The cult section of the literary world
By: Douglas Hackle The ’70 Plymouth Barracuda was already doing a steady 95 MPH down I-90, causing the ’cuda’s shotgun-riding passenger—a lamplighter by trade—to grip the dashboard with a white-knuckled hand, dig his shoes into the floor, and press his back hard into his seat, his forehead slick with terror-sweat. […]
By: John Bruni The end. _____ John Bruni is the author of BLOOD, DONG OF FRANKENSTEIN and POOR BASTARDS AND RICH FUCKS. He lives in Elmhurst, IL, where he spends waaaaaaaay too much time thinking about weird shit for a guy who doesn’t smoke weed.
by: D.J. Tyrer People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, they say. But, what if you live in a house of lint and wool: should you throw stones then? Serennessa lived in a house of lint and wool on the edge of the village, not far from the […]
by: S.E. Casey It was during the limbo contest that I knew something was horribly wrong. I wasn’t being ageist in noting the winner was a sixty year old man. As the captain of the cruise ship, he certainly had a lifetime of practice. But when the bar was lowered […]
by: Ben Fitts Mike spotted the water cube first, which meant that it was his to jump in. The water cube slithered across the desert towards us where we waited in nothing but our swim trunks, the hot sand stinging the bottoms of our feet. It looked like a big […]
by: David S. Atkinson I spent the better part of the afternoon packaging up my excreta in cardboard boxes and clear packing tape again. It’s time consuming, but there isn’t a whole lot of choice. Given my particular situation, I have to dispose of it through the mail. A piece […]
by: JP Vallières We couldn’t get the iceberg to melt no matter how hard we tried: blow torch, bonfire, hairdryer, rubbing our butts back and forth to the song, That’s the Way (I Like It). I’m not into melting things usually, but there were some important items encased in that […]
by: Zoltán Komor My wife wants a baby, but I’d prefer a remote control drone with HD Wi-Fi camera, so I figure out an intermediate solution: I’ll knock up my wife, let her give birth to the child, and after a couple of weeks, when she gets bored with this […]
by: Sean Noah Noah Y2K came and went and pretty much everyone could agree that the world had ended, but nobody could figure out exactly how. Just days before, everything had seemed so certain: all the computers wouldn’t be able to change the dates correctly and they’d break down and […]
by: Bert Stanton All he wanted was a bag with handles. Just one large bag with two handles. Paper or plastic, didn’t matter. Big enough to fit the contents of the brown bag sitting on the checkout counter, almost filled to the top with enough food and assorted sundries to […]
by: James Burr He danced in the dry ice, his limbs staccato-jerking in the strobes. He’d cleared a space for himself and was dancing on the spot, breathing heavily through his nose and mouth, his eyes glazed and staring blankly ahead. “I’m dancing, I’m dancing,” he kept repeating as he […]
by: Martin Rutley It was late, Saturday night, when they brought me in. Strapped to a stretcher, disinfectant smeared into the corners of my eyes, the smell of petroleum in their greasy sideburns. Dressed in the green and gray of the company uniform, each of the six had joyously taken […]
by: John Wayne Comunale Jonathan Switz was loved and renowned by his people as much if not more than he was loathed and reviled by them. Such is the plight of every leader, but Switz remained unaffected. He couldn’t feel the love, hate, or indifference of his people because he […]
by: Neil Sanzari When the girl of malnourished complexion crossed paths with the ribbit in the ruins of Saint X’s Parochial Middle School, she refrained from drawing a single arrow. It was her first encounter with the dread creature. In fact, she had only heard the faintest of frightened whispers […]
by: Cornell R. Nichols When I got to work on Monday, 8 a.m. sharp, vampire swans were eating their way through my office building. Zipping around the corporate high-rise in a flock, a ballet, a whiteness, they have managed to strip away the concrete from all twenty regular and five […]
by: Ira Rat I wonder if there will be enough air in here to last the next few hours. The guys who built this fucking thing said so, but how would they know? It’s not like they would ever come down here and test it, bet their lives their calculations […]
by: Avichai Brautigam We mined the planet dead. Not in the sense that we burrowed, like dwarves, carving Morias and Morias into the crust till it all came apart; it was Bitcoin that did us in. Somewhere, in the moldy basement of some half-forgotten Department of the Bureau of the […]
by: Christopher Lesko Mom: C’mon we need to get you some new slacks. They’ve got good deals going on at Sears right now. Boy: You’re hurting my arm. Mom: I need you to hold my hand when we cross. Could be a weed maniac zipping around the corner. People never […]
by: Ben Fitts I was excited to be back in New York City. I had grown up there and always thought I would end up living my whole life in the city, but the four years I planned to spend in New England for college had into stretched nine and […]
by: James Burr The Artist woke up face down on the wall, his favourite Braque print digging uncomfortably into his ribs. It seemed that gravity must have shifted 90° as he slept as he was now lying on the far wall of his bedroom looking up at his bed, which […]
by: Zé Burns He was a lamp. A China ball lantern wrapped in a bamboo lattice. No, he wasn’t. He was a plant: a delicate ornamental fern, stretching out its fronds over the terra cotta pot in which he sat. No, that couldn’t be right either. Was he a pillow? […]
by: Andrew Wayne Adams “I need to eat to be happy. I need to eat souls like yours. I also like cold cuts and ice cubes. I am remorseless.” That was what the garbage disposal said to Ian on his third night in his new apartment. Two nights before, when […]
by: S.T. Cartledge Leonard is up all night rehearsing his one-man play. The script in hand is only one page and has only three words on it. The first is big and bold: MONOLOGUE: which is promptly followed by ad lib. This is his magnum opus. He had put out […]
by: Chris Meekings The man sailed up to the window. He was in a coracle made of a half coconut. His lips thick with spittle. His beard was grey and grizzled long and matted. Around his neck was hung a bloodied pigeon, alternate white and red, with the sign “Albatross” […]
by: Austin James Winter mornings like this are the deadliest. The clouds press against the terrain, casting flat, gray light. Big, fuzzy snowflakes meander towards the ground. The atmosphere is still and quiet as the crystallized air absorbs both breeze and sound. It seems warm, too warm to be winter; […]
by: James Burr The Writer continued to stare at the blank screen, as she had done, frustrated, for the previous two hours. Words refused to flow and her ideas remained stillborn, seemingly loath to join her in the cold and damp of her squalid bedsit. It was then that she […]
by: John Wayne Comunale “Maybe this isn’t the best time to mention this,” I said just before squeezing the trigger, “but I’m your brother.” I know he heard me too. I could see the weight of my flippant confession smack his flat forehead and reverberate recognition through his eyes in […]
by: Chris Meekings It is barely coin o’clock in the morning, and the bourbon has only just taken the taste of Pepsodent from my mouth when she walks into my office. She’s glass and alabaster, with curves in all the right places, liquorice nice. She walks across the room, her […]
by: James Burr It was a cold October morning when Eleonora Pinkerton first realised that her actions influenced it all. Like that apocryphal butterfly whose beating wings can cause hurricanes on the other side of the world, Eleonora concluded that her every action influenced Everything: scratching an itch would cause […]
by: Austin James The man managed to find (logistically speaking) the worst possible location in the mud pit; too far from the center to gather any real moisture for rehydration, yet also too far from the edge to avoid getting stuck. I say ‘man’ because whatever it was, it appeared […]
by: John Wayne Comunale I’ve always liked my women a little on the trashy side. The ones with elaborate, unnecessary makeup, boots that are way too high with skirts that are way too short, and piercing eyes glaring from beneath dramatically cut, Betty Page bangs. Throw in a few tattoos […]
by Christopher Lesko I saw this asshole pushing a shopping cart filled with groceries down the road, about a mile away from the grocery store. I slowed my car and yelled out the window to him. “Hey! You can’t take that shopping cart home!” He ignored me, kept pushing along, […]
by J. Platz-Halter “This will help you stay warm,” Michael said as he handed Kate a cup of coffee. She was staring at the log in the fireplace, watching the embers recede into the wood, the light becoming fainter and fainter. “Sorry,” she took a sip, “a lot has happened […]
by John Bruni “That’s my seat.” Chuck looked up from his newspaper. A skinny, balding guy with glasses and a sweaty forehead stood over him, looking intently down. He trembled, and judging from the steel in his eyes, it was from rage, not fear. “First come, first served.” Chuck went […]
by Sean Kelly The beach was littered with decayed corpses and charred, human-sized loofahs. Some loofahs were still alive, rolling around on fire. Squealing. An old man, with a beard down to his feet, stood behind a vintage camera. He sighed, slow panned across the carnage. Two people stepped up […]
