By Chin-Sun Lee
From outside the house looked welcoming, if a bit run-down, and not quite to Claire’s taste. It was a small modernized Greek Revival with blistered white clapboard walls and gray shutters. Grass ran wild in the yard, patchy and thin in some parts and overgrown in others.
By Adam Klein
The professor looked hopelessly at his bird. Sleeping!
How does it manage to sleep through such noise, he thought. The professor noted the tiny feathers, like hatch marks around its eyes, and the eyelids smooth as green crepe and closed with the finality of a theater curtain.
By Joe Baumann
When I opened the door and found a naked man facedown on the front porch, I assumed he was a drunk. But then he stretched up, extending his arms so his back curved like he was a seal, and he smiled at me.
By Harry McEwan
Ipassed you on the street this morning. I was dashing to work, texting my boss, late, as usual. I didn’t recognize you until after I’d passed. When the realization hit me, I stopped dead a half block later and looked back. At first I wasn’t sure.
By Courtney Moreno
Billy was sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter, swallowing the last of her medications, when Gustave arrived. She watched him dig for his key. The front door was a French door, with panes of glass embedded in the wood.
By Thea Swanson
On Saturday nights in Washington, Orthodox Christian priests wear black dresses to their feet. They have smooth ponytails and scraggly beards. They have many children and one modest wife. They hold vigil in dark churches lit with candles.
By Andrei Babikov
Translated by Michael Gluck
Little is known about the nameless author of The Strange Book. One source claims that he was a Ligurian translator and scribe who moved to prosperous Florence in search of a better life.
By Roger Mensink
My name is Brittany Benjamin, and life is raining gummy bears (my favorite sweets), not only because I am blessed—my parents are both college professors, both tenured;
By Jessica Barksdale
Higgins lived with his mother, but then she died. Higgins now in charge, her house smells like dry things. Paper and wind. Coffee like brittle green leaves, as if he’s making tea.
By Rob McClure Smith
In.
You don’t recognize your own reflection in the mirror. Your expression is unfamiliar somehow, pale and hard. The rain has impressed streaks like glistening snail’s tracks on your cheeks, blotching mascara.
By Jean Wyllys
Translated by John Keene
1In the beginning came the pallor and the light pains. In those days, Maria da Conceição began to also have dreams of winged beings who seemed to her to be angels.
By Jean Wyllys
Translated by John Keene
Less than two years ago, Ana Clara met a dwarf at that same spot in Avenida Sete de Setembro, near the entrance to Politeama.
By Jorge Cino
Sean
In a personal essay written for Mrs. Bloom’s English class, Sean Burns believed himself to have revealed a little bit about himself and an awful lot about the nature of human relationships.
By Sarah Sorensen
Hello, dear friend. I pray that you can hear these thoughts humming within your mind and that you will trust in your own sanity enough to follow the directions that I am about to issue. I implore you to approach the internet, to use a pocket device if necessary or some larger electronic to retrieve the Etsy website.
By Jean Wyllys
Translated by John Keene
The room in disarray, two used condoms strewn on the floor. The sun, which entered through the wide-open window, made her head hurt even more.
By Cristina Vega
He begins to set up his workstation. He brushes his bed with his hands to remove the plaster that sometimes flakes off the ceiling as though it’s shedding.
By Lisa Locascio
I felt as if I had slept for hours, but it was still light outside when I woke. Kristian snored softly under his miniature gray duvet.
By Lana Spendl
The plane was experiencing turbulence because Mary Louise was snoring so hard. Behind her satin sleep mask, she was fighting ninjas. They had stolen into her home in Massachusetts in the night.
By Yuri HerreraTranslated by Lisa Dillman "I won’t be locked up.” “No.” “And I won’t be in the crosshairs.” “That’s right.” “And I’m going to get a new identity.” “Yes.” He turned and eyed the meter and a half of mattress, coils, and nightstand where he’d been rotting...
By Lana Spendl
Dear Students, Faculty, and Friends,
At the end of the picnic on Sunday, Svitlana’s metal breadbox went missing. It was last seen next to the pitcher of kompot at the end of the table.
By Paul Lisicky
At some point Ginny stopped checking her rearview mirror whenever she backed up. Chuckles knew some other human would interpret this habit as a metaphor: Ginny was afraid of accepting responsibility for her past, for the loss of her job and the end of her relationship with Brett.
By Daniel Coshnear
Len:
She was seven pounds something ounces. No birthmarks. Her birth, I was told, was unremarkable, except she arrived three weeks late, and even then she was in no hurry to come out.
By Raymund P. Reyes
Jameel walked slowly along Al-Madinah Road, swaying his hips more than usual and flapping his arms deliberately in what he thought was an extra sexy gesture that was sure to get the attention of prospective clients.
By Mazzer D’Orazio
The company always tried to promote employee artwork, and Erica, one of their youngest Crew Members, painted the mural of Fairfax on the sidewall. The mural featured a very prominently located Trader Joe’s with a much brighter exterior than the one in real life.
By Ascher/Straus
It’s the middle of the night and he has no idea where he is.
The guy who calls himself Waldo Bunny is slumped way down in his seat with his mouth open, his right hand resting on the hard rubber runner and one foot thrust halfway across the aisle for passing morons to break their necks on.
By David C. Hall
1
A woman enters the room from the left. There is a window at the center of the room. The window is fairly large, with eight windowpanes. A pale light shines through the window. The walls of the room are black, or perhaps a dark gray. In front and to the right of the window is a can of paint and a paintbrush.
By Clarissa N G
I stared at the calendar on the kitchen wall. It was two more days before Saturday, the obligatory hospital visiting day.
By Zdravka Evtimova
We are all strong and difficult people in our family. My father drank, it was true, but he made the best cornel brandy in Southern Bulgaria, and Bulgarians, Jews, and Greeks alike gave their last penny to buy Dad’s home brew for their sons’ weddings.
By Suzanne Scanlon
Esther rode the elevator from the lobby up to the fifth floor, feeling
the light tug of inexplicable loss. The day was blue and bright, her
mood level — and yet the moment she saw the light signaling
arrival on the fifth floor, she could feel a small part of her die.
By Michael Pritchett
The day that blahblah rolls into your neighborhood, he shows up out of nowhere, in the middle of winter. Of course nobody moves their kids in January, making them start all over at midyear, unless the reason is something bad.