Fiction

My mom was sixteen when a band of boys took her out to the woods and bound her to a tree and tortured her to death, like in Jennifer’s Body, so you see her womb was kinda already out of commish by the time she got around to wanting to have me. A year ago, after my thirteenth birthday, she made her first and only concerted effort at explaining it.

In Jan. 2026 (Issue 160)

Fiction

Dregs

by R. Diego Martinez

They fell just to splatter on the concrete, some of them small as ice cubes. It was a day without clouds and the man selling fruit from his stand on the corner was nearly concussed as they began to patter against the street with sound like the early drumming of hail.

In Jan. 2026 (Issue 160)

Fiction

The Tailors

by Kurt Fawver

Author spotlight

The day before the blind missionaries first arrived in our village, we had been raided by one of Jurgen Blanco’s enforcement squads. Blanco’s people were all the same—gaunt, lupine-visaged mockeries of men and women with broken, half-formed grins that perpetually played about their mouths.

In Jan. 2026 (Issue 160)

Fiction

Shahmeran

by Leyla Hamedi

Author spotlight

Up on the hill, past the wrought iron gates, sat the house where twin sisters Sayeh and Roshan lived. As imposing as it looked, the house, like the gate, was kept in elegantly stellar condition. There were no loose shutters banging on windy nights.

In Dec. 2025 (Issue 159)

Fiction

Review: When the Baby Sleeps

by Lyndsie Manusos

The initial spark for this story was a writing prompt I saw online about writing a review for a horror movie that doesn’t exist. It led me to think about my personal relationship with horror movies. Since having children, my tolerance for some of them has diminished, though my love has not.

In Dec. 2025 (Issue 159)

Fiction

The Short History of a Long-Forgotten, Ill-Fated Telenovela

by Dante Luiz

Author spotlight

The last copy of Senhora (1972–1973) lies, with no identification tag, on the shelves of Cinemateca Brasileira, the largest audiovisual archive in Latin America. If anyone ever opened the tin cans, they would see that its quadruplex tapes are flaky, almost falling apart.

In Dec. 2025 (Issue 159)

Fiction

Bleed for Me, Bro

by Sharang Biswas

Author spotlight

Watching Jules claw his way back to life was the hottest thing I’d ever seen. This was the kind of scene artists immortalized with gold and lapis lazuli illumination, the kind of scene that soared, heaven-seeking, up cathedral vaults, buoyed by choirs of castrati. One moment, Jules was twitching in a pool of his own blood, and the next, he shuddered back into himself, lips opening like a crescent moon.

In Nov. 2025 (Issue 158)

Fiction

Primordium

by Erica Ruppert

I have a longstanding fascination with fungi—their interconnectedness, their otherness, their ability to emerge from seemingly nothing. I also have a longstanding fascination with serial killers and the dehumanization they inflict. When I began writing “Primordium” it was only a vignette about mushrooms and their drifting spores, but it grew unexpectedly to incorporate both interests.

In Nov. 2025 (Issue 158)

Fiction

Make of Your Chest a Place for Birds

by James L. Sutter

Author spotlight

The surgery is an aortic something-or-other—you don’t really bother to listen. You don’t need some surgeon barely out of pull-ups to tell you your heart hasn’t worked right since Sam died. They put you under for it, and isn’t that a wonder: to sleep without dreaming. Or if you do, the propofol makes you forget, and that’s almost as good.

In Nov. 2025 (Issue 158)

Fiction

The Versions of Yourself That You’re Better Off Without

by Aimee Ogden

Story background: I’m probably not the only person dealing with intrusive thoughts about everything I’ve ever said or done, or not said or not done, that I wish I could change. Sometimes I’ve wished I could shout at the past versions of myself.

In Oct. 2025 (Issue 157)

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Jennifer’s Daughter

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Dregs

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The Tailors

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Shahmeran

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Fiction

Review: When the Baby Sleeps

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Fiction

The Short History of a Long-Forgotten, Ill-Fated Telenovela

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Fiction

Bleed for Me, Bro

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Fiction

Primordium

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Fiction

Make of Your Chest a Place for Birds

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Fiction

The Versions of Yourself That You’re Better Off Without

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