Stories from
August, 2011

Maybe the reason people joke about tinfoil hats is because they really work. Or if not, something like them. I hope so. I am so tired.

Robert Mentzer (@robertmentzer) writes for a smallish newspaper in Wisconsin.

I said that the winding flight of stairs would take you to the princess. I never said there weren’t poisoned arrows.

Viona Lam thinks thinking is adorable.

Now you know I don’t discriminate, but that man’s a pedophile, and I done work too hard to have someone spoil my children.

Khalym Kari Burke-Thomas would do things a prostitute does. Minus the money.

He stuck small notes in the pages of her books. She still finds them years later, afraid now to open one. To revisit a better past.

Samantha Ten Eyck is getting her MFA in Fiction at Mankato State University. She is an NYC transplant.

The head is still warm. I trace our initials inside the fogged silver cover of the serving platter. Is this really what I wanted?

R. Gatwood is concise.

Here the fallen palm stands tall and stately, pixelated against pink sunsets, like Granny on that Maui beach, you on our wedding day.

A. S. Andrews lives in California, freeways away from the beaches and palms.

“After 30,” Joan said, “it’s Christmas or July. Then one day you’re old as sin.” She lit a smoke and said, “Think this bus will ever come?”

David Massengill offers stories short and long here.

He sat in the café and stared at his gold coin. By God, he’d actually danced for pennies….It was a whole other life, just days ago.

Pete Sain writes with a coffee in one hand and a beer in the other.

She is late. Finally, he must get up and walk, so he can come back in and find her, so the weight of his waiting doesn’t make him small.

Claire Barwise is a writer living in Brooklyn.

A spasm of muscle and it’s done, the photos tumbling down the well to soak and fade. At home she waits, not knowing the evidence is gone.

Chris Bissette writes mostly fantasy, and tweets far too much as @pangalactic.