Do It

By Paul Tremblay

It’s early March 1993 and Generation X sorely needs an antihero. Not a folk hero, you fucking hippies. Not a sponsored, manufactured musician in Chuck Taylors and unwashed hair, not even if he’s a morosely self-aware and self-flagellating genius (sorry, Kurt). Certainly not one of those pre-packaged, obnoxiously beautiful sellouts from The Real World. We need one of us. We need someone who is living this shit for real and not someone washing themselves in a corporate spotlight. We need someone like Kelly G. (Continue Reading…)

Madame Painte: For Sale

By John Langan

“This?” the man behind the counter says. “Why, this is Madame Painte.”

The figure is short, a foot and a half tall, and squat, about the same dimensions across, composed of what might be porcelain. The face is round, the eyes squeezed shut by the wide smile lifting the cheeks. A pointed hat fails to conceal the pointed tips of the figure’s ears. It wears a long apron dress over a peasant blouse. A somewhat typical garden gnome, you think, except for the colors, from which it obviously derives its name. It’s been painted without regard for the margins of clothing and skin. Black, green, and orange slash down the figure from right to left. The face is mostly dark green, the hat orange mixed with black. A splash of white paint traverses the closed eyes; the effect is less a mask and more a piece of webbing. You saw the figure sitting to the left of the door to the antique shop as you walked up the path to it and were so struck by its remarkable grotesquerie that you lifted and carried it inside, setting it on the front counter. On the way, you read the notecard strung to the top of the hat: MUST BE KEPT OUTSIDE.

“I didn’t mean its name,” you start.

“Of course not,” the man says. He’s on the small side, more wiry than slender. Based on the ratio of salt to pepper in his mustache and hair, he’s somewhere in the deep middle of middle age. He says, “You meant the warning.”

“Must be kept outside,” you read. “Why must?”

“The official reason is, she’s covered in lead paint.”

You step back from the counter, wipe your hands on your jeans. “There’s an unofficial reason?”

“There’s a story,” the man says. “Would you like to hear it? It’s brief.” (Continue Reading…)

House Traveler

by Thomas Ha

The five of us were gathered on the floor of one of the last houses, trying to decide which of the group would be the one to go outside. Sitting around an electric camping lantern, our legs crossed like children, it felt like we should have been sharing stories—the way people used to before the end of everything. I sat and listened to the others talking, though I had some trouble comprehending each word individually. My mind felt much like the thin fog curling just outside the dirtied panes. But I understood clearly what it meant, when the man in the tall hat pointed a finger at me.

Yes, of course.

He believed I should be the one to go to the Liar next. And I wasn’t sure why, but it made a certain sense to me.

I should be the one to go.

Yes, of course. (Continue Reading…)

The Story-Stealer’s Night

by Madhu Campbell

Story-teller, Story-screamer

Tell your tales into this night.

The words of the poem rush into Durga’s foggy mind with unbidden clarity. She waits quietly at her school gate on the edge of the beach as the fishing boats make their way to shore at sunset.

Three girls join Durga at the gate, all still in their brand-new school uniforms, but with blankets and flashlights instead of book bags. They are not as quiet as Durga; their audible whispers and nervous laughter push against the silence of their school and the beach. A few teachers watch, expressionless, from high-up windows, but none bother to stop the girls from venturing out after dark.

Durga has done this once before, but the memory flows through her mind like sand through a sieve. And yet she knows where to go, where to stop, which rock to skip over. She knows how to lead the rite of passage every new student, teacher and novitiate at St. Anne’s Convent School for Girls must go through—spend a night on the beach telling stories.

The girls reach a low area on the beach and lay out their blankets to sit as best as they can in their starchy uniforms. A gold ring glints in the moonlight on Durga’s left hand.

“Jewelry is not allowed in our school,” says Rani, in her most pretentious voice, tucking her short hair behind her ear to reveal her own piercing with a small, silver hoop in place.

“The only ‘jewelry’ we’re allowed is the rosary,” says Mary, clutching the plastic cross on her plastic rosary, missing the smirk on Rani’s face.

(Continue Reading…)