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A Bottomless Set of Nesting Dolls
80/ Does Before stalk my social media, the way I stalk After? She’s beautiful. Fashionable. He discarded her, the way he discarded me, but then comes Next. If I think they’re all perfect, maybe the same’s been thought of me. Maybe a few of them managed to break his heart before he could break theirs.…
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Harshness
79/ Max goes out in the desert when they need to think: they sit on the dunes and watch the grains spill into their shoes. There are signs against taking any sand; Max thinks about these when they shower off their dusty toes at home. The bomb went off here, and downwinders in Alamogordo were…
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Teatime
78/ The porcelain’s pattern is the same blue as the imprint of his hand around her arm. Tomorrow it will turn purple, then yellow; but today it’s fresh and bright, pretty in a way, reminiscent of scorpion grass and cornflowers on hillsides in spring. Callie taps the spoon against the rim, twice, and wipes a…
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The Wild Creeps in From the Feald Next to the Garden
77/ In the morning, steam rises off the river, freshly baked from the night before. Silvery minnows dart between glimmering ripples, miniature waves moving and breaking the current’s mosaic in flits, teasing the tree-filtered daylight. Upriver, a fox plods around the half-spine buried in banked silt to snarl a frog between its teeth. The stale…
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The Statue’s Eyes Were Once a Color
76/ She finds her way back to my statue, tucked among the blooming gladioli and the burning, rubber scent of old exhaust. No matter where I send her, she’s found her way back since it was built and worshipped, in the era of miracles, fifteen-hundred-or-so lifetimes ago. Back when a person only had to see…
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I Dreamed Of Circuitry
75/ Sometimes I watch him sleep, when I can’t. Rolled onto his stomach, pillow pushed out of the way, he looks as peaceful as I’ve seen. I wonder what he dreams about. I wonder if it’s me. I go to sit at his desk, spin in his chair, study his breadboard and multimeter. I read…
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Boys and Girls
74/ “When do you stop calling it coincidence and start calling it evidence?” Maura peers over Emma’s shoulder; sets a mug down on a bed of eraser shavings. Emma doesn’t look up. “When it becomes statistically significant.” “Care to quantify?” Emma rips the page from the notebook, balls it up, misses the basket, shakes her…
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Type 2 Diabetes Commercial
73/ Diane’s fat has a different meaning than her mother’s. Three years ago she took a hammer to the scale in the backyard, and every now and then her toes still find a sharp piece of plastic in the grass. Over tea, her mother’s lips purse and she gestures at the television, asking, “Don’t you…
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Bits of Gold Dust
72/ The glass vial lived on a shelf in her bedroom, gathering dust alongside a blunt, misshapen origami crane and a taxidermy luna moth she regretted getting. It made her think of family vacations in Michigan, and walking home from the lake. There was a store, past the drawbridge and before the neat rows of…
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House Ghost
71/ Something shatters in the kitchen and wakes Chloe at four in the morning. It was a vase – not one of the nice ones, at least — and by the time she’s swept and vacuumed and mopped, it’s four-thirty. The clock face on her nightstand presents this as glaring, glow-in-the-dark fact. Her body won’t…
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Indoor Ice Skating
70/ Nemeah grew up on skates. I didn’t. They can go backward and forward, and spin, and make three or four laps to my one. They pull me away from the wall, they hold my hands and tell me to breathe, their own breath rising in clouds. A little more confident, a little more steady…
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They Covered the Pool With a Tarp
69/ I am playing outside. I am crying in the bathtub, soaking my swollen leg. I am told the word yellowjacket. I don’t know what it means. There is a nest of them by the pool. My mother bobs her foot faster when my father speaks; but I don’t remember what they say. I am…
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Purple Sky
68/ I drove up to the lookout on the day I had been waiting for since Mckenna’s doctor had given us the news. Off over the horizon I could see the Jemez, glowing orange beneath billowing black smoke that tinted the sky lavender. The previous year’s fires had been the worst in history. Every year…
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Mating Rituals of the Chicago Thirty-Somethings
67/ The bar’s dimly lit and packed, so Iris steps back past the guy checking IDs and into the cold to wait for Ian, who clambers up the block with his duck-footed gait a few minutes later. They hug. Iris says, “You ever think you missed your calling as a ballerina?” and Ian says, “What?”…
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Autumn’s a B****
66/ After six months I’m still bringing her up in therapy, never by name but as a casual aside, hoping I can stitch myself back together without ever admitting to falling apart. I lean back on the smoke-colored couch, picking up my mug of tea and cradling it for warmth, studying its garnet liquid while…
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You Can’t Go Home Again
65/ Sparks bloom in the hazy sky, booms peppering the city as a dense fog of smoke drifts over the waterfront. I step over littered green and blue and red cardboard tubes, soggy in gutter puddles, mixed in with old newspaper and a coffee cup with someone’s name swirled along the side in bloated, waterlogged…
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A Wave Crests Over the Sand Village
64/ Leo went out the morning of my ninth birthday and returned in the evening with a boar he’d skewered out in the forest. It took three of them to carry the beast, and while my mother carefully sliced down the length of his abdomen, I sat with my feet in the surf and cried.…
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Fuzzy Pink Blindfold
63/ This story contains mature themes “Makeshift blindfolds are easy and pretty readily available,” the woman uses her other palm to emphasize the leather set she’s holding up before she drops it back onto the table. “Scarf, tie, sleeping mask. Towel, or shirt, depending on position. You can even flip someone’s clothing over their face…
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Confusing, Wet, and Incredibly Bright
62/ They arranged us into crouched rows with our backs to the bow; I pressed my face so tightly to my palms that red strobed against my lids. Don’t look at the flash, they’d told us, and nothing more. We whispered it in repeated prayer until the light burst through — so brilliant we saw…
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Time and Gasoline
61/ There’re only two ways out of town: east or west on I-70. I see most everyone before they go, either way they’re headed, because the next closest station is fifty miles going east, or seventy-five headed west. I’ve worked here twenty-five years now, mopping floors and selling cigarettes to kids I watched grow up…
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Gum Stuck Under the Table at Applebees
60/ This story contains sensitive themes. Her body is a foreign vessel. There’s not much inside her, but dragging her fingers over chain link or brick feels the same, no matter if she’s skinny or fat or angry or sad. She knows to apply those words in hindsight from her expressions. Crying is sad; screaming…
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The Plants Are Dying
59/ At the end of their first date — head buzzing, room spinning, ears ringing — Leila invited Josh home. They giggled while undressing, eyes adjusting to the darkness, and it wasn’t until morning that Josh could take notice of the wilted and crisped and yellowing leaves of the plants arranged throughout the space. “They…
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A Tree’s Roots Seek to Be Its Branches, Inverted
58/ The tree is a thousand-or-so years old, now; people come daily to its grove and admire it alongside its brethren. Musing on the bulk of its trunk, they crane their necks to stare up into the canopy and appreciate the branches and their scaled, blue-green needles. Visitors stomp and trample and touch — the…
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When I Bought You Flowers
57/ They sit on opposite sides of the kitchen table. She looks down at the floor, twisting her fingers until she interlinks them in her lap. He looks at her. For a moment her eyes flicker up and meet his, then she finds herself studying the wood grain of their cupboard. “Do you want me…
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Pointless Questions for Pointless People
56/ What’s the meaning of life? What’s the meaning of me? Am I just here, like you, like all of us, because of luck or circumstance? Could it be that there’s really no greater meaning to this life than two people getting it on and somehow creating a consciousness? Is this why people believe in…
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It Came From Outer Space!
55/ The clouds shifted and let out the sun. Molly rolled onto her back, careful to keep her sandy feet off the towel. Grimacing, she made her hand into a visor and peered toward the rocks at the end of the beach to see Olivia perched atop them, knees pulled up into her chest, gazing…
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The Summer the River Turned Rust
54/ Theo wanted to be our friend. We never wanted to be his. But he was always asking to come along — comic in one hand, inhaler in the other — and we got a kick out of seeing what we could dare him to do. By the time school let out for summer we’d…
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When The Greenhouse Roof Splintered
53/ The morning of the Jewish new year, Kate made challah. With each turn and pull and knead of the dough, she thought of her mother. How much flour is too much? she thought, sprinkling more over her palm and the countertop, scraping up the sticky dough with a metal spoon. The bread was too…
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This House Is Much Bigger When I’m Asleep
52/ Our agent told us the house had been on the market so long because of its modesty. Just a simple house, mostly brick, with a little yard and enough room for a garden out back. Ken and I took the listing home and put in an offer the next day. We moved in six…
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Horny for Divine Enchantment
51/ This story contains sensitive themes. One of two prompt responses. I prayed that he would die, then God answered those prayers. Now his body’s flesh is rotting from its bone in a cemetery six miles from the San Diego Zoo. I wish they’d fed him to the lions, or turned him into chum. Who’s…
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European Army Sneakers
50/ Sasha hides her crying in plain sight. Up and down the city streets she acts out arguments she doesn’t care to ever have. She yells or else sobs: her mouth open, lips twisted into a frown so deep it contorts the skin of her jaw and cheeks. It isn’t on purpose; it isn’t planned.…
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Most Apple Trees Are Made From Grafts, Not Seeds.
49/ The blowing-into-a-paper-bag thing really does work when you’re having a panic attack. You can turn off your phone, everything will still be here when you come back. Go outside and touch some grass, hold your breath under water, tell someone you want to hold their hand. Every person thinks they’re as unique as you…
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Luck of the Sperm
48/ My brother and I haven’t spoken in over a decade. Our relationship was always rocky, built on the foundation that he was an achiever and I was not. The last time I saw him was my eighteenth birthday; he found me outside and advised me that the family would be better without me in…
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Aliens. Aliens!
47/ Mel presses her ear to the finished wood of the door. “It’s good for…have interests,” her teacher is saying. “…when it gets… schoolwork…being…a need…step in. Even…astrophysicists…writing skills.” “We’ve tried,” she hears from her dad. “No matter…do, Mel…seem interested…subject.” “That may be. But even so—” Pulling back, Mel wanders down the dark hallway to the…
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A Late Night Drive Through Your Hometown When Visiting Family
46/ There used to be a diner on the corner of Sycamore and Central, before the city’s plans to install a light rail went sideways and caused enough of a disruption that most of the businesses along its path had to close. I worked there — first on soda fountain and then as a server…
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Stand, Lifer, Wreck, Rhyme
Or: Incorporate All the Words You Guessed for That Day’s Wordle 45/ “My dad’s a lifer. He went in when I was three, so I don’t remember him well.” Madeline takes a sip of water from the red diner cup. A crack runs through the L of the white COCA COLA logo; Henry fixes his…
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Words Left Unsaid
44/ Ripe apples thunking into plastic buckets, raised eyebrows at glances through the leaves, laughter peppering off-key songs on the one-lane highway, a tight-lipped smile and a side hug to say good night.
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Lungs
43/ In Seattle, a family draped in black opens their home to visitors bearing soft tones and casseroles in glass dishes. Two hundred miles south, a woman in Portland blinks and counts back from ten, voice muffled from the mask, thankful for the gift of more time.
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A Stream of Consciousness Twenty Minute Breakup Voice Memo
42/ I guess at the end of the day what I wonder most is, if I died tomorrow, would anyone even know you had lost someone? Would anyone even know you had someone to grieve? Alan clicks the pause button and presses his fingers through his hair. Jen comes in from the other room and…
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We Used to Be Friends
41/ There’s not much to say about it, really. Even with the Internet, it started to feel so one-sided. It was always me reaching out to schedule, or hang out, or talk; always playing manager and not feeling that work returned. We grew, in the space of our silence. When we came back together, it…
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Post Nut Clarity
40/ Jade never spends the night. Every time she goes out and feels the thrill and pull and ache of a new connection she thinks it will be different. But the regret always seeps into her bones when their slick bodies still against one another, and she’s restless until she can make some excuse or…
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The Box of Blue Hair Dye and the Fidget Spinner
39/ Mackenzie snaps her gum and tilts El’s head under the bathtub faucet to rinse out the bleach. Their eyes open for a moment and stare up at the ceiling; Mackenzie lightly brushes the side of their face, prompting them to close. She snaps off her gloves and swaps out her gum before donning another…
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182 Days
38/ David left me, and I left the city. I told myself — and everyone else — that it wasn’t about him; I told them all that the country was a metaphor for a deep breath, a step back, a need to slow down. I didn’t believe it either, but that is what I told…
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I Met You Before
36/ The ideation started when Maisie was nine and stuck around until twelve rounds of anesthetized, electricity-induced seizures banished it in her mid-twenties. She’s okay now, mostly, and grateful that she managed to claw her way through anguish to somehow find the sun. Every now and then, when things pile up and she starts to…
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A Discussion On Time Travel
35/ Violet presses her head against the cool oak table. As she pulls away, she watches the murky figure of her reflection in the polished wood. “I’m just not sure how to explain this in any other way.” He doesn’t look pleased with the answers. Andrew’s face is all scrunched together — his eyes and…
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“The Mold Is Getting Worse”
34/ The washer always smells like mildew. It smelled that way when they moved in, and regardless of how much Ingrid scrubs and digs her fingers under the rubber gasket — no matter how many black-streaked, vinegar-soaked paper towels she tosses in the trash — a year later, the whiff of rot persists. The landlords…
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Waking Up
33/ Edith wakes up from a nightmare. The apartment is quiet and dark, and for some time she lies still and plays the dream over. It’s always the same one. In it, she’s young: seven, she thinks, maybe eight. She’s always dressed the same, in the same yellow dress with the white floral pattern. There…
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Pomegranate
32/ Persephone walks barefoot through her wasted world. Dirt gathers beneath her fingernails from planting roses in the fields and poppies in the idling meadows. The night before the equinox Hades swears his love for her on the river of unbreakable oaths, and she feeds him seeds from a bag at her waist. Hecate arrives…
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A Book About Time
31/ June doesn’t know where the book came from, but it’s already told her that one day she’ll destroy it. June hates the book. She thinks there is no curse greater than knowing her own future. Destroying the book is a seductive thought, and it’s an action she would have taken long before if not…
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Misting Breath
30/ I fled four thousand miles to weep beneath the northern lights, my sinuses plugged from the pressure, gasps visible but unperceived. It was never like this when I was alone.
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Mason Jar
29/ Aoife quits everything and thinks there must be something wrong with her. The yoga mat in the corner has been gathering dust for months, a Spanish book rests splayed on the coffee table, and the bag of knitting supplies by the couch hasn’t been opened since she stopped her hat mid-project. She quit violin,…
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The Gumshoe Points One Accusing Finger at the Houseplant
28/ “On first examination, I noticed something very interesting about your collection of plants. You don’t clean your plants, do you, Mia? There’s dust on all of them. You really should, you know, the dust reduces the plant’s ability to photosynthesize. But I digress. This dracaena trifasciata has a disrupted dust pattern around its leaves…
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“Please Forget Me”
27/ This story contains sensitive themes that may be triggering “The rain is usually gone by now,” Megumi said, twisted on the couch to peer out the window. “You’re not really going to go out in this, right?” Harper shrugged, tugging at the laces of her boots. “I’ll be back later.” “It’s just one day.…
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Dry Clay
26/ The students sat in groups of three or four at circular wood laminate tables, their taupe-colored hands rolling small portions of their clay into long snakes or perfect spheres. Taking advantage of Jay’s turned back, Adam threw a portion of his clay at Sarah, who dodged it and stuck her tongue out before returning…
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Turquoise
25/ Zoë loved the farolitos. Each Christmas their mother would pile Zoë and her sister into the car and take them to Canyon Road, where they’d walk until their feet hurt and their cheeks were numb from cold. The shops and houses decorated their facades with ristras and lined the walk with thousands of the…
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Strangers
24/ “How many strangers have such profound memories together?” he wondered when he saw her buying morels at the farmer’s market, a year on, and decided not to wave.
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Musical Greeting Card
23/ It started as escalating mischiefs, an effort by each to find the most annoying, or most embarrassing, or the most absurd. Sliding the latest card across the table, she realized she wasn’t sure when they’d crossed the line into ritual. Those easy-to-miss, small traditions had always been the ones to her that mattered most.
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He Is Inside a Painting but He Doesn’t Know How He Got There or if He’s Actually Just Going Insane
22/ Paul’s explored the field; talked to the man leaning with one foot up against the tree, black cowboy hat tipped down to obscure his face; and sat at the little wooden table with its single apple. He’s sitting in the dirt, elbows on his knees and his face in his palms. “Where am I?”…
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Escaping the Gravity
21/ “Seat one, standby for comm check.” Tanisha’s hands are shaking; strapped in, there’s not much to do now except listen. “Seat one, hear you loud and clear,” she says. The voice goes down the line until Tyler in seat five calls that he’s getting signal just fine. “Standby for ground comm check,” the voice…
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The Second Time We Kissed
20/ The tide lapped at our heels and we stood too close a beat too long, staring down a crossroad. No excuses, no game of spin the bottle or truth or dare to pass off our desire; friends can kiss just once.
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The Pine Tree in the Yard
19/ We got the tree when I was eleven, a tiny fir in a black plastic planter. Every year Jake and I would haul it inside after Thanksgiving and dress it up, and when the year turned over we’d drag it back outside and put it in some shade. When I was eighteen I went…
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Depression Nap
18/ In college, Carol took a class on Eastern religions and learned the Buddhist idea that life is suffering. She didn’t realize that Buddhists had a hell until her Thai friend Pa told her about the cold Naraka, where among other horrors one might spend eight hundred trillion years shivering. Carol herself is agnostic, but…
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A Big Pimple
17/ The doctor in the instructional video is sighing, big I’m not mad just disappointed vibes as he explains — to well, me, I guess, in this case — that pulling on the skin is better than pushing if I absolutely must do this. I shouldn’t — I’ll make it worse, and way more obvious;…
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Dust
16/ The sun rose over the mountains, shifting their shadows on the sand. Skylar hooked his thumbs on the straps of his backpack and surveyed the land. “There’s no harm in waiting, you know. It’s supposed to rain day after tomorrow,” his mother said. He turned and put a hand on her shoulder. “You know…
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I Love You
15/ I don’t think of you as soon as I wake up or right before I fall asleep. Were I to, with everyone I love: I’d never sleep, I’d never work, I’d spend my whole life closed-eyed in bed while my lips shaped each syllable. I’m luckier than most, I suppose, though I’d wager for…
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A Squirrel Realizes It’s in Over Its Head
14/ Nuts! thinks the fox squirrel, gathering acorns and burying them beside a woody rose bush. Nuts! thinks the squirrel, hiding in some brush, waiting to steal the treasure in the den of the park’s big oak tree. Nuts! thinks the squirrel, nibbling on a long leaf pine seed before digging down into the earth…
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Someone in a Park Watches a First Date Unfold
13/ “What are you looking at?” asks Sadie, who’s spent the last five minutes fidgeting with the cuff of her sweater. She’s got it grasped in her hand, pulling the fabric taut over the base of her palm. Owen nods his head in the direction of the couple. “I think they’re on a first date.”…
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A Night Out
12/ An attempted nice gesture, silence pierced by silver on porcelain, raised voices idled at a red, a door slamming in the foyer, a gentle bid for connection, the click of an engaging lock.
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Haunting
11/ This story includes descriptions of substances and other themes that could be triggering Alex only cries when they get stoned. When they’re sober it’s like someone has put a gate on their brainstem and blocked their ability to feel beyond the academic, context-dependent idea of should. Sticking to once a day is okay, if…
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Artificial Intelligence
10/ As a child, Henry had wanted to be a mad scientist; before today he thought this project was the closest he could ever ethically get. Watching his third sunrise in a row, he tries to convince himself that this is all worth it. Next to him, Ellen’s fallen asleep at her desk despite the…
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Unrequited Love
9/ She scatters daisy petals one by one and repeats the children’s rhyme. She loves me, heart palpitations. She loves me not, a stone in her stomach, a knot in her throat. The sun is setting; across town there’s a wedding and six months prior she circled no on the card stock RSVP. Old taste…
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“I Dream in Purples and Blues”
8/ On the first Tuesday in May, the citizens close their blinds and send the fourth graders out to the sorting square. No one roughhouses or giggles as they line up alphabetically. Each child knows the seriousness of the day; each hopes they’ll return home by its end. Beth stands behind Simon Brown, her mother’s…
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A Frog Who Wanted to Meditate, but He Was Hungry
7/ A long while ago, at a pond in a large trapezium-shaped park in a great, populated city on an island in Asia, there was a lily pad. And on that lily pad, a frog named Qingwa was trying to meditate, just as he did every morning. Qingwa didn’t mind the bustle of the city,…
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Small Town, $100, No Connections, Have to Create a New Identity. How Do You Survive?
6/ “How do you survive? Let me let you in on a secret: identities are what I like to call, ‘trust-issued’. When you meet someone and they tell you their name, do you demand their ID? And if someone does push, just say, ‘What, are you paranoid?’ and they’ll probably leave you alone.” She’s shivering.…
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There’s a Bird on the Step Outside the Door
5/ The nightly news theme jingles back from commercial in the other room. Between the drill whirls, over the gurgling, Theodore can make out an anchor calling him process-focused. “Reductive, don’t you think?” he torques the tool he’s using until he pushes past the resistance with a crack, wipes it on the towel at his…
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A Cat That Thinks It’s a Dog
4/ The cat does tricks: sits, lies down, shakes, and even jumps through a hoop for a treat. The strays like her less than yesterday, tails swishing in warning as she leaves home. She returns a stick to a fascinated boy for an ear scratch, but the dogs at the park sniff the exile and…
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An Umbrella With a Hole in It
3/ The pink umbrella lay open in the gutter, its end tip caught between bars in the steel grate. A child walked by and looked at it, considered taking it to school: there were storm clouds overhead. But when they saw the tear in the canopy – saw the sidewalk flowers through the fraying hole…
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Spicy Flowers
2/ “On the day you were born, on my way to the hospital —” “You tell this story every year,” Prue dips her hand into the plastic bag of bird’s eye chilies and drops two into the mortar. He clears his throat over the sound of stone scraping on stone, hands her the fish sauce…
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Seven-Sided Dice
1/ Lyle washes his blistered hands again. The worst of the sting is in the water’s first touch, fading as he lathers soap into suds and scrapes under his fingernails. Washing helps, he tells himself, wincing as he pats them dry with the fraying yellow hand towel. The sharp bile of the thoughts and the…
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