The General is on Television Again Despite the egg on his face, he refuses to step down from the podium. It’s war paint, he insists, his neck swelling like a fighting rooster’s. Most of the audience eats it up. A truly brilliant yellow, notes one reporter. One can’t help but be reminded of the sun,… Read More Micro Prose: The General is on Television Again by Joshua Johnston

Skeletons Warming Themselves We are the most beautiful dead women ever written. It has been a hundred years and our nails are still growing. The domestic dramas killed us. We never made it to paperback. Our faces favor Marilyn and the writers’ own wives. Sealed off in a ranch house in Plantation Springs, we finger… Read More Micro Prose: Skeletons Warming Themselves by Sara Kachelman

We’re sorry, but your characters just didn’t seem White enough Thank you for being patient while we considered your query. While we appreciated many things about the novel you submitted, Hot Fast Loud, we didn’t in the end feel we could represent it. However, because there are many strong elements, we are willing to look… Read More Micro Prose: We’re sorry, but your characters just didn’t seem White enough by Marcia Lynx Qualey

Something Like Hannah We were watching Food Network when the world ended. The children next door were feeding the ducks, the boy standing far back while his sister chased a single goose back into the pond. I had wanted to name our daughter Hannah, if we had her. But there had been mornings, days, and… Read More Micro Prose: Something Like Hannah by Carleton Whaley

Kidnapped Girls keep disappearing. First in Bridgeport, then Mystic. The third girl goes missing from a small town that rhymes with Holland. You imagine her walking through a field of tulips in wooden clogs. No wonder she couldn’t run away fast enough when The Strange Man grabbed her. Ma says there are a lot of… Read More Micro Prose: Kidnapped by Rita Ciresi

The World that Thinks the Worst At the grocery gas station, the parking lot smells like oil. The man who approaches you outside the pump looks familiar, like a lost uncle. He asks for a ride to campus. He’s older, mid-40s, looks hungry and tired. He says, “You look like a college kid. Can I… Read More Micro Prose: The World that Thinks the Worst by Shaun Turner

Return I was sitting in my car, waiting for the mall to open, when a woman I no longer wanted to be friends with knocked on my window. It was a hundred degrees out already, though it wasn’t quite ten in the morning. My car’s air conditioning was set to maximum. Plus, there was the… Read More Micro Prose: Return by Michelle Ross

Down the Stairs in Somebody Else’s Dreams You know who is behind this. Why your mother is unable to sell the house at the seaside. Why most of the prospective buyers distrust the viability of wooden houses, and why the few interested are having difficulties in obtaining a loan from the bank. You have to… Read More Micro Prose: Down the Stairs in Somebody Else’s Dreams by Sophie van Llewyn

Shelter in Place Over the rain she heard another transformer blowing in the distance and waited to see if it was theirs. It wasn’t. Not this time at least. The eye wall wasn’t near them yet. She could see on the outage map that the last slut Alex had cheated with was already in the… Read More Micro Prose: Shelter in Place by Jennifer Schomburg Kanke