Fiction

Dawn stamps the window and tells the blinds’ outline.  Ten minutes later, sunlight taps the floor.  The Matchbox gasps.  Its windshield crystals; the air inside grows tight.  You’ve been sitting in there—in a tiny toy car—all night long.  Its doors, of course, do not open.

A short story by Benjamin Lytal.

They lived in terror of living animals. Animal blood and animal flesh alarmed and excited them. It didn’t help to install glass partitions in the rooms or fill empty corners with taxidermied specimens. Silence, stillness, the occasional snow of sawdust from tiny holes in old hide, these were good things, but not enough. Not reliable. More than once, in the black surface of a glass eye, they glimpsed reflected movement, a declining sun or a bending leaf. They dined in silent tension, in an atmosphere of seance, waiting to detect alternations of light and shade among the cutlery.

Three new microfictions by Addison Zeller.

At the mighty Fimbul Winter’s dawn, two hollow-faced boys eye their bowls. Now the boys pretend to play, watch their mother grip bow and quiver. At the homestead’s door she sniffs the icy air, a blizzard’s smell. Unnoticed, from beyond the pasture, wraiths bide their time.

A short story by Petra Meindl-Andrews.

I’m doing the same kind of exploring as when we went away together, galleries and museums, looking out for statues and monuments, public art and graffiti. Monaco’s far weirder than I expected, though. I never imagined I’d come here, and I can’t believe I’m saying it, but I think I like it — or at least I don’t hate it. There are stupid boards everywhere saying shit like ‘Monaco — Land of Ahead Thinkers’ and obviously the yacht club can fuck off, but some of it is kind of funny: I saw this ludicrous poster with Mickey and Minnie Mouse, the Monopoly Man, Bugs Bunny and Jessica Rabbit playing poker by the casino, I couldn’t tell if it was shit art or just an annoying advert. Of course, the most straightforward adverts for Gucci or superyacht insurance or banks give a better measure of who lives and works here, but I haven’t met anyone besides Jean-Philippe, and I’ve only said a few words to him, so I’ve just been walking around with the camera.

Read an exclusive extract from Monaco, the new autofictional novella by Juliet Jacques.

By virtue of reading this message you have become a participant in a clinical trial that is intended to evaluate the efficacy of a newly-developed therapeutic treatment for exposure to a lethal airborne environmental toxin. A complete prospectus outlining the guidelines for this study is on file in the office of the Food and Drug Administration. Be advised that the FDA as well as any persons involved in the clinical trial will not bear any liability for illness, injury, or death incurred by any participant in the study.

A short story by David Sheskin.

Dimple-chinned Malcolm Tanner is such a precious precious boy that his parents put him on TV so he can make them loads of money. He’s got five good years playing the young son on a hit sitcom but when TMZ leaks footage of his TV daddy beating a real-life mommy in a Silverlake bar, the show doesn’t get renewed for a sixth season. Little Malcolm and the whole crew are now out of work but unlike the bearded grips and buxom starlets, the boy is stranded in the wrong stage of puberty. Pizzaface acne and a cracking voice and sudden growth spurts don’t make little Malcolm so cute anymore. He learns that unemployed in this condition translates to unemployable, or so he hears the casting directors say.

A short story by Vita Tate.

They put—put—me in the countryside. There’s no other way to describe it. It happened suddenly. They grabbed me from my hospital bed one morning right after I had just slipped my hand under the sheets to begin my morning ritual. They must have known my habits, because they came in just as I was getting going, grabbing me first by that arm, then the other, then my legs, lifting me, carrying me downstairs and throwing me into the back of the van.

A short story by Alex Aspden.

Even if she had had legs, Dolores wouldn’t have known how to use them to get away. There was a poison in her and the theft of her legs had not been enough for it: those melted stumps were simply the sign of that greater corrosion, much as the trappings of a church are only there to point to the presence of the god, and it was this hidden thing, not their uncle, that was leading her into the forest. It was the blunt promise of her anatomy: the slack mouth and the round pig eyes; the antiquated languor of her fat white hands—these small acquiescences all pointed to the answer of a question never asked: a great pale feminine yes.

Read an extract from Missouri Williams’ The Doloriad.

When you leaned in for the briefest hug—one arm, no chest—I fell sick with desire, pangs of longing. You in the backyard, you against the truck, you with the frayed sleeves, you with the canvas jacket, scruffy you, rough around the edges you, funny sharp quick you, you with the shoulders, you with the hands, you on the phone, you smoking a cigarette, you with an arm on the steering wheel, you spilling a few drops of soda on the ground, you with the Carhartts and Camels and raspy voice and me losing my mind.

A short story by Elizabeth Bevilacqua.

Shane’s clothes were more sealant than fabric—sprayed on, shiny finish. He wore them like the hard shell of a toy animated to life by others’ imaginations. I was more like a hologram, a cheap illusion. He told stories about yearning to be tough, scraping his knuckles on cement until they bled, cultivating calluses and rough spots, the pride he took in scars, lowering his voice and moving his mouth less beneath a slit-eyed gaze. We were alike. Both of us shot into the world still marked by our makers like bullets streaked by their barrels. And we had collided.

Read an extract from Nate Lippens’ My Dead Book.

This was two nights after his fourth championship, so the statute of limitations has expired. I can tell the whole story now. We had you can be sure overindulged. When is enough enough? a more temperate man might have asked. I’m no temperate man. Even Jesus cursed the fig tree. Mr. Brady is no Jesus. My squeeze and I gained the foyer not without a certain dark elation. Someone had left the gate unlocked, the door too. A point had been scored, was the feeling, a redress for every unjust penalty levied across the years on Mr. Brady’s foes. I am, I confess, no devotee of American football. Too impersonal a violence. In Mr. Brady’s foyer my squeeze and I performed the physical act of love. Out of politeness we kept the lights off, at first. Let’s not wake the family, we reasoned. Our passion, regrettably, took a turn for the raucous.

A short story by Victor Ladis Schultz.

Not that I “prefer to remember the dead when they were alive”, as some would perhaps say. It’s simply that I don’t need visual or olfactory aids to make the connection. On top of that, the funeral industry has to be the only industry that’s worse than airlines. They are equally exploitative and usurious, only that instead of banking on our need to get from A to B they exploit our inability to get rid of bodies effectively and independently—a disposal that if you consider it properly is also a way of getting (someone else) from A to B.

Read an exclusive extract from Fernando Sdrigotti‘s new book.