Stories

For Sale: Human baby. Shoes not included.

Alan Green thinks this is less dark than that other story.

She asked for a water birth. Maybe I should have suspected, but there was never that much detail in the old selkie stories.

Jack Vivace works in numbers by day and letters by night.

She sat watching the children play on the swing, missing the future she was supposed to have.

J.D. Hall is a writer from Toronto.

William ignored his mother’s warnings as a rule, so he followed the glow into the swamp without hesitation.

Joshua Abramsohn teaches the power of literature to 8th graders.

An over-sized glass once filled with cognac in her hand; a melancholic skyline in the window. She thought she was in Manila. Was she happy?

Truls Mårtensson is troubled. And from Sweden.

Nine candles, one for each decade, danced against his clouded flat eyes. He blew them out when told and asked again, “Whose birthday is it?”

Jeffrey Ballard currently lives in the Texas Hill Country. A fact his Yankee family never lets go.

Under her wedding dress sweat stings her thigh, where the groom’s father has left a cut with his wedding ring which he wears fastidiously.

Henry Lu is a computer programmer by day, a painter and writer by night.

Please don’t cry; we all have to go sometime. I’m sorry about the mess. The will is in the safe. I can never see you again.

J.R. Johnson lives north of the border and likes it.

“Tell me about Annie,” I urge him, and his gaze softens. But before he can speak, the guard says our time is up, and he is gone again.

JJ Sheffer (@bustedjj) lives near York County Prison in York, PA, and often wonders what they’re up to in there.

She invests for nine months to afford the elf’s services. She gives birth, then pays the going market rate for happily ever after.

Sean Vivier is a teacher and a writer from central Connecticut.