Really

by Laura Shell

Your name is Really because it was all I could think to say as you marched across my lawn. Your pitted, black scorpion body. Your gray wolf head with drooling smile. Your stinger tail you swivel in all directions and snap like a bullwhip. I filmed you on my phone that day, and then I said, “Really?” The video went ultra viral. You stand by my front door—an alien sentinel. Do you have a crush? You let me stroke the gray hair on your wolf face. Just below your ear. If you were a cat, you would have purred.

Problem Child

by David M Wallace

Dolly knew only the rules of her game and did not notice the other games being played. She thought she had a home, an annoying little sister, parents who could sometimes be persuaded and who sometimes must be obeyed.

But her parents were divorcing. The court would decide with whom she would live. The market assigned a portion of the asking price to what had been her bedroom. District boundaries led to a new school and no friends. The clinic determined a diagnosis and prescribed a medication.

Years later, newly sober, she confessed she’d made some bad life choices.

Restless

by Sara Merkin

Is it creepy to stare at him while he sleeps? You’re not sure. Still, you lay there, counting each blackhead-filled pore on his crooked nose. Fourteen–wait–seventeen on the tip. His breath smells like bourbon, but you were the only one that drank. Up the bridge makes twenty-two. Was he still mad? No, his sleeping body was too still, too relaxed for anger. Thirty-eight. You mimic his breathing, an attempt to drift off. Forty-seven total. At least he kissed you goodnight. Your eyes shut but your mind doesn’t. He might still be mad. Damn, pores are a sorry replacement for sheep.

During an Overdue Oil Change

by Tom Gadd

The undercarriage of the car floats in the oil pan. Breaks into ever expanding circles. Reforms and breaks again. Like our lives, he thinks beneath the car they bought together that he visits now only when she phones about a strange ticking sound or another stall that made their child late for school.
And here are her feet. Just her feet. Toenails flaking pink paint. The daisy chain tattoo circling her ankle. And an opened beer she’s placed on the garage floor.
How does it look?
Looks like heaven, he wants to answer but he says good. It’s all good.

Marital Gratitude

by Sam Anders

In winter he makes soup for my dinner while he’s working at the restaurant. The eggplant creaminess is dark, satiny, subtle, and surprising, like my husband. He might flirt with butternut squash risotto or seduce with the aroma of roast duck. On the day of our son’s birth, I arrived home to feast on his gift of gratitude: lemony sautéed soft-shell crab. I am more fluent in words than in actions, but he understands how much I love him when I make his tea or walk the dog on a cold night, though it’s his turn.