Fiction 5.3
Ozone
by Jenn Hollmeyer
“It was the seventh day of hundred-degree heat, and it was starting to feel like some kind of un-creation story. We ate bowls of chilled applesauce and went to bed at noon. Val sprayed our sheets with water and taped freeze packs to the air conditioner in the window…”
Dear Carlotta
by Jonathan Kravetz
“Dear Carlotta, My husband of seventeen years died last year when his car slid on an icy patch and slammed into a truck carrying live chickens. Many of the fattened up birds got free of their cages and ran into the woods and disappeared…”
Pokoinikk
by Ron Riekki
“My best friend’s father committed suicide by putting a gun in his mouth. His father was a chef with an incredibly picky taste so the sense of irony was not lost on me, but it was a revelation that I realized I could never reveal out loud…”
Zeus’s Fear
by Charlie James Stephens
“The other day my grandson told me about reading a story about how Zeus feared that humans were becoming powerful enough to take over Mt. Olympus. They were whole and formidable with their four arms and four legs, but he split them into the two halves, which became the two sexes. Everyone, including my grandson, understands this to be the basis for the ‘looking for your other half’ story…”