fiction

The Cure

Malinda Lo

“A hysterical girl is a vampire who sucks the blood of the healthy people about her.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes   The first time the fit came over me it was as if I’d plunged into a deep well, and…

Fordham Court

Richard Bowes

To evoke the first place I lived, I try to remember the first adult words I understood, the scrambled way toys and furniture were as important as people, the terrors that came with the dark. Those things stay with you…

Touch

Debbie Urbanski

This was to be the celebration of a lifetime. That’s what we were told anyway. Even the hynies had come out to watch. They huddled on the corner in their ugly robes, hoods up, though they weren’t supposed to gather…

Isaiahs at the Diner

Matthew Lattanzi

The police arrived at the diner, bearing news of my husband’s death. I brewed coffee behind the counter while my husband checked his vitals. It turned out he was very much alive. He tried to explain this to the officers,…

Mothers

Carmen Maria Machado

Here she is, on the porch, all straw-hair and slumpy joints and a crack that passes through her lip like she is dirt that has never known rain. In her arms is a baby: genderless, red, not making any sort…

What is Lost

Su-Yee Lin

I.  Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre The bear stumbles around the clearing, growling and trying to shake off the man clinging to his back. It had all started out as a prank. But he had fallen into the pen, enraged…