MER Featured Fiction Death of the Water Bug by Lore Segal Lucinella wrote to Bridget: ‘We never outlive a shy, uncomfortable shame before asking a friend, especially another writer, to give us the time and attention to read…
Browsing: Fiction
James Callan An Otherwise Quiet Space Beneath the sheets, my four-year-old kneads my thighs with his feet. In his sleep, or semi-sleep, the many long minutes leading up to it, he grips my leg hairs with his impossibly hot,…
Mike Gray The Stoic Birds are starting outside already, somewhere in the languid cool. My arms stretch overhead, body sleeved in fatigue, tired skin luxuriating beneath the sheets. A good day to silence the alarm. Burrow and nestle. Be…
Margo Griffin How to Signal a Ceasefire During War I slipped my feet into the warm, pink, fuzzy slippers my daughter Maura bought me three Christmases ago, before our war began and back when she liked me. The gift…
Tiffany Sciacca P.F. 1982 10 was a reasonable age. Old enough to appreciate the glow of a firefly in the dark cup of your best friend’s hands. Wishing through her fingers for longer summers, longer legs, less pain. Behind…
Join us for the February Flash Challenge! #febflash is a chance for writers to establish or nurture a daily writing practice by focusing on short, flash pieces throughout this, the shortest month. Participants set the goal of writing one piece…
Jennifer Dickinson No One’s Darling Etta puts on her pink dress with the slit up the skirt. Lipstick. Powder. Mascara. Rhinestone earrings. Her fur coat. If she’s going to have an audience, she has to look her best. The blonde…
Breena Clarke Mama Ascended I have communicated with those who would know. Mama and Papa and Harold and Alice were welcomed in the afterlife, following their harrowing deaths. Their souls were luminous. They said that Mama ascended in the…
Melissa Coss Aquino Visions of the Mother We Need (excerpt from the novel Carmen and Grace) We put the holy water on our foreheads in the sign of the cross from the small marble basin at the entrance, as if…
Naomi J. Williams No Doors When they had been stuck indoors for a very long time, the children asked if they could play outside, just for a little while, and the mother relented because she wanted to be alone for…