Publication: Maudlin House

  • The Main Attraction by D.L. Stille

    Stille’s story is creepy and atmospheric, simultaneously sentimental and sinister. Old amusement parks are always creepy, and Cassie the old archway is a strange character indeed. After the boy went missing, no one noticed the soft patch of grass abutting Cassie’s east wing. They didn’t ask questions of the twitchy groundskeeper, didn’t spot the strange…

  • Cache-22 by Tatum Ozment

    This genre-bending short story caught me off-guard. It’s told by a young woman — a new college grad looking to break into the working world as a computer programmer: You get used to it after a while, thinking in the ones and zeros. The black and white of a corporate life, shuttled from room to…

  • So We Sat in the Parking Lot and Laughed About Death by Michelle Drozdick

    This story just took me out. I was a sniffling mess on the train. The combination of heartbreak and humour in this story is unforgettable. My grandmother was in the backseat, tucked away neatly inside my mother’s tote bag. We hit a bump and a corner of the bag tilted downward, revealing the tiniest peek…

  • To the Other Side by Mari Klein

    A dreamlike vision of the apocalypse that begs to be turned into something longform. The mood of this story is haunting: There must have been thousands or tens of thousands of people marching along the winding streets ahead and behind them, but in the thick of the crowd, all they could see was an endless…

  • Lemonade Stand Deliverance by Andrew Rutledge

    This is written from the perspective of a 6(?) year-old kid, and the narrator’s voice is perfect. Tears of laughter. By the second paragraph you’ll be hooked. Anyways, so, like, back when the internet went beep boop beep boop bzzzzzzzt, my brother, he says these culdy sack kids down the road in Cherry Hills, ya know…

  • The Wizard of Ozempic by Amber Baird

    I don’t want to spoil any of this story. The narrator has an eating disorder and is looking for help with it, and then it gets absolutely wild. The narrator’s voice is so distinct and foreboding: Pizza, every kind: floppy New Yorks and Chicago casseroles and California thin crusts and midwestern squares with cured pork…

  • Lessons by Kevin Sterne

    My stepdad would throw knives at me. It was a like a reflexes thing, catching a fly with chopsticks. Character building, a boy’s first funeral. I learned to write my name with bandaged fingers. That’s how I became a lefty. Rick threw knives like a pitcher throwing long toss. It’s how I got these gnarly…

  • Blueberries by Chris Scott

    This story is way too short. It’s a bit of a John Marrs-type concept – people start getting texts from alternate-universe versions of loved ones. Put me on the preorder list for the novel already.

  • This Didn’t Happen

    A story of a possible crime, told in all a clever way: What would you do if you saw something worse? Maybe a car slamming into another and driving off? Or a brick being thrown through a window? Or a murder? You might have guessed that I saw one of those. I can neither confirm…

  • Unlikeable Female Protagonists

    It’s a stunner of a short story about the way society values women by their appearance.