Fiction

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March 27, 1983 Sissy Ghent is twenty-four years old. She has two children, Jill, 4, and Kelly, 3. It is a surprise to her that she is a stay-at-home-mom, but there she is. Her high school sweetheart and husband of five years, Cary Ghent, is also twenty-four. He owns and operates Butch’s Muffler. He bought …

To read this story, please purchase a copy of Issue #20 or subscribe to the print magazine.

To read this story, please purchase a copy of the issue or subscribe to the magazine.

I spotted him at Tanya’s barbecue, balancing his baby in the crook of his toned forearm. In his free hand he held a beer—something crisp and low ABV—and with it he gesticulated an elaborate story about a time he was humiliated then redeemed himself with charm and wit. Tanya worried about the cheese. It had …

This was back in 2010 when I was working as an assistant at Balaskas Bros Wound Care. The sign said Balaskas Bros, but I never met any brothers. As far as I knew there was just Iannis Balaskas, who went by Bob, a Greek immigrant from Athens with pig eyes and a snub nose like …

1999 Fuck it, is the general feeling here, because we are minimum-wage employees in a doomed independent bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky, because what we do is useless, stocking and straightening and standing idly at the register, answering phones, ferrying customers to the Health & Fitness section, Gardening, Travel, guiding them back to the books they …

It was Valentine’s Day, two months before my sixteenth birthday, when Todd first noticed me. I opened the front door in my brown-and-gold Wildcats uniform, still flushed from my track meet, to find Beth and Todd curled up on the couch, his hand on her thigh. Beth’s eyes flicked to me, then back to American …

Ezra Barsky died at his desk around lunch time. His body sagged in his chair, his head fell on the keyboard, and his left arm dangled like it had no bones. A group of his colleagues walking to a conference room passed him but thought: so what? Ezra could’ve been taking a power nap or …

I got a letter from the government claiming an easement on my leg. I had just moved into this house and must not have looked at the paperwork carefully. A few months later, an official in a yellow vest and hardhat knocked on my door. He was carrying a machine that looked like a hole …