I am not hungry, I say. I am not hungry. I have said it so many times that my mouth is compost and the words are larvae, getting stuck in a craw, spinning wheels in the snow, spewing on the lawn. It is winter, and the birds are hiding in the trees. I watch them through the places my breath has...
Ten years ago, the mantle of Sun Coral’s Innkeeper fell to me, and in the four centuries that it has stood in Coveter’s Cove, I became the youngest member of the Lirio family to ever manage it. My mom never failed to remind me and my brother Ethan of this. I probably accepted the job when I was...
from Bad Houses (Arsenal Pulp Press, September 2024) When I couldn’t go on social media without getting sad or angry, I hired an intern. A quiet kid from one of my first-year composition classes. After the second week of class, as I was erasing notes from the whiteboard about how to paraphrase...
They’re trying their best. So am I. It’s not enough. “Okay, let’s just pause. Lake, I said pause! I need a second.” The wind is driving snow into everything. Down my boots, up the cuffs of my jacket, under my toque. It’s giving unhinged prairie winter realness, the full sweat-inside-your-parka...
“I’ve heard,” says Kristen, shifting gears as she pulls out of the ER parking lot, “I’ve heard that quadriplegics, they can get off to someone stimulating their ear. Is that what this was?” “I’m not quadriplegic,” I say, wishing I’d had the foresight to puncture my left eardrum instead of my right...
Deirdre opens the door, a vision of opulence with onyx hair and topaz eyes. One look at her and Cassie forgets about Ben and the kids. She finds herself in the narrow entryway of Deirdre’s apartment. Cooking smells of oil and garlic permeate the air, settling in her throat. “It’s been too long!”...
I love you pandemic o sweet sweet pandemic. I love you new flu I love you flattening the curve I love you doors closed people inside families hidden from view. I love you whatever it is that brings Eva and me to each other’s mouths finally and our shaking panting wanting. Like dogs, I want to...
I would like to make it known that I never languished around like some sort of woe-begotten damsel, desperately waiting for Ben to show up. In all the time we’d known each other, my life had been full. Too damn full, even. And while there’s no shame in having a quiet Saturday evening at home, even...
When she was eleven, Alex spent about a week out in the Missouri cornfields, crawling along the bottom of the stalks until she found a natural divot in the ground that was big enough for her lanky frame. There she burrowed down, surrounded by dirt and worms, and covered the top of the hole with the...
By the early 1950s, the town where I grew up was turning into a modern suburb of Montreal, just across the river. New streets were being carved into the surrounding farm fields of the St. Lawrence valley, but the house my parents had put a down payment on, not long before my older brother was born...
The ringmaster thinks about the words work and pride and feels nothing. Glowing tubes writhe and pulse through colours as they pass over the audience, who scream or laugh or noiselessly gape up into their futures. One tube pauses above the ringmaster, changing to match the black and purple of his...
Naegleria Fowleri infects people when water containing the amoeba enters the body through the nose. This typically happens when people go swimming, diving, or when they put their heads under fresh water, like in lakes and rivers. The amoeba then travels up the nose to the brain, where it destroys...
Finn (not her name) described herself as a grief artist as though this were a familiar term, wanting to see how the person she was talking to asked for an explanation (chastened, as if they ought to have known already, in quotations, to make her feel foolish so they didn’t, not at all). To her, it...
The first time Lenny does her wash at your house, she comes with a bottle of gin in her laundry basket, folded into a cardigan. You’re standing out back watering the lettuces when she calls your name over the fence. “Ginger?” She holds up her laundry basket. “This a good time?” “Of course!” You let...
You ever listened to Roy Orbison? That voice. That fucking voice. Cuts deep into you, slicing you bit by bit. Until you’re just chunks of meaty, exposed flesh on the ground. All that remains is the pain you had before you started listening to one of his songs. Been listening to him a lot lately...
Content warning: this story depicts domestic violence and has discussions of sexualized violence. The Johnny Cash records. Well, we left behind all the records, along with that battered record player in the teal case. All of us, when we were little, liked to play with the metal clasp on that case...
“Two Warehouse Workers, Not Smoking” was inspired by the short story “Two Nurses, Smoking,” (The New Yorker, 2020) by David Means, and the investigative journalism of The New York Times. The sign was written in half a dozen languages in order for its meaning to not be mistaken: A Smoke-Free...
She spent the afternoon the same way she had every day that week, digging around the lake after swimming lessons with the dog-eared blue book tucked under her arm. In her bag, a rosemary sprig, a stubby white candle. All week, Fran had been considering the jaw of the squirrel, and now she walked...
The frosting on today’s cupcakes is bluish-grey, the colour of blah—the colour of this moment. But the smells of cinnamon buns, movie popcorn, and French fry oil fill the air and remind me of the verb wafts, so I turn away from the dessert shop and try to forget it’s there. I make my way to a...
I’ve been walking in the woods for some time when I see it: a bright synthetic pulse of colour, about a stone’s throw from the trail, peeking out from the dead leaves. Upon further inspection it’s a cross, tole painted in uneven coats of periwinkle blue. In a careful and tidy hand, someone has...
When my older sister Mathilde was twelve, my mother told her she had to wait a year before getting a pet—to make sure she was responsible enough, or maybe just hoping she’d change her mind after a year. My sister, being an animal-loving preteen fuelled by stubbornness, waited the year and...
1. Our favorite part of the zoo was the aquarium. We were both scared of water. Never swam or got close to the beach. Being blue-skinned between the water tanks got us close as we ever got to being fish. Me and Jack. I remember, we found the ugliest fish we could that reminded us of each other. He...
Jo wakes up with a lump on her throat. Not in, but on. She sees it first in the bathroom mirror as her face fades into view through the steam from the shower. It’s about the size of a marble, gelatinous in consistency. When she touches it, she feels it move slightly beneath the skin. Lucille comes...
It is late April, too early yet for tourists. The cashier looks at me through a pair of smudged glasses that perch precariously at the tip of his nose. His curious eyes study my features, searching for clues: a hint of an Adam’s apple or eyebrows that are just a smidge too thin. He is considering...
It was the sound of humming that woke me, low and mournful. But when I came to full consciousness, I couldn’t hear anything. It was very late or possibly very early and the room was dark, darker than usual, a sort of pulsating soft black-grey. A fog must have rolled in off the river, dimming...
M The first time you see L, she is climbing a dying pitch pine, brown needles falling into the shadows between her curls. You don’t catch sight of her immediately. Your calves ache from forcing your way through the encrusted landscape, and only a skinny rabbit hangs from your belt. Snow has crept...
In January I moved into a basement suite in Burnaby. The windows looked out into holes in the ground that were covered by planter boxes along the east wall and a newly built deck along the back. No one lived in the house above, but every weekend at 5 AM the gardener would start up a weed wacker...
I. SUMMER My mother was a gardener. She saw something in nature—in dirt and bugs and effervescent flies—that I never have. Under light skies and bright weather, she’d kneel for hours in our mediocre garden, weeding and watering or whatever it is that gardeners do. I am now doing the same in my...
I jump out from under the covers, stumbling down the hallway to Curtis’s nursery. The deep cream carpet muffles my steps, soft against my bare feet. The cool knob of the door startles me fully awake as I turn it. The hinges creak open. The room is dark. No nightlight. The screams that woke me up...
The woman smoking meth across from the bodega looks like your sister, so you offer her a pack of cigarettes and forty-three dollars if she’ll pretend to be her for one night. You could afford to pay more, but this is all you have in cash and she takes it. Up close, she looks less like Reed: acne...
This one Sunday night I stood in my bathroom with the door open while Cass talked me through her most recent horrible week. Cass was tall, blonde, thin. Light on light on light. Except, she kept her long hair dyed bright colours and wore baggy clothes with a lot of patterns. This all had the effect...
My left pinky was first. During the icebreaker at my college dorm’s first floor meeting, when I was asked to give three interesting facts about myself, I lifted my pinky-less hand. The first fact was: “I grew up on a farm about four hours away.” The second fact was: “I lost my left pinky finger...
Marjan Every year, for two weeks in mid-May, the city is struck by cherry blossom fever. In April, the city waits on the edge of spring, which should be soft like rabbit ears or tulips. More often, spring in the city is sharp, the mornings still mean and frostbitten, the grey dusks prickling with...
It started when the bylaws changed, allowing anyone in the suburbs to own and raise chickens. My mom was unemployed at the time, which was common enough in our neighbourhood. She also had two thirds of an agriculture degree, which wasn’t. She worked when she felt like it and didn’t when she...
I can’t even begin to tell you how boring I am now. Boring in a good way, the kind you like, the kind that doesn’t exhaust you. It’s true every night I snort coke off a buzzard’s gold-encrusted talon at the Archbishop of York’s enthronement feast. It’s true my chocolate-covered knuckles are always...
The social worker parks us in the driveway. In my lap there’s a duffel bag and backpack, which I stuffed, hurried, when we stopped at my apartment on our way from the hospital. The social worker—Andrea—idled outside while I ran in. I barely remember what I grabbed before stumbling blindly back into...
Kate Cayley There was a small bathroom off of the gym changeroom. Grace knew it was almost never used. It was behind a beige door between two rows of lockers, and it only had three cubicles. The bathroom was L-shaped, the cubicles facing the sinks and mirrors, and then a corner that ended in a...
Emilie Kneifel the first years they fumbled through the office door, always late, always elbowing each other as they rush-brushed their teeth before they plopped in the chair. a boy and his older sister, who was the moon to his moving car: always behind, same angle, same distance. emily would have...
Johnny Alvarez When I first read it, I think it’s a mistake. I think I’m groggy, mentally displaced, as I often am at this hour. I open it in bed, staring not at the envelope as I tear it, but out my window to far-off Baker Beach. It’s a shitty, grey Bay day, but a few persistent souls have found...
Naomi Arden Paragas Pasatiempo “Tell me a ghost story,” I ask, curled in bed with my Naynay Rosie. It’s our first night in the Philippines, the first time she’s seen me since I was three. Night crawls over Manila. Our hotel room is sixty stories high, overlooking the city. Even from up here, we can...
Chris Slater You’ve been dead three weeks and it’s time to clean out your trailer. Sun glints gold off the dangling leaves. The sky faded denim. I could think of a hundred things I’d rather do today. A thousand. At least Brian’s working too. It’s silent up here in the boonies, no horns or sirens or...
Clara Otto I’m looking at my window when I realize there might not be anything special about it. I had always thought that it would reveal something—about the way dull senses wake up, without explanation, after years of monotony, or why walking down your childhood street can evoke a deep and sudden...
Brian O’Neill Jud wasn’t agoraphobic when he moved in with me. We had been friends for years and he was one of the most social people I knew, which was why I was happy to invite him to live with me. (I mean, that and I could’ve used help with the rent.) The circumstances were rough—his ex’s...
Interview by Rob Bittner Here is the third of four interviews and story excerpts as part of our Youth Spotlight project. For details on this series, see our original post. Rhyan St. Louis’s “To Be the Moon” utilizes a somewhat claustrophobic timeline along with earnest dialogue to create a palpable...
Interview by Rob Bittner Here is the first of four interviews and story excerpts as part of our Youth Spotlight project. For details on this series, see our original post. “The Ostrich Wife” by Annie Bhuiyan is a semi-autobiographical examination of what it means to feel uncomfortable as a...
Ani Kayode Somtochukwu Gloria used to say love was the greatest redeemer. She said this with her eyes closed and fingers fondly caressing a picture of my father, her sweaty hands smudging it to her chest. When I was younger, his pictures used to hang on every wall. He looked almost regal in them;...
Julia Peterson Your safety is your personal responsibility. Always follow the road marked on your map, and do not stray too close to the sidewalk. Do not take shortcuts. The unkempt backyards and vacant lots may be enticing, but the hungry ground beneath the weeds has been abandoned for too long...
Kaitlin Ruether One. Bright and fluid music softened Harriet as she emerged, three weeks ago, from Bloor-Yonge station into the pupil-sting of day. She ascended the subway steps and turned the corner to encounter three violinists, a cellist, and a percussionist whose snap-tap-tap snare rhythm...
Ron Schafrick If it was supposedly commonplace in the mythic suburban dream of the sixties and seventies for fathers to teach their sons how to throw a ball or how to make a fist to defend themselves, my father not only didn’t know it but he also would have regarded such things as useless and petty...
Fraser Calderwood One time I broke Leo’s nose. He let the basketball bounce away and thwack the door of a parked truck and he pinned me on the driveway and sprayed blood on me from his nose. Specks of blood dried on the cement like my head was a stencil. I can say for certain we were twelve and it...
Alice Gauntley Iris figured she was pretty calm about the concept of sex shops, and like most feelings uncommon to teenagers, this was a nerve-wracking position for a teenager to be in. The first thing you should know about Iris is that at the time this story takes place, her defining purpose in...
Tanya Marquardt A nude woman was sitting in my lap. I was looking at her through glassy booze filled eyes when her shaved head came into focus, my fingers curving around her hips to touch the downy hairs on her legs. Though my arm was around her, it felt more like she was all around me, soft flesh...
Jeremiah Bartram The little room was full of shadows. Monsignor Pedro Lopez-Gallo, a tiny figure immaculate in black, directed me to an armless wooden chair before a spotless desk. I was a petitioner, seeking the annulment of my long-dead marriage and he was head of the Marriage Tribunal of the...
Andrew Binks Mom always said I was a trophy hunter, “like your Aunt Evelyn,” she’d add, under her breath. I’d bring home an abandoned wren’s nest, an antler or some old chipped piece of stone off the prairie, and she’d swivel away from The Price is Right, lean forward in her Lazy-Boy, raise her...
Brett Josef Grubisic Using a plastic tool, Mother had demonstrated the art of peeling a navel orange four breakfasts in a row. I’d understood in about a second. Slice, slice, slice, slice. “There’s a technique to it too,” she told me. “From north pole to south in one precision movement. Then...
