Billy Walker, Hero
bySEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD BILLY WALKER, driving home from bagging at Win-Dixie, eases his beat-up Kia through cackling pea-sized hail on State Road 40, right outside Ocala, on the rim of the national…
Stories
Witnessed Through a Windowpane
byTHE SUN SETS LACKADAISICALLY LIKE MOLASSES ON HOT SUMMER NIGHTS. Sometimes there is a soft breeze that pushes the pieces of trash across the parking lot, lightly scraping the pavement….
August Cherries
byON THE SUN-SOAKED HILL’S OF APRIL’S CALIFORNIA, I remember the way November’s New York air ripped through her. *** The last day I see her the city lies frozen over,…
The Waster
by1. TWENTY MINUTES INTO WHAT THE HISTORY MAJOR’S DATE—her mother’s friend’s son—had referred to as “the film about lesbians,” a man who’d been sitting at the end of the front…
Femur
byWE ARE TWELVE WHEN WE SHARE OUR FIRST CIGARETTE ON THE BALCONY OF A POST-WAR BUDGET MOTEL. She wears her mother’s dress and I wear ill-fitting, low-rise jeans and together…
Self-Portrait with Bandaged Penis
byI. OH, SURE, HE LEARNED FROM HIS BUDDIES. Once, when he was four years old, his best friend reached into the back of his teddy bear and extracted a flask…
Salt
byTHERE’S A LEGEND IN OUR VILLAGE. One that tells the tale of our founder, our beginnings, and what she left behind to protect us. Αλας, the woman made of salt….
Goulash for a Ghoul
byMY FRIENDS WILL TELL YOU THAT I’M ECLECTIC. I’ve had a varied career having been at one point in my life a Jesuit specializing in exorcism. But eventually the collar…
Return to Nowhere
byTWO RIDERS MATERIALIZE FROM A SHIMMERING MIRAGE of heatwaves that dance on the blasted surface of this desert wasteland. They are men of legend, El Sombrero Blanco, the Pistolero de…
Coins Over Flowers
byWinner of the Bridge Eight Summer Short Story Prize Estimates suggest Nellie Plink started sheening sometime in late December. Her husband of two years first noticed the characteristic iridescent film…