J.G. Formato is a writer and elementary school teacher from North Florida. She’s moved far from the lake to a little house in the woods, where she lives with her beautiful family. Her short fiction has appeared in Giants and Ogres(Fairy Tale Villains Reimagined), freeze frame fiction, and Youth Imagination Magazine. I was six when Lake … Continue reading Oh, Keep Me by Jaime Formato
Duncan lives and writes in South Portland, Maine, where he works from home while catering to the needs of three small mammals (two of them human). Find more of his stories at www.duncanwhitmire.com and follow him on Twitter at @duncanwhitmire. Steven will probably quit when he gets to the new office. He’ll probably never even … Continue reading Five Hundred Years and Back by Duncan Whitmire
Nicole Janeway lives in Barcelona, where she writes for citypassproject.com. She loves dogs, running in the mountains, and café con leche. Her writing has appeared in Cicada and Scarlet Leaf Review. “My grandfather’s clock was too tall for its shelf, so it stood ninety years on the floor. It was taller by half than the old man himself, … Continue reading Treasure and Pride by Nicole Janeway
I wake up on the back of an alligator crawling slowly down Main Street. Trumpets blare. Knights with shields of flame and blood-encrusted swords descend on the train depot at the end of the drag. They’re on the march, hunting the last big game. General Slaughter wants a new head on his wall. *** General … Continue reading A Long, Long Dog, Having Chased its Orbited Tail by Nolan Liebert
The paintings never sold, so Cora hung them on the walls. Of course, she understood why they frightened people; peripherally, they seemed to move. If you glanced at them out of the corner of your eye, you might swear you saw the waters shimmer, a set of eyes blink, or the wave of a mermaid’s … Continue reading The Painted Sea by Lucy Ledger
My sister is a chameleon, always ready to become whoever is needed to seal the fissures in our lives. She put on Houdini’s skin first, one snowed-in February morning. My mother and I watched her slither out of a pair of bike chains as a blizzard roared through our zip code. Each time she escaped she’d … Continue reading The Lost and Found of What We Need by Evan Mallon
June tugs her jeans lower on her hips, feeling giddy in the half-dark. Such a breathless night, the wind stirring the trees like a great cauldron of apples! She’d like to pull off her T-shirt, let the moonlight and foliage tattoo her breasts in shifting shadow, but she can’t quite shake loose thirty-two years of … Continue reading Junebug by Kellelynne Riley
Omar walked in his front door, locked it, and froze. The house was silent and he could see all the way into the living room, where the time engine sat covered in a lace white tablecloth. All the curtains in the house were drawn, and the last bit of afternoon light was just enough to … Continue reading One Last Time by Lorena Torres Loaiza
Upsherin (Yiddish, lit. “shear off”) is a haircutting ceremony observed by a wide cross-section of Jews and is particularly popular in Haredi Jewish communities. It is typically held when a boy turns three years old. (Wikipedia) Payos are the (often curled) sidelocks worn by some Orthodox men. Tzitzis are the fringes that hang from a … Continue reading The Shearing of Yossi Mandelbaum by Anna Lea Jancewicz
Benicio Armando Solis set aside the noose he was weaving when the severed hand washed ashore. Benicio had been exiled to one of the outer islands of Rubio for longer than he could remember, penance for a crime of passion he was indeed guilty of committing. For the first several years he tried everything to … Continue reading The Hand that Washed Ashore by Kurt Newton