Reckon Review

Tag: fiction

  • One Hundred Percent of the Time

    Fiction by Rob D. Smith Maria Jaworski slid the Styrofoam container containing spinach ricotta pierogies across the window counter to her last customer of the evening. He was always her last customer. “Did you hear about the fire last night at the Parelli’s?” Eugene Mitchum leaned his beefy forearms across the food truck counter. “Never…

  • Some Trouble Next Door

    Fiction by Craig Rodgers The dogs won’t stop tonight. They’re barking, they’re yipping. The sound of their bodies hitting the fence with some force comes and comes again. Andrew turns the blinds but he sees only streetlight falling onto the road. He thinks, maybe I’ll go over there. He thinks, shut those dogs up. He…

  • Abandoned

    Fiction by Zachary Kocanda I joined a lot of Facebook groups after Theresa got sick. Our daughter Katie helped me download the app on my phone. It took an hour, but I did it. First, I joined a group for spouses of cancer patients, then a group where folks chatted about growing up during the…

  • A Stranger Selling J-Cloths

    Fiction by Susan Carey I dream of it often. Haynes Farm. The pebble-dashing on the outside walls of the farmhouse was done by a cowboy builder and after a few months the white layer cracked off in big chunks revealing the house’s bare skin. I imagined the house was embarrassed, like a woman opening the…

  • Imagining the Woman Known Only as Wife On this Eroded Tombstone in the Old Butler Cemetery off Route 194

    Fiction by Janice Leadingham James E. McAnderson1887-1948Co. E. 7th Vol. Inf.Born in West Virginia and His WifeC___1900-1962 C___ spent her growing-up split between her grandmothers—Grandmama, a Baptist who lived in a white clapboard just past the General Store, and Mamaw, who told fortunes with the bones of a bad-luck-cat washed clean in a south-flowing-river to pay Popcorn…

  • If You’re Not First, You’re Last

    Fiction by Brendan Gillen Looking back, the ending was obvious. The cicadas sang, a sigh of deceit. It was summer, depression heavy in the air, heavy in our apartment, in her heavy slurps of hazelnut coffee. I hated the smell. Made my gut lurch, made my ears burn. We did not yet believe that death…

  • Marty Elmo

    Fiction by Drew Coles The very first thing on the very first day of school, the teacher brings Marty Elmo to the front of the classroom to introduce himself. He says his full name is Marty Elmo Flood, he is from Newland, North Carolina, there is a ghost living in his attic, and he once…

  • You Don’t Know How I Get

    Fiction by Heather Bell Adams Kayla Ridgeway and I met at the tail end of a mothers’ morning out, of all places. I was packing up the diaper bag and buckling Henry in the carrier. Kayla tipped back a cup of fruit punch and didn’t so much as wince at the sweetness. She had one…

  • Hey My Son

    Fiction by Anthony Neil Smith Izzy already had the baby when Jackson met her, but he didn’t know if it was her baby – they looked nothing alike. Izzy was dark, tall and thin. Honduran. The kid? Blonde, chubby, white. Jackson guessed he was about a year old, but Izzy said he was younger. And…

  • Vacancy

    Fiction by Kate Deimling I’m in the middle of a mission when there’s a scraping noise, like somebody opening the gate around the pool. I ignore it. I’ve been shot, but if I can make it to the medicine man in the woods, I can get back to full health and do the train heist.…