Category / Fiction / Spring 2021 / Spring 2021 Fiction

Looking back on my time in Singapore, nothing really stands out. I remember it being expensive. The exchange rate was negligible and worse yet if you were traveling with money from the region. Which makes it a bit of a game, trying to save money, to find the cheapest hawker centers, to discover free events.…

On his way to Heaven, Jimmy waved goodbye to his mom and dad and big brother Bill. They smiled and waved back. His dad gave his favorite bike a jump-start and whispered, “Now, on your way, son.” On his way to Heaven, Jimmy jumped over his dog Lucy and cat Pepper. He booted a red…

As Lyla exited Charles de Gaulle Airport, her first thought was not that she was finally in Paris. Rather, she couldn’t stop thinking about Evie’s latest Instagram post and her beaming smile as she posed next to the ivory dome of Sacre Coeur. It had been two years since they’d last seen each other, but…

“Hello there,” a voice said, waking the man. He was lying on a field of dry, colorless grass. As his eyes opened he shot up to a sitting position, gasping for breath as he looked around. “Calm down, you’re dead.” “What?!” the man said. “No…” He looked to where the voice came from. Crouched by…

Of all the dreams of me being chased, there are two that stand out among the dozens of the rest. The first one is about a rescue and run. I rescued a girl from a powerful gang who was about to rape her. And since then, I had to run from their retaliation. The whole…

Marcus flew into Champaign’s Willard airport from Midway-Chicago. It is hardly a forty-minute connector, unsurprising because just to drive can take no more than a true two hours, depending on traffic, depending on the amount of potholes on Cicero Avenue, depending upon the amount of Bettys and Dorothys and Jeds and Joes who slow the…

The orange lounger was such a luxurious treat to lift up the mood for anybody who was feeling low. It had such a nice touch that the skin would dive into it, the stress would melt out like a wax and you would find yourself in your own little haven. On the opposite side was…

She emerged from darkness, a being complete in human detail, but lacking a certain material quality. She was more like a vision than an apparition, her soul taking the shape of what she had been, but in a more ideal, divinely purposed way. She stood now in front of a shining, pearly gate. A man…

Today, I saw my father buried. Yesterday, it was the woman I gave my heart to twelve years earlier on a sunlit day amidst a vale of fragrant springtime flowers. The only person in my life I was capable of experiencing a full and rich life with, who made me better at living and dreaming.…

The soft pink of the sky washed the day in an ethereal haze. It wasn’t sunset, not even close, but the sky was pink. A cheery cherry pink, that reminded me of blush on cheeks and raspberry lip gloss. I stared at it through thick alumino-silicate glass that let in just pinkish-gold light to give…

‘The weird sisters, hand in hand, Posters of the sea and land, Thus do go about, about: Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine, And thrice again, to make up nine’ (William Shakespeare: Macbeth, Act I scene iii) At the hour when the shade lay least on the wooded shore, the girl walked on the…

Dear Whoever This Is, Mankind fucked up, one last time. This isn’t some cautionary tale about what we should have done, or a recipe for what we should do next. Too late for that. It’s just a story about how our final, fatal mistake started, what happened, and where it will end. How did it…

At thirteen-thousand feet Nick feels like a God. He is an atheist, but looking down on the world like he is God seems to be a fitting title. He is reminded of himself as a boy, towering over antbeds with his magnifying glass. He cast down fire and destroyed cities with a quick kick of…