Mother Black Bear sits on her haunches under the heavy limbs of the crabapple tree in the backyard. She rubs her eyes, her long snout, and looks up at the stars and sighs as if she, too, has been awakened by the clock tick, tick, ticking. Through an open window we...
A man with rusty brown hair, a beard, and a plaid shirt has been struggling with something in his mind, so he gets in his truck and drives fast until he gets to the top of a hill and guns it. He’s going all out, and where the cliff juts out over the water, he keeps...
The priest still has a mouth full of cake, crumbs stuck to his lips, when the mom presents a doll with clumps of hair missing, a book with crayon scribbled across the cover, a blanket still warm from the girl’s grip and says, “Bless them?” The girl cries for her...
Congratulations to the writers of these 39 speculative stories! We'll be back shortly with our shortlist! We can't wait to see what Judge Tara Campbell chooses from the upcoming shortlist! Field with Dogs (in the Afterlife) Like Prey Naming the Cat A Thousand Dianes...
One day, there will be a podcast episode about your disappearance, and a woman driving to work will skip it because you’ve never been found, and the woman likes closure. One day, your body will dissolve, the dye in your clothes fading into a muted gray before...
Guest Judge Maurice Carlos Ruffin has chosen his grand prize winner and the 16 finalists! We're excited to publish all sixteen of these stories starting in January 2025! Grand Prize Winner: One Minute Thirty-Five Seconds by Caleb Ludwick Guest Judge Maurice Carlos...
Elena cried for the sparrow, for how it slipped a squeal before it hit the front window, a sound that awfully resembled fear. I knew even then that Elena saw something in that bird, a part of herself that wanted to be free and alive, free of everything that crippled...
Not in the mirror. Not in between his uncle’s years-ago fingers. Not running all over town like Gogol. Just something he could hold in his hands for once in his life. He tried last month to see his heart. After so many years, he wanted to see the actual scars on it,...
Stepmother locks Daughter in the basement, chain keeping her prisoner to the furnace. Daughter tries to reach the window where Mother might be, watching, waiting for a kiss. Mother is there until she isn’t. Until Stepmother pulls them apart. Until the policeman takes...
They left the couch, a show about child prodigies gone insane in their twenties, and in her room he pulled loose her knotted drawstrings. Outside, snow. Frost clinging to power lines like cake piping, a blizzard fooling everyone and, for once, lingering. She breathed...
I felt like television static that year—glossy-eyed afternoons at The Bitter End with a magazine straddling my lap, ears straining to dissect the waves: people chattering, milk steaming, door opening and closing—I was shimmery around the edges. Most evenings, I...
after Meredith Martinez My husband left me in February. He left with my love in his hands, and I walked to the pharmacy for a carton of eggs. The eggs were carried home in my dirty tote bag like a promise kept. I did not swing them, jerk them, or threaten to jostle...