Reckon Review

Tag: fiction

  • 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.…

  • OPERATIC HEART | Fiction by Jen Soong

    My lover didn’t disappear all at once. On Friday, I walked home from work and she kissed me at the door, smelling like cardamom. The sky spilled lavender ink.         “Look, my pinky finger is missing,” she said, holding up her right hand. Gone. No stub or trace. Her tone was full of anticipation. Her face,…

  • THE THINGS I ALWAYS DO | Fiction by Benjamin Porter

    I clean Grandpa before I clean the rooms. This makes it easier—to get it out of the way. Maybe it means I hate him, or I’m just chicken shit. Either way it has to be done quick, like setting a joint in one pull. Saw that once back in high school at a match where…

  • THE PREACHER MAN | Fiction by Kimberli McWhirter

    It’s not much of a town. Not many would dispute my word on that. Hardly qualifies as a wide spot in the road. But it’s home. Got some good people, some bad ones, some sittin’ on the fence ones, depending on who’s watching. And it’s pretty enough, in the way things usually are, if you…

  • RADIO SILENCE | Fiction by Holly Hilliard

    When I heard the news about Jackson Cole, I couldn’t stop thinking about the summer I turned sixteen—the summer I got a job at Cole’s Resort. I wasn’t hired as a lifeguard since I never passed any sort of certification test, but on busy days, my boss would wink and send me out to the…

  • THINGS THAT ADD UP | Fiction by Elizabeth Murphy

    Mama expected a boy, lo and behold got me, called me Paddy, short for Patrick. She was like that, determined to have things her way, not caring about the troubles she was inflicting on me. As if the name wasn’t trouble enough, she sent me to school at age four. I was the runtiest runt…