by Susmita Mukherjee | Apr 16, 2026 | micro
On the morning Ma forgot my name, she remembered everything else: the price of onions in 1998, the exact shade of blue Baba wore the day he proposed, the smell of the sea on her first and only trip to Digha. She stood at the balcony, gripping the railing as if the city below might drift away without her weight.
“Look,” she said, pointing at the Kolkata skyline. “The tide is coming in.”
There was no tide, only the neighbour’s laundry stiffening in the winter sun. But I didn’t correct her. I had learned that truth was a fragile thing around Ma.
She had woken early, asking for her mother, long dead. “She said she’d come today,” Ma insisted, smoothing the bedsheet for a guest who would never arrive. “I should have saved some fish curry.”
I boiled rice, salted it the way Ma once taught me, three pinches, never a fourth, “too much salt is arrogance.” When I placed the bowl in front of her, she smiled politely, as if I were a stranger offering help on a train. “Your kindness reminds me of my daughter,” she said. “Poor thing. She takes on too much.”
I swallowed the sob that rose, sharp as a fishbone.
Later, she asked me to take her to the river. “Not the Hooghly, the big one,” she said. “The one that takes things away but sometimes returns them.”
“We’ll go in the evening,” I lied. The doctor said outings confused her. The river would be too much, too loud, too bright, too full of memories she could no longer hold.
Ma nodded, then drifted toward her cupboard, rummaging through old sarees. She pulled out a cream Tangail, its border embroidered with tiny red fish. Baba had bought it for her twenty-seven years ago. “For your birthday,” she said, pressing it into my hands. “You looked beautiful in it.”
“I never wore this, Ma.”
She frowned. “Are you sure? I remember you spinning around the living room.”
She was remembering herself.
That evening, when the city turned gold, she called out again, hesitant, unsure. “Didi? Can you stay a little longer?”
Didi. Not daughter.
I sat beside her anyway. Held her thinning hand. Felt the small tremor running through it, as if somewhere inside her, a tide truly was coming in and with it, the last, tender ruin of recognition.
by Fractured Lit | Apr 15, 2026 | news
We’re so excited to celebrate these winning stories! They took us to settings only found in these writers’ imaginations! Big congrats to everyone on the shortlist as it’s always hard to get on this list!
First Place: Problems of Inheritance Law in Fig Country, Chapter 117 by Jane Yager
Second Place: Rock Dove by Megan Lui
Third Place: Hypnagogia by David Ryan
Also publishing: Odd Biography by Elizabeth Lee
- Collective Memory by Threa Almontaser
- In the Temple of the Ugly Women by Karen G. Berry
- House of the Minotaur by Kyle Collins
- The Other Sister by Marianne Xenos
- aiteal by Eartha
- Seven by Marketa
- Odd Biography by Elizabeth Lee
- Rock Dove by Megan Lui
- Blood Feathers by Anna Madden
- Overage by Yoram Ong
- Feathers by Marie Powell
- The Last Eden by Cynthia Reeves
- Hypnagogia by David Ryan
- The Map with No Roads by Nilay Kumar Sarker
- Apoptosis by H. Peter Steeves
- Photorealistic Hello Kitty by Emma Stephenson
- Moving In by Marie Stevens
- Worlds Apart by Rebecca White
- String Theory by Judith Janeway
- Problems of Inheritance Law in Fig Country, Chapter 117 by Jane Yager
by Jane Yager | Apr 15, 2026 | contest winner, flash fiction
Now let us consider the problem of the man with three children and one fig tree.
In the Talionis Commentaries we find a man whose will ordains that each fig be split into three equal pieces. This solution is just but impractical.
The Annotations of Marduk speak of a wiser man who assigns each child one of the three cardinal directions – sunward, windward, and seaward – in a rotation so the child who, one year, enjoys the sweet sunward figs will, the next year, command the robust windward figs, and will spend the third year savoring the tart seaward figs.
Our own problem concerns a man who is neither just nor wise. The son of a judge, he inherits a bounteous fig tree on a sunward slope. Eager to spend the money on drink, he picks the fruit before it ripens, but the green figs fetch a low price at market. Each night after the bar closes, the man returns to the tree to rage at the shade of his father for having left him figs that grow too slowly. At this time, there is a popular book called The Man Who Inherited Twenty-Three Fig Trees. Its genre is inspirational self-help. Our drunkard doesn’t read this book, but he sees it in a shop window, and it makes him feel hard done-by. He rages at the shade of his father for having spent his earthly time with law books and not business deals.
The man is handsome, and he fathers three children before his wife tires of his drinking and gambling and emotional unavailability. Finally kicked out of his wife’s house, the man returns to the tree. It no longer bears figs. Because he’s never watered it with anything but his own angry late-night urine, its branches have withered. After using his handsome face to borrow from a neighbor an axe he won’t return, the man chops wildly at the tree. The mournful shade of his father watches from a distance, in spectacles and judge’s robes.
The man’s bundle of green figwood fetches a poor price.
Now reduced to begging, the man wanders the hills with the axe until he reaches a tidy house. The widow in the house likes his face. She says she’ll take him in, but only if he has no children: she has enough of her own to feed.
“I had a few,” he admits, “but they were vile, so I’ve renounced them.”
“Vile, like how specifically?” she says, skeptical.
“Gamblers, drunkards. They’re emotionally unavailable and…” she looks unimpressed, so he grasps for something dire enough, “… they killed my only fig tree, leaving me destitute.” She gasps and urges him to make sure he’s truly rid of them.
The man carries the axe back across the hills to town.
There, he drafts a document disowning his children. Because they are drunkards and gamblers who killed my previously flourishing ancestral fig tree, I hereby disinherit my three children and cast them from this town in disgrace. He posts it in the town square, as is the custom, because the document has the correct legal form, all in the town believe its words to be true. He returns to the widow’s tidy house, stopping along the way at the stump of his tree to throw the axe at his father’s shade.
The disgraced children scatter to the three directions. The oldest, who has inherited his father’s face, travels windward to a cold land without figs. He founds a thriving event management business and soon forgets what figs are. Whenever he sees a picture of one, he perceives it as a date or – if the image in question is sufficiently ambiguous as to its sweet or savory nature – a red onion. His siblings believe he can’t keep this up forever, but they’re wrong; he can.
The middle child, who has inherited his father’s rage, travels a short distance sunward, staying in fig country. He so hates figs that he despises wasps, too, for their devotion to figs. He launches a wasp extermination company, but his emotional damage isn’t the kind that makes a man succeed in business, and the company fails.
The youngest, who has inherited her grandfather’s legal mind, travels seaward to a foreign land. She vows to disprove the charges her father posted in the town square: she’s no drunkard or gambler, and she never killed any tree. Her new country doesn’t let foreigners attend law school, but does allow her into the law library, where she reads every book on inheritance. She spends years writing a treatise. Her work demonstrates that in every earthly jurisdiction except fig country, it’s forbidden for a man to denounce and exile his children by falsely claiming his own wrongdoings were theirs. Fig country is a morally depraved land, she concludes.
She works up the courage to send the treatise to her father. Her brothers warn her not to expect a reply. They regret that she’s wasted her life shouting into the void instead of founding a business.
Her scholarship has, however, attracted suitors among the law students, who know that because she’s an uncredentialed foreigner, they can take her work as their own. The man she marries publishes her treatise. He wins an award for it, and the title Prof. Dr. Dr. jur.
After her wedding, an answer from her father arrives.
“I’ve done better by you than you deserve,” he writes, “for you are my property to dispose of as I wish, yet I only killed the tree and didn’t kill you.” That night, she dreams she’s a green fig shaken from the branch, falling onto the blade of her father’s axe. The shade of her grandfather whispers sadly that she can never win any battle against her father on the terrain of the law or its words, because these things, too, are her father’s property, made to belong to him.
In the next chapter, we will consider the problem of the land on which the fig tree grows.
by Ruth Joffre | Apr 13, 2026 | micro
If they ask if we can get a dog, I will tell them to prove to me they can take care of one, but I will neglect to tell them how. I will watch for displays of maturity (doing the dishes without having to be asked, putting their dirty clothes in the laundry room instead of leaving them on the floor), but my children will beguile me, disappearing into the woods for long hours, then coming home with little cuts on their arms, as if someone—or something—grabbed them, scratched them. I will cry, “What happened? Who did this to you?” my voice frantic with worry, but my children will not be bothered. They will say, “You’ll see,” with these sly, knowing smiles, as if planning a surprise for my birthday. And that is when I will start to follow them: across the street, through the skatepark, over the ridge that separates our neighborhood from the quarry and the lake that refilled it. Every time I look at that dark, silty water, I wonder what grows there, what slimy, boneless creature has slithered up from the depths to poison the loblolly pines the construction firm planted to make up for the destruction wrought with the quarry. Only after I follow my children into the woods will I realize I was looking in the wrong place. When peering down into the waters, I should have been looking up, toward the trees. I will see it there: the creature—a clawed, winged thing my children try to tame. It will hiss at me, its dark pink maw glinting with teeth, but it will tolerate them, their cooing, their small, reaching hands. They’re still so young, my children. So young and so proud.
by Candace Hartsuyker | Apr 10, 2026 | flash fiction
When you’re the stage mother, your job is to attend every rehearsal or performance your daughter is in. It doesn’t matter if she’s an extra or in the lead role. You’re there to support her. The rules: always stand and clap at the end. Whistle loudly, the kind of whistle that makes other moms and dads turn their heads. At home, help your daughter memorize her lines. Give your daughter etiquette lessons, so she’ll know the fork goes on the left and the knife goes on the right. Remember the dream you had, to become a famous actress. Wipe tears from your eyes when you see your daughter has already fulfilled this dream. Before rehearsal, make sure her purse is equipped with bobby pins and snacks, a hairbrush and Guerilla Glue. Anything could happen, so it’s your job to be prepared. When she’s tired after a long day, draw her a bubble bath.
The night the fire alarm goes off, and everyone has to evacuate the hotel, get her out before anyone else. Step on toes and shove people so she will be safe. Wrap your robe around her and turn your head away from the blaring sound of the fire alarm. Apologize to the people you pushed earlier.
The time your daughter doesn’t get a starring role and instead must be an understudy, blot her dripping mascaraed eyes with the hem of your shirt. When she’s having a bad day and trips during rehearsal, tell her no one noticed; she did fine. When she says no one will ever be as good as her, tell her she needs to keep practicing.
When your daughter takes the role of a lifetime and must live in a foreign country for three months, go with her. When she drinks too much wine after a long day, and she falls into a canal on the way home, drag her out of the cold water. When she gets sick and has to stay home, bring her tea and Kleenex and tuck her blankets around her. Tell her you’ll reschedule her audition.
At night, go to the moonlit window and gaze at your hands. Never skilled with a needle, all those late-night sacrifices sewing costumes for her until your fingers were pockmarked with blood. Look at your scarred fingers and tell yourself it was worth it.
You’re the stage mother, the one who does everything for everyone else. No one is ever there for you when the hem of your skirt rips, when you’re exhausted and can’t sleep. When you’re the stage mother, it’s your job to endure.
by Kim Murdock | Apr 6, 2026 | flash fiction
She is the biggest of the girls, freshly turned, the musky sweetness of larch still lingering. Pleasant smile, rosy cheeks. Her eyes are painted open, though there isn’t much to see inside the truck. But in the dim her imagination flies. There are others with her here in the truck. Maybe four. Or seven. A dozen seems impossible. At times she thinks she’s alone, until the truck jostles and there’s a whimper, and another voice, shhh.
Today’s ride is smooth. She pictures a highway–straight run, constant speed. Maybe the city this time, instead of another village or some remote outpost. She was promised a job in the city. A small shop, money to send back to her family. She wonders if the other girls were promised the city, too. In what small shops they were promised work, in what imagined flats they unrolled their dreams. And the girl drifts back into half-sleep, conjuring someplace fine, someplace where dreaming holds up the sky.
She dreams of a toymaker’s shop. There’s a fire in the hearth, but it’s not close enough to singe, nor angry enough to burn. Fruited pipe tobacco, treacle cakes, and ginger biscuits tickle the air. My little doll! The gold headband they give her is out of place with her simple dress, the bouquet of roses so abundant that she almost forgets her own hands, hidden behind the buds and blooms and thorny wood as if they’re vestigial appendages, little ghosts.
The truck hits a rut, and her mind slips. Shoved in the back of a cold closet, a dry, dusty attic where she’s susceptible to cracks, a damp cellar where mold and rot creep in. The kind of things you can’t repair.
Judging by the roughness of the roads, they’re back in the countryside. Light slits through a tear in the rooftop. Somewhere, there are cows grazing in green pastures. A rabbit slips and runs before standing stock-still, sensing a predator. The truck rumbles along. That flat, firm pressure across her belly reasserts, and something splits apart. She wraps the thin shawl closer, but cannot tell whether her shaking is from nerves or cold or the truck’s continued motion.
###
A shout from the truck cab–the word for There! There!—and the truck swerves and abruptly stops. Diesel fumes catch in her throat. Often, on these breaks, the men will gather outside, a thin flap of canvas separating them from the girls, and they’ll trade with other men: paper for cigarettes, paper for boggy whiskey. They’ll sit on their haunches smoking fat, round embers into the night.
###
A smile is currency.
###
Inside the truck, the girls hold their breath, quiet as driftwood.
###
That night, the biggest of the girls dreams of roses. She is shedding them, like a wintery coat, one, two, a whole bouquet, molting a crimson trail as she moves forward. Underneath, her hands cradled against the shock of icy air. Eight, nine, ten, her fingers snap to life. They search for the patient knife tucked into her skirt waistband, found while on her knees. The knife, fallen from the trouser pockets of a man who tasted of brine and mud.
She wakes to a little one’s muffled crying. Moving towards the sound, she finds the girl — this child!–and wraps her shawl as if to swaddle. This child, surely too young to work, to be a shopgirl? She holds the girl’s round face, smooths her hair, hair that stinks of stale cigarette smoke and whiskey and earth.
Later, the truck will stop, and the doors will open. Later, the doors will open, and she’ll glimpse first light. When the door opens, she’ll grip the knife. Matryoshka is full of surprises. She will gather the girls as one. She will carry all of the girls with her. She contains multitudes. When the light comes, she’ll find her hands.
by Lynn Mundell | Apr 2, 2026 | flash fiction
One of the first times I was born was during the plague. Miracle of miracles, I survived! But Maman died, and my sisters, then Papa, and our man Bertran. Finally, I had to go, too. There was no one left to feed me, and the rats frightened me to death.
*
I awoke in the womb of a fine Spanish lady. Bubbles swirled around me, faster and faster, a push, a slap of cold air, then a hand slapping me! My madre rocked me in the first days and our galleon rocked her. Then came the storm that rocked us both overboard. The ocean’s bubbles swirled faster and faster as I sank, and then I was gone. Again.
*
In another womb, I was large and my amma was small. I nested against a second, bigger baby. Nearby, a bell rang a long OM. My brother punched me, hard. Life is a struggle and a dirty battle. A shudder and my twin was born. United, Amma and I kept fighting, and lost.
*
Over and over I was conceived, from Africa to Greenland, Cairo to Memphis, in wedlock and out, during wars and love-ins, and once in a test tube. Born to whores and housewives, in taxis and on an ice floe, to a 12-year-old who was the last of her tribe (until I was). Always I passed away, quickly, unnamed. I was born to a Chinese woman so old that my shade carried hers into the next world, my first breath having stolen her last.
*
In the beginning, I catapulted into space and the stars were my travelling companions. I fell to earth, landing alone on a mountain. I was a volcanic rock shooting off an island and into a sea. Then I was an island, too. Over time I was covered with plants and animals, and people, until a man and a woman entwined, and I was a seed growing in a belly, dying, being returned to the earth again.
*
Then one day I am born and I do not die. My parents line a bureau drawer with their sweatshirts, and there I sleep. They squash me into Mama’s bicycle basket and with the spring air whistling a lullaby I sleep more. At night Papa argues with Abuela and I learn that I should not be here, again. But Mama croons Milagros over and over, calling me back to her, and Papa reads stories, some in the long-lost language of the galleon. Tattooed stars encircle his neck and volcanic flames dance around his forearms. Together, my parents sing along to the radio, songs of danger, bravery, heartache, and love. Duly recorded, my long journey finally ends. The universe releases me to two young people, and I, Milagros, miracle, live at last.
*Originally published in Superstition Review.*
by Myna Chang | Mar 30, 2026 | micro
I recognize the haunt by her milk-shot eyes. She is wolfen this time. Dishonest in death, my sister’s ghost masquerades through the bramble on borrowed claws. She seeks the key to Mother’s garden gate—and the starfall secrets locked inside.
Once upon a time, Mother laced the key about my neck, hid me safe in the wildling canes, but quietly, my darling, oh so still! while I lure the monster afar.
My sister-in-wolf’s-clothing circles ‘round. The blackberry sheen of our mother’s throat stains her muzzle.
Come out, come out, the wolf growls, her rot-sweet curse tainting the nightbreeze.
I twine with the thicket, hold my breath close. She screams a howl that shivers my spine, thumps my rabbit-pulse heart.
Wolfen ears twitch. She sniffs.
My legs ache to run, but she has caught my scent. She sees me now. It is too late.
She is coming.
Trembling, I clutch tight the key.
Give it to me, she always snarls.
But Mother said it’s for me, I always whisper.
Jealous canines glint as my sister lunges, and in that hot gnash of teeth, I again taste death, as sweet as a berry, as tart as the stars. Their twinkling lights sing to me, and I long to trade this changeling bramble for their shine, to let go this phantom game—but my covetous sister has snatched the key. Its magic throbs, a living heart stolen. I see myself in its squeeze. My heart. My magic.
I turn away from the stars.
Hear my own voice in the snarl—Mine.
My sister pauses. Her shape ripples dread as my soft form roughens, thickens. Shedding the cower of rabbit, I blossom, a lupine flowering of wrath, briar thorns sprouting from my fingertips. I tuck a bitter shard of fallen starlight into the gape of my chest, bind it with sinew and vine.
And now I am rising, I am the clawed shadow a-prowl in the bramble, I am the wolf in the night. My murderess flees, weaving a cony path through leaf and root.
My turn, I whisper, and the hunt begins anew.
*Originally published in Moon City Review*
by Skyler Melnick | Mar 26, 2026 | micro
The tornado is sexy, sultry, a slut. She sucks up everything in her path. Since she was born, since she touched down seven minutes ago, in a midwestern prairie, she has known her purpose: to consume. To get thick and plump and burst with herself. She flicks her tail and swirls her lithe ballerina body toward the nearest town. Mmmm. She sucks a cow from its pasture, moos echoing around her vortex. Its giant body flails, hitting her walls. She wants more, she wants more! A cold wind creeps behind her. She has limited time and she knows it, she knows she has to open her mouth and suck. A little girl with pigtails, a pack of kittens, a field of corn, a schoolyard, a church spire. The tornado sucks and sucks, moving faster and faster, her tail thrashing like an animal. Chipmunks and birds, rats and raccoons, their blood spatters, painting her red. The church spire comes apart, splintering her insides. The tornado gasps from the sensation, titillated, set aflame. She wants flames. But that cold wind, that cold creeping wind. She tries to outrun it, to be hot, hot, hot, sucking up a group of men, pulling them by the neckties. Still she shivers, her spiral losing its mass, cows slipping from her grasp. No! she cries. The tornado cries as her life’s work leaves her, as her body dwindles. She sucks up a mailbox. It drops back down to earth. Please! the tornado cries. She cries blood, she comes apart, cold wind dragging her down. Mommy! she begs the sky, the sky shrouded in clouds. The clouds let her turn to dust, let her settle into the ground, depleted, devastated.
Dead.
by Jessica Klimesh | Mar 24, 2026 | flash fiction
When all three of the neighbor girls became pregnant at the same time, my mother gave me a stern look and said, “There’s something in the water, Mabel.” I only guessed from her tone and from what my teacher called “context clues” what she meant. Because it seemed that everyone was pregnant. And when I say everyone, I’m talking grandmothers, too. Even a man at church. Up and down the block, across the city, and from one state to another. My mother called it an epidemic, and when she caught wind of it occurring to girls as young as me, she shook her head and took to scouring the internet, saying, “No no no no no no, this can’t be happening again.” And soon she had ordered what she called allergy pills. “As a precaution,” she said. “You can’t be getting pregnant, Mabel, not at your age, and it’s no longer happening the usual way, like we talked about.” She went on about it being some sort of new biological response to an allergen or maybe a genetic mutation, both of which sounded vaguely sci-fi to me, and then told me to take one of the tiny white pills each day before school and an extra one if I was going to be especially close to a boy. When I made a face, she said, “Don’t look at me like that. I’m going to take them, too.”
The only thing my mother had ever said about my father was that he didn’t exist. I’d been skeptical before, conjuring up fanciful scenarios about who he was and what his relationship with my mother was like, but now with all of these unexplained pregnancies, I no longer knew what to believe. Especially given how on edge my mother was. Biting her nails, pacing the living room. Day after day, I’d get home from school, and before I’d even taken my coat off, she’d rattle off the latest pregnancies and update me on the research she’d found online. One afternoon, especially distraught, she bellowed, “They thought it was a fluke last time, Mabel! A fluke! And they discontinued the research!”
She told me we were switching to an all-organic vegetarian diet and said not to eat processed foods and to avoid city water, adding, “I’ve been reading about it. You might have the gene, Mabel, but maybe if we eat right, exercise, and—” She took a deep breath, and her crazed eyes lit up like static electricity. “Are you taking those allergy pills, Mabel?”
I nodded vigorously to reassure her, but the truth was that they made my breath stink and, worse, I never saw any of the other kids taking them, so I’d pushed them to the bottom of my backpack after a few days, vowing to just stay away from boys.
Which seemed to work fine until I met Jay. He’d transferred up from a lower grade. Smart. And had a dimple when he smiled. Cute.
I’d gaze at Jay during class and wonder vaguely about those allergy pills at the bottom of my bag, so one day I raised my hand and asked our teacher if you could get pregnant from allergies. The whole class laughed. Except Jay. Sensitive. Our teacher hesitated, but then said, “For mild allergies, you might get a headache or some intestinal discomfort.” She put her hand over her belly, rubbed, and went back to talking about fractions.
That same day, after gym class, I strategically placed myself next to Jay in line at the water fountain, so close I could see a bead of sweat on his neck. I didn’t get a headache, and there was no stomach discomfort. So, I got closer, tapped his shoulder. When he turned around, I said, “Hi.”
Jay and I didn’t do much more than smile at first. But then we started talking, sat close to each other at lunch. We traded food, and he didn’t even cringe at my sprout and soybean salad, as I sank my teeth into his bacon cheeseburger. We held hands, and nothing unfavorable happened. By that point, I figured I was safe, so I just threw the allergy pills away. After a couple of weeks, Jay kissed me on my cheek. Love.
And even though it never went further than that, it wasn’t long before I was pregnant.
“It’s not your fault, Mabel,” my mother said, revealing that she, too, was pregnant, and that the pills didn’t work after all. We both sat on the couch, somber, and she handed me a bottle of water with a “Safe!” sticker on it, and took small sips out of her own. “The government says to only drink bottled water,” she said. “Don’t they know it’s too late?”
I rested my head against her shoulder. “So now what?” I asked.
My mother just shrugged, scratched absently at the “Safe!” sticker on her bottle.
“Safe,” she scoffed, pulling the sticker off. “That’s what they said last time.”
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