Photo Story: A Night at the Craig Inn
Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising. This issue's photo prompt inspired some rather noirish tales. Get ready for a dark night of the soul.
View ArticlePhoto Story: By the Tracks
By Beret Olsen A bookish fellow, he studied God on weekdays, then made his way to Chaska to woo the schoolmarm there. Mercifully patient, he waited six months of Sundays for an answer to his question.
View ArticlePhoto Story: The Gurney
By Jeff Switt November spreads its grayness across sticky sidewalks as acrid smoke from burn barrels warms frigid hands and stings sleep-weary eyes.
View ArticlePhoto Story: The Woman in Silhouette
The night scenes had been going on forever, it seemed like. Erik couldn’t get the headlight shot blocked correctly and Lorraine was getting pissed. She was tired of this role.
View ArticlePhoto Prompt: The Chair
Here's what we discovered with our last photo prompt: an empty, abandoned chair can hold more compelling stories than we ever imagined. We couldn't decide on just one to feature. You'll see why.
View ArticlePhoto Prompt: An Inherited Condition
By Eric Skinner Hana shouts in her native Korean, “Foul Pig is waddling in for her manicure.” Venetian Spa on Broadway, far Off Broadway in Ocala, is operated by Hana and three sisters.
View ArticlePhoto Prompt: The Woman in Waiting
She waits alone, as she had waited every weekday morning for that familiar sound.
View ArticlePhoto Prompt: Person in a Box
“Mwahaha, I’m a robot!” I yelled, voice muffled through the cardboard. “Robots don’t say ‘mwahaha,'” he whispered next to me. “They say 'beep-boop.’”
View ArticlePhoto Prompt: Door No. 1, Door No. 2
By Eric Skinner When He asks, Elizabeth chooses Room #2. There, she rides the bicycle hell-fire down steep hills, her red hair the color of mercurochrome covering wounds.
View ArticlePhoto Story: Flames
By Connor Walsh The flame framed Henry's adolescent features against an impending darkness. A fiery period endured there, ending a childhood.
View ArticlePhoto Story: Throwing Stones
By Connor Walsh The dark flees from the beams of light like a thousand timid spiders to the surviving shadows. Cursing and wielding a fifth of his sense, Benjamin stumbles out of his father’s running...
View ArticlePhoto Story: Bruised
By Elaine McKay Her peaches and bruised complexion haunt the flat. Bandaged in oversized sweaters, she’s shrinking. He spills over the couch, thick skinned, swelling as he chews upon her nerve.
View ArticlePhoto Story: A Bolder Life
By John Evans This is how I remember it, what I saw from my window my first night as an orphan. Two trees, backlit by a low-slung moon, took turnabout gesturing at one another.
View ArticlePhoto Story: Comrades
By Tom Conlon Aunt Enid did not look like the rest of us, although she bore the slightest resemblance to Aunt Grace. Inevitable, I suspected, for two women who lived together their entire lives...
View ArticlePhoto Story: Listen
By Jenn O'Connor He learned to sign so that he could communicate with her, so that they could share speech without speaking.
View ArticlePhoto Story: Visitation
By Audra Kerr Brown I recognize her stern chin in flakes of peeling paint, her priggish nose upon water-stained ceilings. And now her profile, a cameo brooch pinned against fractured pavement.
View ArticlePhoto Story: Defector
By Clara Ray Rusinek Klein The postcards came creased, tobacco-stained, stamped Minsk, Irkutsk, and Krasnoyarsk. Ink bloomed in clouding steam as I stirred bubbling beets, hand on my belly, squinting...
View ArticlePhoto Story: The Meteorologists
Laying on the hood of her old Volvo, we scanned the sky, looking for the meteor shower the weatherman had promised—“he must know, he’s a meteorologist”—our conversation continually broken by...
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Photo Story: I am …
I am the cold shiver in the warm bath, the sour bite of the cherry, the wedge of food in your windpipe. I am half past home time for the kids you trusted to the swing park. I am the rise in your...
View ArticlePhoto Story: The Postcard
By Arleane Ralph Contractors discovered the postcard upon pulling out the kitchen cabinetry. It sat for days on a switch box until the drywallers came.
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