Boy

by Maddie King

Every person was a ‘boy’ no matter who it was. A ‘boy’ would take us to Etna, if we asked. Another ‘boy’ could sell us black-rock bracelets from the base; they were cheap, only 15 lira. A certain 'boy' scaled the side of the crater every day to look into its depths and every day would climb back down to tell everyone that the volcano was still dead. This boy’s father had held this job until 1949, when lava had flowed down to Randazzo (“where the allied beetches come”). A few years later, ash clouds spread as far as Libya.

6S

Maddie King is a writer and filmmaker living in Portland, Maine. Her short fiction has been published in HOOT, Fleas on the Dog, and Brilliant Flash Fiction. Once, she had a dream about setting up a palmistry practice by a lake. It didn’t impact the course of her life, but it sometimes amuses her to think about a version in which it had.

Intra-Stellar

by Wim Coleman

It is said that our Hollow Sun holds 1.3 million earths. Just how much those earths resemble our own is purely a theoretical matter, since no information can escape the event horizon of the photosphere. Nevertheless, the laws of physics suggest with a high degree of certainty that there is an earth where coincidences never happen, which itself is an astonishing coincidence. Lent is perpetual on one of these earths, while Carnevale is never-ending on another. There is an earth where everyone's fifteen minutes of fame is divided and subdivided into imperceptible nanoseconds. Most interesting of all to the layperson is an earth where every snowflake has its exact double.

6S

Wim Coleman (he/him) is a playwright, poet, novelist, and nonfiction writer. In a literary culture divided into "highbrow" and "lowbrow," he strives to remain resolutely "brow." (Wim's website)

Sample People

by Patrick Parks

They were a small couple, elegantly dressed, but very small. They looked to me like sample people, something you might see in a shop, a display for the full-sized variety. They were so dainty and so delicate in their movements that I was overcome by the wonder of them and tears sprang to my eyes. It must have been a common reaction. They looked at me with something like pity as they passed. Each raised a tiny hand and gave me a brief, knowing salute.

6S

Patrick Parks authored a novel, Tucumcari (KERNPUNKT Press, 2018), and has had fiction, poetry, reviews and interviews appear or forthcoming in a number of places, most recently The Millions, The Writing Disorder, TYPO, Change Seven, Ocotillo Review, Bridge Eight, Another Chicago Magazine, and Full Stop. He is a graduate of the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop and lives with his wife near Chicago. For more, visit his website.