The office was mostly empty, as usual, and the lights were still off when I got in to work just before eight. I dropped my backpack at my desk and headed straight for the breakroom to put on coffee and watch it, because even though there were only a few other people here, if I turned my back for even the briefest second, there would…
Sink or Swim by Angela Rydell
“Why are they having all that awful fun?” Louisa hissed, standing before their hotel window overlooking the pool. Hands over her ears, she could still hear sharp screams of pre-pubescent pleasure, slaps against the surface of the pool, parents yelling, some with slurred voices. She flicked off the light and threw herself down alongside Everett. Unmoved, he sat quietly on the glossy blue quilt. Sinking…
Welcome
I’d like to take a minute to welcome our wonderful readers to our new website. You’ll notice some changes over the next few months as we work out some kinks and implement new design elements, but for now we’re excited to be back online. Over the past few months, we’ve been going through a long and messy transition. We have an entirely new editorial staff,…
Breakdown at Insurance Firm by Chris Crittenden
he thinks fluorescence might be a blizzard, and snow angels could be sculpted in the drifts. the only escape he has. it lunges out of the delinquency of his Id, disrupting the algorithm of the actuarial, turning the straight lines from his pencil lead into jump ropes. his only dream. the rest of his head dull. tonnages of pig iron. what happened to the lincoln…
Patterns In Rotting Wood by Chris Crittenden
gills, scabs, cuts, cyrillics not found in vacua, dark matter or nix. fingernails, orts, hemidemi- semiquavers, brawl of apostrophes, crows-feet circling grandmothers’ chins, duck/rabbit blitz, codex of muzzles losing shape, Ark’s freckle and Hyde. kiss the wood, hold hear scratch, scent its zinc lichen— trace the threads Atropos snipped, spiraling up a crush of graves, obelisks and cairns, amphoras and fonts, quarrels flaking into palms,…