Original Archives - Page 17 of 45

Poetry

Around the Corners

Struggling with lifelong mental health issues means I’ve heard a lot of suggestions from folks who seem to think I’ve overlooked any number of simple remedies. It often reminds me of the confidence on display when, while watching a horror movie, some viewers are just so certain that they would make smarter, quicker, braver decisions than the characters on screen. How calm and bold and logical they would be while surviving the deadly threats.

In Aug. 2022 (Issue 119)

Fiction

The Arm Ouroboros

by Adam-Troy Castro

Author spotlight

I take the hammer in my right hand and raise it up over my head to bring down, screaming, against the left hand I have placed flat on the tabletop. My knuckles do not break. My skin does not tear. I do not scream in agony. Instead, my left hand flattens like soft rubber, the imprint of the hammer’s head clearly visible in what is supposed to be human flesh. The sight is worse than any pain could possibly be.

In Aug. 2022 (Issue 119)

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- Narrated by:
  
  Stefan Rudnicki
- Duration:
  
  17:57
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Fiction

Skitterdead

by Mel Kassel

My short stories often grow from a fixation on a certain animal. I loved the idea of a “ghost” being a hyper-specific emotional state, something petty and small enough to possess a bug. At the same time, I wanted the centipede to show the tantruming ghost something beautiful, an experience that a human body or mind couldn’t offer on its own.

In Aug. 2022 (Issue 119)

Fiction

Every Atom Belonging to Me as Good Belongs to You

by Endria Isa Richardson

Author spotlight

We came down to Independence in the afternoon. The sky as we descended was white, gray, pink smeared on a dirty canvas. I had the sense—because that morning we had been very high, above 13,000 feet, and everything had been very still as we balanced on hard, flat, brown rocks—that we were walking through the sky, and that we might come down from the sky painted white, and gray, and pink, ourselves.

In Aug. 2022 (Issue 119)

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- Narrated by:
  
  Tonia Ransom
- Duration:
  
  34:12
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Poetry

Bitch Moon

by Sarah Grey

I spent much of my early life in a tiny community on California’s distant North Coast. Isolation breeds secrets; the peaceful dark of an old-growth redwood forest provides easy cover for violence, and speaking out carries devastating social consequences—especially for women and girls. I wondered: what if their whispers grew teeth?

In Jul. 2022 (Issue 118)

Nonfiction

Bunnies

by Dante Luiz

I spent years thinking of writing this down, but I postponed it because I didn’t want to add another “creepy kid” story to the world—sometimes, kids are just sad and lonely and making them feel creepy for the sake of horror feels cheap. But this happened when I was also the creepy child to someone else’s story, maybe even to this creepy child herself, so maybe it’s worth telling, after all.

In Jul. 2022 (Issue 118)

Fiction

The Closet Game

by Robert Levy

Author spotlight

You know the game, don’t you? All you need is a closet, and a book of matches—and a willing participant. Not much to it, considering. Jesse first heard about it at twelve from his older sister, after she came home drunk from a party and was trying hard to scare him. Sleepover shenanigans when you lacked a Ouija board, bullshit kid stuff, he knew that much. A game of pretend. Still, she managed to strike a nerve. You can open a door to another dimension, she whispered across the kitchen table.

In Jul. 2022 (Issue 118)

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- Narrated by:
  
  Stefan Rudnicki
- Duration:
  
  35:39
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Fiction

Dr. Wasp and Hornet Holmes

by Lavie Tidhar

Author spotlight

Dr. Wasp and Hornet Holmes were gathering nectar one day when Holmes made a startling observation. “The Queen has been behaving rather oddly in recent days,” she said. Dr. Wasp pulled her proboscis from the flower and regarded Holmes with surprise. “However do you mean?” she said. “Do you ever feel that not all is as it seems?” Holmes said. “That what we see is illusory, that dark forces move unseen behind the bright façade of the world?”

In Jun. 2022 (Issue 117)

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- Narrated by:
  
  Stefan Rudnicki
- Duration:
  
  27:18
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Fiction

There Are No Monsters on Rancho Buenavista

by Isabel Cañas

In Folktales of Mexico, compiled by Américo Paredes (one of the founding fathers of Chicano studies in the U.S.), I read a story about a man who discovered that his wife was a monster. Any night the man was away, the wife stripped away her skin and flew through the air as a skeleton, terrorizing the people of the town and stealing infants to eat.

In Jun. 2022 (Issue 117)

Fiction

The Last of the Juggalos

by Alex Saint-Widow

Author spotlight

My grandfather was a clown prophet. I mean he was a clown. A literal clown. He wore clown makeup. And he foretold the end. Accurately. John, the Puranas, Snorri Sturluson, Nostradamus, any of those apocalypse writers—they didn’t know shit. The guy who really knew the magic, the guy who really knew about how the end of the world would come, was my grandfather.

In Jun. 2022 (Issue 117)