Fiction Pick of the Week: "Expatriate"
A woman picks up her father's ashes at a funeral home.
Wyvern Lit
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Secondhand"
Various time passages in an old home.
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Other Gods"
A tornado causes physical and psychological turmoil in a religious community.
"The next morning, I ran through the streets in my pajamas, screaming for somebody, anybody. I finally found Daddy standing at the edge of the detention pond behind the church. It was full of all sorts of stuff: cars, tree trunks, gas grills, hot water heaters, and two bodies. The bodies were naked, and I didn’t recognize them at first. But then I saw their faces. It was Brother Mack and the second Hillyer girl. They were facing each other, impaled by a metal post from the chain link fence, pushed together like two pieces of chicken on a kebab."
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Your Uncle Scott is a Lake Monster"
A lake house; complex family mysteries and horrors.
"From the backseat, I pull the hammer. I’m prepared to use it. I considered a hatchet, but it’s my brother."
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Field Recordings"
Cemetery field recordings reveal terrifying messages.
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Field Recordings
Cemetery field recordings reveal terrifying audio messages.
"One night, listening back, she heard the crunch of shovelling. Nothing to worry about, the priest said. Simply gravediggers. She had not realised the cemetery still bore room for fresh dead; she imagined dough cut to the shape of the cemetery and a coffin-shaped cookie cutter pressed into it to calibrate the number of remaining graves."
Fiction Pick of the Week: "Songs of the Dead: An Homage"
Scenes from a local bar in winter.
For a daily short story recommendation from our editors, try Longform Fiction or follow @longformfiction on Twitter.
Songs of the Dead: An Homage
Somber, tender scenes from a local bar.
"It was supposed to be an intervention, but they were getting piss drunk. Freddy Malins had been drinking all week. His mother died the morning after New Year’s at her home in Portobello. She was taking out the trash and fell down the steps in the hall that led to the street. There was another tenant, but they were stuck in Kildare due to the snow storm that covered the country, and, after Freddy came around to ring for her and she wouldn’t answer, he went back home, cursing at his mother for being a right bloody pain in the ass, and got his copy of the key to her house. When he opened the door he found her there, eyes closed, neck craned at a sharp angle, head pressed forward against her chest."
Lost in Space
A budding scifi writer attempts to overcome his parents' reservations and his own mental issues.
"I stuffed nearly a dozen scripts in my bag before I left my dorm this morning, just in case somebody important happened to be here. It’s been a while since I sent them out. I figured I wouldn’t hear much back from anyone I sent it to. Sending scripts to random slushpiles doesn’t yield great results. I read that on the internet."
