By Fallon Clark

The old woman had few concerns and fewer possessions in the quaint cottage hidden within the great forest. Among the towering evergreen trees next to a sparkling river, the home was unassuming and purposefully forgettable. It was peaceful there in the forest, blanketed with fresh snow in the cold of winter. Except for the smoking chimney, nothing stirred. It was a fine afternoon for a rest.

An urgent rap at her door startled the old woman awake from her impromptu nap. She grumbled to herself and blinked through clouded eyes. She cast off the thick wool blanket that covered her tottery legs as she rose from her rocking chair and hobbled toward the door. The thick cloak wound tight around her bony shoulders. Expecting to shoo away a particularly ornery squirrel who liked to pester, the woman further startled to see two small persons. They stood on her front porch and peered at the door with wide eyes and cold-purple lips.

[Read more…] about The Witch

By George Singleton

After the short funeral for my mother’s youngest uncle, we gathered beneath a picnic shelter on the banks of a state park’s lake, the water condemned for fishing, boating, or swimming due to a recent sewage spill. We couldn’t meet at my youngest great aunt’s house because she might’ve been the original hoarder. I’ve never been well-versed with family trees—don’t get me started on ancestry.com—but what I surmised later was this: my mother came into the world right about the same time her eldest sister gave birth to Uncle Arnold, a man I called Uncle Arnold even though, of course, he was my great uncle. Anyway, family members and friends alike showed up at Lake Punke, pronounced “pun-KAY,” armed with their funeral foods: macaroni and cheese, squash casseroles, cole slaw, fried chicken, three bean salads, loaf bread, biscuits, cold cuts, and so on. Someone brought a metal pail filled with creamed corn, as if they dropped it into a creamed corn well and hoisted the handle. On the way in—about a mile from Uncle Arnold’s house, a couple miles from the funeral home that held the service seeing as they weren’t churchgoers—I saw where someone spray-painted out the N in the LAKE PUNKE sign. I was thirteen. I wanted to meet this vandal and become friends.

[Read more…] about Deviled Eggs

By Julius Olofsson

My friend carried the pizzas in a plastic bag. I got stumped seeing it, not understanding why someone would do that, trying to hide it. There’s no shame in carrying a pizza. To proudly declare, “Hey, I’m just human, and I’ll fucking eat pizza whenever I want!” But he had requested a bag. He still needs to carry them, and very few plastic bags are devised with that certain fingertip skill so that it manages to contain, hold, nurture, and care for a pizza. Often, it becomes tilted and skewed, and there’s a risk that coveted pieces of mushroom will slowly glide down.

[Read more…] about Vertical Pizza

By Emma Phillips

Your mum says you shouldn’t keep your troubles inside because they stay down for a while but have a habit, like smoke, of rising. If you don’t deal with them, they’ll get bigger until you’re like that bottle of Coke in the Mento experiment, and the more you try to push your feelings down, the more they’ll rise. But the people round here aren’t big talkers, so you’re not too sure your mum is following her own advice, and you catch her sometimes, staring out the window with a look like that painting of Atlas carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders that you saw at school, and when you ask her what she’s thinking about, she says, “nothing,” and looks at you sideways.

[Read more…] about Tell It to the Dashboard Jesus

By R.G. Evans

Three weeks into the drought, the city imposed water use restrictions. On this side of the street, we can water plants and lawns on odd days. Across the street, they’re supposed to water on evens. 

I hear the *psst-psst-psst* of sprinklers from my neighbor Joe’s lawn across the street. It’s the 17th. Which is odd.  

[Read more…] about Odd Days

By Karen Southall Watts

Goody Rebecca Scot wrapped her infant son in a thin blanket, secured him between her breasts, and stepped out into the bright, cool afternoon. She was eager to speak to the new minister and gain his favor before any of the others in the village had a chance to befriend him. He hadn’t spoken in church yesterday, as old Reverend Johnson had stubbornly stuck to his usual sermonizing after briefly introducing his new young associate. 

[Read more…] about The Recordkeeper