Fiction

Fail-Safe

The door was thick. The room, well-made. I knew. I’d seen. Every step.I never heard Mother screaming in the night. I knew she was, it was obvious. I’d seen her with the cameras. Father had made me watch when I was young. Father had worried I didn’t fully understand. Fully believe. But I did. My favorite days were when it was over and Mother was allowed to return. Mine and hers both, I imagine. She was never happier than after. She would hold me and squeeze me tight, and I’d laugh and she’d pepper my cheek, neck, and forehead with kisses.

In May 2019 (Issue 80)

Fiction

Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island

by Nibedita Sen

Author spotlight

“There are few tales as tragic as that of the denizens of Ratnabar Island. When a British expedition made landfall on its shores in 1891, they did so armed to the teeth, braced for the same hostile reception other indigenous peoples of the Andamans had given them. What they found, instead, was a primitive hunter-gatherer community composed almost entirely of women and children. [ . . . ] The savage cultural clash that followed would transmute the natives’ offer of a welcoming meal into direst offense, triggering a massacre at the hands of the repulsed British . . .”

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In May 2019 (Issue 80)

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- Narrated by:
  
  Stefan Rudnicki
- Duration:
  
  12:48
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Fiction

The Deer Boy

by Micah Dean Hicks

I never had a place. A girl, and the oldest of five. Two brothers and two sisters with howling mouths. Mother sleepwalking from home to work and back. Father was nothing but a flat hand and restless, punishing eyes. They were all noise and need, all shit-kick the dog and eat the last oily handful of lunchmeat from the fridge. All bony-knuckled punch through wood paneling and stinging slap on my cheek.

In May 2019 (Issue 80)

Fiction

Malotibala Printing Press

by Mimi Mondal

Author spotlight

I cannot understand why, but the young men of this generation have developed a new sport—to go and spend a night in a haunted house. Every three months or four, I receive a group of guests. It goes the same way each time. They arrive after sundown, bringing hurricane lamps, candles, sleeping mats, snacks and bottles of water lovingly packed from home. They come in groups of four or five, almost always the atheist, sceptical students of the Presidency College who remind me of my own youth. They sweep aside dirt and rabble from the floor, unfurl their mats, light a hurricane lamp at the centre of their circle, and settle down to tell ghost stories.

In May 2019 (Issue 80)

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- Narrated by:
  
  Pooja Batra
- Duration:
  
  53:16
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Fiction

Shepherds’ Business

by Stephen Gallagher

Picture me on an island supply boat, one of the old Clyde Puffers seeking to deliver me to my new post. This was 1947, just a couple of years after the war, and I was a young doctor relatively new to General Practice. Picture also a choppy sea, a deck that rose and fell with every wave, and a cross-current fighting hard to turn us away from the isle. Back on the mainland I’d been advised that a hearty breakfast would be the best preventative for seasickness and now, having loaded up with one, I was doing my best to hang onto it.

In Apr. 2019 (Issue 79)

Fiction

The One You Feed

by Dennis E. Staples

Author spotlight

There’s an old Indian saying. And I’m an Indian woman who’s worked at an Indian casino as a waitress for almost ten years. My first and only job, right after I turned eighteen. I’ve flirted with old Indian men to get tips and I’ve put on my most tactful, phone operator voice with old Indian women. The old men couldn’t resist hitting on me or smacking my ass and the old women called me a slut for it. So I don’t give a fuck what old Indians have to say.

In Apr. 2019 (Issue 79)

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- Narrated by:
  
  Roxanne Hernandez
- Duration:
  
  27:39
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Fiction

The Ballad of Boomtown

by Priya Sharma

It’s estimated that in 2011 there were 2,881 semi or unoccupied housing developments in Ireland. There was a time when we put our faith in euros, shares and the sanctity of brick. A time when we bought our books from stores as big as barns and ate strawberries from Andalusia, when only a generation before, they’d been grown on farms up the road. The wide avenues of Boomtown were named for trees when there was grand optimism for growth. Now nothing booms in Boomtown. It’s bust and broken.

In Apr. 2019 (Issue 79)

Fiction

The Girl and the House

by Mari Ness

Author spotlight

She is a girl, coming to a house. Not just any house: a large, sprawling mansion, built up from the remains of a ruined abbey, or a shattered castle. One that stands on the edge of a cliff, overlooking the seas, or lost in fog-swept moors, or deep within a rugged forest. A house of secrets, a house of ghosts and haunts. She is alone, or nearly alone, or thinks she is alone. This is not quite as strange as it might sound. In her world, parents die young. Most of her remaining relatives are indifferent, or poor.

In Apr. 2019 (Issue 79)

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- Narrated by:
  
  Stefan Rudnicki
- Duration:
  
  14:51
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Fiction

Carry On

by Seanan McGuire

The line to check in snaked through the terminal like a single great beast, a centipede with a million legs, a thousand heads, and at least five hundred backpacks. Children tugged on their parents’ hands and whined about boredom. Young lovers kissed frantically, ignoring the glances—whether indulgent or disapproving—of the people around them. Air travel was expensive and invasive enough that no one wanted to say anything. That couple might go a year or more without seeing each other again.

In Mar. 2019 (Issue 78)

Fiction

Example

by Adam-Troy Castro

Author spotlight

Hector Ortiz sat on the edge of his cot, smoking a cigarette, because why not. For as long as he cared to remember, “why not?” had been the chief consideration on any of the few life decisions permitted to him, which did not extend much beyond personal habits like smoking. On Death Row, even if you’re not constitutionally partial to smoking, you almost certainly smoke anyway, in part because you have no reason not to, and in part because it is something to do with your hands.

In Mar. 2019 (Issue 78)