New World Writing Quarterly

Faces round a fire call back spin­ning wheels, pull up that throb­bing glow, the hiss of drip­ping sul­phur on a grade of crush run gravel.

Fourth of July and they thought it’d be a kick to stick pieces of bust­ed lum­ber to the back of my bicy­cle, –more

I don’t remem­ber how old I was. I think it was the sum­mer between fifth and sixth grades. I don’t remem­ber Tony going to Erwine Middle School, although there was a boy there with dark hair and a big nose who car­ried a brief­case to class and remind­ed –more

Worms

I took myself to the out­door shop­ping cen­ter when the urges got real­ly bad. The unwel­com­ing way they made you slide your car into a spot was just the begin­ning. Women wear­ing pas­tel polo shirts hand­ed out sam­plers that scorched my heart. Men with –more

The macabre scene looked like a Halloween prank to the toll tak­er. Then she saw the blood. – St. Petersburg Times, 2005

Manny is cross­ing 34th Street, mak­ing a list of things to pay for—flowers, music, dress, –more

I received The World’s Biggest Piece of Shit Award in 1990. My name was writ­ten on the award in fan­cy cal­lig­ra­phy. In front of the whole class, Mrs. Kerris, our English teacher, hand­ed me the award. She wasn’t wor­ried about get­ting fired, as she –more

Theo sat in the tiny din­ing room next to the kitchen, try­ing to con­cen­trate on a book he want­ed to read for a long time now. In lieu of a din­ing set, there was a bur­gundy reclin­er and a small round table that once sat in the break­fast nook. His twen­ty-six –more

It was their own damn fault for day­time drink­ing. You don’t wave wads of cash around in front of a woman who can’t afford to buy the drug that keeps her alive and not expect her to grab it as fast as she can.

The first cou­ple she stole from was so nice. –more

The din­ing room, elec­tric with the shift­ing of wool and the sta­t­ic that hums over the tables in the form of spec­u­la­tion and vibrat­ing con­ver­sa­tion, leans towards the impor­tant ones as they enter and take their seats at the tables.

As usu­al, we’ve –more

Wayne knows that the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library down­town opens at 10 a.m. on Tuesday-Saturday and nev­er one minute ear­li­er, not even when it’s rain­ing and there are a dozen plus-cit­i­zens wait­ing to get inside. The build­ing is eight sto­ries, cube-shaped, –more

Another head poked through the small open­ing in the door. This time it belonged to Rory, the flop­py-haired kid from next door. He was wear­ing a Santa hat and didn’t say any­thing to James, who lay on the bed with his hands behind his head and –more

The hos­pi­tal where Petra was born, her moth­er would lat­er tell her, ran out of drugs the week of her birth­day, so her moth­er screamed for hours, and her father, at work fil­ing papers, swore he could hear the shrieks echo­ing across the entire city. –more

1. Soupmann is Superman’s third cousin twice removed. Unlike his rel­a­tive, Soupmann set his pri­or­i­ties log­i­cal­ly and suc­cinct­ly. He fights for truth and jus­tice, and some­times for truth and the American way, and some­times for jus­tice and the American way, but not for all three at once. Otherwise, he’d be stretch­ing too thin. He goes into a phone booth and turns into chick­en soup. He smoth­ers the bad guys and nour­ish­es the vic­tims. Despite the soup being chick­en, Soupmann is not Jewish. He has two Ns at the end of his name. He’s not even human. He’s out of this world. He is a Kryptonian, and the soup is flu­o­res­cent-green. 10% kryp­tonite and 90% secret ingre­di­ents. No one knows how it tastes, because who­ev­er tast­ed it is either dead or turned mum with awe.

Her death is sud­den, so there is no time to prepare—no pro­tract­ed sick­ness. A stroke: Henry wakes to find her dead beside him, stiff and cool.

You have nev­er met Elaine. You have only seen pic­tures: the one on his desk with the lac­quered frame, and –more

Even pro­lif­ic swingers like us had morals.  Rules to our care­free promis­cu­ity.  Rules each of us took seri­ous­ly.  Beth and I had been hap­pi­ly mar­ried, you see, before we met this mar­ried cou­ple off a dat­ing site at Sloppy Joe’s.  Rule One: we –more

I trace the scars that tat­too the dark skin of your shoul­ders in the back seat of my Volvo s80 and tell you to stop pop­ping ben­zos so often. I like the way you sigh and roll your head back when I go down and how you wear that wig some­times. You’re –more

The teenage boy drove a black Trans Am with an eagle on the hood. He was friends with my babysit­ter Rita and her friends, and she would invite them over to drink beers and blast David Bowie and T. Rex on my dad’s stereo sys­tem. One night the girls –more

My neigh­bor, Tom, came to the door. Tom was in his for­ties, his only dis­tin­guish­ing fea­ture a patch of blond in his oth­er­wise dark hair. He and his wife had bought the three-bed­room house next to ours four or five years ago, bring­ing with them a pair –more

One rocked him­self to sleep every night, bang­ing his head against the wall. One who’d been beat­en for clog­ging the toi­let, took to shit­ting behind the garage. The youngest one had night ter­rors. Once he dreamed he was being chased and tore through –more

To all involved in the Best Small Fictions 2017 con­test. See results here. Couple of our folks involved.

1

At a Wawa gas sta­tion and min­i­mart in Newport News, Virginia, a land­scap­er named Scott stood in line to buy a bot­tle of Gatorade. He had been work­ing for the city, weed­ing and replant­i­ng a wide medi­an strip and a flowerbed at the mouth of an off ramp, –more