Short works of fiction typically under 2,000 words, focused on compression, implication, and emotional resonance.
The first thing Alden Mistlehaus noticed were the angles. It wasn’t dramatic. Nothing so vulgar as a wall buckling outward or a door hanging off its hinges like a broken jaw. It was subtler—an inclination in the structure that suggested, without asserting, that the house had once listened to geometry […]
Iris stood at the lip of the fissure, the wind pressing against her back with a familiar, heavy hand. Beneath her, the crevasse fell away into blue shadow. The Highline Trail was a “ghost” on the season’s maintenance log—a routine three-mile stretch overlooked during the spring shuffle. It was a […]
“Is this actually the original?” Mrs. LaPointe asked Jonah the same question everyone eventually did. She held the photograph carefully, as if it might crumble. A black-and-white print, 8×10, the edges soft from age. It showed a man standing under a carport, hat in hand. The 1957 Mercedes Roadster behind […]
Light moved slowly through the house, casting warm bars on the hallway where the walls narrowed. Elena noticed it abstractedly—the subtle constriction just past the coat closet, where the air thickened and sound softened, as if the walls leaned closer to listen. She paused there, waiting for the sensation to […]
The first thing Ishya learned was that the salt flats listened. Granular where the wind worried it into drifts, flaked where old tides had peeled away in sheets, crusted hard as bone where the sun had baked it into a single unbroken shell. In places it splintered into knives that […]
I slid the gun back under the seat. The Smith and Wesson lay as it had, accessible. I adjusted my jacket and sat back on the passenger side, hands loose in my lap. Slash pines, their bark bleeding sap, and saw palmetto crowded the edge of the clearing. To the […]
It was raining outside. The thin, needling rain that slicked the pavement into a mirror. The bar was narrow and dim, not crowded but not sparse. People squeezed into booths and perched on stools, the low hum of conversations overridden with intention. A place where people came and went. You […]
“I want you to come in. Just for a while,” Jackie pulled a long lock of hair through her fingers, not looking at me. The words landed with the soft certainty of something already decided. Not urgent. Not pleading. As if she were naming the weather, or pointing out a […]
The tasting kitchen’s doors closed heavily behind her with a thump.. It was quieter than she expected. As if the room were used to keeping confidences. Jessica laid her coat over the back of the chair, the phone in the pocket silenced. She smoothed her silk blouse and took […]
They met in the café because it was public enough to feel safe yet anonymous enough to disappear afterward. The place sat in a neighborhood that never quite decided what it wanted to be—half-working neighborhood, half-gentrified attempt at charm. The windows were fogged despite the mild weather. Someone had drawn […]