Latest Stories
Most recently published stories in Fiction.
Balancing Catherine
1. The storm is growing near. We feel the inert and stagnant air grow more and more silent. She complains about the temperature in the room so we go outside, but it is just as hot. We hear nothing except for the coquis and the occasional burst of shooting stars. She always spots them up above, pointing vividly to the skies. I always miss the phenomenon. I always miss the ghosts that Catherine sees at night in our new house. I don't believe in ghosts, much less in her, but the more adamant she becomes, the more I start to believe her. But I will only reach out my skepticism as far as her pretty, quixotic mouth would lead. The storm has started. She wants to go back inside because the winds are beginning to howl. I tell her not to be afraid. She thinks I'm talking about her ghosts. Under the approaching deluge, she simply says that nothing will ever be the same. I never believe in what she says.
By Justin Fong Cruz5 years ago in Fiction
Wastelands
Dry earth crunched under their footfalls. The son tried not to step on the hard desolate cracks that split the earth like a never ending egg being hatched. When he mis-stepped and tripped over his own ankle he stumbled forward and fell to knees catching himself with the base of his palms. When mother looked back she merely smiled and held out a hand to help him up. She didn’t scold him or say anything for that matter. In fact, she rarely said anything while they walked. It had been that way as long as the son could remember. When she turned her back to him and continued, he went on skipping over the dry cracks of earth.
By Judah Pearson5 years ago in Fiction
The Heart-Shaped Locket Gang
I awoke from my dream to a startling realization: I was an illusion. Just a dream being dreamed. Sure, I could still touch my face, hear my heart beating, smell Natalie’s perfume as she slept next to me, taste the joint from last night upon my tongue and see the flames shimmering in the sky outside my window, but I was gob smacked to discover that this human being who my parents had named Mark didn’t exist. My timing, as always, was a calamity. The world, at the very moment of my breakthrough, was hurtling into the abyss due to the sudden massive rise in sea levels and the disarmingly absurd fluctuations in weather.
By stone petoskey 5 years ago in Fiction
Birthday Gifts
Nothing burned like sunshine on skin scrubbed raw with lye soap and steel wool. Traders were coming to West this morning. Display was to begin just before the second feed. Dune cringed when Bell’s rough hands turned him around to inspect his face and hair. Before his bath, she had given him a portion of her morning meal as a gift for what was considered the start of his twentieth year. This was not how he wanted to celebrate.
By Casey A Clark5 years ago in Fiction
Madalynn
I loved the sound of car accidents, don't ask me why, but something in its unsettled breath of metal, glass, and impact made me feel an awakening of higher purpose, like I was in on the joke, far off, a spectator of omnipotence, of obsolescence. I met Madalynn when our cars crashed on that rainy day down by the pond. The accident itself was slower than I remembered, not ephemeral at all because something stayed with me as all that glass sprinkled upon my face like a beautiful wonder of timelessness, some memory of her face flickered for a distended amount of time, right next to me, even though she was a few feet away, in her own fucked up car, going through her own panic of things. My head flashed with quick and bright colors, and I did not even feel any pain. Nothing major had happened, it was just a big mess. It was her fault too, the accident. She did not stop when it was her turn to stop and I was, at the time, reaching for a CD, my mind in other rebuttals. Then it was all over. I found myself outside, sitting on the grass with a face full of glass and distortions. I felt the loose sun entering the little red holes in my face, sizzlingly. It had been a nice day a second ago, cooler even.
By Justin Fong Cruz5 years ago in Fiction
Found at Lost
No time to think what do I take? It didn’t happen the way everyone thought it would, some earth-shattering projectile hurling from space. A World War would have been more predictable. It was a slap in the face of humanity, seeing that it was caused by our need to defend the planet after Asteroid Janis224’s near miss of the moon’s dark side. That asteroid had a profound effect on humanity as a whole. Millions watched for weeks as news agencies covered Janis224 around the clock until it changed course 3 days before it was supposed to make contact. The whole world rejoiced! This also brought the world’s greatest minds together who developed a space defense system. All that brain power and they settled on . . . Space Force. Boy, if President Trump was alive to see that day. All nations pulled together when it seemed like life was on the verge of extinction, Christians were seen worshipping with Muslims, North Korea joined the United Nations, and Israel and the Palestinians set differences aside and drafted border lines that all agreed to. The world watched as piece by piece, the defense system was manufactured, sent off into space, and assembled on the moon. As the world celebrated this major accomplishment, unforeseen events millions of miles away changed life on Earth in a drastic way.
By Kevin Carroll5 years ago in Fiction
Memeing to Midnight
First it was bitcoin. Then it was dogecoin. Then it was doomcoin, a cryptocurrency that’s value was supposedly tied to how close the doomsday clock was to midnight. Not even a real thing, yet non-real things can have realest of consequences if enough people treat them to be real. Make-believe can be a powerful force. But perhaps the most powerful force of all is better phrased as believe-make.
By Daniel Viger5 years ago in Fiction
Singularity of evolution
They call me Ghost. Time is an expendable Luxury, we never have enough yet we never run out. Since the world started to download our personal histories and current events to prevent the loss of all civilization we as a whole have learned to lean more on the easy to feel feelings. Stuff like guilt and shame, allow us to function in a more singular capacity where our needs are very low maintenance.
By Michael Flowers5 years ago in Fiction
2085
Bex Meere woke up early to the heat, like every other day for as long as she could remember. She stretched out on her cot before putting her thin pale feet on the sandy ground. Bex was 5’ 6” with deep red hair and freckles all over. Freckles that seemed brighter when Bex was excited. You see, she had celebrated her fifteenth birthday just two days earlier and that meant she was no longer a child and could now leave the safety of her home, the mine.
By Kristen Renee5 years ago in Fiction
