The mermaid’s story is not her beauty. Her story is not creamy skin and lustrous hair, shell-smooth breasts unencumbered by gravity, small waist giving way to scaled hips. That is a story of fantasy, of fetish. She is beautiful, in the way of an angler fish or riftia, terrifying but perfectly and efficiently built for what she needs.

Her story is not how she traded her voice—so angelic, sweet, and resonant the whales give pause, sailors would gladly give their lives, and gods become jealous—for legs, her gills for lungs. Her story is not the excruciating pain of rendered tail, bloodied feet, broken heart. Lies, she says of these stories, told only to diminish her power. She has been many things, but she has never been frivolous.

Her story is her love, not the love of a girl for a prince, wide-eyed and stupid, needing only to be looked at, to be seen. Her love is as instinctual as hunger, forceful as the sea, powerful as a god. Her story is her garden, adorned with statuary on the sea floor. Red algae-covered and salt-aged stone. Sea grasses, kelp, anemones, polyps, tended with the care of a mother—watchful, pruning, possessive. And the statues: boys, precious looks of wonder in their immovable eyes. A variety of ages and sizes, but all in their youth. The youngest a new walker, the oldest not yet adolescent. Found on the beach by the mermaid, where she waits under the jetty. Where she watches for the most beautiful of them, the most inquisitive, the boldest. The ones who will wander off to explore a curiosity. The ones who do not doubt the existence of a being of another world. She waits under the jetty, calls them with a quiet song, a song only for those who still know how to listen.

The mermaid’s story is not what she gave up, a bad deal she made, a body hurled into the foam. She has been many things, but she has never been foolish. Her story is the way she draws the boys to her, the way they take her hand, so eager, so willing. Her story is the way she pulls them toward the water and down, gently, because they don’t think to let go of her hand. Her story is how they don’t struggle, not even when it’s too late, when they’re frozen to stone in their state of pure wonder.

Her story is that, though she will live a long life, when she dies, she will dissolve into the waves, as if she never existed. She has no soul to live beyond her body, and this is the source of the enduring pain of her story.

Her story is how she arranges the stone boys, each one in his place, here and here and here, expanding her garden to make room for them, all turned toward the center where she takes in their unwavering gazes, their outstretched hands reaching for her, forever. Their palms open, offering their lives to her, not to be stolen, but preserved. Her story is one of benevolence, taking them at the peak of boyhood. She takes only the innocent, the unsullied, the ones who have not yet sullied another. Her story is how she keeps them safe. Or, rather, how she does not keep them, but frees them, these boys with still-clean souls that will go on forever in a glorious, unknown place. She gives them the forever closed to her. Her story is how she loves them not despite, but because.  

***

Stephanie Frazee’s work is forthcoming from or has appeared in Bending Genres, Gooseberry Pie Literary Magazine, Centaur, Sundress Publications’ Delicate Machinery: Poems for Survival & Healing, Midwest Weird, Variant Literature, Pithead Chapel, and elsewhere. She is online at www.stephaniefrazee.com and @stephieosaurus.bsky.social. 

otherwise, he will call me, or I will call him,

and we will talk about his allergies, his prostate, his knees and elbows. He will ask about my day and I’ll tell him what I cooked. “Do you really know how to make that mango curry?” he will ask and I’ll roll my eyes. “Appa, I’ve been cooking for twenty years!” and he will sigh, saying, “Wow, you really have grown up so much!”

         and our conversation won’t end there. He will recall that relative I don’t like. “Visit them,” he will pester and I’ll come up with an excuse. “How about the weekend?” he will persist, and I’ll nod, saying, “I’ll try,”

         and at that moment, sensing the uneasiness hanging between us across the continents, he will recall a snippet from his boyhood — a story I can narrate verbatim. My irritation will drag at its seams. “I know this, Appa!” I’ll say with a straight face. “Have I told you about the time when I took that long walk with my grandfather to the temple?” His eyes will sparkle like little pearls. “Yes. That too!”

        and he will try again, “Even that time when I almost burned my tongue?” His face will touch the screen of the iPad and my heart will melt. “OK. Maybe not that,” I will lie,

         and he will sit up straight and tell me about how he went to a wedding and had piping hot payasam and scalded his tongue, and flutter his fingers to mimic his memory,

and he will and I will, and he will and I will, and all that remains now is I wish I could.

***

Sudha Subramanian lives in Dubai. Her work has appeared in Cutleaf, Centaur Lit, Bending Genres, among others. She is a tree hugger and an amateur birder. Connect with her on X @sudhasubraman or on IG @sudha_subraman or on Bluesky @sudhasubraman.bsky.social 

What Kira packed for summer camp: expired sunscreen, face powder, the pink Bible her grandparents gave her when she was born, tampons, hairbrush full of shed hair she never cleaned out, grape-scented lip balm, a mental image of Lauren’s bird-bone clavicles, her diary/scrapbook/photo album, mascara, the memory of her grandfather/pastor yelling that she couldn’t be baptized after all, not after her deviant behavior, which broke his heart as her grandfather and embarrassed him as her spiritual leader, an oats and honey granola bar, store-brand deodorant, toothbrush and toothpaste, an arrowhead necklace her mother used to wear before she left, faded underwear and mismatched socks, t-shirts from the wildlife conservancy where she donated her allowance money, the memory of the sweet-apple powdery taste of Lauren’s nipples.

What Kira packed to bring home after summer camp: one leftover tampon, a mix tape of praise hymns, the pink Bible, the mental image of Lauren’s clavicles, the charred remains of her diary/scrapbook/photo album, which she snatched from the flames at the last minute and was punished by not getting anything for supper except a cornbread muffin, mascara, her clothes and deodorant and toothbrush and toothpaste, the fading memory of the taste of Lauren’s nipples, a sparkly-clean hairbrush, a Patrick Swayze poster, a booklet explaining the dangers of unhealthy lifestyles (prostitutes, gamblers, runaways, junkies, homosexuals), her mother’s arrowhead necklace, a VHS video tape with a picture on the cover of a sunbeam streaming down from a cloud, which promised a new life, the knowledge that what she’d done with Lauren was a sin just as bad as murder, grape-scented lip balm, a hatred of herself, the desire to hurt herself, a scab where her left nipple used to be, the size of a penny, same copper color, dried blood.

***

Heather Bell Adams is the author of two novels, Maranatha Road (West Virginia University Press) and The Good Luck Stone (Haywire Books) and a novella, Starring Marilyn Monroe as Herself (forthcoming Regal House). Her work appears in New Letters, North Carolina Literary Review, Raleigh Review, The Thomas Wolfe Review; Orange Blossom Review, Reckon Review, and elsewhere.

The day the sun forgets to rise, Mr White sits down for breakfast at precisely twelve minutes past seven. This is in the dining room. It is Tuesday. His Tuesday breakfast is a soft-boiled egg opened with a swift beheading. His wife is flustered by the absence of the sun, but he pays her no mind. She has a habit of working herself up over inconsequential events. Last week, it was the lengthening of a day to more than twenty-four hours. A week before, it was the weight of the air. She is dependable like this. There is a new thing every week. She has been this way since that wintered Tuesday in the long shadow of the war, the one they never talk about. This morning, as she babbles about the sun, he knifes a lean skin of margarine across a thick slice of granary bread. Then he cuts the bread into ten soldiers to dip in the egg. This is precisely how it is every Tuesday. The egg. The soldiers. Mrs White in a fluster. Her emotions rising. Her voice tumbling over itself like a house of cards knocked flat. ‘Can you pass the salt?’ he asks. When she doesn’t answer, he reaches for it himself. The silence is yawning. Mrs White has her mouth in a humble cleft. She is staring out the window now, having no doubt realised her mistake—the sun is simply behind a cloud. No doubt, this will be the end of it. There is a reliability to how things go with Mrs White just as there is a reliability to the sun and the hours of a day and the very laws of nature herself. He picks up the paper. The paper is another source of reliability. Every day it echoes the days before and foreshadows the days to come. There is always the same masthead, the same layout, the same font. The main headline today is about the autumn statement in which the chancellor has declared a tax rise. When Mr White remarks upon the tax rise, Mrs White doesn’t answer. This isn’t surprising. Her mind isn’t constructed in a way that does well with monetary matters. Not like him. Not like their son who, before his deep sleep in the dependable earth, was such a maestro with numbers. He was going to be an accountant. He would have made partner by now. He would perhaps be sitting at his own breakfast table in a grey suit and crisp white shirt. Dipping the last of his soldiers in the yolk of his egg, Mr White pictures his son in this very fashion. Then he glances at the clock and sees it has stopped at twelve minutes past seven. ‘The clock has stopped,’ he says to Mrs White. ‘The sun has forgotten to rise,’ she says in response. ‘I am sure you are wrong,’ he says. Then he explains that the sun isn’t capable of forgetfulness, it is a ball of fire, unperturbed by memory or emotions. But even as he says this, he is overcome by a sense of doubt, a belligerent unsettling that marches through his mind. This sensation has troubled him before. It has been troubling him for many months. Years perhaps. A sense of doubt about the sun. About the weight of the air. About the stretching of time. About all these things that used to feel quite certain.

***

Matt Kendrick is a writer, editor and teacher based in the East Midlands, UK. His work has been featured in various journals and anthologies including Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, Cheap Pop, Craft Literary, Fractured Lit, Ghost Parachute, MoonPark Review, Tiny Molecules, and the Wigleaf Top 50. Website: www.mattkendrick.co.uk

Hank Drummond comes home from a fucked-up day at Link’s Hardware to find Chrissie’s father nailing a 2 by 3 foot sign to the fence at the top of their lane, just off the main county road.  Sure as shit Fred’s using the wrong nails, so Hank goes and grabs six 8ds from his basement workshop.  The sign reads “Well Done, Graduate” above what must be Chrissie’s senior photo.  She’s wearing a blue dress, no straps.  Blonde hair, bare shoulders.  Hank tells Fred maybe his kid’s photograph shouldn’t be on the sign.  “She’s too pretty,” he jokes, “someone might carry her off.  My ex-wife was always jealous of her blonde hair.”  Her father laughs, tells Hank, “Thanks for the nails, and don’t forget the party this weekend” as he hammers the last nail home.  Hank resists the urge to pull out the nails and hammer them in right. 

 Saturday evening, Hank stuffs three hundred-dollar bills in an envelope and drops by the party next door.  He gives Chrissie a fatherly hug and she peeks inside, says “Oooooo, Mr. D.” Her mother hands Hank a beer, and Fred waves from the smoking grill, where a neighbor corners Hank for advice about air-conditioners.  After two beers, a burned hot dog, guys beating up on the Red Sox, Hank returns home to his porch swing, also tired of the thumping noise his twins call techno.  He watches the Fred’s grill lose its glow.  Soon kids will be making out in the bushes or down by the pond.  Sure as hell, next day on his morning walk, Hank will gather up crumpled beer cans, a couple condom wrappers and their limp soldiers, maybe a pair of panties that from a distance look like a flower.  

Two weeks later the sign is sagging from a recent rain. Hank thinks maybe he’ll photograph the sign and send it to the twins. If only it didn’t look like a “Missing Persons” pic.   The twins adored Chrissie who used to baby-sit them before Hank’s wife sued for divorce and left, taking the twins with her.  Chrissie played kid’s games and taught them their first swear words.  “You don’t have to walk Chrissie home. She only lives next door,” his wife would complain after their evening at the movies or the Elks. But he wanted Chrissie safe. 

A month later he’s annoyed the sign is still up though he likes seeing Chrissie’s smile on his way to work.  Two dimples.  She used to sell girl scout cookies once a year.   Cookies his wife used to throw away.  Before he placed an order, he’d ask Chrissie to recite all the flavors—peppermint, peanut butter, pumpkin– her dimples dipping in and out. “Again,” he’d say, “I can’t decide.” 

By summer’s end he figures Chrissie is probably packing to leave for college and thinks about tearing down the sign himself.  Maybe keeping it. Even faded, it’s the same Chrissie who still wheels her bike to his garage to use the twins’ old bicycle pump. Her hair in a messy ponytail, she pumps and pumps, but the valve always pops out.  Finally she wails “Mr. D” and Hank comes to her rescue.  “Thanks again, Mr. D,” she calls, riding off to meet friends, or clock into her job at the town diner where she calls everyone honey.  It’s near Link’s, so two or three times a week Hank stops in for a burger and burned coffee.  Leaves a big tip.

Next weekend, Hank waits for her father at their mailboxes.  He tells Fred surely it’s time for the sign to come down.  Hank wiggles a loose nail as he conjures up a story about some guy obsessed with Chrissie’s photograph.  He says maybe some night the man follows her to the diner.  And maybe he sits slouched in his car and watches her through the diner window.  Her shift over, the man watches as she unties her apron, calls goodbye to the kid on the grill.  The man, still watching, as she unlocks her bike for the short ride home, then leaving his car, doors open, waving to her, calling “Chrissie. Chrissie.” 

Her father laughs, whacks a loose nail, says “Nah.  I’ll give it another week.”

Hank couldn’t do more.  He warned them. They were warned. 

***

PAMELA PAINTER is the award-winning author of five story collections. Her stories have appeared in numerous journals and in the recent anthologies Flash Fiction America, Best Small Fictions 2025, Best Microfictions 2025 and the Wigleaf Top 50 List, 2025. She has received four Pushcart Prizes and her work has been staged by Word Theatre in New York, and LA. 

One gallon of water, one first-aid kit, one pocket knife, two boxes of granola bars, three pouches of pre-cooked rice and beans, two hundred dollars in cash, toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, hand sanitizer, toilet paper, one flash light, eight double-a batteries, one map, no bridges, no tunnels, your phone, your phone charger (almost forgot your phone charger), one missed call from mom, one text, two texts, dropped signal, four vivid memories (the last truly excellent dinner you ate, the last movie you watched that you could honestly describe as perfect, your last great fuck, and for whatever reason a sunset, in college, from your dorm room, the night your roommate had a breakdown and moved back home), three instincts that would feasibly help a person survive something like this, two net-neutral instincts, one genuinely detrimental instinct, an image of his hands on your body, an image of your hands on his body, two shadows merging and separating against the wall, just panicked neurons firing at random now, distant sounds of gunfire (maybe?), a windshield shattering (maybe?), one flat week-old half-full bottle of cherry coke rolling on the floorboard, trying to remember how it got there, an image of that bottle against someone’s lips, imagination running wild now, ideas of a new world, a better world than this one, starting over, where you can go, what it would take, things you could do, people you could be, a sunrise, the sun rising from the highway (even though it’s still the middle of the night you’re pretty sure), but call it a sunrise because there’s no one left to say otherwise, repeating it like a prayer, the sunrise, the sunrise, the sunrise, the most beautiful goddamn sunrise you’ve ever seen.

***

Chris Scott’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The New Yorker, Okay Donkey, HAD, Flash Frog, ergot., MoonPark Review, New Flash Fiction Review, scaffold, Gone Lawn, Maudlin House, and elsewhere. Scott a regular contributor for ClickHole and an elementary school teacher in DC.

She can’t take her children in the suitcase. They would fit if she emptied it. They could top and tail in the folds of the quilt she made of their clothes, but there’s not even enough room for their hands holding tight to the hem of her skirt, not even for their overtired tears, not even for the sound of the word ‘Mama.’

She can’t take her children in the suitcase. The suitcase is full of passports and travel papers, the borders and patrols of Northern Ireland, the watchtowers of the Berlin Wall, footprints across desert miles, train tracks escaping genocides, taking tunnels underground, underwater, and through the mountains and across bridges linking land masses across the times, with the wake of boats and ships that meet the ferry to Ellis Island, and the plane contrails crossing Lady Liberties skies, and all the spaces between these places in the suitcase, are full of maps with imaginary lines.

She can’t take her children in the suitcase. Not the day the suitcase is full of forest fire, screeching firehawks, and trapped animals, hiding their young. Not the day the suitcase is full of an exploding mine and a petrol tank in flames, an air raid siren, and three unexploded bombs. Not the day the suitcase is full of shrapnel and the smell of burning skin.

She can’t take her children in the suitcase. They fill the suitcase full of fire. All the sunshine and starlight. All the birthday, advent and power-cut candlelight. The campfire songs, the toasting fork fireplace, the smell of the turf fuelled range baking scones, and the chip pan flames and smoke with the scream of the fire alarm, that everything has to be left behind for. 

She can’t take her children in the suitcase. She leaves the suitcase behind. She lets it burn in the fire, so all that’s left is a metal cage outline and fastenings, like a charcoal-line drawing on a page, and from the ashes of lost belongings, she will rise and start again.

***

Rosaleen is an Irish community worker/teacher/writer with work selected for the Wigleaf Top 50 2023, Best Small Fictions 2024 and Best of the Net 2024.

We recently published Katerina Tsasis’s singular “Helen of Troy Was My Best Friend.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) This is a classic tale of girlhood friendship, made weightier by the fact that one of the friends involved is Helen of Troy. But the narrator seems to be — simply! — a normal girl. Would the dynamic be different if she were one of Helen’s mythological peers?
Not necessarily—when we look at ancient myths or biblical narratives, we find plenty of petty squabbles and popularity contests and interpersonal feuds. I also think Helen walks among us every day; she’s that person who is so charming or talented or beautiful or intelligent that people are inevitably drawn to her. This flash story came out of a prompt about bringing mythological figures into the real world, and I was wondering how her life might unfold under different circumstances (would she end up in Hollywood? would she become a soccer mom?), as well as what it might be like to be in her orbit.

2) By the end, the girls grow apart. There’s no dramatic fight or breakup — the friendship merely ends, as some friendships do. Do you think the narrator, if she learned about Helen’s later life, regrets not trying harder to remain friends?
The narrator would be around 18-20 years old while recounting this story. I imagine at that point in life she’d be struggling with the idea that long-standing friendships can fade and puzzled that Helen isn’t eager to re-engage. The regrets would come later, when she realizes that Helen was the one setting the pace of their relationship, and that she could have taken a more active role in either fostering the connection or getting clarity from her former best friend after Helen pulled away.

Helen and I were best friends growing up because she was the only other girl my age on the block, and we went to the same school, so her mom drove us in the morning and my dad brought us back in the afternoon. Helen had reddish curls and big brown eyes and grown-ups were always telling her how pretty she was. 

When we got to middle school boys would pass her notes, like “Will you be my girlfriend? Yes or No” and she always checked “No” because she believed having a boyfriend meant being in love and she hadn’t been hit by Cupid’s arrow yet. It’s hard when your best friend gets all the attention even when she’s nice about it. 

Helen liked making snow angels in the winter and suntanning on the grass in the summer while reading romance novels. She believed in love at first sight but her favorite stories were enemies-to-lovers. When she finished a book she’d pass it to me with all the sex stuff underlined and we’d laugh about words like shaft, rod, and tumescence and how “making the beast with two backs” didn’t sound anything like what we learned about in Phys Ed. 

By the time we got to high school she still liked reading but hated English class because of too many old dead British guys. I suggested giving Jane Austen a try–I don’t know if she ever did. Helen’s favorite foods were pizza and red licorice, but she could only eat them at my house because her mom was afraid she’d ruin her figure and lose the Miss Troy, NY contest and there goes her chance at a scholarship. When she didn’t have pageant practice, she’d stay over on weeknights when her mom worked late and we’d do homework together. 

Helen was tall and graceful like a giraffe. Her mom corrected me when I said that because giraffes were ungainly so I should call my best friend something more elegant like a gazelle or a swan but I could never call Helen something so basic, so we settled on ‘impala.’

When we got to senior year Helen started smoking during lunch and kissing boys during free period and working at the grocery store after school twice a week because that whole scholarship thing wasn’t working out. Even though we rode the bus home together most days it was like she was there less and less, like she was herself less and less, like the Helen I knew was vanishing and being replaced by some lesser Helen, less nice, less friendly, less fun, but she didn’t want to talk about it, not with me anyway. She would still pass me her books when she was done with them, but there were no more underlines and the sex stuff wasn’t funny anymore. 

The last time I saw Helen was two years after we graduated, when I was home for spring break and my dad sent me out for ice cream. I ran smack into her stocking curry packets on the shelves–she was a department manager by then and had a little belly bump like she’d either eaten too much curry or was four months pregnant; I didn’t ask. “Come by later,” I told her, “I’ll order pizza.” “Yeah, no, totally, I’d love to,” she said and never showed up. 

***

Katerina Tsasis lives in Austin, Texas. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Bright Flash Literary Review, and Spillwords.

We are all appalled.

That’s the crucial thing we want to convey here. We, like all members of our parent community, are appalled by what happened on Saturday night, and furthermore, that our children, far from being perpetrators, are victims, too. Perhaps victims in a different sense than Ryan Gottfried, who we are relieved to hear has regained consciousness and is communicating coherently with his doctors and parents (our thoughts and prayers go out to Linda and Gary). But victims nonetheless.

When we look at that video that has been making its endless loops on Instagram and the other socials, round and round, we, like all of you, are appalled. Appalled for poor Ryan Gottfried—it shocks us to see that kid with his big, sloppy smile inhaling that beer bong, though there is no doubt he is doing so willingly, as the video incontestably proves. Nonetheless, knowing what awaits Ryan, we are appalled at the chorus of voices chanting “Drink! Drink! Drink!”

But we would like to point out, first, that it is impossible among this chorus of voices to verify without doubt who is saying, “Drink! Drink!” You might think you can identify specific voices, but we all know how video distorts sound. There is no telling exactly to whom those background voices and laughter belong.

Second, we would like to remind all our fellow parents of the concept of “peer pressure.” Undoubtedly Ryan is a victim of peer pressure (again, we must point out, a willing and cooperative victim). But so are all the off-screen young people in the room; so is whoever’s green sleeve is visible in the frame. “Peer pressure” implies that there is one particular peer who exerts the pressure (note the phrase is not “Peers pressure,” the subject is singular). The obvious dominant influence in this disturbing, but (we are grateful) ultimately not tragic scene is the boy filming the video, Sebastian LeComte. Ergo, Sebastian is the “peer” exerting the “pressure.” Our boys, just like Ryan, were the objects, not the perpetrators, of this pressure. Even if they were indeed the voices encouraging Ryan to drink—and again, we maintain it is impossible to identify with certainty individual voices in the video—they would have done so incited by Sebastian filming them.

In this context, we wonder if our fellow parents are familiar with the “Observer Effect,” which postulates that there is no neutral way to “see” a scene. The mere presence of an observer influences the experiment being conducted. This phenomenon feels doubly true when the scene is being conspicuously and visibly filmed, illegally filmed moreover, without the consent of people in the room. Ryan may have been aware that Sebastian was videotaping him—his goofy smile, nearly a smirk, before he imbibes the beer bong is indicative. But we can promise you that if our boys were indeed present, they did not give Sebastian permission to record them, or to forward his video to so many of their peers.

I know some of you may feel that Sebastian was performing a service for our community, similar to bystanders who videotape a police officer beating a citizen, film which then goes viral. We have heard such arguments. But we respectfully find the analogy absurd. In fact, our recent experience has made us wonder whether such bystanders were indeed doing the community a service, or, through their videotaping, provoking police into inflicting grievous harm (see our thoughts above, on the Observer Effect).

 In conclusion, we join the parents of our community in expressing outrage and horror. We join your calls for expulsion from school. We respectfully suggest that our distress be appropriately directed upon the young man responsible: Sebastian LeComte.

***

Kim Magowan lives in San Francisco and teaches in the English Department of Mills College at Northeastern University. She is the author of the short story collection Don’t Take This the Wrong Way (2025), co-authored with Michelle Ross, published by EastOver Press; the short story collection How Far I’ve Come (2022), published by Gold Wake Press; the novel The Light Source (2019), published by 7.13 Books; and the short story collection Undoing (2018), which won the 2017 Moon City Press Fiction Award. Her fiction has been published in Colorado Review, The Gettysburg Review, Smokelong Quarterly, Wigleaf, and many other journals. Her stories have been selected for Best Small Fictions and Wigleaf’s Top 50. She is the Editor-in-Chief and Fiction Editor of Pithead Chapel. www.kimmagowan.com