2025-Issue 26

The ache of absence drove her to it, even as Odette dreaded what lay ahead. The doors rattled open. She found herself in a hallway, shadow-thick. Distorted faces leered and...

Look, we all get tired of actors repeating the same folksy anecdote on late-night talk shows, NPR interviews, and whatever the new hip podcast of the hour might be. It...

Maybe you’re an angel who hit a low branch or ignored the direction back to your realm, causing your wings to fall off. Since that time, you have been painting...

“Number thirty-one.” The monotone call from the woman in horned-rimmed glasses echoes across the stark lobby of the Department of Motor Vehicles. I look down at the number thirty-nine ticket...

“Get in!” she said. “No,” replied the boy, “I’m not supposed to accept lifts from strangers.” “But it’s raining,” the woman in the car said. “You’ll catch your death.” The...

“Are you finished?” “No. Be patient,” Alexandru scolds. He shifts, lifting Vasile’s arm out of the way and adjusting his grip on the ballpoint pen. They sit next to the...

I saw, if not the best, the most curious minds of my generation hungry, naked, and mad, looking for that fix when the moon was high and round and yellow...

Based on the short story A Lady’s Hands Are Cold, written and illustrated by Emily Carroll “It began with a Spring wedding.” From the first night at her new groom’s...

I never thought I would want to kill my wife. Yes, the thought had crept into my mind previously, but it was only a fleeting thought. That’s when there was...

We were not allowed to ride our bikes all the way out to the park. Not so close to dark, and not just the three of us by ourselves. We...

One more drink. Two more cigarettes. My hands are sticky, at that place we went. Some regrets. A few angry gods, devious wretch. I’m still floating in the same shit-swamp...

The sun was down, and the Hall had cooled to a more bearable temperature. The single bulb above the stage looked like the last star in a dying universe. It...

1. A lodger in Tolland County’s Inkwhich Inn, a storied boarding house in Inkwhich Wood, I, that Halloween, in chair at parlor chimney seated, was at supper joined by Samuel...

At 3:12 a.m., the cabin door creaked—but the wind had died an hour ago. Harvey didn’t breathe. Didn’t blink. The fire had smothered itself into coal-colored silence, but something—something—moved. Not...

It was a starving town. In the Norman Rockwell-like setting of Canaan Hollow, being “hungry” had an unsettling connotation. The residents’ grinning faces and cheery nature showed all the traits...

Dean Shawker Dean Shawker hails from Bracknell, UK, and now lives in Melbourne, Australia. Dean is co-founder and editor of Black Hare Press. Having found that his BSc in Bioengineering...

Jodi Christensen Small town Utah is where Jodi calls home. She spends her days in a turn-of-the-century farmhouse, reading, writing, editing, and mentoring other writers. Her daily companions consist of...

Kara Hawkers Kara Hawkers is a poet and author of short, dark fiction. As Editor-in-Chief, Kara devotes most of her time to operating The Ravens Quoth Press, along with her...

Elliot Ansell Elliot Ansell is originally from England, has lived in Argentina, Spain, and Mexico, and now lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico where he is yet to see a...

Janet Wright Janet Wright lives in the wilds of North Yorkshire, UK, where foxes shriek and owls hoot at the bottom of her garden. An avid reader since childhood, she...