After Edgar Degas’ “Dance Rehearsal, 1874” People say ballet theaters are haunted by the dancers who died tragically young, but that’s not true. Theaters are haunted by bored ghost girls. They’ve spooked everyone worth spooking. Wandered Paris, Rome, Tokyo. Lasted...
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Like Soap
When we were fourteen, Tessa, Gina, and I used to laugh at Mrs. Meade, our history teacher, who always came to class like she had dressed in a rush, her hair always boringly tied, her wedding finger always covered in soap, stuck to her wedding band and we wondered how...
I Told Them I’m a Vampire Who Likes To Drink Blood
I wished it on my 16th birthday candles. The school counselor said to believe in myself, so I did. It turned out the junior class at Bellingham High had been waiting for a teenage vampire. First they stopped sitting with me at lunch. Jesse from homeroom said they...
Scars and Time
She has a small scar behind her left earlobe and I wonder if she knows that I’m aware of it. I’ve always wondered how it became to be and I used to make up stories in my head. Stories involving nipping puppies, or a renegade fishing pole cast when she was 13. Then...
Hardwood Nights
Her first love stands in the doorway, a lanky licorice stick of a boy, all words and high tops, sweet and chewy, palms touching the door frame. Insomnia carries him to her, a sleepless offering for bare feet pacing a hardwood floor. If she lingers too long in this...
Monsters, Mystery, & Mayhem Contest Winners & Shortlisted writers
1st: Place: At the Bottom of the Well is a Home by Laur Freymiller 2nd Place: My Brother, Named and Unnamed by Steven Sherrill 3rd Place: Hair, Teeth by Josiah Nelson Shortlisted Titles and Writers A Modern Fairytale by Amy Wang Double the Fun by Ryder Collins...
Little Worlds
Sara’s building tiny huts made of mud that she hollows out with her thumbs and then covers with sticks from the wood chip pile at the edge of the playground. She’s trying to create the village like the one she’s seen in pictures from the National Geographic that rests...
Sugar Baby
When Danny turned six, his mouth rotted and a host of flies swarmed his lips. They laid their ugly eggs beneath his tongue and zipped right through the holes in his gums. Nana washed his mouth out with Listerine and soap, scolding him for not being more careful. For...
How to Embed your Legacy
Take one pair of lightly-arched, freshly-manicured feet, slip off your mother’s gold-edged chappals that always chafed, and plant them firmly in the soft Mangalorean soil of your exacting grandfather’s garden Rub at your slightly turned-in ankles, that resemble your...
Choreography
She knocks things over—pyramid-stacked cans in the grocery store, books off the shelf at the library, her father’s glasses from atop his nose. She studied ballet in New York. Or at least that's what she hopes to do. At night, she glissades across the Swan Lake tromp...
1918
Like every other night, Finkus creaks the splintery door, slips out of his only shirt and folds it over a chair. He smooths the coarse wool with his calloused hands, wets his thumb and rubs the spots. One, a splotch of mud from when he carried a lady’s valise to a...
mi corazón quiere cantar así
did you hear about the shooting? my cousin jasmine texts. i tell her no, open up twitter to see if something’s trending. nada. she responds: they shot a girl in her home. she was my friend’s niece. the details: a ten-year-old, a drive-by, some gang shooting up the...