We were instructed to point the brush with our lips ––Grace Fryer, a dial-painter for The Radium Luminous Materials Corporation, 1930 1.Glow Twirling the paintbrush in our mouths to sharpen the point glow-in-the-dark watches airplane dials clocks in the company darkroom our glow-in-the-dark cheeks necks hands our radium tongues constellations of luminous dust drifting as […]
Claire was in the van across the street from the girl’s house. Ted was beside her. He had the gun. The girl – Margaret Stone – was bald and chipmunk-cheeked, just like her pictures. She was on the large front porch watering a plant, her movements like a child’s: broad, lumbering, graceless. She claimed to […]
He wonders if the bed springs know that they are different things from the springs in his body that clench and unclench throughout the night, instinctive in a helpless attempt to roll himself away from the fire burning in each of his bones. It’s the left side, hip to ankle, shoulder to ribs. He thinks […]
Chapter Two My father had been obsessed with making sure I knew how to tell when and where an animal had been. When he was whipping his little Toyota truck, which he lovingly called The Yoda, up the side of a mountain, speeding around corners with no guard rails, he’d screech to a stop next […]
Chapter One The first person I tried to kill with a shadow was my sister. I had removed my only pair of stockings and left them to dry by the fire while I relieved myself. Remil had taken the socks, unraveled them into two useless piles of thread, and then laughed when she’d seen my […]
One An island. Such is my existence within the stale breath of my house, my house against the undying neon of the Bund, and the Bund beneath the fires that scorch the sky. Mine is an island of solitude and silence. Not even the stifling August heat can begin to thaw the ice that entombs […]
“#83: Kimberly Frank Is a Skank” by Sharon Inkpen is the winner of the Through the Looking Glass Challenge hosted by Voyage YA by Uncharted. Page 1 It’s 1989. You are thirteen-year-old Colleen Paxton. Puberty is hell. High school is hell. Your life is hell. The lunch bell just rang. You’re supposed to be in […]
“Tears Like Summer Rain” by Rose Rasor is the first place winner of the Young Adults Write YA Contest hosted by Voyage YA by Uncharted and guest judged by Theodora Goss. XXX “Tears Like Summer Rain” by Rose Rasor is a beautiful story—thematically, stylistically, and in terms of its structure. It reminds me of a […]
The best part of sewing a garment is pressing the finished seams. The glide of the iron over parallel stitches, two lines a quarter inch apart. The coy slip of the edge rolling under itself. The joining obscured. My hand follows the iron, satin clammy with heat, then reverses back over the seam, skin licking […]
“All Mad Here” by Emi Davis is the second place winner of the Young Adults Write YA Contest hosted by Voyage YA by Uncharted and guest judged by Theodora Goss. XXX It’s very difficult to write a story that grows out of and incorporates another story—that is, to write intertextually. But Emi Davis, the author […]
“The Bird Bag” by Karen Elizabeth is the third place winner of the Young Adults Write YA Contest hosted by Voyage YA by Uncharted and guest judged by Theodora Goss. XXX “The Bird Bag” is a wildly ambitious story in which Karen Elizabeth creates an entire fantastical world, with its customs and beliefs. We are […]
Their men and boys were gone before they’d crossed into Nebraska. Teddy was the last to go. Mary never thought he would make it as long as he did due to his temper and his drinking. But he did. Then one night, he went out to take a piss while they were camped inside a […]