Crestview Way, October 1985 Victoria Lancelotta __________ It’s Saturday night almost Sunday morning when Jimmy and Abby do it. They’re at Ryan from AP European History’s house, the front door open and the back patio slicked with spilled beer, an October wind spinning wood smoke and brittle leaves. The party’s…
Read MoreVallie Lynn Watson Vallie Lynn Watson is an Assistant Professor of English/fiction writing in the MFA program at McNeese State University. Her novel, A River So Long, was published by Luminis Books, and recent short stories and essays appear in literary journals such as Hobart, Bending Genres, and PANK. Watson earned her doctorate a thousand…
Read MoreOne-Sentence Stories: Summer I, 2024 Editor: Vallie Lynn Watson Managing Editor: Abbie Skinner Guest Editor: Taylor Mahone Assistant Editors: Karris Rae, Aiman Tariq, Taryn White, Meilyn Woods Editorial Assistants: Mia Bonds, Alexandria Knight Victoria de Benedicty, UNTITLED Letter from the Editor by Vallie Lynn Watson Letter from the Guest Editor…
Read MoreRhumbline Lucinda Kempe __________ Comus was a black Labrador and came from a breeder on Long Island. Rhumbline Retrievers is run by Susan and her husband Joe. Rhumbline is a nautical term for a straight line between two points.1 Both Susan and her husband had worked in the merchant marine.…
Read MoreTake ’em Both John Janelle Backman __________ The only other customer in the pet shop sidled up to my right, like someone about to whisper a secret. I couldn’t turn my head toward him to get a good look. Short, that I could tell—at least a head shorter than me.…
Read MoreThe Cat Boy Jean-Marc Duplantier __________ When my sister-in-law Amy died, Pascal, her seven-year-old son, moved in with us, and he brought his cat Minou with him. On that first night, I watched from the door of the guest room as my wife Christina kissed Pascal, tucked him in, and…
Read MoreShapeshifter Patience Mackarness __________ Minette turns squirrel and streaks up the trunk of a young oak tree, pausing on a branch twelve feet from the ground. Her long fur is splotched like sunlight, her ears tawnily tufted, her golden eyes rimmed mascara-black. There are Siberian tree-cats in her ancestry, and…
Read MoreDread Randall Brown __________ Attie shone the iPhone’s flashlight in her sister Isabel’s face and, with her left hand, knocked her awake. It had been only six hours since their dog Lucky returned after a week, mad, foaming, stumbling through the gates and into their seven acres on the Philadelphia’s…
Read MoreLet the Bodies Hit the Floor: A Cycle Alexa Doran __________ If you attended the funeral for my Trapper Keeper’s iron-on patch, Frank the Frog, in my fifth grade homebase, or watched me lug a dog dish over to my golden retriever Lisa Frank folder, you are likely unconvinced by…
Read MoreThe Hologram of the Cat Meg Pokrass __________ Today, Muffin barks at the front door for an hour. She nips at our ankles, though not in a painful way. Not in a way that means, ANIMAL ALERT. What is it, girl? we say. Maybe it’s the hologram of the cat,…
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