She extended one arm towards me, then another. I allowed her ten limbs to encircle me, snake around my ribs, under my arms, between my clothed thighs. I got one glimpse of her pink, rubbery face before her hooked beak caught me. It clamped my mouth so hard I tasted
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Winner of the Sonora Review Issue 77 Fiction Contest, selected by Rebecca Makkai
According to Jan Krufka of Hard Facts Magazine, my studio apartment was
When I think of what I want your name to be, I
Rylan won’t change the lightbulb in the living room. She won’t sit down to read, watch a movie or play scrabble there, and it’s all because of the heads. She doesn’t say
It’s 1982. She’s a junior in college, an English major, spending the spring academic quarter studying art and literature in England. The cuisine is awful: gloppy meat pies, mushy peas, Marmite, treacly-sweet
I knew it was time to leave Florida when the sinkhole ate Buddy. I was sitting in a kiddie pool with the hose running, throwing a mangled tennis ball for him to
I know girls sometimes do witchcraft. I’m at a pizza parlor two blocks down from my job. This is where I meet Margaret. I’m on my lunch break from driving warehouse forklifts.
No one bothered telling me that my father was picking me up, so when I saw him outside school, I worried someone was dead. “Why the fuck would anyone be dead?” he
I started calling my mother by her first name when I was 14. It was the day after my father deserted us. He left a message under a magnet on the refrigerator
Gemma gets what she wants. All of the girls learn this, one way or another. When Violet has the nerve to take the last sparkling water, Gemma empties five cans of Diet
The other day, I read an article that reminded me of what happened with David. I was on the bus, skimming my news app, and then I realised how similar the story
The man who kept a book in his pants came by it honestly. That is to say, Terrance did not simply see a book and think, And into my pants this must
On the morning of his death, Dumont is late. We don’t blame him—we like Dumont. There’s no denying he has a sweetness to him, an inviting, innocent smile that’s not worth murdering.