by J.R. Chapple | Jul 13, 2026 | contest winner
She first appears as a pale-yellow blur in the darkness, her figure solidifying as I approach, all taffeta and ribbon. Her extended thumb seems to glow, accentuated by a dainty white glove. She looks normal. Human. So tangible that I laugh as I pull onto the shoulder, sure she is nothing more than an actress, someone hired by the city council to keep up a steady flow of tourists to our little shit-hole town.
“Thanks for stopping.” She lands heavy in the passenger seat. “It’s freezing out there.”
She looks exactly as people have described her. The dark bob, mildly disheveled. Her eye makeup smudged. Red lipstick caked on. She slumps in her seat, and her lack of grace takes me by surprise. I’d been expecting demure mid-century femininity, but her knees spread under the layers of her party dress. She peels her little gloves off with a scowl.
“You gonna drive?”
I nod dumbly, shifting the car into gear. I’m not sure how this interaction is supposed to go, even after everything I’ve read. Those articles outlining the years the government blocked this road off for tests. The ghost hunters and religious fanatics. The hysteria that died out decades before I was born. The only people who visit her now are out-of-towners and thrill-seeking teens, losers and perverts who show up in vintage suits and hot rods, treating it like a game. They play to see who can get her to say something new, who can drive the furthest before she disappears. They brag online about improbable sexual encounters, trade the gloves she leaves behind like fetish objects.
“Where to?” I glance sideways as she hangs a languid arm out the open window.
“My folk’s place is just up the road.” She points, and I drive wordlessly, continuing on toward the house I know isn’t there. The lot, now occupied by a kitschy gift shop full of embarrassing ghost-related knick-knacks, her parents long dead. When I look next, she’s gone. Just a pair of gloves crumpled on the seat.
I tell no one. My friends and I have spent years laughing at the kind of creeps who go looking for her. Morbid people who don’t care to let a spirit rest. But I curl my hair the next three nights. Trawl the dark country road for hours at a time, the glint of headlights in the distance taunting me. Telling me someone else got to her first.
Each time I’m lucky enough to find her, she doesn’t know me. But over time I learn how to win her over in less time, put her at ease, get into a conversation that feels real. I wear a skirt and do my eyeliner tapered, cat-eyed. I smile and joke, offer her a cigarette the moment she gets in. If the message boards are to be believed, she is usually more buttoned up, but I’m the sort of driver she is ready to trust implicitly. A woman her age. Someone she can relate to. When I fake car trouble, she leans back and puts her kitten heels on the dash. Flicks ash out the window unconcerned, her crinoline hitched at her thighs.
“What kind of a guy would leave you stranded out here?” I ask, and she shrugs.
“We had a fight, and I insisted on walking. Real smart, right?”
The online true crime enthusiasts have settled on the idea that he killed her. They’ve chased down every lead, searched the surrounding fields for her bones, obsessively gone through every detail of the case. When I ask if he would ever hurt her, she laughs like the idea is ridiculous.
I know I should be spending my time some other way, pursuing real, living women. But any friends with money left town after graduation. Bigger cities. Colleges. Real jobs. I’m left to the same old bush parties, the bowling alley, the bar that will only serve underage patrons when the staff is at their most apathetic. My opportunity for upward mobility is nonexistent. The years stretch out ahead of me like an empty highway.
“What would you do if you knew you were going to die tonight?” I light up a joint; the car pulls off to the side of the road, the radio playing some top-40 bullshit she’s mocked on countless nights before.
“Morbid.”
“Seriously though.”
“Seriously, you should rethink the blouse.” She takes the joint when I pass it and breathes in deep. Exhales smoke. “What kind of style is that supposed to be?”
I tell her she’s dead, that she’s special, beautiful, all things she seems unable to hear. I reach out and touch her vanishing hand. I wonder what it would feel like to disappear.
I want to give her the things she never had the chance to experience. I offer drugs and liquor. I try to show her my phone, and she shrugs off the anachronisms, unable to process what they might mean.
“Do you know how to drive?”
“Not a car like this.”
“It’s easy,” I say. “No clutch and the shifter is here.” I open my door and walk around the outside as she slides over the console, loose-limbed from the vodka we’ve been throwing back tonight.
She pulls out with more confidence than I’m expecting, one hand slipping from the wheel to turn up the radio.
“How is it?”
“It feels good to be on this side.”
I hang my hand out the window as she accelerates, the slick road laid out before us, shimmering in the headlights. The rush of wind grows louder until it drowns out the music, everything but her laughter.
In the glove box in front of me, my growing collection of little fabric relics waits, ready to scatter across the pavement. Rose petals on a bedspread. Trailing down the aisle. Confetti erupting in one final celebratory release.
by Marissa McNamara | Jul 9, 2026 | micro
First, she cradled it like a child, then put it between her legs and galloped like a horse, next slung it over her shoulder like a rifle, and she stood at attention, the leg at the ready. The leg was more than she had intended to take. So greedy, she chastised. Until now, she had allowed herself only small bites—an ear, a finger, a bit of thigh. On days of admirable control, she would perhaps take only one knuckle or the tip of his toe or thumb. She was practicing restraint, the art of savoring, of chewing each bite 30 times, of feeling her teeth break down the veins and sinews and swirling the saliva around the flesh to make the salty, metallic mush. She knew she shouldn’t take too much too quickly. Already he was breaking down. Each time she opened her mouth, he looked away. She would catch him looking in the mirror, considering each new empty space. She wanted to make this last, to prolong the inevitable when there would be nothing left, nothing but the empty gulps of air between bones.
by Fractured Lit | Jul 6, 2026 | calendar, contests
AWARDING $3,500 + PUBLICATION
JUDGED BY Gina Chung
July 20 to September 20, 2026
We’re once again asking you to send us stories that play with setting, that reimagine our world, or take us into places we’ve never been! Play with the edge of genre, but make sure your character is still the star of your story.
From July 20 to September 20, 2026, we welcome submissions to the 2026 Fractured Lit Elsewhere Prize.
“Oh, there are so many lives. How we wish we could live them concurrently instead of one by one by one. We could select the best pieces of each, stringing them together like a strand of pearls. But that’s not how it works. A human’s life is a beautiful mess.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Elsewhere
For this contest, we want writers to be our tour guides through the unfamiliar, to engage their imaginations widely, and to write the stories that no bot or AI could write! We love unique, specific characters who are grounded in their story worlds, challenge the rules, and make dynamic choices!
For this prize, we are accepting micro and flash fiction, so we’re inviting submissions of stories from 100-1,000 words.
We’re thrilled to partner with Guest Judge Gina Chung, who will choose three prize winners from a shortlist. We’re excited to offer the winner of this prize $3,000 and publication, while the second- and third-place winners will receive publication and $300 and $200, respectively. All entries will be considered for publication.
Good luck and happy writing!
I’m always looking for stories with good sentences, memorable characters who get to make choices and experience consequences, and, most of all, voice. Voice, for me, is what lingers long after any details about plot or setting may have faded from memory; it’s that almost undefinable yet utterly recognizable quality of a story that makes you sit up and think, “Now this I have to pay attention to.” It’s also what makes me, as a reader, trust the writer and know that this story is going where they want it to, not where they think I want it to go.
Gina Chung is a Korean American writer from New Jersey currently living in New York City. She is the author of the novel Sea Change, which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and a B&N Discover Pick, and the short story collection Green Frog, which was a Good Morning America Book Buzz Pick, an NPR Best Book of the Year, and longlisted for the New American Voices Award. She has received the O. Henry Prize for Short Fiction, a Pushcart Prize, two APALA Adult Fiction Honors, and a Center for Fiction / Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellowship. She is a faculty member of the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing Program at Lasell University.
The deadline for entry is September 20, 2026. We will announce the shortlist within twelve to fourteen weeks of the contest’s close. All writers will be notified when the results are final.
OPTIONAL EDITORIAL FEEDBACK:
You may choose to receive editorial feedback on your piece. We will provide a global letter discussing the strengths of the writing and the recommended focus for revision. Our aim is to make our comments actionable and encouraging. These letters are written by editors and staff readers of Fractured Lit. Should your story win, no feedback will be offered, and your fee will be refunded.
Guidelines
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- Your $20 reading fee allows up to two stories of 1,000 words or fewer each per entry—if submitting two stories, please put them both in a SINGLE document.
- Writers from historically marginalized groups may submit for free until we reach a cap of 25 submissions in this category. No additional fee waivers will be granted for this contest.
- We allow multiple submissions—each set of two flash/micro stories requires a separate submission accompanied by a reading fee.
- Please send flash and microfiction only—1,000 word count maximum per story.
- We only consider unpublished work for contests—we do not review reprints, including self-published work (even on blogs and social media). Reprints will be automatically disqualified.
- Simultaneous submissions are okay—please notify us and withdraw your entry if you find another home for your writing.
- All entries will also be considered for publication in Fractured Lit.
- Double-space your submission and use Times New Roman 12 (or larger if needed).
- Please include a brief cover letter with your publication history (if applicable). In the cover letter, please include content warnings as well, to safeguard our reading staff.
- We only read work in English, though some code-switching/meshing is warmly welcomed.
- We do not read anonymous submissions. However, shortlisted stories are sent anonymously to the judge.
- Work generated by AI will be automatically disqualified.
by Claudia Monpere | Jun 29, 2026 | micro
because the tightness the itch the stiff rectangle smothering us. Because eyes bore when mouth and nose hide. Because micro mold, the uglies. Didn’t get vaccinated because— well duh. Didn’t quarantine because we’re all God’s children except those who aren’t. We didn’t cancel the reunion because Amarillo and Waco, Oklahoma City, Whitefish, even California heading to our every other year gathering which was every year for a lifetime till the youngsters got too busy for their britches, but guess what, there’s nothing like family to get you through bosses that mangle you, bills that shred you, and cousin Dwayne hosted again because he’s our very own featured-in-Southern-Living Dwayne, moon far from our doublewides and fixer-uppers, and we chewed our biscuits and red-eyed gravy over prayer, ate our green bean casserole and mac and cheese, fried catfish, ham-hock collards, pineapple casserole, Mama’s three layer hummingbird cake, and we hunkered down in Dwayne’s den with the fancy tv and made a CDC dartboard and we scored Rochelle Walensky’s bitch brown eyes every damn throw. Hunkered down in Dwayne’s Southern Living kitchen with its Calacatta gold marble countertops clinking our bourbon, California pitching a hissy fit because some numb nuts said we’d be outside the whole time and we shouted “Go join the gals on the porch”— babies and lemonade till 4:00 when they switched to spiked sweet tea, and when night came and the kids chased fireflies and played with the Spanish moss dripping from the oaks and cypress and we had thirds of that hummingbird cake and Dwayne poured his small batch bourbon, well we knew no one ever had it so good, but now here we are— moss a plenty not much else except rust and corrosion brambles and thorns and who’d have guessed how many we’d lose, not just elders but whole families even babies in the ICU coughing their guts out, and now we spirit the Katrina ruins of Six Flags New Orleans Amusement Park, watch our little ghosts slide down the rusty spines of Zydeco Scream, beep broken bumper cars, spin in cracked flying Gator Boats, sword fight the Kudzu, chew at lichen covered foam handlebars. Sometimes the mamas paint flowers with the littles on the smashed porcelain toilets. Sometimes the mamas dip their hands into the brackish water, whispering: “It’s okay to play with the gators and cottonmouths. Ain’t nothing can hurt you now.”
by Leah Browning | Jun 25, 2026 | micro
Blackout
I walked into the theatre halfway through the performance. The ushers were all on their phones, and no one stopped me.
All the way down the aisle, in the dark, I dragged a heavy-duty black garbage bag filled with things he had left behind in my apartment. Sacks of flour and white rice he had purchased at Albertsons. Sweaters he didn’t wear. A half-empty tube of toothpaste. Things like that.
There was a claw hammer somewhere in the bottom of the bag, and a silver tea kettle, and they clanked against each other with every step.
I was at the bottom of the stage when he finally turned. The woman standing opposite him couldn’t help letting her eyes flick down to me, but she stayed in character, her hand on her hip, the words from the script still flowing, a cascade of them surging past me and under the doors into the empty hallway until they were gone.
He called my name. Then said something else.
“I can’t hear you,” I said.
I’d been dead for several days, and the sounds around me were increasingly muffled. I let go of the bag and held my arms out toward him.
“Boo,” I said, and I meant the whole thing as a joke, but nobody laughed.
Before I’d left the apartment, I’d put on a long white nightgown for maximum effect. My feet were bare.
We hadn’t seen each other in a couple of years, and it seemed that he no longer remembered what made me tick.
He looked helplessly at the woman on stage with him, who was a fleshy sort of person, bursting at the seams, thick and beautiful and alive, and unbearably curvy in a tight mid-length skirt and low-cut blouse with a pair of sexy black D’Orsay pumps. I almost swooned when she turned at last toward me.
“Get out of here,” she said, in a scolding tone, as if to a pet.
This was something I couldn’t get used to, the lack of regard for the person I had been for decades. It was as if I had never existed in that form.
After a second, with what I hoped was regret, he shrugged at me. They turned to face each other and began the scene where they had left off, and I didn’t need to hear every word to understand what that meant.
I grasped the bag and turned back toward the exit doors, followed by the sound of metal striking metal as I walked up the aisle. No one made eye contact with me except for a young woman in the last row, sitting alone, who shot me a sympathetic glance and then buried her face in her program.
Whiteout
I almost tripped over the dog on the way into my parents’ house. It was dark in the kitchen, even with a light on over the stove, and as I shucked off my boots and tiptoed in I could see my reflection in the window over the sink. The other side of the pane was white with snow, the flakes swirling so fast that it wasn’t possible to see the familiar streetlight outside, the deep bow of its swan neck obscured completely, along with the amber glow of the light illuminating the snowfall from behind.
My feet were cold in thin socks, and I reached down to caress the dog’s head, the dog who was following me past the drying rack stacked with clean dishes and the empty sink, where my mother had wrung out the sponge and left it to dry. We walked down the hall, and I heard with relief the sound of the heat clicking on, the sigh of warm air being released through the vents. The living room was gray in the muted light from the picture window, discoloring the sofa and armchairs, the set dressing on a stage whose actors had exited the scene.
When I looked more closely, though, I could see eyes blinking open here and there, watching as we passed by. I stopped to stroke their ears, the little apricot poodle and the golden retrievers, moving slowly around the room, not forgetting about the pit bull mix at my side, his patient, dignified head and smooth gray back. It had been almost a year since I’d died, but my fingers still craved the sensation of touching things.
There were a few more dogs and a black and white cat farther down the hall, in the guest room, and we made the rounds, Rocky and I, pausing as the others lifted their faces expectantly. When we moved on toward the bedroom, they followed us, nails clicking on the hardwood as I turned the handle and opened the door.
My parents were just faint outlines in the darkened room, their profiles muffled by the lack of light and sound. Gingerly, I crawled from the foot of the bed into the blank space between their bodies. They did not stir. I lay on the quilt between them for hours; time was as fragile as the most delicate glassware, and I didn’t want to shatter it. The dogs and the little cat crowded around our legs and feet, nuzzling me, and I held my mother’s hand gently as my parents slept, and all night, they went on dreaming of me.
by Cheryl Pappas | Jun 22, 2026 | flash fiction
Gretel wakes in the middle of the night with the kind of hunger that claws at your insides, as if it were a feral creature trying to get back to the woods. She hears Hansel’s soft breathing in the dark, the faint sound of jazz downstairs, and the distant, tremulous voice of her stepfather. There is simply no getting out of it; she has to go down to the kitchen.
Gretel hears the familiar sound of tiny feet skittering underneath the stairwell. A single fat white candle sits on the stove, its wax slowly hardening on the surface. Shadows leap and dance high on the kitchen wall.
Kurt is in the living room pacing in front of an infomercial for a weight loss pill. Earlier, Gretel had spied him spraying fentanyl into his mouth. Now, he must have taken Adderall to get back up to speed.
Her mother lies on the couch, hidden by the wall. It’s where she lives now, ever since Kurt stuck the fentanyl patch on her a year ago.
“I’m telling you, Celia, it’s gonna be a ride. . . . So, so, so, I’ll call the neighbor tomorrow. What’s her name? Rachel? She’ll have to take the kids for the weekend. That’s the first thing,” he says.
“Rachelle,” Gretel’s mother murmurs. “You dummy.”
“Funny.” He starts pacing again. “They’re over Rachelle’s half the time anyway, and they’ll love it. All the food they want over there. Now . . .” He shakes his hand with a flourish.
He walks over to the couch and kneels in front of Gretel’s mother, his voice giddy, high-pitched. He grabs her hand and pulls it close to his chest. “This new package Max is sending, the pills in it are brand new. I told him to get them from his guy. I knew exactly what I want. Exactly! They’ll be a dream. And in the mail tomorrow.” He gets back up. “We’re pretty much out,” he says. He darts back and forth in front of the TV again.
Gretel’s mother’s hand slowly curls back into the couch.
“There’s one other thing, though. The social worker. She’s coming at four o’clock tomorrow. Guess we should clean up . . .”
Gretel hides in the stairwell just in time as Kurt looks over toward the kitchen. He turns to face the living room again.
“There’s a chance, Celia, that the social worker may not approve of the way we’re living. I mean, I can spend a little time cleaning before she gets here, but there’s no way you can do it, your back the way it is. You just let me take care of it, okay? I mean, it’s not like she’d take the kids away.”
Kurt stops to stare at himself in the mirror next to the big bay window. The candle on the stove reflects in the glass, and he focuses on the wavering light. For a moment, Gretel thinks she sees her reflection behind him. She moves back inside the entryway.
“I hate to even think about it, I mean, that would be just awful. Conditions are terrible for kids in foster care. Imagine little Gretel and Hansel living in a stranger’s house? Or what if they’re put in different houses, and with the most unsavory people?”
“No, no, NO!” says Gretel’s mother. Her voice garbles like she is underwater.
“Yeah, no. Don’t worry. Don’t worry. That’s not going to happen as long as I’m here. I don’t even want you to think about that right now.” Gretel peers out. Kurt kneels before her mother again. “We’ll have the whole weekend to ourselves, no one bothering us. I can go shopping in the morning, so we’ll have all the food we need. Everything! We won’t have to go anywhere. And we’ll be feeling no pain. We’re gonna let this all ride out, Celia. Are you with me?”
Gretel watches Kurt take her mother’s hand and lift her up to stand. Her mother stumbles forward into his arms. Strands of her once-lustrous long black and gray hair graze her doughy breasts that emerge slightly from her old dusty blue dress. Her slippers scuff on the wood floor as Kurt moves her to dance with him. She lets her head fall onto his shoulder, and her fingers try to match up with his; she focuses on getting their fingers lined up just right. They sway to Miles Davis’s “Blue in Green,” and Gretel can make out her mother’s puffy, gray face in the glow of the candle. Her mother’s eyes little black beads.
“We’re gonna let this all ride out, okay?” Kurt says.
Gretel’s mother turns her face up to meet Kurt’s.
“Let this all ride out,” she says, sweetly smiling and half-closing her eyes.
Gretel tiptoes up the stairs. Her hunger catapults through a million stars to the far edges of a ravenous black hole. She hopes light will return tomorrow in the shape of a plan.
by Patricia Q. Bidar | Jun 22, 2026 | flash fiction
James was grieving the death of his father, who’d mistrusted Michaela. Too dark a horse, he’d warned. She’d be the one to break him. James had told Michaela this in bed, laughing, after a good and unhurried sexual encounter, the night their daughter was conceived. The old man’s money paid for this trip to Ireland.
The two had begun putting things between them. The baby. Their need to work so much in order to afford rent in a safe area. Her focus on her work. His on alcohol; he’d started to hide a bottle behind the towels in their linen closet.
They hadn’t counted on their little daughter’s frustrated mood. On the verge of walking, the things she wanted to do and couldn’t manage. Stand. Run. Follow the Irish kitties she spotted skimming alongside the outside walls of the B&Bs.
They’d stop the rental car wherever they were when the baby’s nap time came. Michaela would transfer her to her stroller, and they’d find a pub for lunch. It was always a pub, James wearing that flat tweed cap he’d bought at the airport. It was he who insisted on the pubs, where he’d keep his cap on and try with hope in his eyes to engage barkeeps and locals.
Except that James always drank too much and ate too little. Whereas Michaela cleaned her plate and the rest of his. “Jack Spratt and his wife,” she always thought. She hoped James didn’t think of it. People were polite to the couple, but never engaged, never fussed over the apple-cheeked baby.
Now they’d had their lunch and strolled the main road of the town, known for its traditional music sessions. The baby was strapped, squirming, in her car seat. James and Michaela stood on opposite sides of the rental car. “Hmm… It’s impolite to speak during the long music sessions,” James read loudly from the guidebook. It didn’t matter. They were always tucked into bed by the time the music got going. Michaela herself had pondered leaving James and the baby and going down from their room. Once she’d started to leave the bed, only to realize what had awakened her: the sound of her husband in the bathroom, talking in beseeching tones to his dead dad.
“You know what? I’m going back to the pub and see where we can buy some milk,” Michaela called over the hood of the car. James, lost in his guidebook, ignored her. Inside the pub, the barman took the bottle from Michaela’s hands and filled it from a jug in the refrigerator. He slid it back to her and wouldn’t take her money. Michaela engaged in a little dream that the bartender would lean over and hold her face in his rough hands. That James would appear as a silhouette in the doorway. That seeing her cherished would engage James as in the old days. In the car park, Michaela sank into the car’s back seat to give the baby her milk.
The sky was heavy, hanging dark with unreleased rain. The plan was to visit the Cliffs of Moher. When they arrived at the empty parking area, Michaela said she was scared to walk down the slippery path holding the baby. They decided to take turns picking their careful way down the trail to view the breathtaking cliffs while the other stayed behind.
Waiting, Michaela reached to stroke their daughter’s cheek, but the baby swatted her hand. In the distance, James outstretched his arms in what Michaela had come to think of as his manifest destiny pose. And Michaela thought again about the barman and his rough hands at the small of her back, this time without James arriving to disturb them.
When they were both belted in, the weather worsened. Ahead of them beside the highway, a young couple sat on a boulder, each raising a thumb.
“Let’s pick them up!” Michaela said.
“Are you crazy? Can’t we just get back?” James’s aggrieved sigh sounded exactly like his father’s, or maybe it was the way he was looking at Michaela. Still, he indulged her request.
The young man and woman were German students, it turned out, alive with youth and the romance of travel. Their wet faces shone with mist. Their jackets were wet. The two piled into the back seat, flanking the baby.
“We decided to hike out to the cliffs together and eat a chocolate bar,” the man said. “Tonight, we will enjoy music in the town.” The woman nodded happily. Even the baby seemed charmed by their energy, their smiles. The woman stroked the baby’s cheek, and the baby grabbed her fingers.
Right after pulling onto the road, James scraped the passenger side of the car against a stone wall. Michaela felt it in her body and gasped.
“Fucking fuck,” James growled. Michaela imagined the young couple exchanging a look over the baby in her seat.
“Take this,” the woman said after a moment had passed, pressing the remaining chocolate in its wrapper into Michaela’s hand. Michaela broke off a square and waited for James to turn his head so she could put a piece into his mouth. There was silence as James pulled back onto the road. Then he said, “Magically delicious!” and the Germans laughed.
They dropped the couple off. The air that rushed in was muscle-clenchingly cold. So windy, too. Michaela could smell sour beer from James’s mouth, under the chocolate. “Sweet couple,” Michaela said. “Not so much younger tha—”
James jerked them to the low stone wall, then back into their lane. Michaela didn’t react.
When he emitted a small sound, she turned: his face was wet with tears. She glanced back at the child. She, too, would be all right. She took a bite of the chocolate. It really was superb; a small taste was enough to let her know that. The gold paper chocolate wrapper in her hand, she patted her husband’s arm, exactly the way she’d patted his father’s arm that last time in the hospital. It would be hard in the beginning, but there were better times ahead, her gesture said.
by J.M.C. Kane | Jun 16, 2026 | micro
The first time the house swallowed a sound, we blamed the insulation. A penny fell from your fingers, flashed once, and never landed.
By June, the kitchen had gone almost entirely mute. A plate could burst across the linoleum without a crack. We learned to live by what we saw: your raised eyebrow for the coffee is ready, my hand on the wall for I’m leaving.
I bought a stethoscope to find where the sound went. Pressed to the hallway drywall, it gave me not silence but pressure: rain trapped in the studs, old apologies packed into the joists, the low electric hum of things said too often to disappear. The house had not lost our noise. It had been keeping it.
Then the leak began.
Not water. A thin soprano drip from the attic. One note, pure and sustained, as if a radio left on in another decade had finally found a way through. By midnight, the stairs were running with it. A 1998 fight about the car insurance broke against the banister. The bark of a dog dead thirty years came through the vents in short, ecstatic bursts.
We stood in the living room while the house gave it back. You opened your mouth to scream, but nothing reached the air. Whatever rose in you went straight up, caught fast in the ceiling.
I made it to the front door through the noise. You were still in the center of the room. I could see your mouth moving. Behind me, the walls kept emptying themselves, room by room.
by Fractured Lit | Jun 11, 2026 | news
We absolutely loved reading these microfictions and are back to present the shortlist! Stay tuned to see which stories Steve Almond will pick!
- Mothers Bake Pogácsas
- Makbara
- Burial at Sea
- My Father’s Orange Farm
- Quiet Survival
- In the Larchmont House
- Loosed
- What It’s Like
- Inheritance
- I’ll sew your socks if you stay
- Competitive Grieving
- No Voltage on a Quiet Road
- Color Theory
- The Thing With Feathers
- Lost girl found
- Doves
- Girls Who Use Wheelchairs Don’t Climb Trees
- We Are Mothers
- katsu.
- Dad in his Elements
by Pamela Painter | Jun 4, 2026 | flash fiction
We have nine snowmen in our front yard. One snow child. In the past month or two, I rolled, lifted, and balanced balls of snow for their snow bodies, searched for sturdy twigs. My wife peeled carrots, dumped raisins in a dish, ransacked closets for hats and mittens, a moth-eaten vest, an old apron, faded scarves that wave in the wind. Five-year-old Sibby patted ice-cold stomachs, smoothed bumpy lumps of snow, tucked old boots and shoes in front of round white bottoms. We have a large lawn, as do our neighbors on the cul-de-sac, but we have the most and best-dressed snowmen. In the mornings, I clear the porch steps, shovel our walks and driveway, before I head off to my job at the PO. My next-door neighbor shovels his walks and driveway in the evenings. His MAGA sign keeps getting buried, and he keeps digging it out. Of course, when he waves, I wave back like a good neighbor. Somehow, though constant, this snow is not burying us. Hard to explain. Yesterday, Sibby said it first. “When’s it going to stop?”
This Saturday morning, I stand at the window and see that the heavy overnight snow is perfect for building snowmen. “Maybe we should add to the snow family,” I tell my wife and Sibby. “Or do a dog or cat,” though I’m not sure how. After breakfast, we suit up in coats and boots, hats and mittens that have come to feel like a uniform. Freezing cold air is waiting on the porch overlooking our white yard below. New neighbors three doors down are out in their yards with their toddler, who is piling snow on his head. Suddenly, Sibby pulls up short at the top of the stairs and squints at the nine snowmen in our white yard. “What?” I say. “What?” my wife echoes. We are both oddly fearful. Sibby shakes her head, hat tassels flopping. “I’m done. No more snowmen.” She slams back inside, and we follow. She kicks her snow boots under the kitchen table, unzips the polka dot snowsuit my wife just zipped her into. Without looking at each other, my wife and I unzip our own parkas, unlace our boots. Sibby clicks on the weather channel, where a new weatherman is talking about last night’s record snow accumulation. Recently, three weathermen have come and gone with no explanation. This new weatherman is non-committal as he talks about snow patterns, lake-effect snow, and tells historical anecdotes that are meant to be comforting. We have hot chocolate with our snow cones. Sibby says, “We’re running out of syrup. Why aren’t we running out of snow? When’s it going to stop?”
Monday, an early meeting takes me to work before I do my usual shoveling, so I shovel in the evening before dinner. Sibby is replacing pilfered carrot noses. Then she sets to making snow angels to watch over the snowmen. The next-door neighbor, out shoveling too, is surprised to see us. He leans on his huge red shovel that has partially rescued his red MAG sign, and calls out, “Your snowmen sure got spiffy outfits. You raid the closets?” In my mind, I too think “snowmen, snowman”– leftover from childhood. Our neighbor is still peering at our populated yard, so to be neighborly, I call, “Come on over and visit our snow people.” I really do say “snow people.” “Hey, sure thing,” he says and plants his shovel in the drift beside his sign, then crosses from his white yard into our white yard.
Sibby and I are proud snow parents as he slowly circles the nine figures, admiring the plaid vest, limp scarves, and the apron with lemons. He gingerly shakes the twig arm of the largest snowman, then he praises Sibby for sharing what was surely her own ratty stuffed bunny. Squinting, he says, “Hey, I’m really pleased to meet my neighbor’s snow people. Yeah, great snow people you have here.” “And snow angels,” Sibby says, and flops backwards to create another one. I say, “It’s sort of strange how the snow doesn’t seem to stop.” “Yeah,” he says. “But soon the government is going to do something about it. You’ll see.” He steps around the latest snow angel. “Like what?” Sibby says, from flat on her back. “Do what?” Yeah, I think, do what? Our neighbor just waves and slogs back to his yard. We can hear him muttering “snow people, snow people” as he gives his sign a final thump in place, “hah, snow people.” Next time I see him out shoveling in his white yard, he pretends they aren’t there. We all pretend something.
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