The Cowards’ Line
byJohn Wilkes Booth and Pat Garrett and Robert Ford rode a ghost train through my living room every night. The first time it came was a week after I moved…
Stories
A Great Rain
byBailey Cunningham was Martin’s friend more than mine and it was early October when I first heard what happened to him. I’d been waiting for the school bus wearing my…
Falling, Flying
byI’m through the heavy door and across the rooftop. I step to the ledge. Don’t look down, I tell myself. It’s a long way down. A woman’s voice, mellifluous in…
A Clean, Buttery Finish
byCharlotte took the elevator to the fifteenth floor. Johnny’s place. Johnny was a professional cuddler who’d burned out from too much spooning and neck nuzzling and was taking a break,…
God Haunting
by1. In the beginning man created me in his own image. Male, he created me. Surprise, surprise. And I say “man,” but what I really mean is a boy. In…
Viper // Víbora
byTranslated from Spanish by Allison A. deFreese Code name: Margueritte With short strokes, the man moves his arms to float in the brown water. The current can carry…
Timeshares
byWhen Nora’s children were children, she never permitted them to go to the zoo. She hated seeing animals in small spaces, away from their people, even if it was for…
Fists & Fingernails
byYour sanity or your apartment—it’s impossible to determine which one you lost first. There was a time, say four years ago, when you definitely still had both. You think of…
Heavy Metal
byTall on the Scriptures and short on trust, folks in these parts agree about the primordial and problematic difference of outsiders. Citing Genesis 11: 6, Bible readers fear Nothing they…
Boys’ Night
byAugust 14—one year since the ban. To “celebrate” we all brought our finest bootleg equalizers, good and loaded. T-bone flaunted his homemade barrel and switch, and Barko fashioned a tracker…