Fiction
NightDream
Your mom thinks you should be recording emotions, not just what happens. You don’t really want to, but what the hell. You can try it once. All you can feel at this part of the dream is … fear.
Section
Short Fiction
Showing 97-120 of 310 pieces
Fiction
People Like Us
That evening, while Mr. Klein and I were halfway across the river, another boat came downstream so he lowered the line and waited for it to pass. It was a big fiberglass boat, and it didn’t slow down. Instead, it steered towards us and then arced away, sending its wake in our direction.
Fiction
Siren
Rebecca sank further, dropped down to the first floor, her own office. A room empty of the watery substance and so her body crashed to the floor, dripping with a thickening blue. The screaming of the alarm was still strong in her ears.
Fiction
World Record Holder
I pictured a man with such a long mustache that it curled around his body hundreds of times, making him look like a spool of thread. A week earlier, my father had taken me to the barbershop, where I had seen several long mustaches.
Fiction
Packed Baggage
The writer notes the bittersweet goodbye and the baggage that comes along with being a spouse to a military man.
Fiction
Chandelier
“It’s perfectly perfect.” She gives me a hard kiss, her full lips keeping our teeth from scraping, then follows up with a softer one, sneaking in her delicious tongue. Totally worth $1,200.
Fiction
John Digs a Ditch
They were his wife’s hens, not his, he would tell anyone who listened. She was far too soft, mollycoddling any that became ill, lame, out-of-sorts. It made him jolly angry, if he ever thought about it too deeply or for too long, this attention that she gave them but not him.
Fiction
Molly’s Positions
With Joel playing Rip Van Winkle, I gave up on him. In the office, I dropped the mail on the desk. As I turned to go for a shower, my cell phone chirped. It was Ron Burkett, Kaufman’s publisher.
Fiction
Down To the Bone
I’m happy to say I have a knack for selling furnaces and water heaters. I’m practical and mastered how to calculate how many BTU’s you need for the square footage you’ve got to heat. Where hot water is concerned, that’s a function of how people are in the house.
Fiction
The Last Story I Couldn’t Tell
I left the bar feeling a unique kind of embarrassment, not that I didn’t belong in their world, but a humiliation of character for betraying Corey’s trust. Corey let me into his home and was the only one in Winter Harbor, or indeed in my life, who never seemed to judge me for my naive sojourn North.
Fiction
The Poor Man’s Table
I hold the glossy, red boots in my hands, and inside, I feel my seventeen-year-old self, twist and writhe. The last time I saw my mother, she was foaming hot curses from the mouth for my wearing these shoes. They sat in the top of her closet, absorbing the scent of plywood, collecting dust. In all the depths of my mind, I could not fathom her wearing them. Even now I cannot.
Fiction
Mrs. Jain’s Mirror
When I began, our images in the mirror transformed too. Reflecting back were two girls wearing purple dresses inlaid with gold, hemlines scraping the sand. We had a diamond stud each in our noses and copious bangles. Once, I’d overheard a family friend describe me as plain. My mum hadn’t denied it. But here, in this mirror, I was something else.
Fiction
More than a Lullaby
She was extremely sensitive to this particular raag. A simple mistake in its rendition which escaped the notice of a regular listener – a minute deviation from Shuddh Rishabh while ascending or from the Komal Rishabh while descending, for example – would cause genuine physical harm to her body.
Fiction
The Remains of a Song
He was older than her, but she was maternal toward him, nonetheless. “Dear”, “sweetie” and “honey” littered her conversation. But he had grown tired of her kindnesses. She has always been good to him and Caroline, but kindness turned to sympathy upon Caroline’s passing.
Fiction
The Pickers
She wears a pink shirt and a floppy straw hat but you can see her eyes, big and brown. She smiles wide, not shy at all like you figure you’d be if you were in her country and a Mexican stranger waved at you from her Mama’s car on the side of a road. Mama is already driving again.
Fiction
A Toast
In years past they had had larger holiday gatherings. She had grown up living next door to her favorite cousins, her mother’s sister’s family. Christmas Eve and Christmas morning were always with her cousins, both girls, the same ages as she and her brother. To her, they were like sisters. Early Christmas morning, they would open stockings at one of their houses, then their uncle Kip would show up dressed like Santa Claus with a huge box of gifts for all of them.
Fiction
I Am Just a Sepoy
Ammi has become thin as a bamboo. Her eyes bulge out like a Tiddi. She coughs all day. I cannot tell whether due to lack of food or if she is heartbroken. Still, we are safe. Do not be anxious about us.
Fiction
My marriage to Madhubala
All I got to know was that the bride’s name was Madhubala, even though I preferred Vaijanti Mala’s magical moves and Sadhana’s chic haircut.
Fiction
Room for Change
I pulled my shirt down, opened the door, and rushed out, with Kaira following closely behind, having hastily buttoned up her oversized shirt.
Fiction
Because He Can
She hugged her knees to her chest and thought about what one of the newscasters said, that O.J. might have been framed. She thought about all the people in the street around his house, about whether they thought he did it, about whether they cared.
Fiction
The Renamed
She sat down, anger gone. Dissipated. Like a promised storm that never lands after the clouds are blown away by the wind. Alina didn’t go to Hira’s funeral. She would never open that chat again. After her phone broke, she didn’t throw it away. She packed it in a box, tissue paper at the edges and put it away in a drawer.
Short Fiction
The Vulture
Tapan Mozumdar translates Hasan Azizul Huq’s short story, Shakun.
Fiction
A Tiny Pebble
The shelves with Tarot books were so densely packed that I wondered if magic prevented them from collapsing. The books ranged from huge to small with covers from muddy brown to flaming yellow. I saw one that said it was the complete guide. I flipped through the pages and thought my mom might be dead before I got through the first half of the book.
Fiction
Sister, Mother, Martyr
I rushed to the living room, my feet carrying me with a sense of urgency that I had never experienced before, with a sense of anticipation of something sinister and something quite uncanny. I saw my mother kneeling beside his cursing body as he held her by the hair, her vitiligo white skin stained by his blood.