knot-
When they entered they were not sure it was the right alley. They looked up to see scraps of sky between old dark beams like the ribs of a boat. Maybe it was covered once. “Do you think this is it?” he asked. “I don’t know. I’m completely turned around.” They walked a few hesitant [...]
She opens her eyes. She’d squeezed them closed, waiting for the voices to pass her by. As if closing them might allow her to disappear. It was a ritual she’d believed in when she was younger, but now she’s nearly eleven and has lost her faith. She’s wedged between the chest freezer and the cinder [...]
the alarm clocks were the first to turn. you reached with morning pulleys at your eyes in the bone-colored light to slap at the clock that wasnt singing. figured you set it wrong and went to work where eventually word got around because everyone shrugs in late and embarrassed and then,