Original Archives - Page 18 of 46

Fiction

Skitterdead

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)

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- Narrated by:
  
  Roxanne Hernandez
- Duration:
  
  36:01
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Poetry

Field Notes from the Anthropocene

by Priya Chand

The imagery is from time spent in the woods, including in an area here with 14,000-year-old glacial soil deposits—how special is that, people clean up your garbage. Back then it would’ve been predominantly oak trees, but we now see a lot more maple, as well as other introduced species. The fireflies . . . the species here overwinter in the soil.

In May 2022 (Issue 116)

Fiction

Esther (1855)

by Juan Martinez

Author spotlight

The Saints saw nothing but rock and scrub, the one lone Joshua tree dead, its arms defeated. They traveled by wagon, the four still alive, their clothes stiff with their own stink and with the smell of dirt. The dead they buried or thought they buried along the way. The animals gone, all but one, and that one fading. They tied casks to the wagon, dragged the wagon themselves, the wagon lighter now because mostly empty.

In May 2022 (Issue 116)