short fiction

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ByKati Bumbera

The cover of racing heads jenny by katie bumbrera.

Racing Headless Jenny

On New Year’s Eve, she wants the story of Headless Jenny.

ByHannah Yang

Everything in the Garden is Lovely

Now that I’ve failed as a woman, my punishment is to become a garden.

ByNika Murphy

The Ghost Tenders of Chornobyl

Not all the ghosts of Chornobyl died in 1986. Some died years—decades—later, bodies ravaged by mutated cells. They were a hundred kilometers away, not realizing their favorite mug was doused with irradiated atoms from the destroyed reactor.

ByEugen Bacon

The Enduring

Vision remembers scent, the car’s “sweet lily of the valley” in a fragrance leisurely releasing from a hung freshener on the indicator stalk of a custom-made dash.

ByKanishk Tantia

For As Long As You Want It

The sparse hair combed neatly over his nearly translucent scalp would have been striking on any Modern, but Atha was an Oldie, natural and organic.

ByElisabeth Ring

When No One Has to Say Goodbye

From the other side of the bed, I heard Caleb take in a breath like he was going to say something, but then he kept quiet. A second breath and silence; a third.

ByKT Bryski

Just You and Me, Now

The campsite looks like it wants to eat them. A fire pit yawns in the middle, an ashy-grey mouth ringed by rocks like rotting teeth.

ByM.M. Olivas

The Man Who Fed Dilophosaurs

We’d drag our wagon of fresh-slaughtered beef up the rocky path, our flashlights cutting beams beneath the violet sky. I called him Yusef because he didn’t like Father or Dad or Papá.

ByNadia Radovich

Then came the ghost of my mother, my mother, my mother, my mother, my mother, my mother, my mother, my mother, my.

Then Came the Ghost of My Dead Mother, Antikleia

You remember Mama pulling you out of line, hands like cobwebs. They say you can go, baby, she said, her voice the reedy, remembered voice of shades.