Fiction
Everything changed with the arrival of Bo. He walked in high-waisted skinny jeans, his curly hair draping over his shoulder and his back. A thin line of mascara on his eyelashes, a tinge of pink-red on his lips. He was twelve years old, five feet eight inches tall and strutting around the village like a whore of Police Bazaar. You knew immediately that was something you couldn’t stomach. You knew how revolting it is for a boy to walk around like that, staring at men like that, talking to other men like that.
by Lede-e-miki Pohshna
Fiction
Something was off that morning, that pre-dawn, before I went for a walk and crossed paths with The Man Who Sneezed, but to this day I cannot pinpoint just what was off. Maybe it was the fact that I had cream in my usually black coffee that afternoon, or that my daily conversation with my mother got cut short, or maybe the fact that I was so low that night that I got high so as to forget about the low
by Cory Jennings-DuBois
Fiction
You see me bite my lower lip. Hear the grating screech of metal on floor as I pull a chair over to sit at eye-level, the way they taught us to in medical school when ‘Delivering Bad News’. This is not the quick “The CT scan of your head looks great!” conversation you were hoping for.
by Sanjana Salwi
Fiction
A short piece of flash fiction by Azee Amoo
by Azee Amoo
Fiction
Three honks when she left. Two honks for “I’m home.” One honk for each word. It was theirs. “I love you.” “I’m home.” It meant she was safe.
by David Wells
Fiction
The General broke out into a fit of laughter, picking up the earthen ball of clay. “Oh, la fille,” he laughed, as my family and I remained still. “You are but a commoner, so you do not know better, but this is a holistically inaccurate depiction!” He would not stop laughing. “Come here, child. You see, the Earth is flat, like this table.”
by Raashi Kulshrestha
Fiction
Under the Rules & Regulations of the Apartment Owners’ Association of the Sandhyatara Apartment Complex, pet animals were prohibited. No one had violated the prohibition so far; but a puppy arrived in Apartment 1102, on the eleventh floor of Building C, about a month back.
by Mashiul Alam
translated by V. Ramaswamy
Fiction
“What kind of purple?” I hadn’t a clue. She prodded me forward. “Is it blue purple or red purple?” Blue purple, I was sure. “And what color is the shadow?” Purplish grey, I guessed. Yes, she said and awarded me the praising smile I coveted.
by Diane Douglas
Fiction
The Dodson twins never imagined what would come of it that day when their aunt dropped off a Banyan seedling on their doorstep.
by Kelly Cook
Fiction
“The marigolds are dying,” Maggie started the conversation as if they were already in the middle of a conversation. She then sucked a cigarette, her exhalation roaring into the receiver. “It’s only September.”
by Alexis Kelleher
Fiction
The boy was fourteen, so he knew what he was doing. At fourteen we are everything we will ever be which is why it’s then that the world attempts to so drastically improve us.
by Darren Chase
Fiction
The path was often muddy, you had to use roots for steps, and it led us out of the warm light that the barn breathed out.
by Jonah Klever
Fiction
Branko was right, Agoston was never very prosperous. He was a blacksmith in the old country
by John Grantner
Fiction
Just before dawn. Another blue sky turned orange. I burned through a neighborhood in Agoura Hills.
by Zachary Cash
Fiction
With dawn the rain abated, and as the boy unzipped and peeled back the tent’s door panel to survey the campsite
by Mike Sammons
Fiction
I nodded, looked out over the city, and thought that what Jake had just said was exactly what was wrong with white people.
by Sam Rappaport
Fiction
To be fair, Fred does try to “improve” the bus. A few months ago, he installed a wooden stove in the middle of the aisle
by Elie Najjar
Fiction
Only when he passes Ms Kriti in the main corridor does Pujari Lal realize what had happened.
by Ankush Banerjee
Fiction
Mark throttled off and let the train ease down to forty. There was nothing else to worry about for miles.
by Brandon McWeeney
Fiction
A bump came up through the seat, another bump. They had landed. A string of runway lights gliding past, then a row of blue and orange Lufthansa tailplanes
by Peter Newall
Fiction
A few days ago, colleagues at a work function had been standing in a circle. He was pallid-work-him glass in hand, standing to one side.
by Hillary Chapman
Fiction
I miss the parts where my siblings and I would pile into my parents’ bed on the weekend, my father still half asleep and my mother long awaken.
by Samiha Meah
Fiction
Mrs. Greene just shakes her head. For a moment, she seems about to speak, to demand something again—
by Elizabeth Benge
Fiction
She is sixty-seven years of age, she looks her age, and to me she seemed to have aged overnight one day in September 2019.
by Rituparna Mukherjee
