Issue 4: Fiction
- The Girl by Elizabeth J. Colen
Each sentence she spoke not once inside, but repeatedly. They ran rampant, compulsive, like an actress inside her skull learning lines. She said nothing aloud. But the words continued, the thump-thump beating at the sides of her head under the hair, knocking on her cornea, optic nerve willing the world to red, then black. It wouldn’t be fair to say she heard voices. Every word came in her voice, her childish patter, cycling deeper and deeper in tenor. Her brain hurt, skull hurt, skin, fingertips, everything burned with pulsing. Everything made childhood feel ridiculous. Made swing sets and monkey bars and bicycles, balls and bats, crayons, even books obsolete. So that her world condensed to the size of the lack of motion, the rhythm below her scalp.
[read the full story] - The Scavengers by Karen Regen-Tuero
Isabel winced whenever anyone called Abuelito’s store a “junk shop.” Though Segundo Oportunidad sold its share of mongo—broken ACs and ironing boards, good just for scrap—the place offered nearly as many treasures: an old-fashioned bird cage, a tiny statue of a boy going fishing, glittery old-lady earrings. Like Isabel always told her abuelo, it all depends on what you choose to see.
[read the full story]
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