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FICTION

What They Didn’t Teach Us by Luke Whisnant

April 3, 2020

  They taught us how to kill with assault weapons, bayonets, bare hands. They taught us the lay of the land, how to navigate by rivers and stars, how to use cover to outflank enemy operatives, how to make a…

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Old Girl by Virginia Reeves

April 2, 2020

  The last time I picked Hallie up at the airport, she was wearing a ratty beige shift that would’ve been a nightshirt if not for the decorative navy rickrack at the neck. Instead of hello, she said, “You hate…

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Coyote the Younger by Stephen Aubrey

April 1, 2020

  In all those moments after he’d lit the fuse but before the rocket-powered roller skates propelled him across the yellow desert at sublimely sub-sonic speeds, in all those moments what came most vividly to Coyote the Younger were the…

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Inheritance by Madeline Anthes

March 31, 2020

  Everyone expected me to take my mother’s eyes. I had a right to take what I wanted, and her eyes were legendary. She’d taken them from her mother, and her mother had taken them from her mother. They were…

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Cedar Court, 2011 by M. K. Anderson

March 20, 2020

  I picked Jeff up from the airport. We’d met online and chatted for a few months. Newly divorced, he said, about fifteen years older than me. But he was normal, and he was from somewhere else. I’d spent hours…

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The Color It Leaves Behind by Kathryn McMahon

March 13, 2020

  My girlfriend has a pet rock that watches us in bed. A cold lump of gray with googly eyes, a feather headband, and a red glitter mouth that Becca would never wear. It used to be in a box…

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Trees Go to Heaven by Craig Bernardini

March 6, 2020

  On a warm, wet November day like this one, I saw what I thought was some drunk, some ambitious drunk, stumbling up Route 376 with his takeout. It was the sort of thing I might have been tempted to ignore.…

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Paradise Pawn by Meg Richardson

February 28, 2020

  We make a ton of money off Christmas in July, because customers have too much hope. It’s not their fault. Me and Rubina feed it to them. We decorate Paradise Pawn with tinsel and lights. We smile and hold…

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Little Squirrel by Tim Hickey

February 21, 2020

  But where exactly had it gone wrong this day? Probably when my brother-in-law-to-be, Ward DiBaptista, shouted at me to move the Tahoe so it wouldn’t rut the yard, or maybe just after that, when my fiancée’s entire family made…

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Empire of Dirt by Jonathan Bohr Heinen

February 14, 2020

  That morning, when they set out to follow the fence line that surrounded their property, Sarah Billard didn’t expect her daddy to stop at the southern section. She could hardly recall the last time seed had taken root there—all…

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