

Next door Marjorie slaughters watermelon with an axe. It is summer, a smoke-stained June, and Melody is counting the days since her sister Val last left the house: eleven. Her record is one hundred and seven, and it ...
Watermelon Axe by Emily Pegg
Fiction, LAR Online

Bernadette’s husband came home late again last night. She’d been awake for a long time because of the rain lashing against the windows and her worry that the river might overflow. The February rains had brought the ...
Someone To Talk To by L.M. Brown
Fiction, LAR Online

I am expired. I have no growing cancer, no failing kidney, or Alzheimer’s, none of the lethal 21st century common causes of death. I have a history of anemia that I sporadically keep under control with the iron ...
The Stories We Choose to Tell by Fatima Alharthi
Fiction, LAR Online

Lucy just isn’t the kind of person who would do something like this. She’s such a good mom.
It’s been a shock for all of us, especially poor Tim. I saw him yesterday out in front of their house. I was ...
To rest her feet, to feel like one of the girls by Hannah Grieco
Fiction, LAR Online

I’m on a wooden bed in a locked room, in a red house, in a gated garrison. Nothing around but endless lines of trees. No one can find me here. No one is looking. A solitary unlit bulb hangs from the cracked ...
The Red House by Rachel Ramirez
Fiction, LAR Online

We’re sitting in his car listening to music and for a second I think he might kiss me. He offered to drive me home after work because he says I shouldn't be taking the train at night. I tell him I'm a strong girl and ...
Sometime in the Fall by Alexa Joyce
Fiction, LAR Online

Daniel Gray’s wife Corrie didn’t belong in our town. We all knew that on the day Dan brought her home from the city.
It wasn’t just the colors she wore. We Allensville wives wore plain waists and dark skirts to ...
Coreopsis by Kris Faatz
Fiction, LAR Online

This is a story about Saeed, which my father told my mother before they’d even considered bringing me into the world, and my mother told me one day when I was trying to heat a pita on the stove. To be precise, Baba ...
Saeed by Amir Sommer translated by Jessica Cohen
Fiction, LAR Online

I tell her he's gone. For real this time. I deleted his number last weekend while scotch-drunk, so it's not like he's at the door when the buzzer rings. It's just takeout. Ok, dog? It’s Bombay curry. She barrels down ...