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Naked Nest
By
Vivian Cartagena
“You get a passionate, hot-as-coals multi-hour makeout session. I mean the taste of each other eats you up. You never want to stop. You go until your jaw aches and you taste like each other. It swallows you up and … Read More
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K-Mart
By
Daisuke Shen
Yes, hello I’m calling to talk to someone. Where am I calling from? I don’t think I know how to answer that. ‘Cause the town doesn’t have a name… Yeah, don’t know that either. I’m sorry, but I just wanted … Read More
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Spinrock/Snapfish
By
Mar Ovsheid
For show-and-tell I bring my pet rock, Earl, hidden in a shoebox. I wait my turn, clapping along halfheartedly every time Hector’s pug manages a trick. It does its final routine, shake/roll-over/play dead, and Mr. Mann calls on me. “You’re … Read More
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Clover
By
Jay Holmes
My dad never talked to me, not really. Even when he wanted me to do something he found a way to say it through someone else. “Tell him to go split some wood. Make himself useful,” he’d say to Mom … Read More
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Jackalope
By
Maxwell Pretzer
It was one hundred and fifteen degrees when I pulled into town. There wasn’t so much as a dandelion tuft in the sky to proffer shade. The heat was immutable and torturous, the kind of heat that bakes you like … Read More
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The Hand That Guides You
By
Olga Murillo
Dark all around. Downer downer colder colder. The smell at first six feet is rot. The smell of organs exposed.
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Rosehead
By
Elle Nash
Cherry liked watching the pretty bulbous eyes of the Santa Gertrudis in the kill chamber until they went blank.
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Folding Chairs
By
Allison Mick
Carrying my book, holding my place with my finger, I followed her into the run-down building next to the Drive-In.
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Glory Udder
By
John Shirley
Growling along to the electric chiming of Sarah’s Ibanez hollow-body licks, Press again started to feel the sickness that didn’t want to admit it was a sickness.
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Come for the Popcorn, Stay for the Show
By
Sarah Monroy Solís
“Remember not to call me uncle,” says the liar’s uncle as they both step off the bus, onto the dusty road leading into the drive-in.
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There Is No Easy Way Towards Earth
By
jonah wu
Car broke down. Too much dust in the engine, I dunno. Wheels kept kicking up land all the way through California & eventually the car sputtered and died.
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The Memorandums of Baja Bonita Construction
By
Brandon Case
Our rules are in place to prevent needless disfigurement and death.
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Ruins of the Sun
By
Brian Evenson
The first whispers I heard concerning Louis le Palme’s Ruins of the Sun arrived just hours before the film’s first and, as far as I have been able to determine, only screening.
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Meat
By
Claire McNerney
In the pen I eat anything in front of me. I eat pellets and hay, I eat tails and dirt.
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Everything Grows Here
By
R. Phalen Rayson
Everybody at her wife’s family reunion had too much to say about babies to talk to Wren.
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House
By
Barton Aikman
Right before I caved and called Dad, his work called. They never do that. The woman’s voice was warm but strange, shaky at the end of sentences.
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Rule 99
By
Joshua Duke
If the directions the boss gave me were correct, I was getting close to Los Suelos. The road before me devolved from a state highway to a county road of rutted macadam and faded thermoplastic road paint.
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diary, leatherbound
By
Chet King
Nasty cold spell early in the season. Forgot about this thing until I got to lookin for tinder. Sure I won’t need those last three pages.
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Ruminants
By
A.P. Howell
Mike’s getting pretty good shots. The composition’s solid, with the street spinning out into the distant desert.
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The Earworm
By
Zach Gonzalez-Landis
Greg took off his sweat-stained Blue Dicks hat and wiped his brow with his forearm. That goddamn song.
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Unfilled
By
Noah Lemelson
“Fuck,” the Con Artist said. The stack of fake IDs he’d been holding flew wild, into the dirt, lamination gleaming in the mid-morning sun.
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Slaughter
By
Barton Aikman
It’s hard to find good help these days. Before lunch, I knew the new guy they brought in wouldn’t cut it. His hands shook when I handed him the bolt gun.
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Chasm
By
Ross Showalter
Calvin started going to the diner as an escape. He wanted to avoid church, but his parents made him promise to acknowledge God, His presence, at least once a week.
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The Buried Man
By
B.R. Yeager
The truth is I don’t expect them to show up at all. I’m used to getting blown off. It’s basic as hell—New Kid Blues, et cetera, et cetera.
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The Carlos Clay Crockery Company
By
Erin Brown
Bianca didn’t have time to stuff the hundred-dollar bill into her pocket before Luis came in to check her register.
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¿Eres un Duende?
By
Lauren Lavín
The preparations required ingredients she didn’t like clients to see. Most disliked what they saw.
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After School Program
By
M. Shaw
A bunch of ladies tried to go hiking in a cave but it goes a lot deeper than they thought. There was some freaky dudes inside.
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Pilgrimage to the Hole
By
Alyssa Greenberg
Took a single button. An hour later I started seeing big swirls of color, then feeling slightly nauseous.
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Excerpts From a Doctoral Student’s Closing Notes
By
O.F. Cieri
I can’t believe this. I managed to do the only thing I didn’t want to do.
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Damn Diary
By
Cath Lauria
Goddamn those Schaefers. If I never write another word in this damn diary, let those ones be the ones that stick.
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The Heavens Beneath
By
Emily Woodworth
Los Suelos is a revelation. On the surface the town looks rundown. But there is a thrum beneath the crust here.
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Caring for Mr. Bernard: An Instruction Manual
By
Mary Gulino
The position you are about to assume is one of great esteem.
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Rock Bottom
By
Ian Kappos
There are ley lines. You know them because you feel them beneath your feet, humming up your stunted legs.
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Code Switching
By
Christopher Zerby
I’ve been to more Blue Dicks games than anyone else in town, I bet. I don’t like baseball, but since Robert’s gone I’ve got time on my hands.
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Gold-Dust
By
Megan Baffoe
It was a short enough walk to the usual haunt. Too short, almost; certainly not long enough to forget the cows.
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Pala Hardware
By
B.F. Vega
Lucinda woke up in darkness. There was some sort of noise, like a hum or maybe a very low tune coming from outside.
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Lying / Garden
By
J.J. Prado
I got yelled at frequently for lying on the ground when I had a perfectly sturdy bed to sleep on.
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Speaking from the Heart
By
Reina Cruz
The last thing she remembered was Abuela’s panic. It rang through her as Abuela’s soft hand pressed against her forehead.
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Bicicleta
By
A.P. Thayer
Jagged machines whose ancient forms I can’t imagine claw at the blue expanse above us. A graveyard of metal monsters.