Category Archives: Fiction

by | 03/31/2016 · 10:42 am

Fantasy Fatherhood

by Mark Brazaitis

My marriage was a mistake. She was a nice girl, and she thought I was a nice boy. After a year and eight months, we decided to end things. No harm—well, some harm (I was unfaithful sixty-two days after our wedding and remained so)—no foul.

I was twenty-six-years-old and a bachelor again. Free. Or so I thought. What I didn’t count on was my ex-wife, three months after our divorce, telling me she was pregnant. Toward the end of our marriage, we’d made a certain mournful—and, as it happened, inadequately protected—love.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under Fiction

Tagged as

by | 03/17/2016 · 9:01 am

Grackles

by Mollie McNeil

Despite her daughter-in-law giving her the stink eye, Muriel remained composed, holding her fork high as she swallowed the last bite of Claire’s too rich beef bourguignon. She resisted yawning while the strangers on either side of her prattled on about a school fund-raiser, and instead watched her son, Tom, flashing his whitened smile and smoothly refilling his guests’ wineglasses with a quick twist of his wrist. Tom was a dentist, good with his hands, and always seemed to know just how much novocaine was needed in any situation. Muriel cleared the table before excusing herself from the party, hugged her son happy birthday, and exited the room, she hoped, before anyone noticed her mounting irritation. Why couldn’t Claire just throw a backyard picnic for Tom instead of these tiresome sit-down affairs? A grinding headache had descended on her. Plus her shoes pinched. She slipped them off in the dim hallway and headed toward the bathroom in search of aspirin. Continue reading →

4 Comments

Filed under Fiction

Tagged as

by | 03/10/2016 · 9:38 am

Mustard

by Monica Drake
(from her new collection The Folly of Loving Life) 

Our dad, when he taught forensic science, said it was the art of looking at a problem and tracking backward, analyzing the smallest pieces to find out where things went wrong. When he actually did lab work, it usually involved investigating tampered with or otherwise faulty pre-packed food. He’d analyze unknown objects found in a box of cereal, a can of soup, a carton of orange juice. He’d determine if an item was molding mouse feet, somebody’s fingers lost in an industrial accident, or only an ordinary clump of burned cereal ingredients that had fallen off industrial machinery into the Wheatie-O’s mix. Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under Fiction

Tagged as

by | 03/03/2016 · 9:06 am

Status Update

by Evalyn Lee

It was like having a stream of people mooning her, looking out the window as the train traveled down to Washington, D.C. This was the close-up asshole view of America: the graffitied walls, all the warehouse depots with their empty ledges, the broken glass, the broken pots, and always the dying, grubby grass on the ground beside the train tracks.

Deborah lifted up her iPhone 4s and took a picture.

Then she updated her status to “Single.” Continue reading →

3 Comments

Filed under Fiction

Tagged as

by | 02/25/2016 · 9:18 am

Keeping Busy, Keeping Quiet

by Nicholas Lepre

I was staring at nothing, sitting in the corner of Lickity Splits, waiting for Dougie to close up, when the sea creatures came in. A beluga whale in cutoffs and a little lobster girl in red ski gloves. I’d never seen a beluga look so miserable. This was a Tuesday night, almost ten o’clock. No one had been in for an hour, just Dougie and me, killing time. I was eating my third mint chip cone because I had spotted Dougie a dime earlier that week. Lobster girl had this look on her face like she was exhausted but didn’t want to go to bed. Nine years old, probably. The whale was in a big hurry and kept snapping at her. Fine by me. All I wanted was to close up, pick up a couple Bell Beefers and watch NOVA in Dougie’s basement. Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under Fiction

Tagged as