Fiction

The Veil Thins

by Fiona Ennis.
“She was being tugged somewhere unearthly, towards a radiant light source, the same colour as those long fluorescent white lights that buzzed in the kitchen in the convent.”

Issue 1
Thinking in Clichés

by Denitza Blagev.
“After all the pain and blood, you almost begin to think of death as the next therapy, because that’s what it is, you realize. Death is part of the process.”

Issue 36 2019 Prize Winners
Lydiola

by Sarah Yahm.
“The ants in her foot went back to work digging tunnels and palaces and palazzos. She willed them to leave but they lingered and malingered and trespassed.”

Issue 25 Mosaic of Voices
Commotio Cordis

by Pria Anand.
“Lydia dreamt, too. She dreamt of Carnivale, of the motorcade, motorcycles without mufflers and pickup trucks hung with paper cutouts circling the island.”

Issue 33 Finding Home
Numbers

by Marcia Calhoun Forecki.
“Even numbers are smooth and sweet, and can all be divided by two, which is the most perfect number of all because two means love: husband and wife, mother and child, man and dog. That should be obvious to anyone.”

Issue 34 2018 Prize Winners
Leviathan

by Jennifer Lee.
“At what point, I wonder, does a person say enough is enough? I can’t go through with this; I didn’t pick the ending I’ve been given. I would dearly love to keep the next few years of my life.”

Issue 44 - 2023 Prize Winner
An Infinite Hunger

by Joon Ae Haworth-Kaufka.
“You eat more and more, until you feel sick. Your mom says people are souls, but not you. You’re an empty body, filling up and up and up to make the emptiness go away.”

Issue 9
Afternoon Heat

by Vishwas R. Gaitonde.
“Summer sapped the energy out of us all, the patients in the waiting room under a whirring fan and I in my consulting room.”

Issue 24 2013 Prize Winners
Storm Chasers

by Calvin Hennick.
“During the week we have left in Hawaii, Liz occasionally mentions that maybe I should go back to the hospital to see my father, and I say no, and she says family is important, and then neither of us says anything for a while. My dad has managed to ruin the trip.”