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Ruth
Fiction by Dan Crawley Her upper body bows over a pile of Scratcher games in the middle of the bed. She’s wielding a quarter on a bright red two dollar ticket. “Goddammit,” she mutters and starts to work furiously on another. I stand near the edge of the mattress. I might as well be acres…
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Osmosis
Fiction by Sara Hills The guy who wants to date my daughter shows up an hour late, swings his long hair like a cape and brings my daughter a square bottle of whisky with fruit in it, not flowers or an apology for being late but whisky and yes, I roll my eyes even though…
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The Hottest and Longest Lasting Fire
Fiction by Michaella A. Thornton A few of the mothers from the neighborhood stand in line together six feet apart at an Illinois pot dispensary. To get here, they have ridden the shuttle bus from the now-shuttered Gateway Fun Park, an amusement park their teenagers once loved to visit as kids. While these moms now…
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Family Portrait
Fiction by Michael Bettendorf The portrait on the dusty mantle was of a family who didn’t own new cars and never would. Flannel-clad and wearing their good jeans, the family sat uncomfortably in a studio worth more than their house. They wore polyester smiles and were told if they worked hard enough, they could accomplish…
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Gangrene
Fiction by Richard Holinger “Don’t go gangrene on me,” is what I tell the foot, but it has no common sense. It blames the black and smelly on me. “What you run into fenceposts for?” it asks. “Well maybe it jump out at me,” I answer because the snowmobile has got no radar. New powder…
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Balaclava
Fiction by Matthew Fiander The mask’s thick cloth deadens the bell’s clanging as I walk through the Speedy Mart door. REGGIE is behind the counter, a tag on his chest announcing, as always, his name in block letters. He is startled but quietly, just a faint lifting of a brow like What’s this? He isn’t…
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Chamomile Tea, Undrunk
Fiction by Jo Varnish The first dead mother was mine. Fifty-eight years old and dead seven Tuesdays ago, not from an incurable disease, nor from a car accident. After making a cup of chamomile tea, she slipped on a piece of slimy maple ham. Her head hit either the sink or the tile floor—the coroner’s…
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Ghost Heron
Fiction by Jack B. Bedell The old soul wakes in the top of its cypress tree, beak tucked under wing. It readies its bones for flight knowing the sun will stretch fingers over the horizon line soon. Bare branches let all the cold into its nest this time of year, but the old soul does…
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Country Roads
Fiction by Stuart Phillips “Did you bring me out here to kill me?” My grandmother filled the Buick with her thin, old woman voice; it ricocheted off the headliner as we slewed back and forth in the loose gravel. She was partly right: we were going to help an old woman die. Just not her.…