Fiction

Everyday Heroes—Tricia Lowther

Fiction Issue #4: Hope March 31st, 2020 March 31st, 2020 Everyday Heroes by Tricia Lowther luorescent light sliced into his pupils and somewhere in the distance Mick heard the clattering of metal. Voices swirled about his head, echoing and receding. He smelled the disinfectant-permeated air just before the pain stabbed his abdomen, and unconsciousness dragged him back under. He was surrounded by darkness when he woke again. His tongue was thick when he swiped it across his ...

Bump—Roisin Doyle-Bakare

Fiction Issue #4: Hope March 31st, 2020 March 31st, 2020 Bump by Roisin Doyle-Bakare I omething in her switched at that moment. Seeing the two pink lines on the pregnancy test made her feel every symptom of pregnancy she hadn’t noticed before. The nausea, the fatigue, the sore breasts: she could practically feel the creature moving inside of her, even though it couldn’t have been larger than a strawberry. All at once she felt horrifyingly ordinary. How ...

A Philadelphia Winter—Mark Tulin

Fiction Issue #4: Hope March 31st, 2020 March 31st, 2020 A Philadelphia Winter by Mark Tulin our nurse woke me out of deep sleep to tell me over the telephone that you were attempting to eat broken glass from a shattered mirror, trying to kill yourself for the third time that month. She said that you are fine, though, heavily sedated and put on suicide precaution for the remainder of the evening. The moments following the phone ...

Assurances—Ann Michael

Fiction Issue #4: Hope March 31st, 2020 March 31st, 2020 Assurances by Ann Michael he young nursing student asks me for help with her clinical notes. She writes, “I have much exciting but also fears about this my first day.” I point out the incorrect use of the adjective for the noun but find it difficult to stay at the sentence level. “Because I have not any experience with mental institution. Also my confidence is sinking due ...

Wendy’s Eighty-Eighth—Mike Bonnet

Fiction Issue #4: Hope March 31st, 2020 March 31st, 2020 Wendy’s Eighty-Eighth by Mike Bonnet ighty-eight. It’s a pleasing number to say. Has a certain symmetry to it. Two fat ladies, they call it in bingo, not that there’s anywhere they call bingo numbers round here anymore. When you get up this high the numbers don’t mean as much as they used to. I remember when I turned 30; back then, reaching that age unmarried was ...

Beating, Like a Drum—Kathi Hansen

Fiction Issue #3: Pain Continued December 31st, 2019 December 31st, 2019 Beating, Like a Drum by Kathi Hansen s the yoga teacher whispers us back from Savasana, I sense that she’s disappeared the grim reaper; even, apparently, from the dark recesses of the elderly woman softly snoring in the corner. But when I open my eyes I catch the glint of his scythe. He’s there, though moving backward, away from me, bending into Utkatasana—chair pose. He ...

The Way We Say Goodbye—Denize Springer

Fiction Issue #3: Pain Continued December 31st, 2019 December 31st, 2019 The Way We Say Goodbye by Denize Springer oe’s face is the color of salt. His head, flopped to one side, floats above the crisp white sheet his wife has tucked tight around his failing body. Irma shifts from one foot to the other. She’d like to tell her brother that he reminds her of a burrito, but she suspects Helen wraps him so because she ...

Tense—A.E. Santana

Fiction Issue #3: Pain Continued December 31st, 2019 December 31st, 2019 Tense by A.E. Santana he living-room apartment had an overlay of warm light Carlota hated. The light came from the floor lamp her fiancé, Noah, had bought for her at a yard sale a year ago. She wanted to change out the yellowish light bulb for a white one, but was afraid of hurting his feelings. So she left it. As Carlota settled onto the worn ...

Review: The Pervert—A. M. Larks

Fiction Issue #3: Pain Continued December 31st, 2019 December 31st, 2019 Review: The Pervert by A. M. Larks n the second panel of The Pervert, a fictional graphic novel created by Remy Boydell and Michelle Perez that tells the story of a transgender sex worker coming to terms with their identity, the narrator recalls being asked by a “fiscally conservative, socially libertarian” guy to have sex while enduring homophobic slurs. The world of this raw, unflinching ...