To Perform a Task Well Is Sufficient
by Maddy Raskulinecz
My task was to induce stress in the participants. I was allowed to do it however I liked. Stress is lizardly in the brain, which can be people’s qualm with it, that the enemies it steels you against are not the ones likely stressing you, like:
Night Sharks
by Lucie Britsch
She warned me on our first night together that there might be sharks. Not just regular ones but night ones, swimming around the bed. If I wanted to call it off, she understood.
I said we could go back to mine but she said it didn’t matter, the sharks would still come.
Sacs by Kara Vernor He poked the drying jellyfish with a stick and flies scattered. “Looks like a fake tit,” he said. “Like someone was jogging along and it flopped out.”
Salad Days by Frances Badalamenti On the night that Uncle Joe’s Tavern opened for the first time ever, I was asleep in my room. I had turned ten that day. My mother had our loud Italian family over for baked ziti and cake. We had just moved from a big four-bedroom house with a sprawling yard and a two-car garage into a nondescript one-bedroom garden apartment, even though there was nothing resembling a garden. There was grass and parking areas. […]
Discovering a Terrible Truth by Jamie Iredell At a cubicled desk he calculated, entered the numbers, filled the forms with his name, a name he would forget. His ties came with stripes and paisleys. His coffee smelled of strong earth. He’d come to this city for work after four years shoving his head in books on a quadrangled, cottonwood-lined campus. He was duded up in fine wool slacks, his teeth gleaming from the dentist, a ticking watch slipped into his […]
Flesh and Blood by Karen Stefano The boy stands before the mirror, the blankness of his own face a canvas, something to crave, to desecrate. Fingernails scratch, puncture, strip away fragments of flesh. Blood trickles. Pain like a caress.
Confessions of The Lovestruck by Leland Cheuk 2001 China launched an unmanned spacecraft named Shenzhou 2. Apple debuted iTunes. And Carrie Kahl auditioned for The Lovestrikes. I remember it better than the day we heard “Blood Hunger” went platinum. She had jet-black hair, blue eyes under thick mascara and eye shadow, and lipstick the color of pork’s blood. She wore denim shorts cut off at the knees and a tank top made out of an XL t-shirt with the sleeves […]
Good Egg by Shayne Terry We answer within one ring. Don’t worry about being fast. It happens automatically. A window opens and there is a person in your ear. The ring is just to warn you. You’ll know the name by the account on the screen. If you can’t pronounce it, just say “Sir” or “Ma’am.” Most of them are okay with “Sir” or “Ma’am.”