No one lets you in on the secret that when a loved dies, you have to relive it with each retelling. At this point, I’ve detached the meaning from it all. Now just a bedtime story I never forget to tell myself. Me, an ongoing audience of one.… more
Tag Archives: Death
Calluses
CREATIVE NONFICTION by Matthew AlcornInnocence is an epidermis, shielding our sensitive nerves from pain. Upon seeing death, that skin sloughs off all at once, a full-body degloving, and even the pressure of the air around you becomes too much to bear, a searing pain that never quite stops, ebbing for a time, then flooding back.… more
Love, Reincarnated
CREATIVE NONFICTION by K Anand GallLong before I knew of ghosts as apparitions, I understood them simply to be the presence of the deceased. In this way, I was raised with death, a silent death that lurked largely unmentioned in corners.… more
The Force of Objects in Summer
CREATIVE NONFICTION by Tetman CallisTwice I have heard young women scream when they have seen someone they love torn open or crushed and bleeding and dying in front of them. There is no other scream like it.… more
Black Crows
FLASH FICTION by Ken RodgersI didn’t know shit about birds, but for some reason watching them made me hopeful. Maybe something about rebirth and all that shit.… more
Thoughts of Death in the Big Country Morning
FICTION by J. BillingsHe would stand on the porch and curse the trains in the distance and then move to the meadow and sit still, so to watch the deer moving slowly through the long grass, and then he would go to the edge of the pond at night and look at the beautiful moonlight mixing like oil into the pond water and he would think about putting a bullet straight through his brain and sinking to the moss at the bottom of the water.… more
Mementos
FICTION by Patrick StricklandWe’d been cutting weight for weeks, wearing garbage bags in the sauna and running a few miles two or three times a day. I’d already shucked fifteen pounds just to save space for booze, but I started to worry Mikey would be a downer all night. Worst thing about a guy like that—he gets you worried you did something wrong, like all his problems are your fault.… more
Gentle Cozy Universe-Spinning Whispers
FICTION by Kate GehanEdward cannot find rest without Nya X since his mother died and he watches her on YouTube precisely because he is not turned on when she dresses like a Russian nurse.… more
Quick Math
FICTION by Paul RousseauDarrell stared at the room placard just below the peephole until his sight went out of focus. He made the numbers 404 transform, they shuffled and stretched, elastic, until they spelled out their true meaning as Darrell saw them. A warning: Death O’Death.… more
