Fiction

This was the year the earth failed to end. Families huddled together in anticipation—so many sunspots exploding at once, waves of radiation hurtling across suburbs to ruin sprinkler systems and glue roadkill to the pavement, not to mention the meteorites passing by, third molars of the sky impacting formidably and ever downward, dislodging drainpipes, charring farm fields—and still, no apocalypse.

A short story by Nathaniel Duggan.

The stars are as beautiful as dead lovers a billion years away! she cried, then hitched up her skirt and began the climb. We were all so proud of our ladder of bones, long enough at last to reach the sky. It rattled as she ascended, sprinkling us with an unfamiliar dust. Farewell! we called, Farewell! and, although she didn’t look back, Good luck to you among the music of the spheres! Her many petticoats receded into the shell-blue morning sky, a frothy farewell.

A short story by Zoë Meager.

Anouska has fashioned seventeen tiny marzipan peonies. Leon is weeping over a failed custard. Padraig is doing something with smoke. His is a life of drudgery and his creations represent the possibility of becoming something greater than himself. This is the sort of endeavour where, despite high stakes, everyone is supportive of everyone else. The only exception is Charles, who makes no secret of his competitiveness, his desire to be designated the Cake Genius. He visibly smirked in rehearsal when everyone else’s key lime pies turned out like crap. But even Charles isn’t so bad. When it comes to being an excellent baker, even the most chalk-and-cheese personalities have more in common with each other than with those who don’t bake at all.

A short story by Michael Conley.

My father strangled the family cat. It felt more like an arbitrary fact than something that had really happened. I have no memory of the event itself, just the aftermath. He had those white rings around his nostrils and his eyes were tight. He was back from another night out pub-crawling along the seafront, and he’d been arguing with Mum. I could guess what it was about, but I don’t know how it came to that. I just know he wrapped his fingers around the cat’s throat and snapped its neck. Mum howled, but she didn’t tell anyone. She hugged me in my princess pyjamas, snot dripping down to my chin. She had pit stains on her nightie and blood under her nose. She got nose bleeds when she was stressed.

A short story by Emily Black.

Curtains part to reveal a ruminant fop, and the bland metal folding seat he seems to have poached from the vestibule. Lit by symmetrical overheads, the man straddles his chair in reverse, facing the audience with his arms laid atop the backrest. “Never,” he says, slowly standing upright, “have I known a single, goddamn thing in my entire life.” The catchphrase triggers wild applause, which fades as the player saunters downstage. “As a child,” he says, “I gazed into my future and found it wanting, hamstrung in essence from the get-go. It’s said that the nursemaids heard a wolf-like howling behind the oaken doors of my room each night, yet by the time they attended I would be dreary and cowed, and of course unrepentant.”

A short story by Eric Olson.

Dan dies and bathing obtains an implicit richness wherein, Nora tells me, a sudden onrush of water coursing over her shoulders obscures such feelings of grief and shame and insurmountable regret as have beset her these last long lonely months, showering, the water, hot as she can stand, and then hotter, reddening her skin and deforming that conical burl of sinew radiating up off her neck like a cartoon’s idea of pain, a column of steam ascending the frosted shower stall, a thick fragrant air, scattering as it rises, the stall’s panels grimed, spotted with boogers and hair and shards of hard mangy soap, all these bodily flickings, bits of me, bits of everyone, our whole family unit, Nora tells me…

A short story by Rod Moody-Corbett.

That Nissim should be on a bus, alone, just completing one rotation of the David Hacohen roundabout, a sheet of blank paper folded once in his fingers, is an inevitability he is forced to accept. It is no accident that the pen is dropping now onto the paper, easing out ink for the sake of an idea not yet fully formed, dripping bullet-points and clauses, figure-skating over the frozen lake where snow has already settled, noting and notating. Crossed lines ease in the purpose of erasure—the more deletable items are consumed by black puddles. Nothing can be surprising within the space of this page, in this bus, in Nissim’s mind (“addled by genius”: the words of his mother), in the images at the windows, in Haifa on the other side of the glass—nothing surprising outside of the ultimate surprise that is the existence of everything. So, lowering a bucket into that mind of his: “No more surprises.”

A short story by Joe Bedford.

One afternoon, when the whole village had gathered to harvest from the back field, a few heads turned away from the potatoes and the gouts of earth, drawn towards the unusual sight of two men emerging from the densest part of our forest. The men were outlined and obscured by the golden light of a sunset just beginning. The first strode confidently ahead, swinging his arms wide as one step raised him high and the next dropped him lazily down. Behind him, where the darkness of the woodland gathers, came forth a stockier man, whose gait was level and steady, even as the two descended through the scree and weed of the village approach. With rain falling thick on the leaves and collecting in deep puddles between the furrows, we villagers were miserable and tired and the sight of the two men was as good an excuse as we would get to stop work for the day. So, despite the griping of our elders, we raised our hands in welcome. Soon the two strangers were in the field and their beards dripped with weak, cold ale, spilt from the common ladle, drawn from the bottom of the broad common jug.

A short story by Chris Kohler.

I went up to the store—you know, to our place on the hill that sells groceries and roach bait and Trojans? That place. I went up there to lift a pint of smoke when no-one was looking but it drifted through my fingers before I got home, only a whiff of stink left to guilt me. If I’d had the cash, though, when I was up there at the store?

A short story by Carrie Cooperider.

Everybody out there was saying, You have to reckon with it, with hands waving up to the power lines. It was assumed to mean everything, and everybody wanted you to reckon with everything. Many gave it a good shot, wrestling with it or trying to wrangle it, but these actions seemed to be avoiding the initial call. I wanted to try, it was time for a reckoning, but I wasn’t a cowboy and I couldn’t wrangle the stars. I made a few half-hearted attempts before. With dad, with war, with work. I wasn’t exactly ready, and they led me nowhere. You burn out from a false reckoning.

A short story by Jonathan Gaboury.

I was looking in the mirror when Ana posted the story online. The employee bathroom was dimly lit with old fluorescents, a small, two-stalled room tucked behind the gift shop. The girl in the mirror wore a blue button-down shirt and the clip-on tie they gave all the gallery attendants after Rachel showed up to the press preview wearing a necklace made from real human teeth. I made the girl in the mirror smile, turning the corners of my mouth up. I made her frown.

A short story by Claudia Ross.

So that’s it for another year. The months of Capitalist foreplay, the gluttonous slew of foodporn ads, the same golden turkeys being sliced over and over as if they haven’t already suffered enough, the same old corks popping from the same green bottles, spunking fizz that’s long since gone flat; all that manufactured excitement, kids getting themselves sick with it, adults stressed out of their heads with the hassle of it all, the secrecy, stashing presents around the house away from prying eyes and rooting hands, wondering in panic what it is they know they’ve forgotten but just can’t place, nerves jangled from the sensory bombardment and the incessant orders from all around to spend, spend, spend; all that, and here’s where I end up every single time — half-cut, fully stuffed and a hundred percent alone.

By Stu Hennigan.