Sunday Stories

Sunday Stories: “Epiphany”

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Fiddles
Epiphany
by Russ Doherty

“This music is The Future of the Irish Culture.” 

As dozens of fiddle notes flood the room, that phrase leaps out of my mouth. The music grabs me by the throat. 
My wife, Therese, snorts, indicating her take on my epiphany. She tosses back her Irish whiskey and orange juice and says, “You always think your private insights are so important. That’s BS. This is nothing but the same folk music I danced to in high school.” Sinead, our daughter, keeps right on coloring with her newfound five-year-old friend, Caitlin. 

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Sunday Stories

Sunday Stories: “The Silent And The Taxidermist”

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Skull

The Silent And The Taxidermist
by Ryan Harbert

Two rabbits tangoed on a miniature dance floor. Their glass eyes reflected a single, naked light bulb burning like a make-believe asteroid overhead. Wires straightened the rabbits’ spines, locking them upright in human posture. Stuffing filled the hollow cavities of their bodies. They embraced each other on a movie-set diorama made of plastic and Styrofoam, saturated with the smell of wet paint. An orchestra of tuxedo-wearing mice played in silent 4/4 time just behind the dance floor. Sparrows in flat caps and bowties framed the dancing rabbits in toy cameras. Their movie set rested on a workbench in a basement with blackout curtains over all the windows. A girl named Lexis sat at the bench, brushing a coat of gloss onto a bullfrog. She talked to herself, listening to her words twist alongside the animals stuck in eternal freeze-frame.

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Sunday Stories

Sunday Stories: “Pucker”

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Tent

Pucker
by Kevin Lenaghan

“Well, that doesn’t look too bad!” John Fergus said, both hands resting proudly on his hips as he regarded his handiwork. 

The small, blue tent was sitting in a mostly upright position, three metal rods still lying unused on the grass next to it. He picked them up, regarded them suspiciously, then shrugged and threw them back down. “Sure, they always give you a few spare parts!” 

Just then the tent, already leaning slightly to one side, fell down flat. He stood staring for a moment, his heavily bearded mouth frowning, hands still on his hips.

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Sunday Stories

Sunday Stories: “Chafing”

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Buildings

Chafing
by Em Pisacic

When my period first skipped, in February, I thought it was no biggie. A month later, after pregnancy tests came back negative, I dismissed its continued absence as a consequence of having started running more than twenty miles a week. April was spotless. May marked my third half-marathon, two months since I last had sex with Jack, and three since I had enjoyed it.

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Sunday Stories

Sunday Stories: “It Will Not Be the Same”

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Tooth shapes

It Will Not Be the Same
(Or: If the Government Asks, I’m a Cis Woman)
by Madison LaTurner

This will not be like that time I got my wisdom teeth out. Before I even knew about the trope of gay people being worried they would accidentally out themselves to their parents while under the influence of the anesthetics and pain meds, I was worried about accidentally outing myself to my parents while under the influence of the anesthetics and pain meds. I was worried about telling my mom that I had begun to think of her as a monster, that I have begun telling my friends that something is wrong but I can’t quite put my finger on it, that the moment she lets me off leash I will run and then keep running. No—it will not be like that. This surgery is gay itself. I will meet my match. 

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Sunday Stories

Sunday Stories: “Where the One-Eyed Man Is King”

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Beach chairs

Where the One-Eyed Man Is King
by Alex Behr

There was a little hole. A hole in the shoe’s sole. The shoe was behind a tree, a lackluster beach tree near the bay, but no one remembered losing a shoe much less putting it there. Frito barked and carried it over. Dropped it in front of Sharon, sitting on a plaid blanket. Sharon took that as a good sign. She was on meds. So were her mother and her sisters and nieces, but not the men in the family. Well, they took statins that ruined their erections, a rare side effect, but too bad for them, but they didn’t take anything for the anxiety that resulted from being on statins, or losing their erections. But if they weren’t on statins they might keel over, like when moving rocks or taking down storm windows. They drooled on their pillows. They told good jokes. 

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Sunday Stories

Sunday Stories: “From ‘Atta Boy'”

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Telephone

From “Atta Boy”
by Cally Fiedorek

Up and at ’em! No excuses. He needed to get out today, stay out. Enough of this sitting around and licking wounds. There was lead in his apartment, and his phone was doing him grave harm. 

Rudy didn’t mean to sound alarmist about this—he’d seen one too many puff-piece headlines about screens and the internet changing people’s brains, transforming the whole social fabric, and he’d never cared too much for the philosophizing. Big whoop, he’d thought. Folks had probably felt the same unease about their TV sets back in the day. Maybe some beatnik wrote a pretty deep poem about it. But these last few days, cooped up in his apartment, scrolling, scrolling, waiting for a sign, he’d felt it too—that thing would be the death of him. The point of no return.

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Essays

Steak and Potato

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Bedframe

Steak and Potato
by Marin Kosut

I was born to vegetate. As a juvenile, I’d stare at my blank bedroom wall. I’d stare out at the driveway. Not even the sky or the ceiling. I’d lay on my bed looking down at the middle of my body and stay outside myself inside the house. I wrinkled with time on top of my sheets. Sometimes, admittedly, I flipped through the Pennysaver. I didn’t know nothing, but I wasn’t totally rotten. 

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