Part I I own a pizza place. People hear that and picture something cozy. Brick oven. Family recipes. A guy in a clean apron tossing dough in the air while Sinatra plays in the background. What I actually own is a small-town grease trap with a sign out...
Christopher Ingram came out of the grocery store with two paper bags in his arms and found a sheet of paper tucked under the wiper blade of his car. At first he thought it was an ad for roofing or gutter work. Then he looked...
“Babe, Travis from WeNet’s on the phone,” Abby said, opening the bathroom door and letting cool air into the hot steamy bathroom. “Shit, okay.” In the shower, I’d been scrubbing the bottoms of my feet with a facecloth lathered in off-brand body wash. “Hang on.” Without choking...
Hayley has new highlights in her hair. A subtle caramel that I don’t notice until she stands—elegant, low-key, conceivably not too expensive. Mom would have liked it. And probably told me that I should get mine done, too. “Just the large matcha latte, Marin?” she asks....
“What’s a five-letter word for ‘type of bread’?” the old man said, looking up from his crossword and nudging his wife, who was trying to read. “Uh,” she thought, “'toast'.” “Toast…toast? That’s not a type of bread, that’s...
The method goes as follows: Prepare the corpse by repairing whatever fatal injury led to the subject’s demise. Keep the body stored in a dry environment with a temperature ranging from 36.12–37.8 °C. Restrain the subject as necessary for the act of resuscitation. Isolate the...
I leaned back, appreciating the handiwork of the birdhouse I had quite literally placed the last nail into. My eyes, squinting into the late October glow of an orange-yellow sunset, followed the horizon to the apple tree planted directly out front of my farmhouse. I...
Approximately 334 days ago according to the Martian Calendar, NASA began to use the *Perseverance* Rover for research of the Red Planet. Thanks to the Rover, we have learned more about our distant neighbor this year than ever before. But not all of it is for...
Looking from within the woods, I could see my ex-wife’s Camaro parked outside of what used to be our house. I could also see the truck belonging to my former neighbor, Trey. The signatures on our dissolution paperwork were not even dry yet, but at this...
In Milan, under the relentless sun of a summer that seemed intent on sealing the city in an endless embrace of heat, a website appeared almost by chance in the dark labyrinth of the deep web, a digital recess that very few dared to enter....
Part I When I applied to Skybound Jump Arena, I thought my biggest problems would be screaming toddlers, the occasional vomit in the foam pit, and maybe the off chance I’d have to tell someone twice my size to stop having fun. I was wrong. So,...
Part I Bob came to the vague realization that something had gone wrong the moment he opened his eyes and found himself standing in an infinite white void. There was no light source, yet he could see. No walls, yet he could feel the space around...
To the writers of Retlaw and Drummond’s Almanac, I’d like to thank you for the vestige. Your county map, in its textured patchwork of onion yellow and copper goner green, was among the last to list my fair town by name. Of course, I understand why that...
I fear the hulking giant that waits just outside my home. I'm too afraid to even look up at him in his full size. He stands two, maybe three stories tall, silently watching me, his silhouette a pitch-black void against the starry night sky. At any...
I can’t explain why I was drawn to that thing in the antique store; I just knew I had to have it. By outward appearances, there was nothing remarkable about the horsehead bookend - smoothly carved from black stone, expression unreadably bland. The weirdest thing was...
Lily told me about her friend on a Tuesday. I was making dinner. Pasta with jarred sauce, the kind of meal you make when you’ve worked a double and your feet hurt and your daughter has been at aftercare for nine hours because that’s what single...
Dane McBride stared at the glow of his monitor, the tab count creeping upward in a scatter of job searches, overdue bill reminders, and half-finished troubleshooting logs. Midnight had passed an hour ago, but his clients expected things fixed before sunrise, and the invoices he’d...
I’m typing this from a hospital bed with one good hand and bandages across my face, the injuries still too raw for me to look at without spiraling. The staff here thinks I had an accident. They keep using that word. Accident. As if I bumped...
I grew up in a small town just outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. Technically, it was in South Carolina, but still a part of the metropolitan area. We were close enough to the city to enjoy some of the city amenities, but far enough away...
Part I Robert Yoder never liked the crawlspace. It sat in the far corner of the basement, wedged beneath an old set of wooden stairs that led to the backyard storm door. The house was built in the late sixties, and the crawlspace—according to his mom—once held...
