Reckon Review

Category: Fiction

  • CALL ME MR. BLACK | Fiction by Mike McHone

    “Mister Black?” A block of ice formed in his stomach. Every nerve in his body told him it was a setup, a sting, and this…, this—what? —eight, nine-year-old kid was the bait. “I’m Nathan.” He scanned the park. Empty swing set. Old lady walking a golden retriever. Mother pushing a stroller. Group of people doing…

  • AUGUST | Fiction by Patricia Q. Bidar

    When my father left us to live with my fifth-grade teacher over in Navy Housing, my mother’s hands changed. They’d always been rough and dry, bare nails cut straight square. Now that she’d begun working, she visited a salon every two weeks. A pink bottle of Rose Milk lotion stayed on her bedside table. She…

  • MORGAN TURNS DOWN THE HEAT | Fiction by Kurt Engstrom

    Morgan stops to look out the kitchen window at the farmyard. The wind-scoured hardpan rimes a week-old skiff of snow with blow dirt that eddies across the ground like a nest of mice swarming a bad dream. The sun is bright, and the sky is an awful blue. The thermometer on the windowsill outside the…

  • SONG OF THE CONFESSOR | Fiction By G. A. Rivers

    I know you wouldn’t want me to be doing what I’m doing right now, sitting in a deserted dive bar in Hell’s Kitchen, having a beer with my former manager. Emphasis on the word former is what you’d say to me with a tug on my sleeve and a show of eyes, the first salvo…

  • INSIDE | Fiction by K.A. Polzin

    The last time my father left the house was for a trip with us to Kmart one sunny day when I was eight: Dad shopped for household items, and my older brother and I walked the aisles, looking at the toys and games. Then, never again. He came home for good. There was no announcement,…

  • IT TAKES A TOLL | Fiction by Margo Griffin

    Dressed in frayed, ripped jeans, a well-worn sweatshirt, and grease-stained vest, the toll collector conducts his business in a long, narrow makeshift tollbooth full of weeds and commuter trash. Splits erupt across his lips like jagged fault lines and tiny red and purple blotches pepper his face like berries, reminding me of our father after…

  • A FINE INVENTION | Fiction by Jason Escareno

    Rogers has more religion in his left nut than other people have in their entire body. Not enough to turn water into wine. He hasn’t tried that. He doesn’t drink. But he can do things that can’t be explained. Like change someone’s mind. Influence grain prices. Raise a child from the dead. He just tweaks…

  • RAT SNAKE | Fiction by Anna Robertson

    The three hard knocks pounded on the hollow metal door at seven AM. Only Beth’s brother knew that she had been held up in his camper, tucked away in the hay barn, and this morning she was pretty sure that even Justin wished he didn’t know that she was there. She opened the door to…

  • SPECIAL INTERESTS | Fiction by Stanton McCaffery

    We’re successful at what we do because of our special interests. Mine: revenge and murder. Also dinosaurs, but that doesn’t help with the murder so much. Some blood got on a book across the room. It’s an illustrated book about the tyrannosaurus. In most cases, if we get blood on something, I burn it or…

  • LATECOMER | Fiction by Eileen Frankel Tomarchio

    He slips in quiet as a silverfish, right after opening credits, a few seats over. No showy Whew! like the matinee is sold out, like it isn’t empty in here but for the usual few lunch-baggers and running commenters and dozing users in the balcony. The movie’s a dark one. A Place In the Sun.…