Fiction – swamp pink

Nobody Said Anything

We stole. We liberated packages from doorsteps. We robbed the convenience store. Sometimes simply because we wanted something. Sometimes to prove something, to show courage. The bravest kids reached into the cars of visiting men, even before it got dark. They were distracted, we’d tell each other. One of us would watch the apartment door and the other would grab whatever was available. We never got anything to sell. We threw away a lot. We stole for the power...

Influencers

Sidney and I started work on the same day, her as a Client Support Specialist at a small influencer marketing startup on 1st and Mission, and me as a Client Support Specialist at a small influencer marketing startup on 2nd and Montgomery. She was on the front end, which meant working with influencers directly, and...

SOME NEWBORNS SHOW SIGNS OF WITHDRAWAL

The girls had the man in the shed for sixty-seven days before Quinn found out. Quinn found the man’s wallet in her daughter Peyton’s closet. His license showed a six-foot-two organ donor with thick, blonde hair. There were no cards or cash. She scared herself imagining the ways a fifty-three year old man’s wallet could...

Jujubes

January 27, 2026

Rahim couldn’t sleep. He turned on the lamp and looked at the clock. Half past three. He flipped through the pages of a half-read poetry collection, waiting for the morning call from the minaret. He never missed his prayers. Outside his window, a crow called. It was said that crows were bad luck for a...

The Hole

January 27, 2026

The grandfather was the first person in the family to notice the existence of the hole in the back yard near the children’s trampoline. The hole was located under one of the trampoline’s eight metal legs, and that leg was now lower than the other seven legs and the trampoline listed slightly to one side as if it were a large insect settling itself to rest or perhaps spawn upon the ground before scuttling away. The grandfather didn’t speak to his daughter about the hole as he was afraid that she...

I’ll Send For You

January 27, 2026

Our mother summoned us to meet her in Jamaica, to say goodbye to our dying granddad. I’d met him once before as a toddler, but my sister, Brittany, never. Despite being warned that the family home was rural, up in the mountains, that it got pitch black after sunset, had no nightlife, no convenience store...

Becoming
Tran Thi Thien

January 13, 2026

To the best of my knowledge, this story is entirely true. My grandmother stole her name from a dead girl. In 1927, my grandmother escaped the house of the wealthy family that had bought her from her impoverished family with the intention of having her marry their incompetent son. They had raised her from the time she was...

Sister Cycle

January 13, 2026

There are twelve sisters, and their house is falling apart. There have not always been twelve, but now there are twelve. Sometimes there are ten, because one of them is being Mother, and another Father. Sometimes there are only six, because a handful are running away. . Rhododendron is prettiest. Sorrel is hungriest, stomping around the house, parting floorboards and collecting termites, popping them...

A Family Affair

January 13, 2026

My father had been in the process of dying for years before he actually went. Cardiomyopathy, a slow disease, and bearing every inconvenience. He was not supposed to chop wood, among a long list of not-alloweds, like consuming anything with sodium or sugar, or walking the dog down the steep path to the woods, or going through airport security without...

Attractions

October 16, 2025

It took like an hour to get to Coney Island from Rockaway, so Kayla and Heiley never went much before, but that was the summer Heiley wanted to ride rides next to screaming boys she didn’t know who pretended to their friends that they weren’t scared afterwards. They had to take the Q35 across the...

Beasts

October 16, 2025

On our last ordinary night, I aimed the ball at my younger brother’s head. We were on the trampoline in the far corner of our backyard behind the thick pecan, playing penalties and meta tres and world cup off the posts. I wanted, just this once, to beat him. My brother dove, then bounced upright, his teeth inexplicably green in the navy dark. The ball...

The Roommate

October 16, 2025

I don’t know how to tell it, I really don’t, it happened slowly and then all at once and the very next weekend we took a hammer to the cot, repainted the walls of the nursery, and posted a listing online. The new tenant would have to be single, since the apartment wasn’t big enough...