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

How will you eat the peach? Will you cut it in even halves? Or slippery, thin moon slices? How will you feel when you take a sharp knife and pierce the supple, almost rose-color skin?

Or will you hold it heavy in your preferred hand, bringing it to your greedy mouth for a large bite and let the juice trickle down your chin? Or will you tentatively balance it in two hands like a hungry squirrel and nibble into the flesh?

But first, will you take the peach out of the small gold box I will send it to you in, and gently rub the fuzzy skin against your lips as you inhale its scent?

Will you eat it at your kitchen table? In your bed? Or take it outside?

What time of day will you consume the peach? Will you wake to eat before the sun rises? Will you have it as the midday shines in? Or will you keep until midnight, and bite as the moon glows on a quiet night?

Are you considering sharing the peach? Who in your life is worthy?

Do you have a good palette? Do apples sometimes taste like potatoes and potatoes taste like rice? Can you tell a hint of rosemary from a smidge of mint on a thick slice of roasted lamb? Does the taste of black licorice affect your whole body?

Will you give the peach your undivided attention? Or will the music of Miles Davis float around you as you eat and take you back to a hot summer night with someone no longer in your life? Or might you attempt to have the peach in place of a madeleine while reading Proust? Dare I ask if you would consider hastily consuming the fruit while watching an adrenaline-inducing crime drama?

Will you savor and appreciate the peach?

Will you always remember it?

Will you regret it when it’s gone?

How often will you think of the peach? Will it consume your daily thoughts? Will it give you a feeling of unbearable longing as you look up at the ceiling begging for the tranquility of sleep?

What makes you worthy of the peach? Will others think you are the correct recipient? Will they applaud the decision?

What will you wear to eat the peach? A reckless crisp white shirt that may be stained by the juice? A black sweater that can dampen your mood for consumption? Your respectful Sunday Best?

Will you try and preserve the peach as a whole on a windowsill? Watching it surpass its natural lifespan, as it shrinks and molds and disintegrates and fills you with a hoarder’s regret? Or might you divide it into thick wedges and immerse in a cloudy, viscous syrup housed in a jar like a science experiment?

Will you compare the peach to ones in your past? Will you accurately remember their flavor or inflate the sweetness that never was?

Will you try and document with a photograph, or a recording of your slow and quiet bite? Or will you eat it with no evidence that it once existed?

Will the peach evoke feelings of jubilation? Will it be a cure for your loneliness?

What will you do with the pit? Will you place it in your mouth and let it dangerously roll around, gasping in a brief yet exhilarating fear each time it gets too close to the back of your throat? Or will you plant it in your garden, hoping it will come to fruition even in a snowy landscape? Or will you simply dispose of it with no regret like a former lover who loved you more and thought you were the sweetest in the world?

***

Anna Mantzaris is a San Francisco-based writer. Her work has appeared in BlazeVOX, The Cortland Review, Five on the Fifth, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Necessary Fiction, New World Writing Quarterly, Sonora Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of Occupations (Galileo Press). She teaches writing in the M.F.A. program at Bay Path University.

How you shouldn’t sneak out flashlight-less, since it’s easy to get lost near the mausoleum and that one girl twisted an ankle tripping down the riverbank. How the gravestones of town settlers bite chunks from our black crayons though we lay our alibi tracing paper flat. How the popular girls didn’t invite us to their pool party, and how we’ll get them back when they inevitably tiptoe into our weekly gatherings. How the groundskeeper’s forgotten this oldest quadrant of the cemetery where we circle up, so the new girl whines about deer ticks, invents rabid skunks skittering around the knee-high grasses, imagines shadows in our smuggled camping lantern. How we roll the dice to see who pairs first.

How one girl’s stepmom won’t quit pinching her “muffin top” or serving her half portions. How the creep outside the Gas-N-Go followed a girl to her car, and the auto-lock on her shitty hand-me-down Honda wouldn’t work. How another’s father uses his belt. How another’s parents are checking her college dropout brother into a “retreat,” and how stupid do her parents think she is when she knows mosquito bites from the marks that dot her brother’s arms.

How us original four found the scratched DVD in the thrift store dollar bin. How lucky it was that the rehab-destined brother hadn’t sold his Xbox for drugs yet because no one has a DVD player. How bang-able Brad Pitt once was. How smoking Helena Bonham Carter used to be. How maybe it’s a generational thing, but cult classic our asses. What did nineties-era white men have to be so mad about? How good it felt that first time when the credits were rolling, our pillows exploding sweat-smelling feathers all over the basement, and we continued with fists. We were Jacqueline’s scream-shredded throats. We were Jacqueline’s bilious rage.

How acrylic nails disqualify until filed down to stubs. How everything below the neck is fair game, but faces are for open-handed slaps only. How if you have braces, you’re allowed to wear a mouth guard stolen from the football storage shed. How all combat must occur in the ring of leaning headstones, cleared of twigs and rocks. How we stash cell phones under the mausoleum’s withered topiary. How the originals can invite a fresh face, but newbies can’t bring another until the dice turns up their number.

How the cemetery became a refuge one month after our classmate’s death. How the police called it accidental. How her quarterback ex came to school with scratches on his cheeks the day after her drowning. How his father is the sheriff. How we kneel at her headstone at the end of each gathering. How her name was Casey McCutcheon. Her name was Casey McCutcheon. Her name was Casey McCutcheon.

How the late summer raindrops perfectly numb the bruises. How we’ll ward off the Gas-n-Go stalker with bear spray hooked on our keychains. How we’ll horde getaway cash in a place our fathers will never look. How we’ll go for the eyes, the balls, the throat, the knees. How any parting gifts from gatherings in the coming cold weather can more easily hide under sweaters. How we’ll tell teachers we tripped, we fell, we were looking at TikTok.

How it’ll be impossible to find a mutual night when school picks up, between homework and band camp and cheer meets and musical rehearsals and basketball practice. How we’ll add more meet-ups, more nights, so every girl gets a turn. How we’ll stay even if the groundskeeper squeals. How we’re practicing now for when we’ll be on our own in just a few years. How this bitch of a world won’t pull her punches.  

***

Lauren Kardos (she/her) writes from Washington, DC, but she’s still breaking up with her hometown in Western Pennsylvania. The Molotov Cocktail, hex, Cold Signal, Bending Genres, Lost Balloon, Best Microfiction 2022, and The Lumiere Review are just a few of the fine publications that feature her stories and poems. You can find more of her work at www.laurenkardos.co.

Boy wakes up in paragraph five, no backstory, no introduction. He would like to know who He is, some action that reveals character and age. It would be helpful to have a name, to know whether He likes football, or has learned to ride a bike. He taps the writer on the shoulder, but the writer shrugs Him off and continues roving his fingers over the keyboard.

Boy searches through sentences for Mother and finds Her back on page one. There She is dressing and climbing into a car. Page two, She is undressing and climbing into a bed. He sees climbing on every page and learns Her stockings are diamond-patterned, sheer and black. Her heels are tall, shiny, and toppling. Her hair is long and wavy. He wades through paragraphs and
pages. Sentences unspool about Men, Martinis, and Sex with no mention of Childcare. It occurs to Boy that He is not the protagonist of the story.

Boy tries again to catch the writer’s attention, whispering in his ear that He would like a puppy. He’d even take a little sister. But the writer is ignoring all calls from the story. An empty glass sits next to him on the desk.

By page twenty, Boy should be back in the storyline. Mother should be making Him breakfast, at least a bowl of cereal. But there are no mentions of Him. He wanders through the pages, searching the sentences. Mother puts her hair up and takes it down. Mother undresses and climbs. Boy wonders where the story is going.

The writer appears to have nodded off. On page twenty-five, Martinis grab hold of the narrative. Mother mixes and climbs and mixes again.

The writer lifts his head and returns his fingers to the keyboard. He backspaces over Mother and types in Woman. Then he scrolls back through the pages, cutting all references to Boy. Boy cries out, tries to hold on, but He is too undeveloped. The writer deletes Him altogether in paragraph five. Boy, like so many children, remains forever unwritten.

***

Shira Musicant writes short fiction and creative nonfiction. Her current stories can be found in journals such as Fourth Genre, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Bending Genres, among others. Recently retired from her practice as a somatic psychotherapist, Shira lives in Southern California with her husband, a black cat, and five chickens. She writes early in the morning, chickens still roosting, cat on lap. shiramusicant.com

Stale beer and cigarettes. Chick-fil-a grease on my brown polyester uniform. Parking
deck lights and shadows. His blue pinto with the yellow hood. His eyes the same blue as his
Gyro Wrap uniform. The steering wheel against my back. His soft thighs, warm. The squeak of
his white leather jacket. His long, sun-bleached hair with black roots. The way he quotes
Outlando de Amour. The blue metal bench in the mall where he explains that I’m too skinny, too
young. The prick of sedative and the cold metal instrument followed by the overwhelming need
to faint. Followed by the overwhelming need to cry. The way his mother moves in their kitchen
that same afternoon. Like any old thing had happened.

***

Mamie Pound has stories in Smokelong Quarterly, James Dickey Review, Image Journal, Gooseberry Pie, Ghost Parachute, and Bath Flash Fiction Anthology 2024, among others. Her work was long listed for the Craft Fiction Award. Her chapbook was a finalist in Fractured Lit’s Chapbook Prize 2024. One of her stories was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is awarded a residency at the Kerouac House artist-in-residence beginning November 2025.

I want to write a story about a house sinking into a swamp, but I’m always writing a story about a house sinking into a swamp. Sometimes I’m unclear about the metaphor. Am I the house, slowly being devoured by my anxieties? By the volatile environment? By my poor choices of real estate investments? Or am I the swamp, ever hungry, slowly swallowing the young couple that couldn’t afford a pricier first home, because, let’s be honest, most people would kill for the mold-thick two bedroom that sits on the swamp’s border. They don’t care about the water in the basement, the way low-tide-reek creeps in once a day, the beards of moss draping their window casements. They don’t even care about the thing living out there in the depths, the one that calls shrilly every night in a near human voice. It sounds a little like his grandmother. It sounds a little like her first boyfriend. It sounds a little like me when I can’t sleep and need someone to talk to about my own dread, not realizing it will slowly become their dread, that it will become the thing that frays their tether to reality, sanity slipping until they drown one another, or set the house on fire, or re-list the property on Zillow at a loss. I’ll push them away like any good swamp should. People aren’t meant to live so close to fetid water. The phosphorus should be a hint, that creature living at its center an even greater indicator. I’ve tried to write so many stories where the couple stays, where they overcome their fears, or kill the monster, or fix up the property and double their money like they do on the Home and Gardens Channel. But that voice that is almost their grandmother/ex-boyfriend/me is always there, always whispering, never letting anyone rest. I’m always anxious that the house will be subsumed, that the swamp obscures something worse than I originally thought, that I’m actually there, nestled amongst the reeds, screaming and screaming.

Maybe someday I’ll stop writing about a house on the border of a swamp.

Maybe someday I’ll understand and emerge from the reeds.

***

Corey Farrenkopf lives on Cape Cod and works as a librarian. His work has been published in Electric Literature, Strange Horizons, Nightmare, The Deadlands, SmokeLong Quarterly, Bourbon Penn, and elsewhere. His debut novel, Living in Cemeteries, was released from JournalStone in April of 2024. His eco-horror collection, Haunted Ecologies, will be published by them in February of 2025. He is the Fiction Editor for The Cape Cod Poetry Review. To learn more, follow him on twitter @CoreyFarrenkopf or on the web at CoreyFarrenkopf.com

The children are getting out of bed, they are putting on shorts and T-shirts. They are scarfing down their mother’s love, bowls clinking, they are meeting in the valley, the hills, the burnt out lot
where the supermarket used to be. They are waving to their friends, they are waiting for the kid with the ball to arrive. They are constructing a goal on each side, made of sticks and string. Their teams are decided by strength or by smarts or who the kid with the ball likes best and the game stretches like the shadows of the summer day until the children are running in the golden light. Not all of them. A curly haired boy or a girl with braids or a kid with a closely shaved head is kicking the ball toward the goal made of sticks and string. The ball is going to make it and the light falls on his curls, her braids, the curve of the neck where it meets the skull, and their mouths are open with laughter, with joy, and the children are running from the sky. The bomber so low the flag on the belly is visible. The stripes or circles or stars as clear as the children’s own panicked breaths.

***

Sage Tyrtle’s work is available in New Delta Review, The Offing, Lunch Ticket, and Apex among others. Words featured on NPR, CBC, and PBS, and taught in schools. Read more at www.tyrtle.com.

We recently published Beth Sherman’s brilliant “Natural.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) I love the interaction between the taxidermist and the boyfriend when the mother first appears. So much weight in these lines: ” The taxidermist thought she’d probably break up with him. She always dumped men before they did it first.” What, other than the obvious, makes the taxidermist think the boyfriend would be planning to break up with her?
“Natural” is part of a longer novella-in-flash about a fractured family and the fraught relationship this character has with her mother, who left when the narrator was young, and her father, who died young. At this point in the novella the father is gone, too, and the narrator seeks fleeting comfort in a series of unsuitable men. It’s always a bit dangerous to psychologize your characters, but in this case I think she’s trying to avoid getting hurt and losing anyone else. So she makes sure she’s always the one who ends the relationship. Her psyche is so fragile that she can’t imagine anyone would want to stick around!

2) Of course, the real relationship in this story is the fractured one between mother and daughter. Do you think the taxidermist has gotten (at least in some form) what she wanted from her mother now? Or has that ship long sailed?
This piece is part of a series of fabulist stories that the narrator in my NIF is writing to try and make sense of her life. As the “taxidermist,” I do believe she gets something from the interaction with her mother here. For one thing, she’s at least partially in control of her mother’s whereabouts (until the end, that is), and she’s able to care for her mother’s body — even if it’s weirdly after death. Interestingly enough, the mother is not actually dead while this is being written, but it feels that way to the “taxidermist.” Their relationship is strained to the breaking point because of the mother’s failings and the “taxidermist’s” unwillingness to understand or forgive. Although I haven’t finished the NIF yet, I’m hoping there can be some sort of reconciliation between them.