By Deanna Morris

It is leaning, this house, more a pile of bricks than mortar and frame, casting its crooked shadow over the acres of land that made up the estate. The gardens used to be maintained, the grounds manicured. Now, weeds wallow in the yard, and the fountain that filled its bowl with spring water, is cracked and empty.

The owner, Gwendolyn, is inside, in the drawing room where a grand piano sits scratched and silent, the fireplace mantel juts its jaw over the mostly empty room. The windows are draped in heavy, moth-eaten damask material, their maroon color faded and layered with cobwebs; the only lights in the room are the dots of sun coming through the holes in the fabric. On the walls, a slight shade of difference in the paint reveals where paintings had hung, their shadowy shapes evidence of devotion to beauty and art.
Continue Reading This Story

By Sharon Gosling

The jungle was dripping. Everywhere, colours were running, merging into each other as if on a doused canvas, half-finished and now beyond help. Colonel Spink lay on his side beneath the inadequate measure of his tent, watching the drowning amethyst of a flower his mother would probably recognise, but which to him was entirely nameless. It was being consumed by water, slowly crushed a little flatter with each murderous slash of rain. As he watched the amethyst gradually turned to garnet, the bruised petals folding against one another. Funny, he thought to himself, how water could be both death and salvation. In his head he listed other things for which this was true.
Continue Reading This Story

By Jackie Sizemore

Abby and Danny have been dating for a while now, like, three months or so. It’s problematic for stick figures to hold each other, but they live in the cave of their existence, and this is a cave where there are no real hands.
Danny calculates his moves carefully. He wants to hold Abby’s hand walking through the hallways of their stick figure high school, coming inside from gym, and in the back of theater class. He’s watched humans navigate affection and he is ready to try it out. He starts with closing the space of air between his stick arm and Abby’s. The sharp edge of Abby’s appendage cuts the air as they walked in large strides with their long, thin legs. The air in between them is so small, so insignificant, it is two-dimensional. Continue Reading This Story