By: Harman Burgess George was crouched in the bushes, staring at the backpack lying on the path in front of him. Not so much at the unconscious girl next to it—he wasn’t hungry enough to try his hand at cannibalism—but…

By: Francine Rodriguez He didn’t come around that often.  By the time I was old enough to figure that out I realized it was always around the time my mother got her welfare check, the first and the fifteenth of…

By: T.R. Healy      Lowell Barker paused in front of the door of his apartment for a minute, carefully adjusting the pale blue surgical mask across his mouth, then opened the door and started down the steps.  He moved cautiously,…

By: Michael Casey If you’d asked me last year how I thought 2020 would play out my answer would have been way off the mark. Other than the pandemic, one thing I wouldn’t have anticipated was my trip to India….

By: Donald Njoaguani Mama was dead, but it always felt as though she was right there, all the time, watching me, scolding me, and only I could see her. I never had a direct picture of her but I could…

By Clark Zlotchew Fifteen-year-old Randy Remington III could not have foreseen the heartbreak followed by joy that would accrue to him because of the flamboyant Ms. Josephine M. Burke.  It all started with her fateful intrusion into the meeting room…

By: Yash Seyedbagheri At nightfall, my mother’s bathed in pale blue, tangerine, and pink clouds. Her words are confident, replete with nicknames and jokes. Her gait soothes, a clickety-clack of heels. But at midnight, the crack of the fridge and…

By: Alan Swyer Flying to Connecticut to attend his father-in-law’s funeral, Artie Shore found himself in a quandary.  Expected to join his wife, her siblings, and their spouses in saying a few words at the gathering, he was hard-pressed to…

By: Alan Swyer On a Tuesday evening in March, after getting cold feet three days in a row, Darlene Cook finally made an announcement to her family while serving dinner. “As you all know,” she told her husband and two…

By: Dah       They were driving Highway 1, heading south through San Diego. Figured they’d be crossing the border in thirty-minutes. It was late September, and the weather was hot. Luke was at the wheel and Abby rode shotgun. They…