Today is my favorite shift of the year: New Year’s Day. The passengers that ride my bus are mostly quiet; last night’s partygoers have found another way home. It’s just the morning route and the Oregon rain and ...
The Cadence of Rain by Erin Popelka
Fiction, LAR Online
I was seventeen years old and living in the suburbs of Westbrook, Maine, when God rode her skateboard through a flaming hole in the sky. She turned out to be a bit of an asshole in denim and sent forth a cloud of locusts ...
And God Descended Like Hell on Wheels by Francis Walsh
Fiction, LAR Online
I was eighteen and living on two eggs a day. I fried them in soy sauce, pleating them in the pan the way my mother showed me. Don’t break the yolk, she’d say, rolling the oil into pearls. It means you’ll have a ...
Transcendence by K-Ming Chang
Fiction, LAR Online
I didn't want to make a spectacle of the night, but I did want to bring in some turbine. A different flow for Sheila and I. We’d been together for three years and lived at the Lyndon on seventh. There wasn't much
holiday ...
Christmas Eve at the Lyndon Hotel by Henry Lara
Fiction, LAR Online
All you did was use the toilet. Then clear away the blocks Beverly had left scattered in the entryway. You didn’t want anyone to trip later, coming inside. You left her with her sidewalk chalk out in front of the ...
Things Are Already Better Someplace Else by Jody Hobbs Hesler
Fiction, LAR Online
Our new mayor, a rat of his word, announced the crackdown after inauguration.
Rottweilers were rounded up first, muzzled, then marched out of town. Few onlookers said a word: a notorious mauling years back stayed ...
On the Rooftops by Alex Sheal
Fiction, LAR Online
Shards
Our front door is damaged, and the windows are broken, by a series of storms, so everyone sneaks in- humans, blackbirds, moths, vines. Dad drove away, wrote a prayer hotline number on the kitchen wall. We hide in ...
Shards & It’s Crucial Where You Hang That Mirror by Tara Isabel Zambrano
Fiction, LAR Online
Inertia
The train hurries past unfamiliar landmarks, and she realizes too late that she was supposed to get off two stops ago, maybe four. She looks around to the door, past bulky bodies in puffy coats lodged together ...
Inertia by Yunya Yang
Fiction, LAR Online
A good run it’s been so far, Julian thinks, this thing between him and Sammie – nights out while ignoring her husband’s calls, trysts in hotel rooms purchased merely for the self-aware absurdity. The brief escape ...
Salsa by Jason Peck
Fiction, LAR Online
