By Brian Barnett The door was locked, just as Daniel Brown anticipated. He gently rattled the doorknob to show Frank that his suspicion hadn’t been unwarranted after all. The window panes rattled noisily and the white paint, grayed with age, threatened to flake from the splintered wood of the heavy door. Frank simply nudged Daniel…

By Phil Yeatman The fuming peak dawns behind a ridge from miles away. Julián pays it no attention at first, another mountain like all the others in the Andean desert. But as it looms large in the windshield he can no longer ignore it. The road curves around its base and into a town of…

By C. M. Costa I watched as a lady with a large, serrated kitchen knife sticking out of her right eye filled out some kind of form. Across from her, a man in a brown suit supervised through gold-rimmed spectacles. When she finished, the man behind the counter said something and pointed past the back…

By Frank Kowal Dear Mr. Johnson: Thank you for interviewing me on Zoom for a reporter’s position on your national newspaper. As per your request, I am now sending you a current news story that I wrote last night. It will give you a good idea of my writing style. (It’s a summary of the…

By Jennifer Walker “I’ll have a Coke please,” Claire shouted over the plane’s engine. Judgment, the kind usually reserved for war crime tribunals, radiated from the woman in the window seat, but by the time Claire helped pass across her club soda she was working hard to look compassionate. Claire focused on the hand-off to…

By Daphne Fama He killed her in the bathroom of an Amoco gas station on a lonely stretch of Route 301 somewhere between South Carolina and Georgia in 1988. It was the sort of bathroom you needed a key to get into. The type that’s outside in the back, a broom closet with a depressing,…

By J.R. Packard The tragedy of Margaret Lincoln is a difficult one to understand. Not least of all, by its unique and curious nature–but that it occurred to none other than the most innocent and random of young ladies, in the most innocent and random of places. And yet, despite the strangeness of it, it…

By B. Craig Grafton A man grew old, and as he did so he started to reflect back upon his life. He did not wax nostalgic. For he forgot about all the good times and good things he had done in his life and for some reason or other fixated and dwelt only upon all…

By Zeke Jarvis I. When anyone first walked out onto one of the patios or decks, the first thing that they would see was the trees. Green in the summer, an array of beautiful colors in the fall, and pleasantly white in the winter. It was a nice talking point when homeowners wanted to sell…

By Franco Amati I was getting a bagel and a coffee, and the girl behind the counter was looking at me weird. She was, like, really staring at me. I’m not a handsome guy, so it didn’t make sense. I got all self-conscious and touched my face thinking maybe there was something stuck to it.…