Focal Point

by Elise Stephens in Issue Four, May 2022

Her world was gone, like a night sky stripped of moon and stars.

“They told me you fell,” Hilf whispered from the bedside. “That you tripped down the stairs from your studio and after that you didn’t look into their eyes.” His voice deepened. “Why didn’t you let them fetch a doctor?”

Her husband hadn’t removed his riding coat in his rush to see her, and she could smell the wet wool as she sat up and opened her eyes. As before, the darkness remained. Blind. Had she seen Hilf’s kind green eyes for the final time?

Estil groaned. Her eyes still burned with the afterimage of the painting that had b...

Axolotl

by Atreyee Gupta in Issue Four, May 2022

At the Table

I eat silence. It tastes lonely and bitter alongside ma’s watery yam casserole as it serrates speech from my tongue. In thirty years I haven’t learned how to digest this aching abyss. I turtle into my eight-year-old self, wondering: what aren’t ma and baba saying? Is the silence punishment for my inadequacy? No matter how I iterate myself, the recipe fails. Untethering from home, I’ve discarded my native language, abandoned the gods, adopted cutlery. Yet the minute I cross their threshold, artifice, concealment, and placation cloak my intentions.

“We called last week. You didn’t a...

The End of the World

by Meghan Kemp-Gee in Issue Three, March 2022

I met you in London last July, on the hottest day ever recorded, during the last two weeks of my research fellowship at the Cambridge University archives. The vaults and reading rooms were quiet and cool, so like all the other fellows, I stayed until the very last minute they were open. Nowhere else in the city had such dependable air conditioning.

I made polite conversation with a couple of grad students in the coat room as we gathered up our hats and sunglasses and purses. They convinced me to go to a pub with them. I wondered if they were only inviting me because they imagined I was lonely ...

Sworn Guardian

by Kimberly Christensen in Issue Three, March 2022

When the crack of thunder ripped us from sleep, our eyes scanned the darkness for one thing – the green light over our doorway. Ten breaths exhaled at once, as if we were a single organism. Lightning had not ignited a fire – at least not yet.

“Who’s in the watchtower tonight?” Bristlecone whispered from the top bunk, her voice sinking through the humid air.

“TickTock and Beaver.”

Like me and Bristlecone, they were Apprentice Guardians, learning to preserve the forest in the face of drought, beetles, and ever-rising temperatures. Tonight, they were charged with sounding First Alert, a mechanica...

Hope: A Perspective from the Forest

by Tadayoshi Kohno in Issue Three, March 2022

Dad, I thought to my father. The smoke is too thick. I can’t breathe. I looked up at him, and he looked down at me. His soft amber eyes glistened with tears and sorrow.

I know, Dad thought to me as he laid his snout on mine. My body glowed with the knowledge that he would protect me.

He lifted his head and scanned the rest of our pack. We had stopped on a hill to survey the forest. My litter mates and I needed the rest.

We looked at the fire—fires—blazing in the distance. We heard the distant crackle. Our old home: gone. Our friends with shorter legs: gone. The plants that gave us shelter: gon...

For the Remnants

by Belicia Rhea in Issue Three, March 2022

Every night we wait for the drones overhead to spill our allotted water rations. I’ve never gotten used to the whirring sound—and that smell, nearly sour, the way it coats the air. Turns it artificial. For most of who’s left, it’s all they’ve known.

The kids are already racing outside with their mouths open, waiting for the pour. I remember as a boy, before the machines, playing in puddles that lasted all night, floods rushing the ground till morning. It rained for days, dragging cars away, the water reflecting our nervous faces back at us when we looked over the porch.

We’d imagine portals in...

Chrysanthemum

by Erin Keating in Issue Three, March 2022

Mama didn’t weep when the world Dried Up. When the smoke choked the sun. When the sky turned orange. When the birds died mid-flight. Mama didn’t weep when the world Dried Up.

But she’s weeping now.

Her parched eyes can’t spare the tears as she howls curses to the sky, her bloody fingers clawing at the roots around my legs.

“Don’t cry,” I whisper.

Mama does not stop weeping, but she gives me her leathery cheek. I kiss it. I taste salt but remember honey and juice and ice.

“Not you,” Mama cries. Her fingers are in my hair. “Not you, baby girl. The whole world, but not you.”

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The day of the Dry,...

We Are the Moor

by Sylvia Heike in Issue Two, January 2022

First published in Flash Fiction Online, February 2020

We are one and we are many. We are shrubby willow and cotton-grass; we are moss and heather. All we need is this peaceful state of being. Enjoy the sun, listen to the birds, drink the mist. But there’s a new voice among us, and she won’t let us rest.

Night and day, she whispers about a man in town.

An image flickers in the dark. Brown eyes, strong arms, warm tanned skin. The glow of red-hot iron. No matter what we tell her, she won’t let go of him, the young blacksmith she was to marry before the fever took her.

“I must go,” she says. “I ...

Touched

by Emmie Christie in Issue Two, January 2022

Rayla discovered the jacket in the back of a Salvation Army sale. Its camo green had faded to a dingy brown. Good enough for 50 cents. She tried it on, shoving her gloved hands into the pockets.

She touched someone’s fingers.

“Oh!” A few yards away, a woman jerked her hand from her coat pocket. Blue eyeshadow smeared her eyelids and a ‘let me speak to your manager’ haircut puffed the back of her head. She swiveled her gaze around and landed on Rayla, suspicion curling around her lips.

Rayla twirled, acting the cutesy kid playing dress up. Not the streeter, not the criminal stitched together ou...

My Sparkle Alone Can't Cull Your Demons

by Eric Farrell in Issue Two, January 2022

Ainsley Miller flips the vanity mirror open in her pristine, bulbous vehicle. She’s been parked out front of a nondescript apartment in a rundown Westside neighborhood, trying to psych herself up for what’s to come. A thin mist coats her windshield, each raindrop a sphere of flaring purple sunset in the distance.

It’s just a job, she tells herself, staring out at the world, the tension so thick it buzzes throughout the entire dusty suburban beach town.

Two cops are waiting outside of the arched entrance leading into the apartment complex. They’re waiting on her, the local forensic officer.

She...