Category: fiction
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Season of the Drought
by Mark Tulin Artist: Denis Tangney The rain was always in the back of my mind. When will a storm come? A beautiful downpour? Hell, I’d take a drizzle, a couple of spits from heaven. I kept looking up where God was supposed to be. Why are you holding back? Why are you torturing me?…
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Bacon
by Jessica Hwang Artist: Scott Olson The air is laden with stink and with noise. The sharp sting of ammonia cuts through layers of coppery blood and vomit-tang. Squeals puncture the suffocating heat. Men shovel piles of steaming dung, kicking animals out of their way. Their tanned ropy forearms sling heavy buckets of slop into…
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Dark Fate
by Joe Giordano Artist: Jeff Bergen I was drawn to Anouk. Slim, elegant, she entered a room and became the center of attention. When I first appeared, she blanched and strode away, but I couldn’t be shed that easily. I followed her everywhere, even to the Ritz Carlton where she schemed to seduce another friend’s…
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Ne eligat is qui donum accipit
by Andy Betz I sat in the driver’s seat waiting. She sat in the passenger seat watching me suffer. The rain took its cue from her success and began a slow trickle, just enough to make it excusable to remain with her, not enough to justify leaving. I should have departed nonetheless. Her perfume became…
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Time, Down, and Wary
by Moiya Gooden Mona sat on the floor collecting her small stash of freshly washed baby blankets and arranging them into neatly folded, color-coded stacks beside her. She looked at the little black trunk, gifted to her by her grandmother at her baby shower a week earlier, and opened it and placed the stacks inside.…
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A Line Before The Other
by Dina Hendawi Artist: Nisha K. Sethi “When are we going to stop calling these terrorists the fringe and realize that they’re the mainstream.” Everyone around the staff table is uncomfortably quiet. Trent is talking to Allen, but really directing the conversation towards us. It is hard to tell if he is baiting us for…
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Horehound Candy
by Marco Etheridge Artist: Igor Markov Lieutenant Bondar scanned the battle-scarred landscape through a pair of heavy binoculars. He reconnoitered from inside a hidden basement bunker, elbows propped on the sill of a blown-out window. The powerful binoculars compressed the perspective of the broken land before him as if capturing the scene between plates of…
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And…
by Richard Ankers Artist: KC – Khings Collage And… I loved her despite the tales, those fabricated fantasies. There was never a why, not from me. I accepted her as she was, like the clouds accepted the rain, in misery made manifest and melancholy downpours. This was just the way it was. Initially, I drove…
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The Hurtshop
Jonathan Darren Garcia is a San Antonio based writer. He was a featured poet in San Antonio’s Collective Carefest and is a Staff Contributor to PEPPER magazine. He has been published in multiple literary magazines including Royal Rose, From Whispers to Roars, Scum Gentry Alternative Arts, Beyond The Veil
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Cat Eyes
by Logan Rose “Go get the cat,” says Mother. I roll my eyes. “Roll your eyes one more time, young lady,” says Stepfather, who likely let the cat out, in the first place. He raises his hackles from the couch, ready to stand over me and emphasize his authority, as if it’s not already clear…
Dream Noir 