Publication: JMWW

  • David as Toaster by Dawn Tasaka Steffler

    This is another devastating piece of Dawn Steffler’s upcoming novel in flash. Skip this one if you’re feeling fragile. The toaster worked just fine. Until her son, David, hung himself in the garage. After which, everything Linda drops into the double slots comes out black and inedible. 

  • When Imagination Runs Wild by Melissa Witcher

    This is about suicide, so if that’s not for you, skip this one. Witcher writes about her father in two different modes. The second half of this story is as direct and fearless as anything I’ve read. As always, you are on your own. A bird lands on the railing of your 8th-story balcony. That’s…

  • Seasons of a Disappearance by Abbie Barker

    A child goes missing, and a family starts to spiral into depressed desperation. The missing girl’s sister narrates the story, cataloguing the increasingly upsetting circumstances caused by not knowing the truth. The way Barker calls back to the opening paragraphs in the closing ones is striking. The summer my sister disappeared, our lawn shriveled during…

  • Happy as a Clam by Pete Prokesch

    Happy as a Clam is a pretty melancholy story about the relationship between a young guy who drives his troubled older coworker to work in exchange for breakfast. Prokesch slowly turns up the intensity as the relationships become more complicated: Occasionally I’d hear a diesel engine pass from the street—either a semi driving to P-Town…

  • Long Game by Michelle Ross

    A very short story about a grandmother’s legacy with a surprising premise: After the funeral, my father sends me a one-minute timer, the small, plastic kind used in board games, only it’s not filled with fine, white sand but lumpy flecks of gray. Her idea, the note reads.

  • Nobody’s Cowboy Now by David Waters

    Jack is a doctor filling in at an ER in Idaho, and his motto is ‘nothing messy’. Things get messy. This poignant story has lingered for a while. Jack’s heart was as soft as a beat-up Courtyard by Marriott pillow. He didn’t know this. He was a fine diagnostician for everyone but himself. All that…

  • The Possibility of Ghosts by Amorak Huey

    A short ghost story about living with a teenager. I love the ending of this story. Here’s the start: Eventually we did start to catch on he was a ghost. The lack of sleeping was a clue — he was up when we got up in the mornings, still up when we turned in. “I…

  • Liberations by Phebe Jewell

    A short, weird horror story that’s full of metaphors about aging and childhood that leave a lot to interpretation: For generations, the children of Malia’s town freed their animals during the annual Fall Festival before they started school. Some cried as they said goodbye, but most were like Max, Malia’s brother, who couldn’t wait to…

  • Copperfield