Jeffrey Miller tells the tale of one woman's desperate journey in his harrowing short story "The Roads We Must Travel".
“You need to be more careful, Comrade Kim,” the soldier said, reaching down and grabbing the packet. “As I said, this road can be very dangerous.”
Suffering through groomsman duty in Alex Schumacher's "Rock the Cash Bar".
"Weddings.
Huh!
What are they good for?
Absolutely nothing."
Our Writer of the Month for October 2015, Erin Parker, shares a story of a most unlikely hero, "Small Creatures".
That’s how it all started. Nobody knows who I am except for the animals. I don’t have a catchy name, a mask or a cape, and that’s the way I like it.
Kathy Bratkowski's short story "Goodwill Saturdays".
“It’s happening, Mo,” she says ruefully, using my kid nickname that makes me feel sentimental.
“What?”
“They look at you now. Not at me. I’m becoming invisible.”
Ben Winston's haunting short story, "Invincible".
Before the heat of shame works its way to my fingertips, the intruder’s stall falls silent. My body tenses, and I sense Mikey’s does too. Long moments pass. An eternity. My lungs scream. Then a long exhale comes, slow and continuous. I imagine the man’s body deflating, the air from every corner of his body pouring out of his mouth, leaving his skin cinched tight around his skeleton like a mummy. The exhale fades out and I hear the soft creak of the toilet seat, followed by two loud thuds.
Jane-Rebecca Cannarella returns to Drunk Monkeys with her flash fiction story "Bison Called Buffalo".
How do two people argue about whether it’s called buffalo or bison, pock marking moments where our teeth knocked each other? “There aren’t any fucking buffaloes in the US, they were bison.” Later I twisted my ankle at your retreating back. I don’t think we were arguing about quadrupeds.
An exceptional short story from Gavin Chapman, "Defending Dignity".
I don’t feel what I did was wrong, but I can already hear Micky screaming in my ear about how I went against God’s will.
Here we go. Was I right? Right or wrong, Ma, she’s gone.
Samuel Wilkes with a thrilling tale of deep sea diving, "New Depths".
I hesitated at first, still confused by what was before me. Then I handed Rob my second regulator so that he would remember to breathe properly. He followed my direction like a scared child on a turbulent plane. Then I saw the new arrivals that began circling on account of the flowing blood. Like a demonic halo above us swam a school of barracudas with the light of a now foreign sun in the middle, beckoning us upward like the divine grace of heaven itself.
Jared Stein with a surreal short story set in a mental ward, "6W".
I am in New Jersey. I am in a hospital room, propped on a lumpy mattress. I am in restraints.
Morgan Bazilian's flash fiction piece "My Little Boy is Sitting on Flowers" captures the joy and the anxiety of being a parent.
I feel like I can’t stand up; that I can’t move at all. But I have to keep watching him, and them. If I lose sight of him, even for a moment, my stomach sinks and I get incredibly scared. My chest tightens. But he is right there. The lights in the floor now look like cars. He is in awe. Like magic.
