“The Mud Club. It’s right around here somewhere.” Our foreign comms units weren’t granted access to Texas communications. We knew our Central States’ units would be blocked before we left and had planned to buy a convertor chip but hadn’t had a chance yet. Remembering that the tourist bars were on 6^th Street, we counted our way up there. We passed dark dance halls, closed virtual world entertainment cafés, and what must have been seven barbecue joints promising exotic synthetic meats from places like Brazil (tapir), Malaysia (sun bear), and the deadly snakes of Australia.

Mika Yamamoto lives in the Chicagoland area. She teaches middle school and is a lecturer at The Art […]

Called forth by my father’s words, the cave sprung up howling in my mind. The pine trees around it lashed in the wind, lacerating the sky. Below, waves keened. Black, white, green, gray.

Taylor Hagood is a writer, speaker, and educator. His publications include several books of literary criticism, the biography/true […]

A resisting odor
of pine-tar
soap, a country smell,
pine-paneled.
Where angles mean
little, unsure even
of their structural
function.

Douglas Steward has been published in the Zizzle short stories book series (Volume 1), Atherton Review, Blackworks, Brief […]

Looking back, I could have avoided a whole lot of trouble if I had just handled things with Tamsin in an adult fashion. Perhaps had a chat with her over a joint behind the Farm King. Tell her I was a married woman and couldn’t carry on like that.
I’m kidding myself. Nothing would have helped. Certainly not talking about it.

He stood up and opened his leather bag. He took out a small, gold-colored instrument. It was a tuning hammer. He opened the top of the piano. With a small grunt he lowered his arm into the piano back. I could hear the faint tinging of strings as his hand moved around in the piano’s depths.

Jessica Hwang’s fiction has appeared in Reservoir Road Literary Review, Bright Flash Literary Review, Mystery Magazine, Tough, Shotgun […]

I was lying in the bathtub one night thinking about Simon (Bren, don’t be mad, I only liked him because you were gone and because I was so lonely), and I lay there picturing him and Corrine together until the water went lukewarm. When I wiped the steam from the mirror, I looked the same as I always had but inside I was completely numb. Every which way my mind went was bad—Simon, Ziggy, you.